Instant Music

"Instant Music" from Electronic Arts (1986) is a bit different from any other music applications on the Commodore 64 as it allows you to 1) create music from scratch or 2) "jam" along an already made tune.

Jamming (or "mouse jamming" as it's called) means that you can jam using one channel while the other two are playing a tune. Since I don't find "mouse jamming" too appealing, I am gonna focus here on "Instant Music" as a pure music creation software. To turn off "mouse jamming" in case it's on, click on the icon that shows a joystick with a thunderbolt next to it.

What's neat about "Instant Studio" is that it can make sure that everything you do is in key (pitch guide set to "scale") and better yet in key and melodic (pitch guide set to "melody"). Of course, it can let you play whatever pitch you want if you set the pitch guide to "free" but that kinda defeats the purpose of "Instant Music".

By default, Instant Music controls the rhythm (it is "guided") but you can certainly have full control over it. Indeed, note durations can be changed to quarter, eighth, and sixteenth at any time. You can also select a note duration and allow the length to be multiplied (select "multiple" instead of "discrete" in the rhythm guides) when you actually input notes (keep joystick button pressed and slide right).

Here are some things about Instant Music I've figured out after playing for a little bit (the hard part was figuring out the pitch and rhythm guides):

- You can create single notes, dyads (2 notes) or triads (3 notes) one by one or along a line (click on the thunderbolt icon to get into line drawing mode). The "quickdraw" pattern determines how the notes are gonna be placed along the line.

- You can copy/cut/paste blocks of music you've added voice by voice.

- You can change the tempo of the tune that's playing.

- You can can zoom in/out in order to play/edit pieces of the tune.

- You can edit the instruments available.

- You can transpose an instrument's pitch up or down (by one octave).



In the video above, I kinda show off my musical skills. Actually, you really don't need any because Instant Music takes care of pretty much everything (pitch guide set to "melody" and rhythm guide set to "guided"), you just need to decide whether the notes go up or down.



The video above goes into much more details regarding the pitch modes and rhythm modes. It's interesting to note that, when in melody mode, Instant Music modulates (changes scale) quite a bit. It would be interesting to delve into this more and kinda reverse engineer the next note decision making. The choice of the next note is based on the stable/unstable (consonant/dissonant) degrees of the scale but that's about all I have been able to figure out thus far. Concerning the rhythm, I really have no idea about how it works.

Ubik's Music

The video above showcases demo tracks number 00 and 01, just to see what Ubik's Music looks and sounds like.

Here are some commands that can get you started:

F8 Start/Stop song
RUN-STOP (Esc on pc keyboard) Enter menu
SHIFT+ENTER Edit current sequence
F1 Edit value
F3 Insert row
F4 Delete row
Those last 3 work when you are stringing up the sequences in the song menu and when you are making up the sequences (editing notes/commands within the sequence).

Live play/edit voices:
SHIFT+A Disable channel 1
SHIFT+S Disable channel 2
SHIFT+D Disable channel 3
A Enable channel 1
S Enable channel 2
D Enable channel 3
SHIFT+J Transpose up/down voice 1
SHIFT+K Transpose up/down voice 2
SHIFT+L Transpose up/down voice 3
F1 Increase value
F2 Decrease value
F3 Increase value by 16
F4 Decrease value by 16

Thanks to HVMEC for those. HVMEC which stands for High Voltage Music Engine Collection has a lot of C64 music apps but the popup ads are real annoying, to say the least.

When you are in the "Live play/edit voices" panel, you need to press F8 to hear what you are playing (it seems to be switching you over to voice number 00 automatically then). Now, how do you switch voices in the editing panel? That, I have no idea. There are some rather cryptic controls in there, in particular, the gate NPSTRSG switch. Without a manual, it's a bit hard to figure out what each "knob" does. I really can only refer you to the Ubik's Music review in Zzap! 64 post to put some sense and reason to the voice editing panel. All I can gather is that it's a pulse width modulated (PWM) oscillator filtered by a high, bandpass or low (HBL) filter and amplified following the ADSR envelope. I would assume that the amplifier can be modulated by the gate instead of the ADSR envelope but it's just speculation.

All in all, after playing a bit with it, I really like the tracker aspect, that is, the assembling of patterns (sequences) and songs. The voice editing panel leaves me real perplexed though (it'd be nice to have a manual, that's for sure).

Below is a video that really shows what can be done with Ubik's Music. It's not my doing (I wish it were though).



