Anders from Chipflip has linked to an interesting interview he conducted with Metin Seven, one of the developers of SIDMon. In it, they discuss the transition from c64 to amiga, and the retro-origin of the intial use of the chiptune term. Great read!
AC: Hi Metin. I’m a tracker musician researching the history of chipmusic for a master thesis. Currently I’m looking the epistemology of the word chipmusic or chiptune. Since you were involved with SIDmon the first synthetic Amiga tracker, right? I wanted to ask if you have any memories of this.Hi Anders. That’s the coolest master thesis subject I’ve heard of so far.
:-SIDmon was indeed the first synth audio editor for the Commodore Amiga. Its name refers to the legendary MOS Technology 6581/8580 SID Sound Interface Device chip, best known from the equally legendary Commodore 64 home computer, the Amiga’s predecessor in terms of Commodore flagships. The “mon” part of SIDmon refers to “monitor” and was inspired by the first music tracker I can remember: Soundmon for the Commodore 64.SIDmon’s interface was primitively designed compared to today’s design standards, SIDmon’s graphics reflected the game-oriented 2D graphics style of those days. It was divided in four parts: a waveform editor for creating synth sounds, a sound sample editor, a pattern editor for arranging the sounds into music patterns, and a song editor where you could combine the patterns into a four-channel song.
via Metinsevendotcom