commodore 64 and circuit bending

  • Hey there, try using a square wave with bit crusher/distortion to get the desired sound. Also try using a quick arpeggio (1/32 or quicker) that doesn't change in pitch to get that nintendo sound.

  • You want to emulate the C64 sounds I think (and not use the Original C64 or bend it's circuit), right?


    Well there are some emulations out in VHDL and Verilog language to be placed into programmable hardware like PLD and FPGA which replace the original SID chip of the C64 and have a pretty good documentation. From that you can learn how to control it and possibly emulate it's sound capabilities virutally using the virus hardware.


    Basically the SID has the classical sine, triangle, square and a noise generator and some rudimentary ADSR-behaviour, cut off and such - so this can be done surely.


    8 Bit-reduction won't do here much since the limitited bit accuracy is a minor issue. I am not 100% sure but maybe it is possible to recreate this effect with a very low patch volume or at least processing out channel only and reduce the volume appropriately (not sure about that).


    The typical video game sound of that time especially with the Commodore VC20 and VC 64 was marked by some tricky usage of the resouces to e.g. get more voices out of the sound chip. A very common thing was to quickly roll over / swap the notes of a chord in order to "waste" only one physical voice. This can be done outside with MIDI or inside the synth with an arpeggiator function. Also the noise gen was used and the cut off frequency was adjusted that way that it meets the current pitch.


    Another (even more tricky) thing was overloading the internal ADC by to high amplitude causing a "warm" clipping - as far it is true, that clipping causes warmth :)


    But what was with a total weird idea and buy a C64? There are MIDI-interfaces available