Update: the Ubik's Music manual is now available.

Playalong Album - Popular Classics

This game from 1985 is kinda like karaoke for piano playing, sort of. When the game starts, you are given the choice of playing along 12 classics which range from "Capriccio Italian" to the "Toreador's Song".

Once you have chosen a tune to play along, your task is to play the melody on the keyboard, initially, by following what keys the program tells you to press (Single Key Play) and then, once you're good at it, by playing the melody all by yourself (Rehearsal Mode and Performance).

What's interesting is that there's a midi mode. Alas, I am not too familiar about MIDI interfaces for the C64 so hard to say if it's input (MIDI keyboard, doubtful) or output (most likely).

There's also a concert mode which might be a free-for-all type of deal.

Needless to say that the game portion of the soft is quite forgettable. On the other hand, Hearing timeless classics a la chiptune never gets old though.



Video above showcases tunes 1 to 6: Capriccio Italian, Caprice, Concerto No 1 Bb Minor, Dance of the Reed Flutes, Emperor Waltz, Hungarian Dance No 5.



Video above showcases tunes 7 to 12: Hall of the Mountain King, Minuet in G (Beethoven), Night Music Serenade, Romeo and Juliet, Sonata in C (Mozart), Toreador's Song.

Oh, almost forgot, check SID Sings post for a little blurb on this title, courtesy of Zzap! 64.

Rhythm King

Rhythm King is a really neat drum machine for the Commodore 64. It makes full use of the 3 channels the C64 has, in other words, you can play up to 3 drum sounds at the same time.

The "recording studio" (as opposed to "live play") has a bunch of options but the most important two (well, the ones discussed here) are the "pattern editor" and the "edit song" mode.

In the "pattern editor" mode, well, you can edit drum patterns at your heart's content.

To edit patterns, press the directional pad up/down to highlight the "edit" option. Then, press the left/right directional pad to cycle through the pattern spots. Press the fire button to enter the name, the number of bars, the number of beats per bar, the quantization (how many strokes you can have per beat) and the number of beats per minute. Apparently you need at least 2 bars per pattern.

You are then taken to the actual drum sequencer. For each step, you may enter up to 3 drum sounds: 1 is open hi-hat, 2 is cymbal, 3 is some kind of pipe, 4 is hand-clap, 5 is low tom, 6 is high tom, 7 is the snare and 8 is the bass drum. To cycle through the options at the top ("exit", "edit", "record" and "tempo"), press the up/down directional pad. If you make a mistake picking the wrong drum sound, well, you just shift press the drum sound key of the drum you want to get rid of.

In the "edit song" control panel, you string together the patterns that you have defined.

Highlight the "edit song" option in the "recording studio" screen and press the directional pad left/right to go up/down the list of songs. Once at the right spot, press fire and give a name to your song and press return to get to the actual song making control panel.

Highlight the "pattern" option and then cycle through the available patterns with the left/right directional pad. If you want to repeat a pattern (default is 1, played once), highlight "repeat" and then press the left/right directional pad to get to the number of plays you want. The tempo may also be changed in a similar manner for each pattern. Once you have a bunch of patterns out there, you can highlight the "stop" option to cycle through the selected patterns with the left/right directional pad (in case you need to change the pattern or its attributes).

Anytime you play a pattern or song, press (more exactly, strike) PgUp (on a pc emulated C64 like ccs64) to get out and go back to editing.


Little video I made showing the pattern and song editor. Only showing pattern 00 being made but the song has actually 3 patterns (00, 01 and 02).

MicroRhythm

MicroRhythm is a drum machine for the Commodore 64, written by Simon Pick and released by Firebird. It is a single channel drum machine, which one may find a tad limiting. As usual, you create patterns (bars) and then string them together to form a drum track (song). Each bar or pattern holds a maximum of 16 steps.

F1 toggles between "bar write" and "song write" mode.

In "bar write" mode, to change the bar (pattern), you just enter the bar number. In "song write" mode, to add a bar or pattern, you enter the bar number and press return. It will be added to the left of the cursor. When you start writing a (blank) song, the cursor says ST (start). The patterns are added to the left but they are played from left to right.

