This was quite an early SID tune in the overall lifespan of the c64. The almost unique characteristic of the SID chip was the ability to switch wave types for each note within a channel. Triangle, Sine, Square and noise are available at any point. This allows it to sound like it has more than just 3 channels. The NES (which DID have a great soundchip) struggled to do the arpeggios and drones Galway loved to use. You should check out what the composer's LMan and Jammer achieve with a stock c64.

I've known of this track for thirty-five plus years so it's fascinating to hear a fresh take. I remember around this time (around 85-86) in the UK C64 scene that tracks were getting longer and more experimental. This is certainly one of the more "out-there" numbers Martin Galway ever produced, and in my opinion one of his least approachable, especially for someone unfamiliar with this genre. Really enjoyed your video. Thanks.

An epic c64 track, really nice to see someone who obviously didn't grow up on these tunes take a listen. Fantastic video, thank you so much brings back memories.

I never thought I'd see old SID chip tunes on your channel. Thank you for checking these out, there are some true gems out there.

@CriticalReactions

Жыл бұрын

It often blows my mind just how far in any direction this community will take me. I'm so fortunate to have such a diverse group of people guiding me through music's wide history.

That ending is actually insane, when you consider the time when this was actually composed and the technical limitations of the hardware available.

The Parallax theme made the hairs on my arms stand up when I first heard it in the mid 80s.

One thing to remember about Commodore C64 game music was that the music was driving the game, like Wally Beben's utterly EPIC Tetris score, or the seminal Monty on the Run by Rob Hubbard.

Great that you covered this song! The more you learn about the limitations of the SID chip by today's standards, and inversely, for its time its incredible capabilities, the more you will appreciate this song. Parallax is when many millions of us teenagers first realized that video game music could be real music that can affect your soul. We realized that day that the SID chip was an ingenious musical instrument, not a toy, and Galway was a master at squeezing polyphonic sounds out of those 3 rudimentary synthesizer channels.

Cool, someone to actually make an analysis of a legendary SID track :D Just to add a few things: The SID chip is analogue (mostly) and it has 3 main waveforms: pulse\square; saw and triangle (no sine signal as someone mentioned earlier), noise BUT also combinations: triangle+saw, triangle+square (the weird signal you noticed in the oscilloscope), saw+square and tri+saw+squ. In addition, it has a filter (LowPass, BandPass, Highpass and combo of these). PLUS ring modulation (only with triangle waveform and its combos), sync modulation and both ring+sync, so this little chip was a BEAST back then :D This song was composed on (and for) the older SID 6581 which only had the tri+squ combo and the filter was good gritty.

@kangarht

6 ай бұрын

sid is digital only the filter part is analogue, you only have 1 filter and you can select wich channel(s) to apply it.

my mom and dad heard beeps, I heard guitar-solos when i first experienced Martin Galways music :)

Some of my favourite C64 tunes are, and you can consider these suggestions or requests: "Auf Wiedersehen Monty" - Rob Hubbard & Ben Daglish - kzread.info/dash/bejne/eWapuJZtYK3JaKQ.html "Driller" - Matt Gray - kzread.info/dash/bejne/Y4murLd8gM6pmtI.html "The Last Ninja", especially "Mansion in-game" part - Matt Gray - a stereo mix kzread.info/dash/bejne/iqZ3rZVxkcfdo6Q.html#t=50m9s "Tetris" - Wally Beben - 25 minutes! kzread.info/dash/bejne/gK1rlpWcY5XNgMo.html "Wizball" - Martin Galway - kzread.info/dash/bejne/m2l82KSaoLqxcag.html "Master of Magic" - Rob Hubbard - kzread.info/dash/bejne/e4OD1tanppnXlpc.html

