News: 1627390811

  ARM Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life (Terry Pratchett, Jingo)

UK's National Museum of Computing asks tunesmiths to recreate bleeps, bloops, and parps of retro game music

(2021/07/27)


The UK's National Museum of Computing (TNMOC) [1]is running a competition aimed at recreating the bleeps, whistles, and flatulent squawks of video game music from years gone by.

It's all in honour of the 40th anniversary of the BBC Micro, which, if memory serves, was not really a ball of fire in the sound department when put up against the Commodore 64 Sound Interface Device (SID) chip.

Then again, we have fond memories of laboriously typing in lists of [2]SOUND statements (and fiddling with the [3]ENVELOPE statement) in order to persuade the computer to output a recognisable rendition of a popular tune.

[4]

Interestingly, the BBC Micro shared a sound chip with the TI99/4a home computer. Users had access to three tone channels and one "noise" channel. The Beeb's ENVELOPE , however, hinted at what those willing to sidle a little closer to the silicon could achieve. The conversion of the arcade game Spy Hunter even managed a bit of [5]sampled speech and sound effects .

[6]El Reg visits two shrines to computing history as the UK lifts coronavirus lockdown

[7]Staying in the UK this summer? Good news: Temples of IT nerdery are reopening

[8]The 40-Year-Old Version: ZX81's sleek plastic case shows no sign of middle-aged spread

[9]Retro Microlympics concludes with possible reopening dates for UK computer museums

In an attempt to recreate those bygone days, TNMOC is looking for 30-second .mp3 files spat out by software running on a Raspberry Pi. Entries are by age group and judging will be based on authenticity (so using or emulating sounds from the original computers will be a plus), concept (this is for a fictional game), and catchiness.

This hack can still be heard humming the [10]main theme of Thing on a Spring nearly 40 years after it first graced the shelves of UK retailer WHSmith.

[11]

The closing date for entries is 19 August and judging will be performed by David Housden, a BAFTA and Ivor Novello-nominated composer and Matthew Applegate, a composer and BAFTA Young Game Designers Mentor Award Winner.

Nowadays the epic orchestrations of today's game music, "much of which is up there with some of the finest music ever made," according to [12]our resident gamer , have been freed from the silicon limitations of the past to generate theme and atmosphere.

[13]

Be that as it may, it is still [14]Outrun's "Magical Sound Shower" rather than the [15]haunting and beautiful melodies of Skyrim that remains firmly wedged in this writer's brain. ®

Get our [16]Tech Resources



[1] https://www.tnmoc.org/retro-sounds-music-competition-entry

[2] https://central.kaserver5.org/Kasoft/Typeset/BBC/Ch30.html

[3] http://stardot.org.uk/mirrors/www.bbcdocs.com/filebase/library/pubs/musicmasterclass/bbc_mm_02.htm

[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YQAtup4u-tpNtzOyZneExQAAAAg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0

[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCZA4toasfU

[6] https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/15/retro_computing/

[7] https://www.theregister.com/2021/05/17/diy_geek_guide/

[8] https://www.theregister.com/2021/03/05/zx81_at_40/

[9] https://www.theregister.com/2021/03/01/retro_museum/

[10] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmmEBO2lDVI

[11] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YQAtup4u-tpNtzOyZneExQAAAAg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0

[12] https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/26/solasta_crown_of_the_magister/

[13] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YQAtup4u-tpNtzOyZneExQAAAAg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0

[14] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzsqx5uXmpA&t=6s

[15] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBBwdOGDIKk

[16] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/


fond memories of laboriously typing in lists of SOUND statements ...

Dr_N

"POKE" surely ?

Re: fond memories of laboriously typing in lists of SOUND statements ...

richardcox13

BBC Basic was rather more sophisticated with higher level support... and that was a thin wrapper around "OS" level operations, so usable without the Basic interpreter.

Hence various games later on having speech synthesis.

And

> 40th anniversary of the BBC Micro

I deny the reality in which it is that long ago!

Re: fond memories of laboriously typing in lists of SOUND statements ...

TheProf

And at an extra cost you could plug in your own microchip newsreader* and have voice synthesised fun with that.

*Kenneth Kendall

Re: fond memories of laboriously typing in lists of SOUND statements ...

