I have always wondered how you made music for the c64. Did you first play and compose with synthesizers the music you had ideas of making and then made the same music on the c64 afterwards? Or did you write musical composition on paper first..or what? It's hard to imagine that you just made it on the go on the c64, in...assembler? That is very impressive if it's the case:-) Anyways, we are about the same age and now and then I refresh all the good memories form childhood and teenage years in the days of homecomputing, by listening to all the great tunes you guys made. Yes and of course I follow the demoscene.

Straight from my imagination, mostly... programming the notes in hexadecimal .byte strings directly into Turbo Assembler... Like this: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/n52HnNSQ3p6ViH0.html

Mostly straight from my imagination/inspiration directly into assembler, typing down hexadecimal .byte strings, indicating sounds, lengths, notes and effects. So, 90%, yes, on the go. =) Like this: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/n52HnNSQ3p6ViH0.html

JT, you do a killer job with the C64 sound chip resources. It's very different than the chip used on the NES because (if I'm recalling correctly) the channels on the C64 had the ability to change waveform at any point whereas the NES sound chip had more waveform channels, but they were fixed. I'm curious as to your opinion between composing for C64 versus the NES. I've heard your work with Bram Stoker's Dracula, Robocop 3 (of course), and Alien 3 to name a few and it is quite distinct and punchy, something that a lot of NES composers never seemed to tap into. Thanks for what you do!

Isaac: Yes, the SID soundchip within the Commodore 64 has 3 channels that can change between waveforms (noise, PWM, triangle and saw) up to 4 million times a second (according to specs), but with a a 1 MHZ CPU to control it within the cycles given, the best that could be done was basically what could be done within that "limit". Mostly, the SID updated every 1/50th of a second (50 herz) (PAL) or 60 herz (NTSC). The NES soundchip indeed has 3 fixed waveforms (channel 1, 2 and the noise channel) and one kind of programmable 3rd channel, which was standard holding a "sort of" SINE/triangle waveform (very bassy). Channel 1 & 2 (both PWM): being able to be set to 12.5%, 25%, 50%, 75% and 88,5% width)... which, when switching quickly between them, could create a more SID-like PWM sound. What made the difference in the NES music I composed was that I looked very intensely to the specifications first, before even starting to composed music for it... and using the possibilities to it's best use. The 3rd channel plus the noise channel made for great sounding bassy drums... and off course, using arpeggios (which is great on any FM soundchip and is now a catch in most electronic music)... rooms it all up for quite a good pallet within the limited set of voices for each machine. 'nuff said... 8bit soundchips always captured me from the very beginning and it's fun to capture great musical ideas within a very limited environment. =) The music is always the most important part (melody, harmony, rhythm (groove if you will), but also makes for a *very* distinctive soundscape as soon as one drives the chip to its limits... Limitations boost creativity.

Indeed, given the whole package of songs I composed for it, but ... at least it's out there for people to enjoy (as music). I personally think that when a game gets "canned" (unreleased), at least the working state of it should be dumped for the nerds. ;-)

Thanks, bro!

It's hard to explain but I believe that trick has something to do with RAM

@@cfothough Yes, most packages of tunes had to be

@@cfothough so, this requires RAM? Damn

It could be viewed as 'inverted synth'. Square wave contains almost all harmonics, so instead of adding signals, you just filter out unwanted frequencies from a square (or whatever suits your needs). Same result.

You'd have to ask Dr. Rob Hubbard... I ripped his samples for this... with his permission, of course! =D

@@JeroenTel skate or die chords?

Considering the game wasn't released, it's most likely a coincidence.

@@ExtremeWreck Zabutom probably found out about this soundtrack. Zeta Force is not a game, it is a song.

@@cfothough I know, but I mean, how would he know about this anyway?

@@justinhiggins2090 Even though the game was never released, the songs have been out for a while

We had the tendency to release "promotion disks"... 5"25 disk... to promote our music. This saved it... if that wouldn't have happened, the music would have died in my basement (so to speak). =)

If you mean the 4th/bottom voice its a sample channel if im not wrong.. Edit: People say that its a "virtual" 4th channel. When you change the main volume it makes a little tick sound. So composers used this glitch to make (sort-of) samples

That's a sort of bug in the SID chip that musicians can exploit to make a virtual 4th voice. When the main volume is adjusted up or down it makes a tiny little tick sound. If it's changed fast enough it can be used for a PWM-style wave form. One good use of it is in the Afterburner title music by Maniacs of Noise (which Jeroen Tel was a part of if I remember right).

@@00Skyfox I know it can be used to recreate samples. What I was asking for as to what sample they are attempting to play back? Is it strings or something?

@@Sh-hg8kf Ah, ok. I misunderstood.

I'm asking me the same question.

there is a little exploit some C64 composers found that lets you playback samples from a fourth "channel", i dont remember how it was done and besides there were many ways to do it, but there are videos explaining it, its easy to understand too,

​@@Iouie_There are two ways you can get the effect: the first is exploiting a glitch in the volume register that can cause pops. This allows you to do PCM. You can also exploit the test bit for a not dissimilar effect. Both have a high CPU cost, but test bit effects work on newer SIDs better as the glitch with the volume register was mostly fixed.