SID and Music Programming

This is where you find programming examples as well as hardware information about the SID, the soundchip inside the C64. This section also contain information related to music programming on the c64, such as music file formats and other things like that.

This section exemplifies how to play a tune in your own demos/games. The tune itself is done elsewhere, in a editor like JCH/DMC/SDI etc, or coded directly in assembler.

• Simple IRQ Music Player - A small IRQ music player, by Richard/TND
• Playing music $A000-$FFFF - A quick tip by Richard/TND
• Avoiding the $D000-$DFFF issue for playing music - Some quick tips by Conrad/Viruz
• Playing music on PAL and NTSC - by FTC/HT
• Very short music play routine with fast forward function - by The Typhoon/FTS 2009

Detailed examinations of the waveforms.

• Triangle Waveform - by Asger Alstrup
• Noise Waveform - by Asger Alstrup

This section deals with code to generate music. (Not just playback of readymade music.)

• 256 bytes tune+player - Compo entry by FTC/HT for the Tiny SID compo #1.
• Microtracker V1.0 - minimalistic Musicplayer using max 6 Rasterlines, by The Syndrom
• A SID Player Routine - pseudocode for a MIDI controlled SID player - by Linus Wallej (King Fisher/Triad).
• Building a music routine - aka ”Rant 6” - tutorial by Cadaver
• Modplay 64 - Simple Amiga Module player for the C64.
• Modplay 128 - The C128 version of the above player.
• Element 114 Music editor - Element 114 music editor with sources.
• Macro Player - Macro Player for the C64 by Geir Tjelta. 64tass source code with music (Noisy Pillars tune by Jeroen Tel).
• Rob Hubbard - Monty on the Run - A commented disassembly of a player by Rob Hubbard (from C=Hacking #5).
• Matt Gray - Driller - A rough disassembly of Matt Gray's classic Driller tune.
• Sound Fx Player - Play sound fx in your code, by Malcolm Bamber.
• Sound Fx Routine - Full source code on the sound effect routine made exclusively for the C64 conversion of “Prince of Persia”, by Conrad/Samar.
• Fake music player - A debug music player that aids in creating code while considering a music you don't have already. By Karoshier / DaCapo

• JCH 20.G4 Player File Format - Brief documentation of the JCH Editor file format, by FTC

Is it a 6581 (the old one) or a 8580 (the new one) SID in your machine?

• detecting sid type - from “mathematica” by Reflex (This is the old and not 100% reliable method)
• detecting sid type - safe method - by SounDemon, based on a tip from Dag Lem. (Won't work in VICE.)

• How to calculate your own SID frequency table - by FTC
• PAL frequency table - by mrsid
• NTSC frequency table - by mrsid

• NMI Sample Player - Simple universal Sampleplayer (using $d418) working on 6581 and 8580 by Groepaz/Hitmen
• Digis R Eazy - A tutorial from Domination #13 written by Decomp/Style
• Vicious Sid Demo Routine Explained - by SounDemon from Vandalism News #50

• Hi Tech Trickery: Sample Dither - by George Taylor (published in C=Hacking #11)
• Mods and Digital Mixing - by Jolse Maginnis (published in C=Hacking #20)
• The C64 Digi - by R. Harbron, L. Harsfalvi, and S. Judd (published in C=Hacking #20)
• Addendum to C=Hacking #20 - Further notes on sample playback by L. Harsfalvi

• C64 DTV DMA SID Digi Player - by Gábor Lénárt.

• Formant - a speech synthesis program for the C64 by Radwar Enterprises used in the Demo Lautschrift
• S.A.M. - Disassembly of the famous speech synth.

• MIDI on the C64 - A number of wiki pages on MIDI and C64 MIDI coding

• Reduce noise