New Stuff For Old Stuff :: Blog

T his weekend I've tried a different approach to writing and recording a song and it's worked out so well I thought I'd make some notes here about the process. First of all, here's the finished music. I only spent an hour or two actually writing it. That was in itself an exercise in composing but I wanted to try this new method of recording and just got something down to work with. I like it a lot and will definitely expand it. All sounds here are produced by the C64, albeit one fitted with an ARMSID (set to 6581). Only because my working C64 with a real SID chip is playing up. Rather than try to write for 3 or 6 voices and then import that information to end up with a .prg that will run and play the music (aka a "sid") I've written any number of parts, with up to 3 voices in each, and used the C64 as a MIDI instrument, sending each part as MIDI to the computer and recording the audio that comes out of the computer. I think that Logic and other...

I 've set up a YouTube channel for posting my music, mostly to give myself an incentive to keep writing and hopefully improve those skills. I recently posted a version of this eastern-sounding piece rendered by the notation software. An exercise in using the pentatonic minor for that eastern flavour. I've now made recordings of the C64 playing the piece. First of all I made a 3-voice version (not yet posted) and then an 8-voice version using multi-tracking. That's the first version you hear in this video, played on my 'bionic 64' which is fitted with an ARMSID. Curious about how this would compare with the same music played by a real 6581 SID, I did the same recording using an all-original 64 and made a video with one recording after the other. My observations are below but judge for yourself. In the 'pure' tones it's hard to hear a difference. But there is definitely a difference when there are many voices playing together and using pulse-w...

This has been an amazing journey so far. I've worked entirely on my Mac and the Vice emulator while dusting off a real breadbin 64 and gathering the necessary adaptors and other hardware. Isn't this the cutest thing??! It's a SD2IEC from The Future Was 8-bit . Thank you to them for everything they do. I've got a version that should work with C64, Vic20, Plus4 and more. I didn't go for the preloaded card option, but it was very easy to grab a card, format it and load it with stuff. This was a very big moment. It's been weeks since I started this project, and for the first time here it is running on original hardware. The sheep look fantastic to me, cheap monitor aside (the characters are straight from my cartoon, Yvonne the Sheep ). It's very early days as far as the gameplay goes, I've mostly been working on the tune recently and have built a system that allows me to pretty much import from sheet music . The music played, and it sounds bea...

T his post is going to combine musical notation, music XML, cocoa programming (objective-C for MacOS) and retro game programming (specifically the music) in assembly for C64. That might qualify this as an extremely niche post, so if you're reading because you're interested in all or some of those things, or if there's some other reason why you'd like to convert sheet music to another format, do let me know if the comments so that I know I'm not entirely alone! In the last couple of posts in this series I wrote about how I was tinkering around with a little tune for a game I'm writing for C64. Writing out the notation is something I'm very comfortable with. I eventually arrived at a great and efficient way to store and play the music within my game. This involved using a kind of 'bytecode', combining instructions and data. (A development of code that came with Derek Morris' book). That looks like this: That looks pretty laborious to wri...

The development of the music for this game has gone so well - way better than the development of the gameplay itself, which I'm having serious doubts about! Writing a silly tune was the easiest part. I've now improved that - it has a 'chorus' which is deliberately reminiscent of 'English Country Garden'. The main part of the tune is meant to accompany sheep trotting / blundering around a field. It even has a fourth part now, although I can only use three because the C64's sound chip - SID - has three tone voices. And here's how it sounds using the Vice C64 emulator: Disclaimer: Tonight I've been messing around with voices and ASDR envelopes, and haven't yet found settings that I really like. The bass in particular is raspy here, I want a smooth sound, but when I use the triangle waveform it sounds very quiet even with the highest sustain volume. In the first part of this little diary , I mentioned that I started to use Derek M...

It's funny how interests from your teens remain with you, how easy it is to pick them up again and how comfortable they feel. I'll probably write more about the revival of this hobby and my collection of 8-bit computers. Let's just say for now that I've begun a C64 puzzle game based on my character Yvonne the Sheep and her friends - and enemies. Writing for 6502 (or 6510 in this case, which makes no difference as far as the assembly language is concerned) is like putting on an old familiar comfortable jumper. I wasn't particularly keen on doing music, I did think about just forgetting it and just going with sound effects. But a silly tune came into my head that seemed suitable for sheep pootling around a field. I'm not a composer of any great experience but I am at home with sheet music. Notating it (in 3 voices and possibly a fourth later) was the easiest way for me to get the tune out of my head and onto 'paper'. Before I knew it I was rea...