C64Music!: March 2006

SIDlove

musha68000 expresses his love for Rob and the SID.

Some more Blibb Blobb for you - Episode 10 .

SIDplay 3.4 for MacOSX Released.

GoatTracker 2.28 for MacOSX Released.

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C64 Studio of the week

80s home recording studio featuring a Commodore 64 as the main MIDI sequencer...

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SIDCONTROL 0.93b VSTi

Ups...I missed this new Beta of SIDCONTROL, for those who never heard of SIDCONTROL, it puts a complete user surface to the HW-SidSynth in form of a VST-Plugin.

It's made for those Sid-Synth-owners that make music with the PC by using a VST-Host like FLStudio, Audiomulch, Logic or Cubase. It's usage is like a common VST-Synth but it produces MIDI-signals instead of audio. Because of that it does not eat much CPU. It has full MIDI functionality as you know it from other VST/VSTi's - no problem to link any slider or button to your MIDI-box or record some controller's data to the VST-Host's Automation-channel and import or export banks as *.fxb (instruments as *.fxp) file.

SIDCONTROL is no sysex-based Patcheditor like jsynth-lib and does not make any changes to your hardware-patches. All sound settings will be saved in your song-projects and are recallable when you open a song and start your VST-Host.

Latest changes :
Now it sends MIDI-Data on up to 4 channels simultaneously. Additionally it has a new keyrange-function. You can set up a Keyboard/Pianoroll key-range for every Channel, too. The 3 new buttons activate up to three additional MIDI-Channels to SidControls' main Output.

...I enhanced the patchselect-field but it has no good internal patches at the moment. Now you can switch all 128 external patches very comfortable....

Requirements:
a win98\2000\XP compatible PC with some Mhz and RAM.
a VST-Plugin compatible host-program
and (of course) your self-soldered Sid-Synth

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Get SIDCONTROL

GoatTracker V2.25 for MacOSX!

GoatTracker is a cross-platform Commodore 64 (MOS Technology SID) music tracker.

GoatTracker supports emulated output via Dag Lem's reSID engine, the HardSID soundcard or CatWeasel MK3.

It is written by Lasse Öörni and released under the GPL with source code. A stereo version, emulating two SIDs with reSID, is also available.

"This is a C64 music tracker, just running on PC. Can pack/relocate songs directly to SID format as well as to PRG and raw binary file. Music routine takes 12 rasterlines max. to execute. "

From V2.0 onwards the editor includes more powerful step-programming (wave/arpeggio, pulse and filter), 63 instruments, more instrument parameters & pattern commands. May be less userfriendly than V1.xx, but you can import V1.xx songs and instruments to see how the corresponding V2 features work. Rastertime usage has stayed about the same.

V2.25 improves packer/relocator error reporting.

Niiice one.

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Download GoatTracker (go to tools)

TRON DigiDrum Sampler

Not much shows up on google when searching for the TRON DigiDrum but according to some website (which sells one unit) it seems to be a:

"...Drumcomputer Cartridge with software (tape) for sound-editing and rhythm composing. 16-Step Trigger-Out for synchronising with external equipment..."

Well.. according to the pictures I would say it's a sampler cartridge built in 1986 by DCS/TRON that included some drum machine software to trigger the samples. Probably the basic sample editing functions too. But, I don't quite get the 16-Step trigger out thing... anyone knows more about this cartridge ?

C64 first remixes ???

As far back as 1986, a company called Mupados released via the W. H. Smith chain of shops a cassette tape called Datahits.

This tape contained the first remixes of C64 music, containing enhanced versions of the tunes from Rambo, Never Ending Story, Ghostbusters, Crazy Comets and Hyper Sports. The music was still fairly similar to the original (the C64 still provided all of the melody) but was in stereo and had realistic sampled drum tracks overlaid onto the music.

In the creation of DATAHITS, Mupados used:

The COMMODORE 64 Computer
The COMMODORE Sound Sampler
The COMMODORE Sound Expander
The COMMODORE Music Studio
The TRON Digidrum

Another piece of music on similar lines was provided on a cassette given away with Zzap!64 magazine in June 1987. The cassette, called "The Zzap Sampler," contained a number of game demos on side 1, and a fully remixed version of the Sanxion loading tune on side 2 entitled "Thalamusic." This was rearranged by Hubbard himself using top-of-the-range keyboards and drum machines, and it was extremely popular.

"...Thalamusic - an audio remix of the Sanxion loading tune. Approximately five minutes and forty-two seconds in lenght. Rob used authentic Fairlight samples, as heard on Jean Michel Jarre's "Zoolook". The piece was performed on a Yamaha CX5M, linked up to an AKAI S900 Sampler with a Digital Reverb and a Yamaha RX15 Drum Machine, and recorded on a four-track..."

Get these tape MP3s (and others) here:
Gamestone - Zzap64!

Text is © Adam Dawes

Taken from Play it again, SID article, as published in issue 4 of Retro Gamer magazine.

Thanks Gamestone !!!