----------------------------------------------------------------------------- T H E H I G H V O L T A G E S I D C O L L E C T I O N release 1.0 July 12, 1996 Compiled by: The Shark of INC or Jan Diabelez Arnt Harries (Rambones/TST) Darren, Bod/Talent Assisted by: Michael "The Mage" Schwendt <3schwend@informatik.uni-hamburg.de> Adam Lorentzon -> Members of the C64 Historical Preservation Society! <- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------- COPYRIGHT NOTICE ---------------- All of the tunes available in the High Voltage (HV) SID Collection are copyrighted and owned by the original authors/software companies. Use for profit would be subject to law. Do not offer any such contributions to the creators of this collection for none will be accepted. --------- CONTENTS: --------- [1] Introduction [2] Collection Structure [3] How Can I Help? [3-1] Contributing SIDs [3-2] Identifying Mistakes [4] Update Information [5] Included Documents [6] Acknowledgments [6-1] Special Thanks [6-2] Information About the Creators ------------------------- CHAPTER [1]: Introduction ------------------------- At last, the ultimate Commodore SID tune collection has arrived! What was originally thought to be a two week project for an individual has instead turned out to be a two month project for a group of five. Perhaps two months is not quite accurate since this collection has been in the works ever since the first hacker decided to rip a beloved tune from a video game. Why rip? There is no doubt that music enhances the enjoyment received from a video game and it is often the case that you can whistle your favorite game's music without flaw. That is why this collection exists. The memories of these tunes bounce around in our heads to this day. We *must* hear that magical music once again. The purpose of the HV collection is to bring you the most accurate and comprehensive SID collection specifically designed for SIDPlay*, but is also compatible with PlaySID. What is a SID you say? Here is Michael Schwendt's definition: Approximately, the European part of the world refers to any piece of music from the Commodore 64 as "sidtune", while the American part of the world only calls musics, which were made with the original "Sidplayer" on C64, "sidtunes" or "sids". From what I have learned so far, the "Sidplayer" was very famous and there were more than 7000 sounds for it. We shall be using the European definition of a SID. Further, the HV collection has but a mere handful of Compute Gazette SidPlayer SID's. The reason is that we find that these tunes are an insult to the SID chip's abilities. Now then, what is SIDPlay? Paging Michael Schwendt... Basically, SIDPLAY is just an ordinary music player for PCs with a soundcard. It is not bound to a specific music data format. Instead, it emulates the sound interface device chip (MOS 6581, known as SID) and the micro processor unit (MOS 6510) of the Commodore 64 on your PC. Therefore it is able to load and execute C64 machine code programs which produce interrupt driven music or sound. In general these are independent fragments of code and data which are ripped from games and demonstration programs and are transferred directly from the C64. As of release 1.0, HV SIDs contains around 95% of the most memorable tunes from the C64 (25.5 Megs, 4176 dat's). In addition, we have contacted several of the original composers of the tunes to help verify the music descriptions and some have even sent us additional tunes not in our collection. Further, we have also searched our C64 libraries looking for the correct labels (AUTHOR, TITLE, & COPYRIGHT) for the tunes. Finally, several tunes have been fixed and a billion repeated tunes have been eliminated (some still linger on). All of this was done with great pride, so we hope you enjoy the collection as much as we enjoyed putting it together. * SIDPlay - copyright(c) 1994,95 Michael Schwendt and is Cardware. Have you sent in a postcard yet? SIDPlay is available for many operating systems. For more info: SIDPlay homepage - http://www.student.nada.kth.se/~d93-alo/c64/Sidplay/ * Unfortunately, the HV collection uses the old eight character filenaming convention on MSDOS. I shall not go into the reasons why this was done, but future updates will most likely rename the files to take advantage of the ability to use longer filenames. --------------------------------- CHAPTER [2]: Collection Structure --------------------------------- There are several ways in which most SID collections have been organized. To name a few, by Author's first name, by categories such as demos and games, or to have a simple rat's nest of SIDs. We have chosen