Soundmonitor
chris-huelsbeck's music editor for the C64, written in the summer of 1986 as a front end for his Musicmaster play routine and published by 64er as a type-in "Listing des Monats" in issue 10/1986 — "the most popular Commodore 64 music editor in Europe of the late 1980s" and the ancestor of the tracker: bars of notes shown as A-1, a track/step table of bar addresses per voice, sounds as 24 hex bytes, and a play routine that runs in the interrupt so the tune can be heard while you edit (sources: s-64er-soundmonitor-article, s-vgmpf-soundmonitor-tfmx).
Model#
- Track/step table: steps
$00–$FFdown the screen; per step three tracksTRK1–3each holding the address of a bar, plus per track a transposeTRand a sound-transposeST, and anARP/Saddress for base settings + arpeggios.F3/F5mark first and last step (source: s-64er-soundmonitor-article). VGMPF's summary: per step tempo, length, volume, fade-out; per cell bar, transpose, instrument set; per note instrument and options (orderlist; source: s-vgmpf-soundmonitor-tfmx). - Bars ("Takte") are raw memory: default length
$20notes × 2 bytes =$40, so bars sit at$B000, $B040, $B080 …;$BE00is the empty bar,$BE80a metronome; no memory management, "man legt die Takte am besten zwischen $B000 und $BE00 ab" (source: s-64er-soundmonitor-article). - Notes: name C–H with
#/-and octave 0–7,---rest,+++hold; plus one byte — low nibble sound 0–F, high nibble sound options (arpeggio bit, portamento bit, suppress transpose, suppress sound-transpose). Typed normally = retriggered (inverse), withSHIFT= legato (source: s-64er-soundmonitor-article). - Sounds: 24 hex "registers" (table below); 16 per bar (
STreaches higher numbers). Arpeggios: 8-step semitone lists on the ARP/S page. Base settings: CIA timer lo/hi, coarse tempo 0–4, bar length, fade-out, volume (source: s-64er-soundmonitor-article). - Musicmaster supported "transpose, detune, portamento, vibrato, pulse width modulation, filter modulation, and arpeggios (a first in an editor)"; songs "were always over 10 KB, and the driver was slow and unrelocatable" (source: s-vgmpf-soundmonitor-tfmx).
Cheat sheet#
| key | action |
|---|---|
X / SYS 4096 | leave / restart the editor |
SHIFT+I, Y | initialise: all steps → $BE00, defaults |
Z | sound page; F1/F3 select sound number; type the 24 bytes top-down; RETURN leaves |
RETURN on a bar address | open the bar's note display; RETURN back |
N / P | play from FIRST STEP with SID init / play on-off at CURRENT STEP |
F3 / F5 | set FIRST STEP / LAST STEP at the cursor |
TR column | transpose in semitones, 00–7F up, FF–80 down (0C = octave, FC = −4) |
ST column | added to every sound number in the bar |
RETURN under ARP/S | base-settings page: bytes 0–1 CIA timer lo/hi (hi "35–50"), 2 coarse tempo 0–4 (smaller = faster), 3 bar length ($20, $30 for 6/8, $40 double), 4 fade-out (FF none, 10 fast … 30 slow), 5 volume 00–0F; next lines = arpeggios of 8 semitone steps, e.g. minor 0c 07 03 00 0c 07 03 00 |
| arpeggio per note | set option bit 3 (digit 4) on the note; the byte after the last note selects it: 08 first, 10 second, 18 third, 20 fourth … |
O (+SHIFT) · CLR · K · , . / | keyboard octave · sound · key-transpose · voice for live play |
F7 | play on the keyboard (CTRL = C, 1 = C#, …; border red); F7/RETURN back |
R, Q, F7 | record: pick the track, quantize (1 = 16ths, 2 = 8ths, 3 = quarters, 0 = none), record — bar addresses must be filled in first |
£ | invert option bits and show the digit |
SHIFT+= | copy the FIRST…LAST STEP block to the cursor |
L … SHIFT+S | copy a sound, a bar or an ARP/S line |
SHIFT+INS/DEL / DEL | insert / delete a step |
SHIFT+@ | clear the bar under the cursor; on ARP/S: write default settings and two arpeggios |
T, SHIFT+S, SHIFT+L, $ | file type (Soundnumber / Complete Song with routine / Steps only), save, load, directory |
SYS 49152 | starts a "Complete Song" file from BASIC |
Sound registers (source: s-64er-soundmonitor-article): 0 waveform+gate at key-on (11 tri, 21 saw, 41 pulse, 81 noise; +2 sync, +4 ring, +8 test) · 1 AD · 2 SR · 3 portamento target · 4 pulse width · 5/6/7 pulse-EG up time / down time / step (> 30 "gets dirty") · 8 waveform at key-off (10/20/40/80) · 9 pulse-EG restart (1x) and portamento mode (x1 up, x2 down, x4 once) · 10/11 portamento speed lo/hi · 12/13/14 vibrato depth / speed (00 fast … 7F slow, bit 7 = start direction) / delay · 15 fine detune · 16 filter type nibble (FF = leave the filter alone, avoids clicks) · 17 resonance + voice mask · 18 cutoff · 19/20 filter-EG up/down time · 21/22 filter-EG step lo/hi · 23 filter-EG mode + trigger voice.
