C64 Music Programming

Presentation

Before shaping the feb14 performance project with Inge, the original idea was to use an old Commodore 64 computer as a member of an Electronic Hip-Hop band.

The project

The C64 is very famous among 8-bit music lovers, because it's internal ship, the SID, which is cheap and yet powerful. Usually the SID is extracted from the computer and used in a more contemporary MIDI controller. I took the initial restraint of not opening the C64 (because it was borrowed) as a starting point the create the music.

The only way to achieve this is by programming directly in the C64, via the old Commodore Basic V2 language. I found a copy of a very good book entitled "The Commodore 64 Music Book" which help me a with the programming of the first songs.

Unfortunately, I realized later the Datassette, external tape drive used to store data, was quite unstable. In the end, I wasn't able to record data anymore, making it impossible to build songs in regards to the amount of text necessary to just output a few tones. The project was then aborted.

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