If you use ccs64 (should be the same for the other C64 emulators like VICE), this is what the pc keyboard keys do in "bar write" mode:

* left/right (up/down) arrows moves sound cursor to the right (left)
* Q = bass drum (BS)
* W = snare drum (SN)
* E = tom-tom aka low tom(TM)
* R = tom-tom +2 pitch aka medium tom (TM +2)
* T = tom-tom +4 pitch aka high tom (TM +4)
* Y = rim (RM)
* U = cow bell (CW)
* I = hand clap (CL)
* O = not sure (TA)
* P = hi-hat closed (HC)
* [ = hi-hat open (HO)
* ] = cymbal (CY)
* space = silence
* F adds flam
* -/= increases/decreases the pitch (by one semi-tone, I assume)
* D/G decreases/increases flam time
* C (pressed twice; press B to deselect) clears the pattern (bar)
* ;/' removes/adds a step in the bar
* ,/. decreases/increases tempo speed
* S plays/stops the pattern

This is what the pc keyboard keys do in "song write" mode:

* A opens song A
* B opens song B
* C opens song C
* D opens song D
* S plays/stops the song
* backspace removes the bar at the cursor


This video shows the predefined pattern 00 and then plays predefined song B.


This second video (could not resist!) plays predefined song A. I think it's a killer drum solo. Goes to show you really don't need that many channels in a drum machine. Apparently, one might be more than enough.

Even though there's only one channel available, being able to add flam and change the pitch of any drum sound is pretty cool. In case you don't know, a flam is a (weaker) repeat of a drum hit. In MicroRhythm, you can adjust the time between the main stroke and the repeat (flam time). Kudos to the developer for this fine piece of software.

MicroRhythm Plus is the sequel to MicroRhythm. It's actually 4 music apps in one: MicroDisco, MicroLatin, MicroVocals and MicroTuned. The interface remains the same, it's the sample sounds that change. Have checked all 4 and the samples are not that groundbreaking when compared to the original ones (the disco one is pretty disappointing actually), so stick with this one and you won't miss much.

Music Shop

Music Shop is a music editor published by Broderbund for the Commodore 64. It is similar in terms of functionality to Activision’s Music Studio. The interface doesn’t have the bells and whistles of the Activision title but it gets the job done, as they say.

When it starts, Music Shop’s main window shows, besides the traditional staffs, three drop-down menus (a la windows):

Tools
* Setup Screen
* Get Notes (F1)
* Adjust Sound (F2)
* Verify Timing

THE MUSIC SHOP (score’s name)
* Load Score
* Save Score
* List Titles
* Enter Title
* Format Disk
* Print Page
* Print Score
* Clear Page
* Clear Score
* Exit
* Edit

Capture
* Cut
* Copy
* Clear
* Paste
* Undo

There are two additional mini-menus (boxes) on the main window. The box in the upper-right enables page changes: press the button and push up or down to change the page. The box in the upper-left is used to play the score: press the button to play and press RUN-STOP (Esc on a pc) to stop.

In the Tools menu, the Setup Screen enables you to choose between a one-staff or a two-staff setup and to select the key signature. In Get Notes, you can pick and choose which note/rest you wanna use to edit your music. Note that dotted notes and ties are available, which is quite comforting to see in a music editor. Also, repeat bars and repeat notation are there for the serious music scorer. As you know, the C64 has three sound channels so it is no surprise that you are given the option of changing the sound parameters of three voices (V1, V2, V3) in the Adjust Sound sub-menu. You can modify the main characteristics of each voice but also just change the instrument assigned, which is probably enough for most of us.

The Edit capabilities are pretty neat. You always start by selecting an area in the music editing window with Capture. Then, you can either cut, copy or clear the area. So, if you want to copy and paste, you need to Capture, Copy and then finally Paste to get Music Shop to do what you want.


In this video, I simply loaded one of the many demo songs and let Music Shop play it. This one is among the simpler ones. There are some pretty involved tunes in there including Pachelbel’s Canon in D, the wedding ceremony classic.

Activision’s Music Studio is probably more inviting than Broderbund’s Music Shop because of its (big) icon based interface. Music Shop caters probably more to the serious music composer. Between the two, it probably comes down to which one you are more comfortable playing or working with.

Electrosound

Electrosound from Orpheus is a synthesizer/sequencer for the Commodore 64. It is one among the many music creation apps that are available for the C64. You write tracks (songs) by combining so-called sequences (patterns). You compose a sequence by assigning a note (and its instrument) to a channel for each sequence step. Electrosound has three channels and a maximum of 240 steps per sequence.

I don’t think Electrosound is the best music making app out there but it’s probably the easiest to use without a manual. You don’t have to create your own instruments/sounds as there are plenty to choose from. Having a two-octave keyboard to punch on makes writing the sequences quite easy especially if you have no idea about musical notation (but are somewhat familiar with a piano keyboard).