MajDom

I had programmed an EPROM to have the Beeb greet me with my name when booting up. Instead, it screamed in agony and I had to put it down. Sigh. (it wasn't as if I was going to code, burn, test, erase, code, burn, test for a couple of months)

But it was a blast, in every sense of the word.

Re: fond memories of laboriously typing in lists of SOUND statements ...

Dr_N

No need for EPROMS on the C64:

Just copy the system ROM into the underlying RAM and then switch banks.

Then change stuff to your heart's content!

Aah was it really 35 years ago ?!?

Re: fond memories of laboriously typing in lists of SOUND statements ...

Stoneshop

There were several add-ons for the Beeb to do so, and even with just one ROM socket you still had empty, an 8k or 16k SRAM and a wire to connect the SRAM's R/W to some equivalent signal elsewhere you could achieve the same.

Re: fond memories of laboriously typing in lists of SOUND statements ...

Hans Neeson-Bumpsadese

"POKE" surely ?

My first home computer was a Vic-20, and I can still remember the sound registers for that - 36874, 36875 and 36876 for normal tones, 36877 for white noise and 36878 for volume. Happy, happy days.

Miles ahead of the ZX Spectrum

AMBxx

Still a lot better than the Speccie. Make a beep for 1 seconds and everything stopped for that 1 second. Hence the number of games with farty noises as you could make a very short sound frequently to allow the main program continue running.

Anyone still do imitations of 'Meteor Storm' speech?

Re: Miles ahead of the ZX Spectrum

Dan 55

[1]Shirley some mistake?

[1] https://youtu.be/hLrNQ5m8MS8?t=3050

Re: Miles ahead of the ZX Spectrum

Anonymous Coward

that's the 128k, it had a dedicated sound chip the AY-3-8912. For what you can achieve with the 48k 'beeper' the AgentX sound track by Tim Follin is one of the best - at the time it was mind blowing!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aA2ywx0h5bA

Re: Miles ahead of the ZX Spectrum

Hans Neeson-Bumpsadese

Who could forget 3D Ant Attack, where the developers managed to emulate two audio channels? Two audio channels and 3D graphics - it was like living in the future :-)

Guilty Pleasures

oddie

Does anyone else play old arcade racer music when driving to work?

Re: Guilty Pleasures

ChrisC

I can neither confirm nor deny that I may, or may not, have the Lotus Turbo Challenge music stored on my car stereo, nor that I do, or do not, take great pleasure in listening to it as I drive...

Postdoc

I co-wrote the book 'Creative Sound for the BBC Microcomputer Model B', which means I'm far too old to enter some bloody competition.

Captain Pugwash theme was the best

Roger Greenwood

and now that is going to haunt me for the rest of the day....

Re: Captain Pugwash theme was the best

Will Godfrey

Damn. That's got me too now.

I managed to pull out the data file for that and developed my own interrupt driven program to run it in the background.

I have a MIDI to BBC Micro converter

Silas S. Brown

which can generate BBC BASIC code from any MIDI file you'd care to create, fitting up to 3 notes per channel via envelope arpeggiation, although I didn't code any support for the noise channel (but happy to accept patches).

Alternatively RISC OS has 8-channel polyphony (and runs natively on the Pi), but viewpoints may vary as to whether that can be counted as "retro".

Wot! No mention of the Hybrid Music 5000?

Peter Christy

Aaahh! But the BBC Micro had the awesome Music 5000 add-on, which turned it into a full-on synthesizer! I recall many happy hours spent programming "Telstar", "Nutrocker" and several other classics into it, using the supplied "Ample" programming language.

However, my crowning glory was managing to get the whole of Bach's "Toccata and Fugue in D minor" into it, which required some deft programming shortcuts to get it all into the 32KB of RAM! Took me weeks to figure out how to do it!

Happy Days!

--

Pete

Re: Wot! No mention of the Hybrid Music 5000?

AnotherName

I had Toccata, Golden Brown, and Sweet Dreams as BASIC programs using the internal sound system on the Beeb. I'm sure I had others too that I can't remember now - possibly there was Only You as well - I'll have to dig the 5.25" floppies out of storage - not that I've got a drive to read them any more... or a Beeb... Superior Software games had good soundtracks (Repton, anyone?).

P.S. It wasn't the Golden Brown causing the Sweet Dreams, either.

Christ was born in 4 B.C.