NYC Resistor

Most kids wanted to be something like a fireman or an astronaut when they were growing up.

Me? I wanted to write music for videogames. Some of my favorite pieces of music came from my Commodore64 and Nintendo, classics that I still whistle whenever I find myself in an empty, echoey space.

Think about some of your early videogame experiences. How many themes can you remember? The classics are all accompanied by tunes that we remember to this day. Pacman. Zelda. Mario. Brilliant works defined as much by the restrictions of the “instrument” as by the imagination of their composer.

Well, life often takes you in different directions from your childhood dreams, but I’m lucky enough to get to play at mine as an adult. There’s a whole scene dedicated to writing music for these platforms, and I’ve been dying to dive in, but didn’t really know where to begin.

Luckily, GameBoy Genius over at 8bit collective has put together a great how-to for getting started with gameboy music, complete with a gameboy emulator and awesome tracking software for the gameboy itself. Here’s a sample of what you can create with it(mp3). The gameboy’s limitations gave it a sound very similar to the C64, which also holds a special place in my heart. There’s apparently a “getting started” guide for C64 music as well, guess what I’ll be checking out next?

I started out this post looking to write a non-Arduino story, but it just wasn’t meant to be. I’m a huge fan of computer generated music, dating back to my days of playing games and composing music on the Commodore 64. I still love that classic SID sound, and was floored to hear it in the new 50 Cent and Justin Timberlake tune, Technology:

(Thanks to Kelsey Ruger for pointing out the videogame sounds in the song and Alex Hillman identifying the SID, likely coming from something like the SIDStation)

I wrote my first music on a C64 with “The Music Shop”, and after hearing this song, I want to get started in SID hacking and make my own SID powered instruments.

Well, I’m sure I’ll have more posts on that coming in the future, but while researching tonight I found myself sidetracked by Toni Westbrook’s awesome project to bring Guitar Hero to the C64 and the SID.

A closer look reveals that Toni’s programming the ATMega8 chip that he’s got the controller wired into with, what else, an Arduino! Even digging into C64 music projects, I still ended up with an Arduino post.

Read more about Shredz64 on Toni’s page