As I mentioned before, when my band plays live, we use programmed music
sequences on the Atari 2600 (for drum accents in most songs) and I program
colorful abstract visual patterns that respond to the measure and beat
pointers.
Well, if anyone's interested in trying their hand at programming visuals
for a song, I'd love to use some new stuff in an upcoming show. I'm sure
most of you are pretty busy, but it is pretty fun (and easy) to just write
code to display something really cool and crazy with no boundaries on the
2600. It can really be anything: objects flying around the screen, words,
animations, color patterns, 3d stuff, whatever. But it's kinda cool if it
makes some transitions that go with the music a little bit.
So if you're interested, let me know and I'll send you the source for a
song and give you a link to an mp3 so you can hear what it sounds like with
the other instruments. You can just replace the video kernal with whatever
you want. Only limitations are it's gotta fit in 4k, and it's got to have
the same number of scanlines as the original (otherwise, it won't sync up
to my other gear). And beware my code on this stuff is VERY sloppy.
I've attached a couple of example ROMs. You have to set the left
difficulty switch to A/Expert to unlock the song from the first measure
(that's F6 in Z26). B&W switch = stop/go. Reset/Select are fast forward
and rewind. Keep in mind these sequences are just one part in these songs,
so they don't sound very musical by themselves. You can hear the complete
songs with all the instruments and vocals here:
http://www.qotile.net/audio/tree_wave_covers_deerhoof.mp3
http://www.qotile.net/audio/may_banners_g_by_tree_wave.mp3
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