Frantic

C64 scener of the group Hack'n'Trade (also FTC, "Mad Frantic" to goto80) who composes and codes in one gesture: his two winning tiny-sid-compo entries — New Kid On The Block (2005) and the generative BLOCK ACID DUB (2006) — are among the wiki's most instructive miniature players, and he is the author of defMON, the C64 editor with no instruments and no effect commands (sources: s-sidin11-tiny-sid-2-part-2, s-sidid-player-list, s-goto80-site-defmon-posts, s-chipmusic-defmon-thread).

Facts#

• New Kid On The Block (256 bytes, joint 1st at 186 points in the 2005 tiny-sid-compo): "Chip: 6581 C64 used when composing"; only $11 and $21 waveforms, yet Tognon judges "so it is great made". Its 3-byte instruments hold AD, control byte and note duration in one row (SR stays $00 — "Using AD only to save space"), so a silent instrument is a whole empty pattern in one byte; jsr $b5ff runs a BASIC ROM fragment as a free filter sweep ("hijack some BASIC ROM shit"); the test bit ($08) is written before every note (hard-restart, adsr-envelope, instrument-tables) (sources: s-sidin09-tiny-sid-256b; placing: s-sidin08-tiny-sid-512b).
• BLOCK ACID DUB (Tiny Sid 2, 2006; 1st at 256 bytes with 96 points): "Code + data + load address = 254 bytes. Two bytes reserved for the file system, so the tune will fit in a single disk block"; for the 6581, PAL, assembled with DreamAss. Notes and instruments are one stream of SID register writes — "Not using different code structures for 'notes' and 'instruments'. It's all just SID data" — and a CIA timer read ($DC04) picks one of four instrument pointers per step, so "the tune will appear different each time"; the hard restart is two bytes of data on the drum channel (sid-player-routine, wavetable-programming, arrangement) (sources: s-sidin11-tiny-sid-2-part-2; placing: s-sidin-news-digest).
• His stated aims across the two compos: "Last Tiny SID compo I aimed to make a long composition with harmonies and a 'real' melody … This time I aimed for fatter sounds instead"; on the dub aesthetics of the random recombination: "one part of the brain follows what is steady in the music, and another part follows that which is fleeting and passing, and therebetween a tension arises … that is what constitutes dub" (source: s-sidin11-tiny-sid-2-part-2).
• Peers borrowed from him: stefano-tognon's step-by-step squeeze of XL5 uses "Frantic's SBX trick" (.byte $cb,7 = sbx #7) to cycle the player across the three voices (source: s-sidin10-tiny-sid-2-part-1); sidin #10 printed Frantic's correction of #9's analysis of his 256-byte player (source: s-sidin-news-digest).
• defMON: the SIDId player list's "made 2008, released 2013" (source: s-sidid-player-list) is refined by his own account — coding started ~2006, "it was in 2008 that defMON got finished enough to be usable, and the first user (goto80) started using it", public 2013 via a Genesis Project crack; weekly two-C64 jam sessions with goto80 "fed back into the development of the program". He ran the chipmusic.org defMON thread as its support channel 2014–2021, wrote the Super Commands and defBPM docs as FTC, announced defMON II (3 SIDs, MIDI) in 2020, and withdrew the project from public development on 2021-04-27 after "various accusations … even some vague threats" (sources: s-chipmusic-defmon-thread, s-goto80-site-defmon-posts, s-defmon-wiki-supercommands, s-defmon-wiki-releases).
• His design philosophy in one line (2018-02-22): "defMON is designed to implement as little 'built in' functions as possible. Things like hardrestart, vibrato, etc.. Instead it is up to the user to do it themselves in the sidtab" — consistent with BLOCK ACID DUB's "It's all just SID data" (source: s-chipmusic-defmon-thread). He also runs codebase64.org, and before defMON made Papaya Dub with goto80 on the 8×-speed JCH editor (source: s-chipmusic-defmon-thread).
• The same philosophy in the program's documentation: "Power through simplicity and flexibility rather than a large number of 'special functions'" — defMON "doesn't make a distinction between 'instruments' and 'effects'", and hard-restart and vibrato are things "you can do … the way you prefer yourself, although you have to do it manually" (source: s-defmon-wiki-manual); the community tutorial he co-wrote as FTC repeats it in one line (source: s-defmon-wiki-defmoning-102). The developer pages carry it into the player's interface — a packed tune at $1000, jsr $1003 once per frame and $1006 for the remaining multispeed calls, "more or less the same as in 90% of all other sid tunes out there", with one warning: the init routine sniffs the SID model and "temporarily disables interrupts" (source: s-defmon-wiki-calling-the-player).
• defBPM (as FTC, 2013-03-02) applies it to tempo: rather than a sync feature, a formula — BPM = 60 × (clock / (timer + 1)) / (speed × steps-per-beat), clock 985248 Hz PAL — and a printed table of hex timer values from 50 to 348 BPM, so the user dials the CIA timer in by hand (sync, shuffle-funktempo; source: s-defmon-wiki-sync-and-stereo).
• "Kommando Knorr" — alias or duo? SIDId lists it among Frantic's aliases (source: s-sidid-player-list), but goto80's Improv page says the edited two-C64 defMON jams by both of them "were later edited and released under the name Kommando Knorr", and Wikipedia calls Kommando Knorr goto80's "electro duo (2009)" — the wiki keeps both statements (sources: s-goto80-site-defmon-posts, s-wikipedia-goto80).
• Quoted in the scene: WitchMaster's SID-Wizard book quotes his CSDb line on hard-restart — "using hard restart is a scene sacrament that must be blown out of proportion if order is to be maintained" (source: s-witchmaster-creating-chiptunes-with-sid-wizard); he also posted in the 2006 CSDb thread on chris-huelsbeck's unreleased C64 TFMX editor (source: s-csdb-huelsbeck-tfmx-thread).

Related#

defmon · goto80 · tiny-sid-compo · sid-player-routine · hard-restart · instrument-tables · sync · multispeed · arrangement · sidin · sidid · stefano-tognon · 4mat

Sources#

s-sidin09-tiny-sid-256b · s-sidin11-tiny-sid-2-part-2 · s-sidin08-tiny-sid-512b · s-sidin10-tiny-sid-2-part-1 · s-sidin-news-digest · s-sidid-player-list · s-witchmaster-creating-chiptunes-with-sid-wizard · s-csdb-huelsbeck-tfmx-thread · s-chipmusic-defmon-thread · s-defmon-wiki-releases · s-defmon-wiki-supercommands · s-goto80-site-defmon-posts · s-wikipedia-goto80 · s-defmon-wiki-manual · s-defmon-wiki-defmoning-102 · s-defmon-wiki-calling-the-player · s-defmon-wiki-sync-and-stereo