Home › entity › tool

DMC

entity tool C64 / SID #tool #editor #c64 #sid #duration-based
aliases Demo Music Creator, DMC V4.0, DMC V5.0, DMC V7.0
sources SIDin #10 — Richard Bayliss interview (Stefano Tognon, 2006) · SIDin #1 — Iseq music composition program: the comp.sys.cbm threads and Steve Judd's Commando cover (2002) · SIDin #12 — Mihály Horváth (Hermit) interview (Stefano Tognon, 2008) · SIDin #9 — Nata (Stephan Parth) interview (Stefano Tognon, 2006) · SIDin #13 — TSM & Freedom interview (Stefano Tognon, 2010) · The Brief History of SID — Jan Harries (SIDwave), Vandalism News #64 (2015) · SIDin #1–15 — Editorials and News digest (Stefano Tognon, 2002–2015) · SIDin #5 — Music Engines Pattern Searching, part 2: the Lostack database (Stefano Tognon, 2004) · GoatTracker v2.72 readme (summary) · SIDin #11 — SID Factory vs Ninjatracker (Stefano Tognon, 2007) · SIDin #13 — JITT64 Tracker: Tognon's Java Ice Team Tracker from the user's side (2010) · SID-Wizard 1.8 User Manual (summary) · Creating Chiptunes with SID-Wizard, Second Edition (summary)
created 2026-08-30 · updated 2026-08-31

DMC is a family of C64 sid music editors of the 1990s and the wiki's archetype of the duration-based school — sidin #13 frames the editor divide as duration-based (DMC) versus tracker-style (JCH) (source: s-sidin13-tsm-freedom-interview). No wiki source documents the editor itself; what survives here is its version trail (V2.0 to V7.0), the composers who used it or fled it, and the "DMC mode" note-entry and key conventions that later editors still offer.

Facts#

  • Duration-based lineage: the Recollection SID history calls Ubik's Music (1987) "the first of what we called a DUR editor" (D-2 DUR 02), "like the 1990s DMC" (source: s-recollection-brief-history-of-sid).
  • richard-bayliss's main tool: DMC V2.0 was "a whole lot easier to use" than future-composer V4 because "the utility disk had example tunes" to take apart; he mostly used DMC V4.0 and V5.0. His first DMC V4.0B (by Graffity/Panic Design, from the Magna Musica utility disk) "had a bug in the tune packer", and a fully working copy only turned up on the Internet in 2001. DMC V5.0 was "one of the most complex version of DMC at the time", learned by experimenting (source: s-sidin10-bayliss-interview).
  • The V5 sector editor: what Bayliss misses in goattracker is DMC V5's sector editor, "where you could try and control filtered sounds to go up or down like in DMC V5 itself" (filter-programming); he prefers the 8580 sid for its filters, "especially when it comes to using cool composers like DMC V5" (source: s-sidin10-bayliss-interview).
  • 2SID: in 2008 the only 2SID editors hermit had found were "DMC 4.3 and Prophet64", and DMC "wasn't easy to make 2SID zaks, because of switching between SIDs". DMC is also in his inspiration list: "Cybertracker, Odintracker, DMC and JCH's editor were the trackers that inspired me" (source: s-sidin12-hermit-interview).
  • Too hard for some: nata tried C64-native editors — "Voicetracker, DMC, JCH…" — "but they were simply too hard for me – first choice was GoatTracker" (source: s-sidin09-nata-interview). agemixer's Commando cover was made in DMC 4.0B, which he calls "easy but one of hardest ones for covering anything well" (source: s-sidin01-iseq).
  • DMC Music Compo 2007, run by Richard Bayliss with "all the versions … allowed": winners Psycho Wot Da Funk (DMC V4 modified by Glover/Samar), Surgeon Extreme - Part 2 (DMC V7.0) and Rio Tanker (DMC V7.0 IDE64 version), all on the 8580 (source: s-sidin-news-digest).
  • hvmec 0.4 (2005-06-02) added a "DMC v4.0y" among its catalogued editors (source: s-sidin-news-digest).
  • In rips: SID player identification knows DMC through Name= fields such as DMC V4.0 and DMC V4 - clone I (player-identification) (source: s-sidin05-pattern-searching-2).

Legacy: "DMC mode" in later editors#

richard-bayliss · agemixer · hermit · nata · goattracker · ninjatracker · jitt64 · sid-wizard · future-composer · commando · hvmec · player-identification · tracker-scene-history · filter-programming · sid

Sources#

s-sidin10-bayliss-interview · s-sidin01-iseq · s-sidin12-hermit-interview · s-sidin09-nata-interview · s-sidin13-tsm-freedom-interview · s-recollection-brief-history-of-sid · s-sidin-news-digest · s-sidin05-pattern-searching-2 · s-goattracker-readme · s-sidin11-sid-factory-vs-ninjatracker · s-sidin13-jitt64-tracker · s-sid-wizard-manual · s-witchmaster-creating-chiptunes-with-sid-wizard

To verify#

  • Resolved: the expansion is stated in the Brief history of SID lecture — "this is the same as we know from the '90s editor, DMC, Demo Music Creator" — in a passage that also places DMC in a lineage: UBIK's Music (1987) was "the first of what we called a DUR editor", where a note carries a duration code (D-2 DUR 02) instead of blank rows between notes, and DMC works the same way (source: s-recollection-brief-history-of-sid; see tracker).
  • The editor's original author(s) and full version history are in no wiki source; Graffity/Panic Design are named only for the V4.0B build (source: s-sidin10-bayliss-interview).
source file wiki/entities/dmc.md · graph