The sixtyforgan
April 1, 2021 11:18 AM Subscribe
The sixtyforgan by Linus Åkesson combines a Commodore 64 and a spring reverb to make the 8 bit computer sound like a church organ.
Previously: the chipophone. Bonus Swedish music with a church organ: Anna von Hausswolff finds a church organ in New York.
Previously: the chipophone. Bonus Swedish music with a church organ: Anna von Hausswolff finds a church organ in New York.
That sounded a lot more like an organ than I was expecting! Lovely musical nerdery.
posted by Greg_Ace at 1:59 PM on April 1, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by Greg_Ace at 1:59 PM on April 1, 2021 [1 favorite]
Am grinning ear to ear. Best of the web!
posted by a humble nudibranch at 3:16 PM on April 1, 2021
posted by a humble nudibranch at 3:16 PM on April 1, 2021
Nifty! The pipe organ is quite literally the original synthesizer, so it's not surprising this sounds so good
posted by STFUDonnie at 4:43 PM on April 1, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by STFUDonnie at 4:43 PM on April 1, 2021 [2 favorites]
This was in my open tabs as "gotta post this to metafilter" so kudos, good taste, and thanks. There's a The sixtyforgan: Commodore 64 equipped with a spring reverb | Hacker News thread that's not awful as of yet. I'm still going "that's not a C-64 that I've seen" but I'll give a bit of rebuilt old things in better form factors.
posted by zengargoyle at 10:25 PM on April 1, 2021
posted by zengargoyle at 10:25 PM on April 1, 2021
I'm still going "that's not a C-64 that I've seen" but I'll give a bit of rebuilt old things in better form factors.
I've been confused at first, too, but then memory kicked in : There was a limited edition called C64C that came in an even more limited edition black case. It's mentioned on the Wikipedia page for the C64 in "C64 family".
Now that I actually read that Wiki page, it mentions changes in the SID. I wonder whether that's useful for this artist?
posted by flamewise at 4:57 AM on April 2, 2021 [1 favorite]
I've been confused at first, too, but then memory kicked in : There was a limited edition called C64C that came in an even more limited edition black case. It's mentioned on the Wikipedia page for the C64 in "C64 family".
Now that I actually read that Wiki page, it mentions changes in the SID. I wonder whether that's useful for this artist?
posted by flamewise at 4:57 AM on April 2, 2021 [1 favorite]
I was thinking about posting this as well. I think I got distracted reading all the previouslies about the guy.
posted by Harald74 at 6:56 AM on April 2, 2021
posted by Harald74 at 6:56 AM on April 2, 2021
I have a daughter who loves chiptunes and plays the pipe organ (I guess I did a few parenting things right). She's gonna be delighted by this demonstration thay pipe organs are basically chiptunes with reverb.
posted by straight at 7:57 AM on April 2, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by straight at 7:57 AM on April 2, 2021 [1 favorite]
His album 'Reverberations' of c64 Bach is rather good, even if he simulated reverb. Even though he's got previous, my favourite work of his is still the Jon Hopkins-like A Mind Is Born musical piece in 256 bytes of assembly language.
Re that black case c64c, it could also be one of the new mouldings made from the original moulds, which were found and rescued from a scrap yard. I think some of the FPGA-based Ultimate 64s use black cases, too. The Ultimates really are special: wanna stream pixel-perfect C64 video and sound over HDMI, or even re-route it via UDP to the network? No problem!
The old vs new SIDs thing can cause a fight in retro circles. The older chips had slightly more noise, but some people claim they have a warmer sound. The new chips cleaned up some bugs and internal wiring, which make it too clean for some folks' liking. Then there's the whole PAL/NTSC "Which sounds better?" thing. I think Linus is okay with the newer chips. Since real SIDs are becoming unobtainium, there's a whole raft of AVR, ARM and FPGA-based SID-replacements. Some of these sound amazing, and allow multiple SID cores to run on the same c64.
posted by scruss at 2:08 PM on April 2, 2021
Re that black case c64c, it could also be one of the new mouldings made from the original moulds, which were found and rescued from a scrap yard. I think some of the FPGA-based Ultimate 64s use black cases, too. The Ultimates really are special: wanna stream pixel-perfect C64 video and sound over HDMI, or even re-route it via UDP to the network? No problem!
The old vs new SIDs thing can cause a fight in retro circles. The older chips had slightly more noise, but some people claim they have a warmer sound. The new chips cleaned up some bugs and internal wiring, which make it too clean for some folks' liking. Then there's the whole PAL/NTSC "Which sounds better?" thing. I think Linus is okay with the newer chips. Since real SIDs are becoming unobtainium, there's a whole raft of AVR, ARM and FPGA-based SID-replacements. Some of these sound amazing, and allow multiple SID cores to run on the same c64.
posted by scruss at 2:08 PM on April 2, 2021
Some are claiming Amiga easter egg: Amiga Basic music demo: Bach - Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring. Same graphics, same tune. I'm totally not sure in which direction that goes in the spectrum of homage, coincidence, or every computer that could had the same demo because the graphics were easy and the tune was complex and familiar to a large group of church goers.
Now that I think about it, a C-64 in what looks like an Amiga 500/1200 case should not be so odd, like lol both are Commodore duh.
posted by zengargoyle at 3:46 PM on April 2, 2021
Now that I think about it, a C-64 in what looks like an Amiga 500/1200 case should not be so odd, like lol both are Commodore duh.
posted by zengargoyle at 3:46 PM on April 2, 2021
OK, that was pretty great. In some ways the genius part was using the accordion key layout as the basis for mapping the pitches to the qwerty keys, which seems to make it far more playable as an instrument. (Speaking as someone who has toyed around with using the qwerty keyboard in various music software programs, and found the relationships between the keys and the sounds & notes somewhere between baffling and incomprehensible.)
posted by soundguy99 at 7:27 AM on April 3, 2021
posted by soundguy99 at 7:27 AM on April 3, 2021
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posted by They sucked his brains out! at 11:46 AM on April 1, 2021 [3 favorites]