to arrange the collection by the author's last name or by the author's alias if it was used more frequently. In addition, we have a two level hierarchy scheme where the more famous and professional composers are grouped above the demo composers. This no way indicates the quality of composition. Finally, we usually only give composers their own directory when we have four or more tunes available from them. We have made some exceptions. Below are a some comments about a few special directories: Demos - For tunes found in demos in which the artist has less than four tunes. Demos/Unknown - For tunes found in demos in which the artists are unknown. Documnts - If you are reading this document, then most likely you have already figured out what this directory is for. Games/Euro_X-X - For games first released in Europe in which the artist has less than four tunes. European game tunes with unknown artists go here as well. Games/USA - For games first released in the USA in which the artist has less than four tunes. This does not signify that the artist is American. USA game tunes with unknown artists go here as well. Various - As mentioned above, this is where mostly demo composers or lesser known composers reside. ------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER [3]: How Can I Help? ------------------------------------------------------------ [3-1]: Contributing SIDs ======================== We love to receive new SIDs for the HV collection. Of specific interest are tunes from games, but we'll take anything you have unless the tunes are lacking musical skill (subjective). He are some other items we are looking for: * Complete collections directly from the composers. * Loading/Intro tunes used in games. These are rare since crackers would often not include the tunes along with the cracks. * SIDs already in the HV collection, but with additional sub-tunes. SIDs with additional sounds effects are okay, but we prefer SIDs with more tunes instead. * Fixes of SIDs already in the HV collection. We have found several tunes that start at the wrong location, have missing voices, with bad samples, etc. - We DON'T want any Compute Gazette SID tunes *unless* you find a few that are exceptionally good. We have already listen to NemeSIDs #18-#19 and have rejected around 99% of those. - You will notice groups of tunes where there will be a gap in order. For example, in /Various/Partybox, you will see a group of tunes labeled "boxX" with small gaps. These gaps usually do not mean that we are missing these tunes, but rather we have found them repeated elsewhere. If you have SIDs and would like to send them to us, there are several methods in which this can be achieved. We prefer them to be mailed as an included attachment or to be uuencoded. There are other possibilities so feel free to email us and we can arrange what ever is most convenient. Please mail them to both of the people below: The Shark of INC or Jan Diabelez Arnt Harries (Rambones/TST) In addition, for those of you that rip, below is a proposed standard for labeling SIDs. Please refrain from adding your alias/name into the credits for this does not look appealing. We will give full credit to all of those who submit tunes to us. Focus instead on making the credits as accurate as possible. Proposed SID Credits Standard ----------------------------- NAME : AUTHOR : <FIRST LAST> or <ALIAS> COPYRIGHT : <FOUR_DIGIT_YEAR> <COMPANY or INDIVIDUAL> Fill in any unknown field with a <?> Place a maximum of 31 characters per field for compatibility reasons. ----------------------------- Examples: <All information is completely known> NAME : Hysteria AUTHOR : Fred Gray COPYRIGHT : 1987 Software Projects <Author and Company are unknown> NAME : Night Racer AUTHOR : <?> COPYRIGHT : 1988 <?> <Tune ripped from a demo/intro, but you know that's not where it> <originated. This will give clues which just might jog the memories> <of someone listening.> NAME : R.A.D. Intro <#> AUTHOR : <?> COPYRIGHT : <?> <Author is thought to be known with a *strong* degree of certainty> NAME : Uridium AUTHOR : Steve Turner <?> COPYRIGHT : 1985 Hewson ----------------------------- *Note that you should be at least 70% certain of the field you are guessing. To put incorrect credits rather than a <?> would forever ruin your reputation as a serious SID collector. :) When in doubt, at least follow the doubtful information by a <?>. *Note #2, just because a tune uses another author's famous music routine, that is not enough to signify with certainty that the tune is by that author. Sometimes authors lent their routine for another to use. Other times, the routine was used without permission. Again, please use <?