Friday, September 16, 2005
Nerd News, volume IX, #16
Here is what you need.
You need the CCS64 Commodore 64 emulator found here. And then you need to go to the website of Paul Slocum, of the band Tree Wave, and get his Cynthcart program in emulator form, found in the middle of this page as "cynthcart.prg" (Check out the two Tree Wave tracks while you're over there, they're great. And check out his other gear. He makes music with a printer!)
Figuring out the C64 is a bit strange, since it is an ancient computer running on something like DOS. Read the page about what the buttons do on both sites (for the emulator and the cynthcart). So you can figure out how to load and run the thing (if I can do it, you smarter more technical people surely can. I have faith.)
Anyway, this gives you a synthesizer program powered by the 8-bit glory of C64 sound, which is way cool. You use the qwerty keys line and the numbers for black and white keys, and the space bar is for whammy. There's also different wave forms, LFO, portamento, and three-note polyphony. All in 8-bit, of course. Who needs a fancy synth when you can make these sounds for free? And soon you will be like me, considering hunting down a used Commodore and putting the program on that, for even more authentic crappy sounds.
I recorded a demo to get you excited about shitty sounds. Listen to it here.
The only problem is, if it's using my computer's audio output, how do I play along with music recorded on my computer at the same time? Hmmm... some sort of splitter maybe. Or get the thing onto my laptop...
Nerds unite!
You need the CCS64 Commodore 64 emulator found here. And then you need to go to the website of Paul Slocum, of the band Tree Wave, and get his Cynthcart program in emulator form, found in the middle of this page as "cynthcart.prg" (Check out the two Tree Wave tracks while you're over there, they're great. And check out his other gear. He makes music with a printer!)
Figuring out the C64 is a bit strange, since it is an ancient computer running on something like DOS. Read the page about what the buttons do on both sites (for the emulator and the cynthcart). So you can figure out how to load and run the thing (if I can do it, you smarter more technical people surely can. I have faith.)
Anyway, this gives you a synthesizer program powered by the 8-bit glory of C64 sound, which is way cool. You use the qwerty keys line and the numbers for black and white keys, and the space bar is for whammy. There's also different wave forms, LFO, portamento, and three-note polyphony. All in 8-bit, of course. Who needs a fancy synth when you can make these sounds for free? And soon you will be like me, considering hunting down a used Commodore and putting the program on that, for even more authentic crappy sounds.
I recorded a demo to get you excited about shitty sounds. Listen to it here.
The only problem is, if it's using my computer's audio output, how do I play along with music recorded on my computer at the same time? Hmmm... some sort of splitter maybe. Or get the thing onto my laptop...
Nerds unite!
# posted by Michael : 12:44 PM
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I found the emulator, installed it, found the music program, installed it, got it to run, experienced 8-bit musical bliss... but couldn't figure out how to record it??? how did you record your sample? I am at a loss....
Well, I ran the audio output from the headphones jack into my amplifier, and put a microphone in front of it and recorded it that way. The problem it, that's all I can do. If there is any other audio output (say, a song I would be trying to add a commodore 64 solo to) then all the sounds come out of the amp and it sounds bad. So all I can record is solo Commodore 64 at the moment.
That's why I'm going to buy a c64 from ebay and do it the proper way. Then I can just run it through any audio processing equipment I want and play along with whatever. Distorted, wah-wahed, chorus Commodore here I come! It's so gonna wail.
That's why I'm going to buy a c64 from ebay and do it the proper way. Then I can just run it through any audio processing equipment I want and play along with whatever. Distorted, wah-wahed, chorus Commodore here I come! It's so gonna wail.
Ah, that makes sense how you recorded that track. 8-bits are so much fun to play with! Who needs more than 8 bits???
Greedy spoiled-rotten princess boys, that's who.
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Greedy spoiled-rotten princess boys, that's who.
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