First off thank you for being open minded enough to listen all the way thru and critique it open minded as well. Yes this is definitely one of Martin's more experimental tracks and kind of a unique track for the time period as well. Most C64 game music tracks were much more interested in melody/harmony and more similar to western 'classic' style. This track is very out there and typically people either love it or hate it. I find that to be the case with a lot of even modern electronic music. While the song was used as the theme song for the C64 game Parallax I think it really was more just Martin showing off to his fellow SID track composers. "Look what crazy sounds and effects I've pulled off'". So compositionally, yea it's kinda lacking there. Here is a much more typical C64 game song as well as the original track it was trying to imitate. kzread.info/dash/bejne/eqFpqsysnZi0ipc.html&ab_channel=Overlord1024 was a cover of kzread.info/dash/bejne/eqFpqsysnZi0ipc.html&ab_channel=Overlord1024 which was recorded by Larry Fast on 'real' synthesizers of that era. Pretty impressive cover considering the limited channels etc of the C64. To answer a couple of your questions. The C64 as you said had just 3 channels. Each channel could play either a sine wave, sawtooth/triangle wave, square wave, or white noise. There was also what was called a 'ring modulation filter' that could be applied between two channels to further alter the sound. By rapidly switching between these 4 waveforms, altering pitch etc the SID was capable of producing a decent variety of timbres. With this particular track Martin was, as you said, mainly focusing on using the interaction BETWEEN the channels to create syncopated and slowly phasing in and out rhythms rather than creating actual melody lines played on any one channel. BTW, the guy who designed the SID chip for the C64 went on to start the company that made the Ensoniq synthesizer line. www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/Bob_Yannes Crazy thing is, the creation of music, graphics and 'demos' is still very alive and well on all of those ancient computers. To this day there are still large multi day fests/competitions over in Europe where enthusiasts are writing stuff on C64s, Atari 800s, Z80 Spectrums and just about any computing platform you can think of. They share the music tracks, art and demos they've created at www.pouet.net/ Thanks for taking the time to listen and comment on Parallax. It was fun to see the reaction of a 'non-computer geek'. :) I was kind of expected that 'hmmm sort of frowny face' during the feedback phasing ending couple of minutes. It's kind of like a train wreck. Your brain is going "I'm not sure I really ''like' this..... but I can't stop listening". Not everyone's cup of tea, but I loved it since the first time I heard it back in 1986.

@CriticalReactions

Жыл бұрын

Thanks so much for this excellent feedback. There's so much great info here that helps put this work into better focus and gives me a larger appreciation for what Martin accomplished here. It's neat to hear that this craft is still alive and well. I love to hear that older art forms and knowledge is still being practiced in a large enough community to need festivals for it. And just to clarify, while I'm mostly a music nerd I also have a degree in Computer Science, coded some games, built computer towers, etc. So def a bit of a "computer geek" 😄

@ArachnidEyes

Жыл бұрын

Feel like I have to correct this and other comments in that the SID chip cannot produce sine waves. The four waveforms are sawtooth, triangle, square and white noise. Getting even deeper, the chip is a combination of digital and analog circuits, with the digital portion being even simpler. Technically each of the 3 voices is a counter and some logic gates. So each voice is fundamentally based on a sawtooth only (or a pseudo random number generator for the noise type). The logic allows you to create the other waveforms by eg. flipping the sign (top bit) of the counter for triangle or comparing against an adjustable threshold value, outputting on or off for square. Ring modulation is a logical combination of two channels acting like a multiplication of the counters. Each of the logical operations is gated in the chip and there was nothing stopping you turning each waveform function at the same time. I believe that is what causes the weird wave shape (have seen that output before when turning on wave and square at the same time I think).

@ArachnidEyes

Жыл бұрын

By the way, some examples of different waveforms appear in my favourite SID tune, Last Ninja Wilderness: kzread.info/dash/bejne/Y4OestKPosaZl7A.html The first sound is ring modulation and the weird waveform shows up a bit later (the ring modulation is turned off with the original triangle and square waves squashed into a single channel playing both waveforms at the same time).

@ArachnidEyes

Жыл бұрын

Oh and some of the waveform shape comes from ADSR envelopes as well.

@ArachnidEyes

Жыл бұрын

@@CriticalReactions Since you mention a degree in Computer Science, though it might be worth pointing out that this and other tracks were not created in some sort of music software, it was hand written in 6502 assembly language! Literally programmed!

This is one of the best things I have discovered in your channel. I enjoyed every second of that song. That was so cool, seriously jejeje.

