Commodore Remix

The Commodore 64's SID straddled what is for me the two great eras of sound synthesis. First came the early, more abstract and freeforming period, the whacked-out hippy stuff. Then you got the kind of synthesisers we all know today, with their well-defined presets allowing the user to imitate 'real' sounds accurately or produce high definition noises with a more organic-style structure.

Take a look at this video I found which looked at the world of the SID's roots. This is the world it drew on:
(1) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snfzrCRD ... re=related
(2) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJthvtXN ... re=related

(And just imagine the computers you could have bolted onto them: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p ... itish+view)

And what of today's sounds, which c64 programmers have dabbled in: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tp5Ct-BU ... re=related

And lastly, let's start Looking At Sounds, as they did in 1950:
(1) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLiCvBbO ... re=related
(2) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UG0MJl0d ... re=related



Right then, I'm off to watch Winds And Their Causes (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXcNCHEV ... re=related), though I don't need a film to tell me about where the winds come from in my house!

In the First Video 7:23 that was David Pritchard on the Radio station CHUM FM which is still around and based in Toronto, Pritchard passed away sometime in 2005. Bit of a history there.

Interesting post links. Though I get the impression that it was aimed at Hippies of the 70s no wonder punk took off as prog rock was taking over! Some of its predictions were true such as the ability to make your own music but the bit about the alpha brain waves was way off unless they bolt it onto the next generation console for the game Rockband that is!!

Considering it was done in 1976 the music was pretty experimental and to think Jarre's Oxygene would be released a little later and sounded light years away from the sounds those hippies were making!

Did you see the hippy on the Barclays' Bank computer film?

....This plastic society man, if you ned a scapegoat it goes on the computer... Like, wow man!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUkL9osy ... re=related - Oxygene covers.

And let's not forget the Bomb Jack soundtrack, which is also a Jarre cover.

Interesting that the 'future' of synthesisers came so soon after that film, which to me only proves those hippies weren't as forward-thinking as they thought they were. Intentional weirdness is all they come up with in anything, so no wonder the schools are falling off these days.
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I've noticed that those professional oddballs, like Krzysztof Prendereki, seemed to avoid the only medium their noises and cacophonies could have been any good for. I've got one of his records and it's full of orchestra hits and various strings and choral sounds; hard attack, soft attack, various sustains, decays, textures, you name it. On their own they sound absolutely terrible; directionless, disjointed and without any real structure, and they were proud of it. (Indeed, it's such a aural barrage that John Lennon need not have bothered with contaminating the White Album with Revolution 9.) Yet I've heard of none of those sorts of people who used their brains to do freelance overdub work for record producers. Those noises would have made excellent sample collections had they sold their records to sound effects libraries.

(Still, few or nobody have ever heard it all, so out come the scissors anyway and sampled into the MSSIAH they go, if I can be bothered! Oh well, waste not want not I suppose!)

Thanks for the link.. I need to go back and listen to some Jarre's earlier albums, I haven't heard them in a very long time.

i think these 'computer' thingies are a fad, and wont last long.
like them 'teeny boppers'


and 'microwave ovens'




oh, and those 'flux capacitors' too.


stoopid things.