Recipes from the article: bass 41,09,99,00,20,10,10,10,40,10,00,00,00,00,00,00,FF,… · lead 41,08,7C,00,60,10,10,10,40,10,00,00,10,07,1A,00,FF,… · flute 11,09,99,00,00,00,00,00,10,00,00,00,10,06,10,00,FF,… · bass drum 11,09,09,01,00,00,00,00,10,01,FF,00,… (a triangle pulled down once) · snare 81,09,09,01,00,00,00,00,80,01,10,30,… · "Rambo theme sound" 41,08,7D,00,00,20,10,10,40,10,00,00,10,08,1D,00,FF,… · ring-mod effect 15,08,7A,10,00,00,00,00,14,01,20,23,… (instrument-design).
History and use#
- Written because typing Musicmaster data into SMON had made shades "eine zeitraubende Arbeit"; sold to 64'er with the contest win (sources: s-64er-soundmonitor-article, s-vgmpf-chris-huelsbeck).
- Hülsbeck's later steps — samples as a 4th voice (1986–87), The Final Musicplayer (July 1987, only for Georg Brandt), tfmx (1988) — stayed private; the scene made Rockmonitor (April 1987, samples, "to Hülsbeck's chagrin") and modified or compressed the driver. "The sound grew old, as many arrangers used the same instruments; particularly drums were just a triangle wave sliding down" (sources: s-vgmpf-soundmonitor-tfmx, s-vgmpf-chris-huelsbeck).
- Used on games by Hülsbeck, Georg Brandt, Ramiro Vaca, Peter Clarke, Charles Callet, Hannes Seifert, Pablo Toledo, Appaloosa and matt-gray; used before their game careers by jeroen-tel, Barry Leitch, Jason Page and Jonathan Dunn (source: s-vgmpf-soundmonitor-tfmx). Gray: "Soundmonitor and Rockmonitor, godsends at the time"; his Quedex loader was written in it; Tognon notes he also used "RockMonitor 2/3 and MusicMaster" before his own player (sources: s-c64com-matt-gray-interview, s-sidin02-matt-gray-driller). All three founders of maniacs-of-noise "had already arranged music … using Soundmonitor" (source: s-vgmpf-maniacs-of-noise).
- Hülsbeck on its note display: "Other programs that came later, like the Trackers on the Amiga used a similar format and they may have been inspired by my earlier tools" (source: s-emuwiki-huelsbeck-interview).
Versions, scene use and names#
- Versions (tracker-history/HVMEC): V1.0 "a.k.a. Music Master", 1986-10; V1.1 by The Leader/Computer Cracking Team, 1986-12-28; Music Master V1.3 by The Syndicate, 1987; the sample branch rockmonitor (II by Swagerman & Giesen, 1987) and Digitronix (RAB, 4-bit samples mixed on the NMI). C64-Wiki.de adds "64'er Extra Nr. 13" as a second print appearance and "Programm hat Kultstatus" (source: s-soundmonitor-lineage-wikis). CSDb: "Soundmonitor V1.0", October 1986,
.t64; "not a scene release" but kept "due to its massive impact on the scene" (source: s-csdb-soundmonitor-and-shades). - In the scene: SIDwave calls it "the greatest gift of all" — "the actual name of the program is Music Master v1.0"; The Parade International's Crack's Best (two demos, 25–30 Soundmonitor tunes each) appeared before 1986 was over; by late 1987 "most of the scene are stuck with Soundmonitor/Rockmonitor"; jeroen-tel's 1986 Soundmonitor tunes were, in his view, "not very good"; Soundmonitor and Electrosound were "very heavy with raster usage, around 45-75% CPU", one reason composers wrote their own players (source: s-recollection-brief-history-of-sid). Hülsbeck himself calls it "the first tracker-like music editor" (source: s-audiogang-huelsbeck-interview). de.wikipedia: the band Welle: Erdball still uses it (source: s-soundmonitor-lineage-wikis).
- SIDId names:
Soundmonitorwith sub-signaturesMusicMaster_1,MusicMaster_2,MusicMaster_TMM,Digitronix,Huelsbeck_Digi_V1/V2— "Released as a type-in listing in the October 1986 issue" (source: s-sidid-player-list; sidid).
Why people left it#
Three complaints, from three people who used it and then wrote or bought something else.
- It was everybody's sound. JCH on 1987: "almost everyone was using a public domain editor called Soundmonitor", and against that "there was also an enormous prestige in using one's own player" — he was "among just two or three people in Denmark that could do this". Both Soundmonitor and future-composer became "trite", the mark of groups "that didn't have access to unique music in special players". That pressure, more than any missing feature, is what drove the 1987–89 wave of private drivers (tracker-scene-history; source: s-chordian-my-computer-chronicles).
