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I’ve been meaning to install a SID chip (Sound Interface Device) virtual instrument for a while now and get all nostalgic about my 8-bit electronic music roots. Here’s the result.

The Commodore 64 was blessed with a rather spectacular sound chip (also the CBM-II, Commodore 64, Commodore 128 and Commodore MAX Machine home computers) called the 6581/8580 SID which programmers of the time made innovative and wonderful creative use of despite its limitations. A cult grew up around the sound chip and the musicians that provided the soundtracks for the top games. You still hear these sounds occasionally – albeit in slightly dubious places, an off-shoot of the ‘demo scene‘ which peaked in the 80′s and early 90′s.

So, here’s a little SID based tune from an evening session last night. Not sure how it ended up being quite so jolly, but I think I may have been quite excited to hear the old sounds again and got carried away with it all. I didn’t manage to stay completely authentic to SID as I initially intended to; I couldn’t help but add a smattering of delay, reverb, string samples and a bit of strengthening percussion just to make it a tiny bit more palatable to 21st century ears.

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