> if not certain. *Note #3, don't make up titles (e.g., TITLE: This tune ROCKS!). *Note #4, the documentation that is included with SIDPlay includes a large quantity of information about how to get C64 tunes working with SIDPlay. Further, you will find other documents related to the area of SIDs that we recommend you read. [3-2]: Identifying Mistakes =========================== We know that there still exists several mistakes within the HV collection and we would appreciate any help in correcting the mistakes. In addition, we also would like to have missing information in the SID tune credits (i.e., filling in the <?>'s). If you have some corrections or some additional information, no matter how insignificant, let us know. Please mail to both of the people below: The Shark of INC <shark@dhp.com> or <inc@asu.edu> Jan Diabelez Arnt Harries (Rambones/TST) <nmioaon@vip.cybercity.dk> Before you mail us, please verify the information you are sending by either loading the game/demo yourself or contacting the original composer. We have squashed many common beliefs as to who *really* composed several tunes. You might be surprised to see one of your favorite tunes now with a different author (the correct one we hope). This is why we suggest you first verify the information you plan to send us. One last note for this section, we have found several tunes in which someone has gone into a tune and removed part of the song for whatever reason. Examples of this would be the old Fusion theme being a subset of Rhaa Lovely II. We highly recommend that you listen to these tune in question carefully and check out the UpdateXX files for information we have discovered. ------------------------------- CHAPTER [4]: Update Information ------------------------------- The HV SID Collection will be constantly maintained by providing zipped update files. These updates will add new tunes to your HV SID collection so that you will always have the most accurate SID collection around. To handle deletions, renaming, moving, etc. of files, we will also provide a 'sweeper' program that upon execution will clean up your collection for you. Isn't automation wonderful? Oh, now I have pissed off the Unibomber who happens to enjoy updating his SID tune collection by hand. *************************************************************************** * It is therefore *important* that you keep the HV SIDS structure and * * filenames as is, otherwise the sweeper will fail to work properly. * *************************************************************************** The updates will be announced at the INC C64 Music web page as well as other locations. There is no set time as to when the updates will be available. The frequency of updates will depend on the amount of new tunes and corrected information we receive. The INC 64 Music Web Page -> http://www.dhp.com/~shark/c64music/ under the 'High Voltage SIDs' section. ------------------------------- Chapter [5]: Included Documents ------------------------------- The following lists the documents that reside with HV SIDS (/DOCUMNTS): MUSICIAN.TXT - A list of most of the musicians who ever composed on the C64. We would appreciate any help in fixing errors in this list. Further, we would also like to know artist's real names for the sake of possibly identifying other tunes by these artist. That is, some artist composed tunes under an alias as well as their real name (e.g., Neil Baldwin = Demon). PSIDCOMP.TXT - An explanation of what PSID compatibility is and how to avoid this problem. Includes a list of tunes where PSID compt. only has been removed. Consult this file, if a sidtune or some of its songs (1) do not run in SIDPLAY (2) do only run in SIDPLAY's PlaySID-compatibility-mode RECOMMND.TXT - A small list of tunes that we recommend you listen to that were done by lesser known artist or by artists who have an incredible amount of tunes. This list in no way should help you decide as to which tunes are good vs. which tune are bad. This only points out some of the more popular tunes by the artists in the list. UPDATEXX.TXT - A list of fixes and additions that have not been seen in any other collections publicly available. There are more with in HV SIDS, but some were not documented. Sorry. The XX in the file name will increase sequentially as new updates are released. Also included is some information about some tunes that were given wrong credits. ---------------------------- Chapter [6]: Acknowledgments ---------------------------- [6-1]: Special Thanks ===================== Rob Hubbard - You certainly gave us some surprises when you informed us what tunes you had *really* composed. Thanks a bunch for taking the time to listen to the tunes and putting up with our waves of questions. Martin Galway - Thank you very much for helping us out! I am glad we now have the Times of Lore vs. Babygang problem figured out. Jeroen Tel - Thanks for a somewhat of a partial list of what tunes were composed by you and Deenen. We look forward to the complete list. David Whittaker - Thanks a ton for the speedy response and for verifying your tunes. Wally Beben - Thanks for verify the tunes we had credited to you! We hope to get some of those other tunes from you that you had mentioned. Jens-Christian Huus/Vibrants, for sending an incredible amount of ripped tunes -- as well as original work from the whole Vibrants crew. Drax/Vibrants, for sending his and Laxity's tunes. Agust Arni Jonsson (Nemesis1) - We took several tunes from your collection so please feel free to snag tunes from ours for the NemeSIDs collection. Your work has helped our cause tremendously. Thanks. Zenox/Starion, for sending some of his tunes. (Jan is still waiting for the rest).. Ulf Andersson (Guant collection) Fred - We merged your collection with the ours. Thanks dude for some good rips. IW - Thanks for some rips! Vectrocon of Fairlight (sent in 47 tunes!) Wad of Prehistoria - Thanks for the info! Svante Hellstadius (Fulcrum) - sent Adam his complete collection Medicus/KLF (Andy) (a few dozen tunes) Author of Doom II FAQ - used your format for this document. And to everyone else who contributed...We apologize if we have forgotten anyone. We are sort of in a hurry right now. [5-2]: Information About the Creators ===================================== *********************************************** * The Shark of International Network of Chaos * * Email: <shark@dhp.com> or <inc@asu.edu> * *********************************************** 10 Most Favorite SIDs: ---------------------- "Agent X II" - Tim Follin "Ark Pandora" (tunes 1-3) - Ben Daglish "Helikopter Jagd" - Martin Galway "Hysteria" - Fred Gray "Knuckle Busters" - Rob Hubbard "The Last Ninja" - Ben Daglish & Anthony Lees "Nemesis the Warlock" - Rob Hubbard "Platoon" - Jonathan Dunn "That's the Way it Is" - Jeroen Tel "Thunderforce" (tunes 1,4) - Johannes Bjerregaard 5 Favorite SIDs From Less Popular Artists ----------------------------------------- "Dacapo" - Drax "Dexion Ranking Demo" - Future Freak / Dexion "Hit Points" - Link (Klaus Grongaard) "Holiday Dream" - The Blue Ninja "Mixable" - MAD / Scoop Contributions ------------- The grunt work! Sorted and searched and sorted and searched and sorted and searched and sorted and searched. Eliminated a billion repeats by hand (or ear?). Dug up a few C64 titles for Rambones to rip. Contacted several composers asking (begging) for help. Corrected thousands of credits. Sorted and searched. Comments -------- Looking back to the old days on the C64, I can't remember when I first started to really listen to the music, but I distinctively remember being blown away by Commando (Hubbard) and its very famous high-score music. After that, it was all of the tunes jammed into Lettermaker that really got me hooked. No other system since has been able to compare. Thanks also to Strider of FairLight for introducing me to SIDPlayer! Look at everyone's "Top 10" lists and notice such a variance! C64 History ----------- Upgraded from a Vic20 to a C64 in 1983. Started INC in 1987 which specialized in importing/exporting software from/to Europe, and we also managed a few cracks. Kept C64 to this day in order to still hear the music (and perhaps play an old game or two). *************************************** * Jan Diabelez Arnt Harries * * Rambones/The Supply Team, 1985-1989 * * * * Email: nmioaon@vip.cybercity.dk * *************************************** 10 Most Favorite SIDs: ---------------------- "The Combat Game" - Jeroen Tel "Delta" - Rob Hubbard "Eliminator" - Jeroen Tel "Gerry The Germ" - Rob Hubbard "Infodroid" - Fred Gray "Mikie" - Martin Galway "Rambo" - Martin Galway "The Vikings" - Ben Daglish "Wizball" - Martin Galway "Zoids" - Rob Hubbard 5 Favorite SIDs From Less Popular Artists ----------------------------------------- Ode To Martin / MC Attention / Banana Still Rolling / MC+OPM The Galway One / Laxity Zound-Muzak #3 / Rambones Contributions ------------- Added several hundred new tunes from his collection and others. Helped verified SID musician list. Ripped even more tunes (has this guy ripped the most of anyone? 