- The data was too big and the player too slow. scarzix valued it for exactly the reason a public editor is valuable — it "let me open Chris' tunes" (chris-huelsbeck) "and see how they were made" — but its tunes were "too heavy regarding memory as they weren't compressed and way too slow … for rastertiming", i.e. unusable in a game or demo with a raster budget. He moved to future-composer ("a whole new sound and much better drums") and then to JCH's editor (source: s-sidin14-scarzix-interview). The scene's compressed and modified builds listed above are the same complaint, answered with a patch.
- It could not give you your own sound. matt-gray: "I started on Electro Sound and then moved on to Soundmonitor and Rockmonitor which were both excellent. But to get your own sound you need to write your own routines I feel" — the sentence that explains why the best-documented C64 tunes run in private drivers rather than in this one (matt-gray-player; source: s-sidin15-matt-gray-interview).
Hülsbeck himself left in the same period. Yodelking's dating on CSDb: "Chris used his Soundmonitor from 1986-1987 (and an adapted version of soundmonitor with digis also 1987). Then some time in 1987 switched to TFMX ed", with /Huelsbeck_Chris/Starball.sid as the example — so the digi branch that the scene turned into rockmonitor had a private counterpart in the author's own hands. VGMPF dates the switch to tfmx a year later, in summer 1988; the two datings stand side by side (sources: s-csdb-huelsbeck-tfmx-thread, s-vgmpf-soundmonitor-tfmx). Wikipedia, citing Retro Gamer #283, gives the plain version: "In 1986, he published SoundMonitor for the Commodore 64 and later co-created the TFMX … sound editor with programmer Peter Thierolf" (source: s-wikipedia-chris-huelsbeck; tertiary).
Two more witnesses (SIDin, 2003–04)#
- Hülsbeck to SIDin: "The Soundmonitor was my first big software project and was based on my third music player (the first was pretty basic for a friends game, the second was for Shades)"; the two later revisions of its driver were TFM ("more memory and CPU efficient") and one that "added my sample playback"; Rockmonitor "was a hack / reverse engineered by those guys. Back then I was a bit mad about them, but not anymore" (source: s-sidin05-huelsbeck-interview).
- A late user's verdict: stephan-schmid typed the 64'er listing in 1991, made his first tune (Erste Schritte) "on the day I finished typing it in", then tried to reproduce the sounds of the crack intros — "which was simply impossible. :-( So I quickly quit playing around with it, disappointed by the limited capabilities of the editor"; his C64 composing lasted "only for about 3 weeks", and when he returned in February 2003 it was to the JCH editor, "not quite easy to use" (chordian) (source: s-sidin03-schmid-interview).
- jan-harries (Rambones) wrote The Supply Team's demo music "using the Soundmonitor from Chris Hülsbeck" from about 1986; the tunes are in HVSC under
/VARIOUS/M-R/Rambones/. His 2004 verdict on the editors of that era: those "using notation are aged (1982–1986), and don't offer sophisticated sound creation" (source: s-sidin06-harries-interview).
Three more first-hand witnesses (1987–1994)#
- Happy Computer 3/87 saw it in use in Langen: "Chris benutzt zur Soundprogrammierung seinen selbstgeschriebenen 'Soundmonitor'. Damit läßt sich am Soundchip alles nur Erdenkliche einstellen und manipulieren"; the article's screenshot shows it over To Be On Top (source: s-happy-computer-soundprofessor).
- Hülsbeck in 64'er 2/88, asked how a song gets from the synthesizer into the computer: "Ganz einfach durch meinen Sound-Monitor … Da ist kein größerer Programmieraufwand nötig" (source: s-64er-rainbow-arts-feature).
- jeroen-tel in 1994: "As soon as I discovered Sound Monitor I started to compose using that program, plenty of tunes were used in demos like for example 'Madonna Remix'" (source: s-domination01-jeroen-tel-interview).
Related#
chris-huelsbeck · tfmx · shades · 64er · sid-player-routine · tracker · tracker-scene-history · orderlist · instrument-tables · chord-arpeggio · pulse-width-modulation · filter-programming · vibrato · pitch-slide-and-portamento · sid-wizard · goattracker
Sources#
s-64er-soundmonitor-article · s-vgmpf-soundmonitor-tfmx · s-vgmpf-chris-huelsbeck · s-emuwiki-huelsbeck-interview · s-c64com-matt-gray-interview · s-vgmpf-matt-gray · s-vgmpf-maniacs-of-noise · s-sidin02-matt-gray-driller · s-recollection-brief-history-of-sid · s-soundmonitor-lineage-wikis · s-csdb-soundmonitor-and-shades · s-sidid-player-list · s-audiogang-huelsbeck-interview · s-sidin05-huelsbeck-interview · s-sidin03-schmid-interview · s-sidin06-harries-interview · s-happy-computer-soundprofessor · s-64er-rainbow-arts-feature · s-domination01-jeroen-tel-interview · s-chordian-my-computer-chronicles · s-sidin14-scarzix-interview · s-sidin15-matt-gray-interview · s-csdb-huelsbeck-tfmx-thread · s-wikipedia-chris-huelsbeck