An Ode To Gaming Music 46
1up.com's never ending flow of excellent features has turned up a piece celebrating gaming music at its finest. The article delves into the past of gaming music and talks about the realities of today's soundscape. From the article: "Along with Space Channel 5's tracks, Katamari Damacy is one of the best examples of what musicians are doing with compressed audio today. Each song is lengthy enough so as not to repeat itself during the 5 to 6 minute stages in the game, and composer Yu Miyake let his imagination run riot, running the gamut of musical styles from introspective electronic music to big-band swing to power ballads to lounge singing. Just like its namesake, the disparate styles all clump together to form something awesome that's worth experiencing even outside the context of the game. "
Re:band that specialises in gameing music (Score:1, Informative)
Re:1up = aggravating (Score:3, Informative)
The C-64 had (and still has) some really amazing and distinctive sound. But if by multi-channel you mean stereo, then you're wrong. The C-64's SID is not a stereo chip. (You hack 2 into a C-64 and have a crude form of stereo, but that's true of any mono chip.)
And if by multi-channel you mean polyphonic then the C-64 was also not the first -- even the VIC-20 had multi-channel sound before the C-64. The VIC used the MOS Technology "VIC" chip before the C-64 used the MOS Technology 6581 "SID" chip. The VIC had 3 channels of square-wave sound (one oscillator per channel) and one noise channel. No enveolope control or filter, but still very much multi-channel and fun to listen to. (The VIC was also very similar to the POKEY chip from the Ataris and many arcade machines of that era also.)
More on the SID here [slashdot.org]
More on sound chips here [wikipedia.org]