When you press the (enter) key anywhere in the program, you are taken to the menu screen:

* 1 Manual Play
* 2 Sequence Play
* 3 Sequence Write
* 4 Track Play
* 5 Track Write
* 6 Tape/Disk

Let’s focus on the key functions for the sequence write and track write sections since everything else is not that interesting.

Sequence write

* N play
* M pause/continue
* B stop
* , go backward one step
* . go forward one step
* return : go into menu
* A Channel 1 +
* S Channel 2 +
* D Channel 3 +
* F Channel 1 Switch +/-
* G Channel 2 Switch +/-
* H Channel 3 Switch +/-
* J Channel 1 Filter +/-
* K Channel 2 Filter +/-
* L Channel 3 Filter +/-

Track write

* Z Decrease track number
* shift+Z Increase track number
* X Decrease sequence number
* shift+X Increase sequence number
* C Delete last sequence
* shift+C Add sequence

In sequence write mode (if you are using CCS64 on a pc and I believe VICE should be the same):

* (’) key changes the filter setting (channel 1 to 3)
* (`) key resets the current sequence
* up/down arrow increases/decreases the number of steps in the sequence
* (shift+x)/(x) key switches sequence up/down
* (F1) key switches channel


In the video, you see/hear one track made up of three 16 step sequences. The melody (on the 3rd channel) is totally random (most of the time).

In conclusion, Electrosound is a very user-friendly synthesizer/sequencer (probably the most user-friendly of all). Of course, it doesn’t have the bells and whistles of more involved C64 music apps (in particular, regarding instrument creation) but I can guarantee you that you will be creating beautiful SID music in very little time with Electrosound.

Music Studio

Activision released quite a gem in 1985 with Music Studio. Budding composers could finally put their melodies on five and a quarter inch disks and share them with their neighbors.

For starters, the interface is just brilliant. You place notes (and other musical things) on the staffs (two of them) using the joystick. There are four basic interface sub-menus: edit (delete, copy and move note blocks), key (haven’t really delved into this part but I assume it’s to change staff keys), move (bar placement and navigation around in the score) and sound (instrument choice). Note that you can select a block in the score and delete, copy or move it or change the assigned instrument. What’s neat about the interface is that it kinda hints at you what you are supposed to do (no need for a manual).

Little bit of free information: to tie two notes or more of the same pitch, click on the tie item in the move sub-menu and place the first note, then go back to normal editing (click again on the tie item) for the following note(s).


The beginning of the video shows the edit (Ed), key (Ky), sound (Sd) and move (Mv) modes to illustrate what I was saying earlier. After that, the video plays my rendition of an 80s anthem: Van Halen’s Jump. Could not add the bass line (in the lower staff) because you cannot play more than three notes simultaneously in Music Studio (only three sound channels are available on a Commodore 64). That’s really too bad for Van Halen.

Personally, I think Music Studio for the Commodore 64 is a great piece of music editing software. It’s definitely a great way to compose little melodies while being totally retro. Thank you Activision!

There's a limit on how high you can go on the staff for the lead, so it kinda limits what you can do. And as said before, since you have only three channels available, it's a bit of problem when you have a solo lead on the upper staff and three-note chords on the lower staff.

Pro-Drum

Pro-Drum is a drum machine that enables you to write some backing drum tracks on the Commodore 64. There are two modes (press F1 to switch between the modes): one for creating drum patterns (on two channels) and one for putting the patterns together to actually make the drum tracks.

This neat little drum machine was released by Dutch-USA Team in 1988. The interface is very well done and there’s really no need for a manual to create some beautiful drum tracks within minutes. Of course, having only two channels at your disposal is a bit of a drag but what can you do? Also, it would have been nice to label the steps (1,2,3, etc), makes it a tad easier when editing a pattern.


In the video above, two similar drum sequences (00 and 01) are created in edit sequences mode (sorry about the lack of sound during the tedious editing process of the 2 patterns but it is well worth the wait) and then assembled into a drum track (in the order 00, 01, 00) within the edit drum track mode. As you can tell, I am a big fan of the cowbell and the hand clap.

There is a Pro-Drum 1, 2 and 3 for our beloved C64. Versions 1 and 2 are very similar and differ only by the drum samples you can play with. Version 3 looks much different and I have not been able to figure out how it works ... yet.