Hewson Consultants, created in 1980 by Andrew Hewson, did publish several good games on Amstrad CPC like Uridium, Paradroid, Nebulus, Firelord, Stormlord and Cybernoid, but not only.
Available on their site web, a book (epub or not) as pre-order, and 11 incredible tracks from 10 classic Hewson games, remade by legendary artists (reduction of 40% with the code retrogamer on Bandcamp).
Roland Radio is an internet radio, and its program should interest you : only Amstrad CPC music. You can follow them on Twitter and facebook (cpcradio).
Since at least march 2012, a 128 Ko version of Paperboy with music added by Fano does exist (download on source link, see below).
This Paperboy version has been reviewed by Xyphoe on Youtube.
Boulder Dash by SuTeKH (Epyteor) is a new Amstrad CPC music disk. Other music disks by SuTeKH :
A 8bit musical remix of Games of Thrones (George R.R. Martin) on Youtube which sounds Amstrad CPCish.
And by the way, if you like George R.R. Martin (who write on an old msdos computer with the wordstar word processing), I suggest to read the Wild Cards serie. It's about an extra terrestrial virus released on New York in 1946. This virus kills almost everyone touched by it (black queen), some still lives but becomes jokers : monsters with sometimes a superpower more or less effective. And for only a few they become aces : super heroes, or deuces if their power is not really that useful. It's a must read.
Ultrasyd playing live at Blip Festival 2011 in New York, May 19th, 2011. Set performed using Atari STe, Amstrad CPC 6128 and Nintendo GameBoy. Background visuals provided by NO CARRIER.
McKlain has written an Amstrad CPC version of Funky Stars, also known as Hybrid Song. Original song by Quazar of Sanxion. This song is known for being used in numerous keygen programs.
This song is part of his future music disk for the Amstrad CPC. Stay tuned.
It's sampled from his Amstrad CPC 464, no emulation, made with Arkos Tracker.
As much as we love our Amstrad CPC, the sound we get with the General Instrument AY-3-8912 sound chip isnt the bestone on 8bit computers. Happily it's possible to get a better sound with either a Digiblaster, an Amdrum or a Music Machine.
The first version of the Digiblaster was designed by Face Hugger (Interview of Face Hugger by NoRecess) and printed in the German magazine CPC Amstrad International in issue 8-9/1991. It's a small hardware device plugged into the CPC's printer portto play 8-bit mono sound samples. Joshua made a redesign for better sound quality (electronic printout of Digiblaster v1 and v2 here).Then there is new Digiblaster by Futurs : the SoundPlayer and the SoundPlayer+ (VN96 network included). The SoundPlayer+ was replaced later by the SoundPlayerNG.
The digiblasters v1, v2 and SoundPlayer(+/NG) can be connected to passive mono speakers.
A few months back, Bryce made a redesign with even better sound quality : the Digiblaster v3. You can feed the AY output through the card so that both sound sources are played through the same speakers. The DigiBlaster has been made dual-mono so that both speakers play the sample as is done withthe AY-3-8912 Channel B. The AY and Digiblaster sound levels are balanced. You must use active stereo speakers.
You can write music using the Digiblaster with :
At least 2 Amstrad CPC demos did use the Digiblaster : Bordelik Demo 4 (1995) and Digital Orgasm (1994).
The Amdrum has been made by Cheetah, but it uses the expansion connecter. It can also play 8bit samples like the Digiblaster, and was advertised as a drum synthesiser. You can check the youtube video of the Amdrum being used with the JavaCPC emulator.
A third device which I found on CPCWiki : the Music Machine, using the expansion connector like the Amdrum. Another hardware letting play sound samples, designed by Flare Technology andmanufactured by RAM Electronics. It could record sound with a microphone.
Playing SID music on Amstrad CPC is possible, but you can also play YM music on C64 using YM-64 by Norbert Kehrer.
And the winners are :
All entries will be available later.
The Amstrad CPC use the General Instrument AY-3-8912 sound chip, providing 3 channels, each configurable to generate square waves, white noise or both. A small array of hardware volume envelopes are available. The C64 use the SID sound chip with also 3 channels, each configurable to generate 4 different waves forms : sawtooth, triangle, pulse, noise. It offers other features, much more than the AY-3-8912.
So is it possible to listen to SID music on an limited Amstrad CPC ? The answer is yes, and if you are lucky enough to read french, you will be able to read the article "les SID-Voices" on Quasar. So to resume, yes you can do it on a plain Amstrad CPC, but if you play 3 SID-Voices, you wont have enough CPU time to do something else. Otherwise on an Amstrad CPC+ using the DMA, you will be able to do something else than playing music. The Quasar article comes with the AY+ source to play SID-Voices on a CPC+. On a plain Amstrad CPC, you can use a program by Geco, a hungarian programmer. He usually works on the Elan enterprise, he wrote a SID player for this computer, and ported it to the Amstrad CPC. Download this Amstrad CPC SID player (128 Kb only).
Some informations about this utility directly from the author (taken from chipmusic.org) : I created the player used 6510 emulation code of Simon Owen, and CPC header checking. The player spends a lot of time with 6510 code, this is the reason of speed changing on CPC, on Enterprise I met less speed changing, may be the cause of this on EP the processor is running at 4Mhz if the code is not in the video Memory. Yes, only some feature is emulated, frequency registers, envelopes in 50Hz, control registers (without wave formats), and volume register, if I remember well. And the noise emulation is also interesting on CPC, because when noise should apply then I give fix 0f value to noise channel, and drive the frequency with tone channel frequency (set reg 6 tone and noise enable on a channel), with this solution 3 different noises can appear on the AY. The player can play songs in 2 speeds, 50Hz, and 100Hz, does not matter of SID speed, ex if the speed of SID is 60Hz the player plays it on 50Hz.
Finally, you can play it hard too, with an extension. Read about it on CPCWiki (a bit of drama included).
WYZTracker is a tool developed by Augusto Ruiz (interface in english and spanish), from Retroworks, that can be used to compose music for WYZPlayer.
WYZPlayer is a Z80 player for the AY-3-8910 sound chip (a 3-voice PSG : Programmable Sound Generator designed by General Instrument) used by (and for) the Amstrad CPC, MSX and Spectrum. It can be used for games and demos due to its minimal use of CPU and RAM, the player takes little code and all musics are compressed.
Finally, you can use cpcwyzlib by Raul Simarro, an Amstrad CPC library to play wyztracker tunes with SDCC. He also wrote the cpcrslib used with z88dk.
Nightshift is a compilation of 11 musics by Mr_Lou, artwork by BlueAngel, code by Kevin Thacker (aka arnoldemu) and catart by tastefulmrship.
The music of the Amstrad CPC game Teenage mutant hero turtles 2 has been found on the original support.
You can download a .DSK image with the music on CPCWiki.
And now a youtube video of the game by Xyphoe, music included.
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