What's New?

April 28, 2010 Apple II Adventures

Here's something: JJ Sonick has a blog devoted to "exploring games, music and programming on the 8-bit Apple II computers". Some interesting stuff, including honest-to-goodness Apple II music!!!

Feb 12, 2010 Maintenance...

I just got round to fixing a few links and actually making the site accessible again... not much else is new :(

June 10, 2008 Bank Street Music Writer Writer Writes...

Just got an email from Bank Street Music Writer programmer Gary Clancy, who also happens to be the composer of Sambaman. Check out what he has to say about the tune on the Audio page.

Dec 3, 2007 My Music Links

A quick list of links to all my Apple II music thus far... enjoy!

• Binary Star
• Night Driver EP
• Geometry For Lovers
• Serial Dub EP
• MICRO.MUSIC

Nov 2, 2007 Drumulator

I was lucky enough to pick up a Drumulator off eBay for a reasonable price... now the challenge is to either locate the Apple II software or write my own. If anyone out there has a copy of Graphical Rhythm Composer for sale or trade, please get in touch!

July 24, 2007 TimeLord v. 2.1 Released

TimeLord 2.1 features vastly improved (ie: useable) pattern editors and supports synchronized starting of NadaNet connected Apple IIs.

July 18, 2007 New(er) Music

Posted a recording of MICRO.MUSIC to the Internet Archive, though I think listening to it on anything other than an Apple II is cheating ;-)

July 16, 2007 New Music

I've just finished a new album of experimental Apple II music. One of my projects for this year's RetroChallenge was to fit an album's worth of music onto a single-sided 140K floppy. The result, "MICRO.MUSIC", is in a similar vein to Geometry For Lovers, though somewhat less jazzy. Apple II users can download the album as a ShrinkIt archive here, everyone else will have to wait for the CD release ;-)

July 16, 2007 1 MHz Feature

As I'm sure many visitors are already aware, this site was recently featured in episode 10 of Carrington Vanston's 1 MHz podcast. Thanks to Carrington for the exposure!

May 20, 2007 RetroChallenge '07 is go!

RetroChallenge 2007 has been officially announced. The contest is open to everyone with an interest in RetroComputing -- a good chance to show off your creative skills.

Mar 10, 2007 And now for something completely different...

Here's a rather strange short film by Dale Goodfellow featuring a semi-musical Apple //c.

Feb 10, 2007 A2 Goes Dub.

Some new Apple II music... Framebreaker's Serial Dub EP explores the possibilities of 8-bit digital dub.

Dec 20, 2006 Syntauri Software.

Charles Hobbs of the Los Angeles Stylophonic Orchestra has kindly "donated" a folder full of software and docs for the alphaSyntauri synth... yet to be sorted, but you can find it here.

Nov 22, 2006 MetaTrak Manual.

Scanned in the manual for the MetaTrak multitrack sequencing software for the alphaSyntauri system.

Nov 20, 2006 SuperTalker.

Added a few pictures of the SuperTalker card to the hardware page (courtesy of Mr Bill Garber of Garberstreet Electronics)

Nov 5, 2006 alphaPlus Cheat Sheet.

Thanks to Charles Hobbs for providing this handy Quick-Reference for the Syntauri alphaPlus software.

Aug 31, 2006 ProTrio for alphaSyntauri.

A "friendly hacker" has succeeded in deprotecting the ProTrio Wave Maker disk for the alphaSyntauri synthesizer. ProTrio emulates a Hammond B3 organ. Both ProTrio disks can be found here.

Aug 6, 2006 More Timelord Music.

For this year's RetroChallenge entry, I got together with J. Warden of The First Punic War and put together a whole album's worth of music... the results can be found at the Internet Archive under Geometry_For_Lovers. A "real" CD release may be available eventually.

Apr 30, 2006 Apple II on Vinyl.

This is pretty cool: I was commisssioned by The First Punic War to program a track for their latest vinyl release. The track features 3 Apple IIs all running Timelord. The track ("Punk Rock") by itself is on the Audio page, but you can download the entire EP (and even buy a copy if you're so inclined) from The First Punic War's web site.

Feb 11, 2006 DX-1 Docs.

Added the manual and reference card scans for the Decillionix DX-1 Sampler to the docs page.

Jan 14, 2006 For What It's Worth...

Against my better judgement I decided to revisit a project from a few years back, namely the OmniVox Tru-Tone Digital Sound Generator which never really worked as intended... after spending an afternoon with the Beagle Compiler, I'm happy to announce that Omnivox is now playable in real-time, if not necessarily in tune.

Dec 28, 2005 Happy Holidays!

Added a few Mockingboard tunes from Ultima to the audio page, courtesy of Kevin Greene's Apple Vault site. Added Drumulator pics and description to the hardware page, courtesy of eBay.

Sept 14, 2005 RT.Synth Released

Michael Mahon has pulled another rabbit out of his hat with the release of RT.SYNTH, a real-time wave-table based soft synth for the Apple IIe and up. RT.SYNTH currently features 10 voices, real-time recording and playback as well as a "VoicePak" editor.

Sept 7, 2005 Mockingboard Clone Announced

GSE-Reactive is introducing an updated clone of the classic MockingBoard sound card for the Apple II. The Mockingboard v1 Sound Card is a stereo music and sound synthesizer with 6 voices. Up to 2 units can be installed in a computer to give it 12 voices.

Aug 15, 2005 Apple II Song Wins Big!

Nova Styrene's latest single Telnet Heart has placed first in the RetroChallenge music category (mainly by virtue of being the only entry).

May 15, 2005 CrateSynth

Michael J. Mahon, author of Sound Editor, is working on a NadaNet-based multi-voice synthesizer/sequencer capable of playing converted MIDI files, all without benefit of additional audio hardware. Although Michael has yet to release the software, he has posted a few MP3 files of his Crate Synth test pieces. Check out Michael's homepage for more information.

Simon Williams
Luddite Enterprises