The SID has triangle, saw, square with pulse width modulation and sine waves. The SID also has a filter which isn't used too often but also oscillator sync which is quite musical and ring modulation which is probably what you were hearing at the end of the track. Ring mod can be used to do bell type sounds, oscillator sync can make a synth sound like it is talking if modulated right. This shows that the SID chip is a proper synth at heart, just a bit crude and cheap as it needed to be as it was for a home computer.

@fromwithinuk

18 күн бұрын

The SID doesn't have sine waves.

The track is best thought of as "Philip Glass does chiptune metal". As others have written, this was an experimental piece. It's not really pushing the SID chip itself: most of the techniques used were pretty standard for the time, but he was looking to use them to create sonic textures. I'd recommend Wizball as a more typical example of his style, which is much more melodic. Another contemporary of Galway's is Tim Follin, who created some absolutely amazing tracks that sound quite different from Martin Galway's style. The interesting thing about the SID is that it's still very much in demand for use in MIDI controlled synthesisers to this day. You've almost certainly heard it in tracks before and never realised it. Its designer, Bob Yannes, went on to found Ensoniq.

@GeoNeilUK

4 ай бұрын

If you're talking about Tim Follin, you have to talk about his miraculous work with the ZX Spectrum's beeper! He got *THAT* out of what is basically the PC speaker?!

Fantastic video. "I Can get behind this", at 09:33, has to be the best reaction I've heard from a composer of today listening to video game music. I joined Ocean as a musician after Martin Galway had left, and his work on Parallax was an inspiration and motivation.

@matthewcannon9699

Ай бұрын

Shortly after starting work at Ocean, I began my contemporary composition studies, and when I first encountered Steve Reich's works that employed the "Minimalist canon" device, I realised that Martin had been doing the same in his C64 music.

@matthewcannon9699

Ай бұрын

I think Parallax is the most striking use of minimalist canon in Martin's works. It reminds me of the first movement of Reich's Desert Music, after the introduction, where a rudimentary figure grows and spreads across the string section as a canon offset by one beat, then two, etc.

I must say, your ability to mostly keep a straight face while enduring 2 minutes of noise is rather remarkable. Seriously though, I find all of this (noise included) extremely enjoyable, despite not being quite old enough to be suffering any form of nostalgia. We did have an old hand-me-down Atari 2600 though.... about the same era? Pretty sure this sounds far better in comparison. And there are definitely some more tuneful ones out there that might be more to your liking.

@Studeb

Жыл бұрын

The Atari 2600 was released five years ahead of the C64, the sound capabilities of that are almost none, plus it only had 128 bytes of ram, compared to the 64kb of the C64.

@chips161

Жыл бұрын

@@Studeb Thanks for the info, that makes a lot of sense. My timeline is really messed up because the C64 was already gone, and we never had any console systems in our household aside from the day the Atari (and a Colecovision) showed up. My brain has still not fully reconciled that it was probably not normal to be playing "Air-Sea Battle" in the 90s :(

Ouph. Parallax. That's a rough one. A technically important step for music for C64 games, but not an easilly approachable one. Too see what magic could be done with the C64 I recommend tunes like any of the songs from Last Ninja 1 & 2 (loading screens or game levels), Commando, IK+, Nemesis the Warlock, R-Type, Rambo 2 Title Screen, Turrican 3, Arkanoid, Fist II, Legend of Kage, Saboteur 2, Mission Impossible, Deathscape, Krakout. But really, The Last Ninja 2 is a must listen. Trust me.

This is one of those C64 tunes that brings me back 36 years. What I was doing, how I felt, everything comes back! A true Galway masterpiece.

I didn't know of this C64 music until now. I fell in love instantly hearing the Matt Gray version. Maybe it's generic. Maybe there is some skill there. I don't know, honestly, as a non-composer. But I do enjoy the fact that it takes 7 minutes of build up to get to the pay off. It isn't Going Home by Mark Knopfler, but it does pay off and I enjoy the ride getting there. I also appreciate how composers working from their bedrooms for games on minimal to no budget aimed at young children were able to challenge our minds beyond ear candy. This isn't an iconic game tune enjoyed by the Nintendo cult. It is more special than that.

Would you consider Tim Follin's work on the ZX Spectrum? Especially the Spectrum 48K such as his theme for Agent X and Agent X 2?

