Enhanced SidPlayer - 8-Bit Music The Way I Remember

[Shane R. Monroe]

Long before MP3 files ... before the popularity of "8-Bit Chip Tunes" ... well before the "High Voltage Sid Collection" ... came a little thing called SIDPLAYER and it's composition partner - SIDEDIT.


During the mid to latter 1980s, SIDPLAYER inspired a connected online presence known as QuantumLink to arrange, compose and trade some incredible songs - mostly arrangements from popular TV, movies and pop music of the time and decades before.


This phenomenon become known as The Compute's Gazette Sid Collection (CGSD); thousands of songs that have been subsequently ignored by fans of early computer music in favor of "in game music" and compositions from a handful of (admittedly) talented musicians (via projects like HVSC which contain none of the CGSD).


Even as "8-Bit Music" became more popular, part of the experience - the SidPlayer keyboard (also known as "Enhanced SidPlayer") fell by the wayside for basic, but functional players for Windows like SIDPLAY/W and other working - but unmemorable software - some highjacking the name of the original but never presenting the original experience.


For those of us in the scene - the "I was 8-Bit ... before 8-Bit was cool" crowd, SidPlayer and the CGSC is how WE remember music from that era; complete with keyboard display and playing music of the time period we existed in at the time.


This is the first of possibly many tributes of real music, played back on the original hardware (emulated for convenience) - with the original interface, timing and content that we, the lovers of music at the time, remember.


Enjoy your trip back to the '80s.


This collection features the following tunes: (with composer)

Part 1

• Theme from Battlestar Galactica (Brian M. Szepatowski)
• Ghostbusters (Brian M. Szepatowski)
• Raiders of the Lost Ark (Brian M. Szepatowski)
• St. Elmo's Fire (Brian M. Szepatowski)
• Dallas (Bobbye)
• Fernando (Bobbye)

Part 2

• Miami Vice (Brian M. Szepatowski)
• All My Lovin' (Jerry Roth)
• Back to the Future (Brian M. Szepatowski)
• Chariots of Fire (Brian M. Szepatowski)
• Final Countdown (CPR/DC Star)
• Happy Together (Bobbye)
• Material Girl (Jerry Roth)
• Teenager In Love (Jerry Roth)

[Shane R. Monroe]

This is retarded. So I'm told my account allows me to upload videos longer than 15 minutes. Then when I put this up, they nuke my video.

Sigh .. fine .. I'll split it up and upload it again.

[WorknMan]

So did anyone do a genuine pc port of this?

[Shane R. Monroe]

Not that I've found .. I've been looking too.

[merman1974]

For those interested, http://c64music.co.uk/ holds the Compute's Gazette SID Collection

[Dragon57]

So did anyone do a genuine pc port of this?

I looked a couple of years ago and never found one either. Doesn't mean one doesn't exist though.

[Shane R. Monroe]

Thanks, I should have posted that

For those interested, http://c64music.co.uk/ holds the Compute's Gazette SID Collection

[Shane R. Monroe]

I got another hour+ set ready to go ... INCLUDING Ob-La-Di (pain in the ass to find).

[merman1974]

My first experience of the format was a PD disk, it had SIDPlayer 7.0 (which also played stereo SIDs) and a collection of film & TV themes.