Puzzled - a piece for dual-SID C64

his is another performance using my new "MIDI input" music driver.

This is another piece of original Dual-SID music. I've tended to like intros that start simply and build but I'm starting to doubt the wisdom of writing long ponderous intros. I may experiment with form and try something that dives straight in and uses the thin bits in the middle.

My 16-channel MIDI to 6-channel SID voice music player is improving. The sound in the video is captured straight from my sixtyclone which you can see in the video. I realised later that I had failed to remove the sound from the separate video footage and so you can hear a faint strange echo and room ambience.

The music is actually being generated by Logic Pro on a Mac (I can use anything that generates live midi events) and sent to the C64 via my Datel MIDI cart. This setup is working really well. Composing using the piano roll in Logic is great, it allows me to really fine-tune the length of the notes (or selectively overlap them, which can indicate a portamento in my software). I can easily make adjustments and immediately hear them played through the 64.

My software has 3 modes at present; mode 1 simply selects the next available voice. This is best for single-sid or where the output is combined to mono. Mode 2 limits midi channels 1-8 to SID 1 and 9-16 to SID 2 which means you can decide which instruments go on which side of the stereo and still have multiple channels playing through the sids' 3 voices. Mode 3 maps specific midi channels to specific sid voices. This limits the number of midi channels that can be used, but it allows certain effects like the portamento and arpeggiation (which I have yet to write into this driver).

I'm happy with the SID2SID, it's doing its job but it does limit the second SID to $DE00 (which interferes with certain cartridges including my DATEL MIDI cart!) or $DF00 (which doesn't seem to work with SIDPLAY64). I'd really like to be able to switch the second SID to whereever I like, so I've ordered a kit for the MIXSID.

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