1364 to be precise). Helped with giving several tunes the proper credits. Added a few ideas that helped make the collection better. Comments -------- I'd just like to get in contact with 2 of my old friends in the SID business: Jipe/The Supply Team, and Banana/The Electronic Knights. write to me! C64 History ----------- My interview at In Medias Res.: http://www.kuai.se/~zike/imr/zimr.htm go into 'C64 persons' and click my name. ************************************************** * Darren, Bod/Talent <darren@talent.demon.co.uk> * ************************************************** 10 Most Favorite SIDs: ---------------------- "Knuckle Busters" - Rob Hubbard "Parallax" - Martin Galway "Talented Bells" - Edwin van Santen/20cc "Terra Cresta" Martin Galway "Trap" - ? "Yie Ar Kung Fu" - Martin Galway "Yie Ar Kung Fu II" - Martin Galway (Bod chose to only list seven for his own reasons) 5 Favorite SIDs From Less Popular Artists ----------------------------------------- I+T Tune by Mixer/Origo I have no names for the other faves. Contributions ------------- Providing several C64 demos/games on his C64 CD which allowed us to fill in the proper credits for several tunes. Renaming the NemeSIDs collection by hand so that it could be used with SIDPlayer (shortly after, a tool emerged that could do this automatically :). Provided around 50-100 SIDs for the collection. Comments -------- Being involved in some way with this Sid collection means a lot to me. The 64 was part of me for a long time and listening to some of these tunes bring back so many happy and fond memories of good times and friendship that I have known through the C64 Scene since I started. C64 History ----------- I got my c64 back in 1986 and joined Hotline in 1987. Supplying, trading and cracking. In 1990 me and XXX left Hotline and started our own group Talent, later the same year we joined up with our Danish Friends in Ikari to form the best co-op that ever lived. :) Ikari & Talent. ******************************************************************** * Michael "The Mage" Schwendt <3schwend@informatik.uni-hamburg.de> * ******************************************************************** 10 Most Favorite SIDs: ---------------------- Comment: Since I keep a list of my personal top 200 sidtunes, making a selection of only 15 out of 200 was a very hard decision. I had to leave out further great tunes (e.g. by Jeroen Tel/Maniacs Of Noise, Wally Beben, Neil Baldwin et al). "Bad Cat (Intro)" - Chris Huelsbeck "Bulldog" - Ben Daglish "DNA Warrior" - Thomas 'Drax' Mogensen "Exploding Fist" - Greg Holland "Future Knight" - Ben Daglish "Knight Games" - David Whittaker "The Last Ninja" - Ben Daglish & Anthony Lees "Lightforce" - Rob Hubbard "Mutants" - Fred Gray "Rambo" - Martin Galway 5 Favorite SIDs From Less Popular Artists ----------------------------------------- "Elysium's Origon (Loader)" - Touldie "Nibbling" - Geir Tjelta/Moz(IC)Art "PLIS" - Stello Doussis "Rasterblast II" - Anders Andreen/Moz(IC)Art "SYS4096" - AMJ Contributions ------------- Added a bunch of great fixes. Helped find repeats in the collection. Helped with the proper identification of SID tunes. Added to and helped correct the musician list. Added several ideas to help with the collection. Answered several questions about SIDPlay. Added a few new tunes to the collection. Comments -------- I simply adore the SID (the MOS-6581), its sound capabilities and especially the quality of the SID tunes. Imagine, those SIDs consist only out of three voices (neglecting the virtual fourth channel for samples). In comparison, most of the existing MODules from Amiga and PC, which use several hundred kilobytes of high-quality samples, sound like crap ! Disgusting, isn't ? Btw, I think the High Voltage SIDtune Collection will be the new standard on the Net. **************************************** * Adam Lorentzon <d93-alo@nada.kth.se> * **************************************** 10 Most Favorite SIDs: ---------------------- "Bombo" - Ben Daglish "Bionic Commando" - Tim Follin "Cybernoid" - Jeroen Tel "Delta" - Rob Hubbard "Game Over" - Martin Galway "Hawkeye" - Jeroen Tel "The Last Ninja" - Ben Daglish & Anthony Lees "The Last Ninja II" - Matt Gray "Myth" - Maniacs of Noise "Rambo" - Martin Galway 5 Favorite SIDs From Less Popular Artists ----------------------------------------- Jens-Christian Huus - Sampler #1 (1/4) (well-known artist, but not the best-known out of his gazillion tunes) MacGyver Theme - Oliwer Klaewer Fifth Axis - Gilles Soulet Rock - Future Composer Tune Yip - Omegaman Contributions ------------- Added new conversion options to SIDPlay (Win) that helped out this collection tremendously. Provided a script that helped find repeats in the collection (I wish I had this 1-2 months ago). Helped identify tunes in the collection. Relayed several new SIDs. Comments -------- