The Commodore revival band PPOT (Press Play On Tape) will release a new album on 12 May 2012. On this double album the following music: Man with the Gun, Formula One Simulator, Olympic Fanfare, Winter Games, Parappa the Rapper 2, Ghosts 'n Goblins, How to Waste this Day, Gods (Into the Wonderful), Piece of Noise, Nonterraqeuous, Zero-G, Future Knight, The Human Race, Knuckle Buster, Lightforce, One Man and his Droid, Rambo : First Blood Part II, The Last Ninja (The Wilderness), Master of Magic, Aztec Challenge, Thrust, Commando, Sanxion, Shockway Rider, Monty on the Run and Zoids.

Stefan Noack developed a hardware SID player with the help of a Atmel micro processor. The used components are: 6581 SID, Atmel Atmega162 and a MAX 323. You can use the ACID 64 software to play your SID's on the SIDboard. Because the project is open source you can download the schematics and firmware to build your own SIBboard.

Schematics and firmware for the SIDboard.

You can listen to new remixes on the AmigaRemix web page. In the last weeks they added the following Amiga music: Elvira Loader Darkstyle, Hybris (NewAgeMix), Flashback - The Escape (Long version), Leisure Suit Larry 3 - Nontoonyt Hotel (Casino Mix), Lotus 3 Metalmachine daXX RMX, Amberstar (Title Remix), SHINOBI - Ninjas never die, Project-X (XPlod Remix), Wings Of Death (Level 2) - More Gravity, Memories of a Turbo Challenge,A cembalo on Monkey Island, Elvira Mistress of the Dark Garden, The Great Bath (of the Seven Seas).

Stare Kino is an alternative band from Poland. The song "Commodore" is a musical tribute to Jack Tramiel. The members of the band grew up in the 80s, in communist Poland, and dreamed of the Commodore C64. You can watch the video-clip on YouTube.

The Amiga Music Preservation (AMP) web page has had a big update. AMP wants to be the most comprehensive, complete and precise database about Amiga music. At the moment there are more than 120.000 modules available.

Flex (Antti Hannula) made a new SID for the Commodore C64. He made the SID with the help of the Goat Tracker program. He also made a real nice "old skool" demo screen. You can download Chime from the Commodore Scene Database.

HIVE is a small computer system. The specifications are: 24 RISC processors, VGA, Video, Stereo sound, 1 MB RAM, SD card, LAN and PS/2. The whole computer fits on a eurocard and has no SMD components. Drohne235 has used his HIVE to build a TriBorg SID player. The SID's can be stored on the SD card and played with the HIVE system. You can watch an demonstration on a YouTube video.

Rave-TZ makes music with many different computers and game consoles. In his demonstration he uses the following equipment: GameBoy, ArdinoBoy, Nintendo NES, Korg Kaossilator Pro, MIDIBox SID and a SID Station. For the control software he uses the program ReNoise.

SID is an 8-Bit desktop synthesizer made by the German company Mode Machines. The SID can be used "stand-alone" or with a PC. The features are: 100+ Patches, 50+ Wave tables drum sounds / effects, Audio in/out, Midi in/out. The SID will be available in April and will cost 599 Euro.

JSIDPlay is a Commodore C64 cycle-exact emulator optimized for sound reproduction. It is also a SID player for music collections like HVSC and CGSC. JSIDPlay2 can load SID (PSID/RSID), MUS, DAT, P00, PRG and STR sound files. It can play mono and stereo formats. External SID filter definitions are possible. And you can also use it like a real C64 to watch demo's or play games.

The CGSC (Compute's Gazette Sid Collection) has had an update. The COMPUTE!'s Sidplayer was a music system, created by Craig Chamberlain and Harry Bratt, for the Commodore 64. The aim of the Compute's Gazette Sid Collection is to preserve as many of those Sidplayer music files in one location as possible. The current collection contains 12228 MUS, 3597 STR and 4360 WDS files.

The HVTC or High Voltage TED Collection is an collection of music for the Commodore C16, 116 and the Plus/4. The files that are available, are the original programs that produce the music with the TED music chip. At the moment there are 200 files available in the database. A few examples are: Auf Wiedershen Monthy, Karate+, Lunar Blitz, Melon v1, Rainbow Trout, Emerald Mine 2, Summer events, Bandits at Zero, Power Ball, etc.

You can listen to new remixes on the AmigaRemix web page. In the last weeks they added the following Amiga music: Stryx Intro (Oxidize Mix), Desert Dream Part One (Radio-Overkill-Mix), Leander World Two (AS2011), Benefactor Forest Level - Odee Remix, Turrican 2 - The Wall (Faithful A500 Mix), Cream of the earth (HardCopy), First Samurai Remix, Lethal X-cess - Lethalness, Chuck Rock 2012 (New Guitars RMX), Alien Breed 2012, Total Tekkno Xstacy, Do It Now, Goldrunner - daXX Orchestra Surprice RMX and Flower Power / Anarchy Main remix.

Syso4 made a successful FPGA implementation in VHDL of the Commodore Sound Interface Device Chip (SID). The FPGA development board he uses is a CyberCortex AV with an Xilinx Spartan 3E 500k gate FPGA and a 1-bit DAC with a passive RC-filter. The program that sends the data to the FPGA is ACID 64 by Wilfred Bos and the music is from Welle:Erdball.

The program Audio Evolution 4 for the Amiga is now available for free. AE4 is an digital audio recording and editing system on the Amiga with a wide range of effects, including compression, noise gate, delays, re-verb, chorus and 3-band EQ. The source code will also be made available soon.

Audio Evolution web page.

Sauraen and Oikanys are working on a new project, the MIDIbox ASIDITY. This project will be the most powerful SID-based synthesizer in the world. The synthesizer will be built with NXP LPC1769 processors and MIDIbox SID 3.0 software. The system will control 8 Commodore 64 SID sound chips (4 x 6581 and 4 x 8580) and will have the following features: 32 active and 128 passive modulators, 256 SID controls, 44 knobs, 240 buttons and 760 LEDs.

Demonstration video of the MIDIbox ASIDITY.

The BitJam podcast number 147 is a tribute to the Music from the Last Ninja games. In this BitJam the following musicians: Ben Daglish, Anthony Lees, Matt Gray, Reyn Ouwehand, moog (Sebastian Bachlinski), Stefan Poiss, Instant Remedy, XxDustyxX, TmX, Richard Braithwaite and SIDrip Alliance. Total playtime: 51:34 minutes.

For orchestral demoscene music you can listen to the BitJam #146.

Kananga is working on a conversion program that will make VIC-20 versions of SID music. The converter is based on the Aleksi Eeben's SID Emu and will work on a Commodore VIC-20 with an 8 kB memory expansion. You can now listen to examples he already made, such as Commando, Cybernoid, IK and Zoids.

SIDBlaster is a new sound-card for the ZX-Spectrum. The features are: MOS 6510 CPU, 64Kb RAM, Direct playing of PSID and RSID tunes, PAL/NTSC compatible, 4 SID's (2x6581, 2x8580) and full C64-interrupt system. When the SIDBlaster is fully functional, it will be rebuild with the help of a FPGA. The hardware design is from Sergey Bagan (Prusak) and the software is done by Alexander Alexandrow (Byteman).

More information about the SIDBlaster/ZX (Russian > English)

Swinkels, well known for his SwinSID, has now made a C64 music player for the Samsung bada 2.0 platform. This app gives you access to the High Voltage SID Collection (HVSC) with more than 40.000 SID's. The player also supports extended stereo for a new experience when listening to your favorite SID tunes.

There is a update available of the High Voltage SID Collection. There are now more then 41.250 SIDs in the collection. In this update 861 new SIDs, 156 fixed/better rips, 786 SID credit fixes, 88 SID model/clock infos, 43 tunes identified and 79 tunes moved. You can download the update from the HVSC web page.

Schema (Leif Bloomquist) made a new music track. The music is made on a VIC-20 and was optimized with FL Studio (phaser/reverb/equalizer, mild overdrive). The music was made for the "Art and the Machine" (RAM) presentation. RAM is a showcase for artists who work with art and electronic technology, light, graphics, robots and virtual reality.

Rethinking Art and the Machine web page.

You can listen to new remixes on the AmigaRemix web page. In the last weeks they added the following Amiga music: Enigma Gun (Extended Mix), The Chaos Engine - The Forest, Paradroid-2010, BA1 - Beautiful Fireworks, Another World (End Theme Remix), The ultimate challenge (lotus III remix), Elvira Loader, Vroom Crack Intro (Monday Remix 2011), Turrican 2 - Level 2, Beams of Light, Interference [Szudi^Implexy RMx], Turrican II - The Great Bath [Extended Piano Mix], Atomix - Title Song - Element Thalion Industrial Mix, Agony and A Shuffled Hyperbase [Enigma - Hyperbased].

You can now listen to the Music from the game Panic Analogue. Panic Analogue is fast game for the Commodore C64, for one or two players, and it uses paddles. The music from the game is made by Redcrab, and the titles are: Panic Analogue main theme, Cave Music, Tomb Music, Happy Times, Pepwalk, Tribute and Game over.

Panic Analogue the game.

The title of the BitJam podcats number 144 is "Mitch and Dane". In this BitJam the following music: Dazzler, Listen And Learn, Archangel, Escape From Reality, Smashing, Morphing, Break The Cycle, Melissa D, Mashiare, Bondage II Intro, Dirty Pair, Lois Lane, The End, Crush, Live Forever, Bus, In Your Bed, Vertigo and Orbital. Playtime: 45:18min.

And for the CPC fans there is the BitJam #143.

The title of the BitJam podcats number 142 is "Womanizer". In this BitJam the following Amiga music: Mitch and Dane - Gloria, Fanta - Madalena, Gasman - Losing Victoria, 4-mat - Rose, Beek - Oh Delia, Vinnie - Bangin' Cindy, Maestro - Black Carol, Ciccilleju - Martina, Brainbug - Vanja, Nightbeat - Miriel, Drax - Caroline, Christian Stenzel - Joanna's Flashback, Carebear - Louis Lane, Rymdlego - Yuki Satellites, Cdnalsi - Song for Tina and Machinae Supremacy - The Great Gianna Sisters. Playtime: 47:28 minutes.

Hawkeye/Maelstroem made a music video. He uses 8 Commodore C64 8580 SID chips. With this 8 SID's and a MIDIbox he constructed a "DIY" SID synthesizer. The sound in the video is made with the 8 SID chips, a machine-drum and a virtual piano. Everything is sequenced and mixed live.

More information about MIDIbox.

Last month there was a big update of the Amiga Music Preservation (AMP) web page. AMP wants to be the most comprehensive, complete and precise database about Amiga music. At the moment there are 81462 MODs, 14768 XMs, 4760 S3Ms, 3447 Its and 3634 MEDs.

Episode 049 is now available for download. In this podcast you can hear the following music: Rob Rubbard - The Last V8, David Filskov - Firelord, Ziphoid: Back in the saddle, Chris Abbott and Rob Hubbard - Comets 97, Necropolo - Zak, Necropolo - BC Bill, Peter Clarke - Monty on the Run, LMan and Sunflower - Follow me and DJ Skitz - MegaSweet. There is also news about: Markus Behlau, The new "Commodore 64", Julian Rignall, C64 remixing in 2010 infographic, Chipophone, LCP 2011 party, Back in Time CD, Remix64.com and HybridSID.

CheeseCutter is a Music Tracker program developed by Abbadon of Fairlight. The JCH Tracker was used as an inspiration and it uses the reSID engine by Dag Lem. A few examples of the changes in this version are: Improvements to the Playback tracking system. Scroll Lock can toggle playback tracking on/off. It is now possible to switch between ReSID-FP filter presets using Ctrl-F8 and Shift-Ctrl-F8. Added a "spartan" mode which disables some editor features for working with highly modified players. It is now possible to swap the places of two instruments, which includes an update of the sequence data.

Digital Audio Concepts has released the "SID Symphony II" cartridge. With this cartridge you can add a second SID to your Commodore C64 without opening the C64. Features: SID register mapping from $DE00 to $DFE0. Access LED. Reset button. 12 V DC-to-DC converter for 6581 SID chip. The price of the SID Symphony II cartridge, without an SID chip, is $39.95.

Radio Paralax is an Internet radio station with original or remixed music from computer games. The music is from the demo scene, from the C64, Amiga, NES, SNES, Sega Megadrive, Playstation etc. On the Radio Paralax web page you can also find a forum (German / English), chat, play list, program guide and downloads.

The title of the BitJam podcats number 141 is "Erection Day". In this BitJam the following Amiga music: Metal - Cock Cut, Reyn Ouwehand - Soft and Wet, Virgill - Sex 'n' Drugs, Moog feat. Makke - Basics of Love, Xerxes - Erotica, Falcon - Underwater Sexual Intercourse, Dominei - Pornographic, Orbiter - Get F*cked, Beezerk feat. Dawni - Feels So Good, JCO - Wir machen Sex und keine Popmusik (Party), Pinza - Varifom (Horn-y House Cut), Glxblt - F*ck on the Floor. Playtime: 51:21 minutes.

Slimex of the group Sidrapers made a new SID for the Commodore C64. You can download the music from the Commodore Scene Database.

The title of the BitJam podcats number 140 is "ArtCity Unknown Artist Compo". In this competition many tunes were connected to the correct composers. You can now listen to 16 of these tunes. Intensity: Are Am Eye Commodore Mix, Sweet Alien, Fly, Magic and Exemption. Lizardking: Art of Chrome, Compulsion to Obey, Tides of Dosk, World of Mages and Elimination. Moby: Mobyle, Groovy Thing and Livin' Insanity. Virgill: TBB Plasmacrap, High Density and Interference. Playtime: 58:42 minutes.

Wilfred Bos released a new version of ACID 64 Player Pro. Changes in this version: Improvement of the performance of the folder tree view. Support for JSidDevice 1.2. You can download the new ACID 64 Player Pro from Wilfred's web page.

More information about jsiddevice.

Wilfred Bos released a new version of ACID 64 Player Pro. Changes in this version: Stereo SID (2SID) support for: HardSID 4U, HardSID Quattro, multiple HardSID ISA/PCI cards and JSidDevice v1.1. Emulation improvements. Improvements with the calculation of player speed and with SID search. And many more small improvements. You can download the new ACID 64 Player Pro from Wilfred's web page.

Mail Order Monsters is a three piece music and video performance group, celebrating the sound of the Commodore 64 computer. They use a range of (custom) hardware to produce the SID sound like multiple keyboards and percussion controllers, Midibox, Hardsid, Mssiah, and real Commodore 64 computers. In total they use 23 SID chips (6581) on stage. They will do a live show at the Artprize 2011 in Ah Nab Awen Park, Michigan, United States on 21, 23 and 30 September.

Mail Order Monsters - Jeep Command

Tognon Stefano (ice00) released a new version of XSidplay for Linux. XSidplay is a SID music player for Linux, initially developed by Michael Schwendt. This version is made with the QT4 development framework. The next versions will have multiple run-time sid library support and PSID v3 support.

Andy made a demonstration video about the BeebSID. The BeebSID is a project from Martin Barr and Tom Walker. They made a circuit board with a SID chip, that connects to the bus of a BBC Micro computer. With the BeebSID you can play SID music on a BBC Micro computer. You can also see a HcX floppy disk emulator that is used to load the SID data.

More information about the BeebSID.

Press Play On Tape performed at the Assembly 2011 party. You can watch a video where they do a tribute to TV-series. You can listen to music from Night Rider, Miami Vice, Ghost Busters, The A-Team, Dallas, Dempsey and Makepeace, Mac Gyver, Bravestar, Transformers, V, Dick Turpin and Airwolf.

Press Play On Tape speelt: Monkey Island

The latest podcast of BitJam has as title 2:18. All tunes in the podcast are 2 minutes and 18 seconds long. Podcast #138 was made by Vincenzo, and a few examples of tunes are: D Fast - Macgyver, Dreamweaver - Shivers, Geir Tjelta - That's the Wave II, Uncle Tom - Stunnflight and Muffler - Free Power.

Also a interesting podcast is number 136. This is a tribute to the Immortal CD’s. A few examples of the tunes are: Barry Leitch - Lotus Turbo Challenge 2, Chris Hülsbeck - Turrican 3, Per Almered - Obsession - Desert Run, Jon Hare and Richard Joseph - Cannon Fodder "War" and Timothy "Coldstorage" Wright - Agony 2007 (Astronaut mix).

SIDcog is a project from Johannes Ahlebrand. He made a hardware simulation of the Commodore SID music chip inside a Propeller micro controller. Some of the features are: 31kHz sample rate. 16 bit resolution. Full filter and envelope support. All 4 waveform types and combined waveform. Ring modulation and oscillator synchronization. On the Youtube channel from Johannes you can see several demonstrations of the SIDcog.

Sidcog information and download.

Unreleased Pimps is a music collection from the Maniacs of Noise. The music is made by DRAX and the graphics and code were made by Clarence. The songs are: Plea Ease, Blue, Dreamy, Handle It, Indifference and Sloppy.

On this YouTube video you can see a Papilio FPGA board with a SID 6581 VHDL core (no filters) acting as a networked SID device. The program ACID 64 is used to send the SID data to a network device. Then a program from Markus Gritsch sends this network data to the FPGA via the serial port. The FPGA has a RS232 UART for receiving and sending the data, a 16KB FIFO buffer for storing the data and a emulated SID chip for playing the audio.

ACID64 web page

The group TRIAD made a new music collection. This time they converted well known Amiga music to the C64. The music collection was made by: iopop, Itch, dalezy, ne7, Spot and Taper.

You can see a demonstration of a prototype of the Mega SwinSID on YouTube. This time the original SID is replaced by a STM32 ARM Cortex M3 microcontroller. The microcontroller works at 80 MHz and it uses the integrated 12 bit DACs for stereo output. Currently it is in early stage of development and only basic SID emulation is working.

SwinSID web page

People are making music with the Commodore C64 since the year 1982. And most people use the SID chip to produce the music. But Jordan Bartee does it a little bit different. He uses various synthesizers and digital equipment to turn the digital signals of the C64 into music. Jordan welcomes you to the micro-galactic frontier.

Markus Gritsch wrote an alternative firmware for his HybridSID device. It can now act as a "Network SID Device" and can be used as the sound output device for ACID 64 and GoatTracker. When the HybridSID works together with ACID 64 you will have support for the RSID format and the music is played cycle exact. The HybridSID is a open source project, the schematics and firmware are available to build your own device.

Sophia Tong interviewed the musician Chris Hülsbeck. You can watch the video of the interview on the GameSpot web page. Chris started his career many years ago making music for computer games. A few examples of games that Chris made music for are: The Great Giana Sisters, Turrican, R-Type, Apidya and M.U.D.S. His latest project is music for Star Trek: Infinite Space.