McKlain has released another musical compilation with his musics written for the Amstrad CPC and ZX Spectrum between 2011 and 2016. I am listening to it while writing this, it's nice as usual. Continue the good work !
Roland Radio is an internet radio, and its program should interest you : only Amstrad CPC music.
There is now an Android application for Roland Radio.
Some music in a world of brutes, Golden Axe mixed with the SID of the Commodore 64 and the AY of the Amstrad CPC by Vincent GR.
Both tracks had different tempo and pitch so Vincent had to transpose C64 a bit higher to match the tempo with the CPC.
Golden Axe played with the SID (C64) and the AY (Amstrad CPC) by Vincent GR
An original video by John Gage : synchronized music of Glider Rider Amstrad CPC (stereo) and C64 (mono).
The original music is written by David Whittaker.
An original video by John Gage : music of Pro BMX Simulator Amstrad CPC (stéréo) and C64 (mono).
The original music is written by Matt Gray and David Whittaker.
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.
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.
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