I always thought this song sounded like something Philip Glass would've done if he wrote on the C64. This isn't really the first song I would've picked though.

One thing I have to point out is that video game market crash of 1983 was pretty much limited to United States while in Japan there wasn't similar dip and Nintendo came out with Famicom during that time. There are many reasons for the crash in US and it did leave the market open for higher quality games to fill the market afterwards. There are some books on history of computer music in general (such as The Oxford Handbook of Computer Music) and music of video games more specifically (such as Game Sound from MIT Press). I'm looking for them myself as well. Galway was known in the era when music was made by programming the synthesizer directly and in mid-1980s first PCM-sound outputting chips came out for home computers. Amiga-computers with Paula chip was in particular key for birth of tracker-music (Ultimate Soundtracker by Karsten Obarski). So "chiptunes" were replaced by tracker-music made with software like Protracker, OctaMED and so on. At the same era as Amiga there was Atari ST with MIDI-output, which became popular as a way to "conduct" other instruments producing sound instead of generating the sound on the computer itself. Finally, interesting to see another perspective! These chiptunes sometimes were made with purpose of showing off programming skills so they are not always suited for people who are listening to them as just "music" so to say.

@CriticalReactions

Жыл бұрын

Oh neat, I'll have to keep an eye out for Game Sound and that Oxford Handbook. Really interesting context there about how music was created on those older systems. As for your final note, I totally understand that. This is a neat song but not something I would really listen to in any context outside of this one. And yeah, the video game crash was wholly in the US. I didn't mention a region because there was only one large scale, widely known market crash between the Atari and NES. I will admit that I only recently learned it US bound though. Think it was the book Game Over where I learned that, which I read only a few years ago.

One book is “The Little Book of Sound Chips” by Fusion Retro Books. It has a few pages explaining the different technologies and a catalogue of music with QR code youtube links for each.

You are dead on with the differences between this and what chip music is to most people (Japanese VGM music). It's true that C64 music is waaaaay more metal, experimental and prog and EDM inspired. The Japanese composers had the advantage that they had a classical education, and often a dedicated composer who worked it out on a keyboard synth (or even a piano) and a separate engineer to translate that into what the sounc chip could make. The C64 composers were a lot less musically schooled, but they programmed the chips themselves and composed FOR the chips. You know how much difference there can be between music for an instrument composed by someone who plays that instrument, and something which isn't... And they were younger, and often deeply in touch with various club music scenes that would become mainstream in the later 90s.

@inphanta

Ай бұрын

Jazz was also a huge influence on Japanese composers. It’s all over their work.

By coincidence, I was looking for the remix of Allister Brimble (from the album "The Galway Works"), and I have just found out your channel. You should check other C64 works such as Jeroen Tel, Rob Hubbard, Charles Deenen. By the way, C64 uses no samples, you program all the tracks, which makes some of them very impressive.

Now do Comic Bakery by Martin Galway

the guy looked so friendly on the thumbnail what happened XD

Also, the Game Boy has a wave channel (among the 4 ones) where you can do particular sounds if you are talented. Alberto Jose Gonzalez is a great example (Turok 2 on GBC, but also Tintin Prisoners of The Sun, The Smurfs... yeah, licensed games had great tunes at the time, especially the european ones).

@CriticalReactions

Жыл бұрын

Older game soundtracks is definitely a blindspot for me, musically. I know of the songs for the games I owned but can't say I've ever looked for soundtracks for games I didn't (like Turok 2 GBC). I'll give it a look.

Bought this game in the Oceans 6 star hits pack I think it was. When it came out somewhere around 1984.

How about checking out "A Final Hyperbase" by Firefox and Tip, theme to Phenomenas "Enigma" Demo on Amiga?

Martin Galway was THE 6581 godfather.

Gabor Szabo - Galatea's Guitar Gabor was one of Santana's majoir inspirations.

