The LaserBoy Thread

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Originally Posted by james

For all of the Commodore 64 fans.

I made this recording right after I got my Fostex A8 1/4 inch open reel 8 track tape machine in 1986.

If you know about the C64 you probably know about its SID sound chip.

I wrote an app that allowed me to poke values into the SID register addresses. I could set it up with some kind of complex sound and just let it go.

I made this piece by recording 8 tracks of the SID. The pitch changes are done either by punching-in with a different SID setting or by adjusting the speed control of the tape machine while it was recording.

There are no effects in this recording. It is nothing but the SID direct to tape. The phase shifting is done by offsetting the frequencies a bit, either by setting the SID or changing the tape recording speed.

http://laserboy.org/stuff/Ode_To_64.mp3

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That's pretty cool. I only had a TRS-80 Model I so I was pretty limited to sounds. I did play around with early wav files back then by recording voice through the tape recorder input into memory and then playing it back. It sounded pretty horrible since it was filtered to something like 3000 bits/second and only had 48Kbytes of RAM. I built an Orchestra 80 board based on a schematic someone gave me and I was able to play some pretty decent music like that. It sounded similar to a very early soundblaster MIDI player... so, not great, but a lot better than click, blip, and bloop. I miss the old days and having to build stuff and writing machine code to do something that seemed amazing but at the same time I don't have much interest in doing those things anymore.

When I was young I had endless enthusiasm and not much money. Now I am older and I have money but not as much enthusiasm. I guess that was part of the challenge though. I always tried to go beyond expectations with what little I had to work with.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by james

For all of the Commodore 64 fans.

I made this recording right after I got my Fostex A8 1/4 inch open reel 8 track tape machine in 1986.

If you know about the C64 you probably know about its SID sound chip.

I wrote an app that allowed me to poke values into the SID register addresses. I could set it up with some kind of complex sound and just let it go.

I made this piece by recording 8 tracks of the SID. The pitch changes are done either by punching-in with a different SID setting or by adjusting the speed control of the tape machine while it was recording.

There are no effects in this recording. It is nothing but the SID direct to tape. The phase shifting is done by offsetting the frequencies a bit, either by setting the SID or changing the tape recording speed.

http://laserboy.org/stuff/Ode_To_64.mp3

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Hey Laserboy, I'd sure love to see this, but when I click on the link it asks me to confirm I want to go to a facebook link. I don't do FB. Can you post to YouTube?

Thanks

That's weird.

I must admit I scraped the text out of a post I did on FB. But the file is actually on my own server at

http://laserboy.org/stuff/Ode_To_64.mp3

That should work!

Let me know.

James.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by james

For all of the Commodore 64 fans.

I made this recording right after I got my Fostex A8 1/4 inch open reel 8 track tape machine in 1986.

If you know about the C64 you probably know about its SID sound chip.

I wrote an app that allowed me to poke values into the SID register addresses. I could set it up with some kind of complex sound and just let it go.

I made this piece by recording 8 tracks of the SID. The pitch changes are done either by punching-in with a different SID setting or by adjusting the speed control of the tape machine while it was recording.

There are no effects in this recording. It is nothing but the SID direct to tape. The phase shifting is done by offsetting the frequencies a bit, either by setting the SID or changing the tape recording speed.

http://laserboy.org/stuff/Ode_To_64.mp3

James.

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That worked James! That is really very, very cool and nicely done!

I remember the C64 and its SID capability although never got very far into exploring it. I did transfer my Apple II laser graphics software and drivers for use in the C64 back in 1983-84, though.

Thanks for sharing.

Thanks! I'm glad you liked it.

The C=64 SID chip was pretty cool, and it still enjoys a loyal following today. There are companies that have built small Synth rigs around that chip, and you can still buy them today. (They are expensive though - much more than a used Commodore 64!)

It's really crazy to hear some of the music that people have been able to squeeze out of that chip, especially considering it's age. :)

Adam

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Originally Posted by buffo

The C=64 SID chip was pretty cool, and it still enjoys a loyal following today. There are companies that have built small Synth rigs around that chip, and you can still buy them today. (They are expensive though - much more than a used Commodore 64!)

It's really crazy to hear some of the music that people have been able to squeeze out of that chip, especially considering it's age. :)

Adam

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I built a Sammich SID synthesizer, i'll have to dig out or take a video. I is fun but so limited with the controls. The sounds sure do bring back the memories.

I used to like to set the 3 oscillators to variable pulse width rectangle waves with the shortest possible pulse. I'd calculate the freq of a nice low note in the 12 tone scale. I'd set one to that freq and the other two to an increment above and below that freq. Since it's a short pulse wave it is freaking saturated with all of the natural harmonics all the way up to the top of the audio spectrum. Since the 3 oscillators are slightly out of tune, they go in and out of phase with each other. You can hear that in my recording.

It's all about the texture of the sound.

It's too bad that Crow (The_Doctor, aka lostgallifreyan) isn't still active on here. He was working on his own syth software back in the day that could create pretty much any instrument sound by adding up multiple waveforms. (Lots of them!) I remember it being able to create some amazing sounds; I wonder if he's still developing it.?.

Adam