![]() ![]() Chiptunes "are derived from a variety of stylistic realms are presented together in live performances, on CD compilations, or on websites devoted to chip music". Many of the early sound chips utilized a limited number of audio channels dedicated to sine, square (pulse), sawtooth (saw), or triangle waveforms, as well as white and pink noise to create a game's music and sound (K. Such hardware limitations "shaped the sound of early video game music by way of the affordances they offered and the constraints that they imposed", "The aesthetics of constraint?," para. If you are not really using your Commodore right now, why not use it as a MIDI monitor for your studio ? Nothing beats a MIDI monitor on top of a rack, even if you never look at it.An early example of a video game with iconic chiptune sounds and hardware limitations is Pong, which debuted in 1972. Realtime messages (Seq Start/Stop/Cont, etc).Channels active since last screen reset (black). The typical application might well be to simply start MIDIMon and let it run. There is extensive help built in, but the operation is pretty simple. The space bar clears the screen and resets the graphics. This is useful for finding specific activity. The channel messages can be displayed all together, or limited to any channel with a single keystroke. This is the MAX, which stands for "MIDI Voice Expander/Computer Peripheral" and it was one of the keyboards that Sequential Circuits built between 1984-86. The Max is a 6-voic e, multi-timbral analog synthesizer with a 4-octave, 49-note (C-C) keyboard. It was designed to be attached to a Commodore 64 computer (one of the more music-oriented personal computers of the time). Owing much of its design to the Six-Trak, the Max lacks pitch and modulation wheels as well as the Six-Trak's "stack" mode which allow you to stack all six multi-timbral voices for a very complex monophonic sound. It has an onboard sequencer, which has a 500 note maximum. The sequencer features real-time recording (although it has no click-track), looping, and once you assign it to a voice, it will play independent of the rest of the keyboard. Once you shut the Max off, your sequence is lost unless you back it up via MIDI dump. However, when you turn it back on, you can choose from two demo sequences permanently stored in the Max's memory. The Max's MIDI implementation is pretty good for its time. It can send and receive on any MIDI channel and features Mono mode, MIDI program and sequence dumping, and switches to enable it to receive program changes and external wheel receive. However, it does not have a MIDI Thru jack. ![]() On the front panel is a single keypad, a single volume knob, buttons for transpose and tune, and 16 buttons used to operate the sequencer. Programming is accomplished using proprietary software for the Commodore 64 personal computer. ![]() The Max can also be programmed using the Six-Trak keyboard or the Prophet-T8. The back panel features a power switch, a power-in jack (8V AC), two 1/4" jacks for stereo out, MIDI IN and OUT jacks, two 1/4" audio output jacks, and a Stereo 1/4" main output jack, which doubles as a headphone out.Īnd to finish off this MIDI retro nostalgia, check out in this pic how good the Commodore SX64 looks when racked up in a studio full of Sequential Circuits stuff !!! thanks to this photo I NEED a SX64 in my rack immediately. Young Monkey designed back in 1988 this monster MIDI controller for the Commodore 64. ![]()
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