Chiptune is so fascinating to me, just the fact of how it's become even remotely popular. You basically have a situation in which very old technology was incredibly limited in the sounds it could make, but because music WAS made for it, and that music got experienced by people who loved playing the games they were used in, so many ended up loving the sound and are now turning that limitation into an actual aesthetically desirable thing. All that said, I haven't heard a ton of chiptune myself, but this was probably the best I've heard. It's fascinating to hear a track that sounds like something I could hear in modern classical (especially minimalism) that ALSO sounds like a soundtrack for a video game that came out before my time. It's fascinating that these two things can co-exist at all, much less that they sound so fascinating while doing it. I was surprised by how much I found myself loving not just the musical ideas--like I said, like a Minimalist Trio--but really appreciating the chiptune aesthetic and what it brought to it. Great stuff. Maybe the best new thing I've heard in all year, and I'm going to have to check out more of this guy's stuff.

You should analyse Fred Gray's "Mutants" (also a legendary SID track from the 80s)😊

the idea that the C64 was only 3 tracks and then being able to take this out (3 stemmig in dutch ;p )

Very good Track, lot good remixes exist about this song, too.

I do believe this was really not the best song to start getting into SID music. Also the unknowns should have been cleared from the top: Martin Galway made SID music in the 80s as a teen. How wasn't that clear before even getting into this?? Also, the SID chip? What is up with the SID chip? It's a 3 voice synthesizer with basically a similar architecture to the Minimoog, fitted into a computer chip, with even Band pass and high pass resonance!!! It does SYNC and RING modulation !!! Damn..... And this song uses like 5% of the SID features stretched on almost 10 minutes... It's niche. If you want to hear the SID chip, there's so many better choices. I dunno, check out the Bionic Commando soundtrack from Tim Follin. I mean geez even the Yi Ar Kung Fu or the Terra Cresta, even Mickie from Martin Galway is waaaay more accessible than Parallax. Parallax is for the hardcore SID lovers, not for everyone. Tim Follin Ghouls N' Ghosts whole soundtrack kzread.info/dash/bejne/qa5nmKyQeLfRXaQ.html

Galway is 'The Goat' ❤

You would maybe have to code the music in assembly language also? Another poster recommend auf weidersein monty that is a good c64 tune!

Also, the C64 had a better sound chip than the NES (though that might be my European nostalgia talking here, the C64 was *WAY* more popular over here than the NES) For an example, try acrouzet's cover of Daft Punk's Short Circuit which sounds pretty much identical to the original! Or their cover of Freestyler, which includes a shot at speech synthesis without using the 6581's volume bug, just one of the SID's voices! It's funny bit impressive!

@inphanta

Ай бұрын

No, it was better. The SID can do many things the NES audio chip simply could not. It just had a more channels. That’s it.

@GeoNeilUK

Ай бұрын

@@inphanta the NES sound chip had more voices, but the SID could do more with the voices it had!

Oh boy, you're only just getting started with the oscilloscope views lol

Spirituel

Martin is a god.

This is one of my favorites from his rival, Rob Hubbard kzread.info/dash/bejne/e4OD1tanppnXlpc.html

I stopped listening at 19:45, this blew me away aged 15, one of the reasons I’m 27 years into a video game audio career. I bought Martin breakfast once at 2 am in Brighton, along with Richard Joseph, who’s no longer with us. I’ll watch the rest at a more suitable hour!

very far from my ordinary path... don't really know what to feel and think about it.

Martin was the greatest on the C=64. Not my very favourite song though. But still great. It is all about being limited. The hardware was so unpowerful.

C64 was before NES, but to my ear, most NES music is quite irritating in comparison. Simple melodies that wear out their welcome and too shrill. Hopefully, I can get away with this heresy here.

@inphanta

Ай бұрын

Samey too.

looks like a zipper

certainly not to shit on the efforts of Martin Galway but I never enjoyed this piece. A great artist of the day but found this not to be one of his finest moments. I've listened to it a good 4 or 5 times now and it really isn't an especially great piece personally speaking other than being a somewhat interesting enough piece that is technically rather sound for the hardware. It sounds a bit harsh on the ears and musically while it has a couple of nice moments, Martin Galway was capable of vastly better I would say. I get that it's a long piece though in the same sense of say Delta in game and Driller which possibly informs people that it must be a great piece of art etc but I wouldn't say that of it. Rambo Title Tune or Green Beret is where he really shined I would also say that it's not always ideal to gauge something from a first listen only as while are brains are very good at understanding the music we are hearing, we don't necessarily know if we appreciate it yet or not

your face says it all

green berret or rambo were better