Author: 8GB

  • First Philadelphia Computer Music Festival

    Thanks to 8bitweapon who posted this heads up on 8bitcollective, we can bring you some old but fresh news :D

    First Philadelphia Computer Music Festival
    As true as chip can get?

    “The First Philadelphia Computer Music Festival was held August 25, 1978 as part of the Personal Computing ’78 show. It was organized by Dick Moberg of the Philadelphia Area Computer Society.

    “Several people in the area had been producing music with their computers so I suggested we have a computer music concert.” said Dick Moberg, organizer of the feast. “John OK’d the idea and we went to work calling our friends and urging them to perform.”

    “The concert was finally held in one of the larger ballrooms of the Sheraton Hotel. Our borrowed sound system was set up and sound checks made for the recording. We opened the doors to the crowd outside to find several hundred more people than the room could hold. Many sat on the floors of the halls as the music filled the hotel.

    Hal Chamberlin had set up an oscilloscope that would project the waveform being played on a screen. The result was a fantastic synchronized light show!”

    The First Philadelphia Computer Music Festival was held August 25, 1978 as part of the Personal Computing ’78 show.

    You can listen to the music online or download the songs in MP3 format. The navigation sidebar to the right includes the album’s liner notes, which describe the event, the programmers, and the computers that created the music.

    Downloads, tracklist and more at the release’s website

  • C64.sk’s LAST COMPO

    Every year’s autumn for the last 8 years, super Commodore 64 news portal from Slovakia, C64.sk, runs the SID Compo, C64 scene’s biggest online music competition.

    It has now been announced, the LAST installment of this compo, starting now and ending by end November. Each year the amount and quality of releases has been rising a lot, so I bet this time, being the last one, it will be no exception, with everyone wanting to make the SID Compo leave us with quite a loud bang.

    Get updated about it on the compo page at CSDb, and join if you want to.

    You can also check out the previous installments which are full of delicious tunes (in between brackets, my favs :)) :

    C64.sk SID Compo #1 (#7 and #4)
    C64.sk SID Compo #2 (#5 and #8)
    C64.sk SID Compo #3 (#4, #5 and #13, and I got a tune in #24 :))
    C64.sk SID Compo #4 (#5 and #7)
    C64.sk SID Compo #5 (#1, #3 and #16)
    C64.sk SID Compo #6 (#2 and #7 )
    C64.sk SID Compo #7 (#8 and #4)
    Bonus! C64.sk Covers Compo #1 (#7 and #4)

  • The X’2008 demoparty: All releases online!

    Booze Design raises the bar for tech achievement on a C64 demo.

    So, another X party has finished! This milestone of the C64 scene has delivered some of the best productions of the last years, as always. Let’s have some of the official blurb:

    “13 years of X parties, 10 years at the farm, the 9th X in total and still going strong. Who would’ve thought.

    The biannual c64-only event in rural Netherlands has been one of its kind in 8-bit partyland. Not only do you get brilliant demo/graphics/music competitions, but you also get a nice bed, hot showers, proper food, breakfast and all the beer, soft drinks, tea and coffee you can drink.
    For the competitions and performances you can count on a high quality big screen and audio equipment to keep the cows awake.”

    The stream of releases is BIG, as always the C64 scene proves to be one of the most productive in the demoscene, and the quality bar is usually quite high. This party has seen the release of the tech-groundbreaking demo “Edge of Disgrace” by Booze Design, which has raised the bar for C64 demo tech quality very, very high. I can’t wait for X’2010 when this demo should be surpassed by a new one :)

    Other personal favourites are Pearls for Pigs from Xenon, and My Beauty from Fairlight (featuring music by mr. Goto80)

    On the music side, I can recommend to give a listen to the tunes by Randall and Fanta.

    All the info comes thanks to the Commodore Scene Database!
    Here are the final listings with CSDb rankings and links to vote/comment/download the prods:
    (more…)

  • MAIN #3 performances – Videos online!

    In the war roomHello everyone!

    Welcome me, Akira  (a.k.a. 8GB) to True Chip ‘Till Death! I hope to bring you hot hot hot news, specially from my areas of oldschool expertise xD

    As my first post I present you with video recordings of all the chipmusic performances at the MAIN #3 Festival/demoparty.

    The link contains videos to all performances, and for Saturday, the video marked as 8GB actually contains many more performances in the end (no, I did not play 150 minutes :P)

    Find them here:

    The website is quite arse and you can’t download the videos, but it’s watchable.

    Enjoy!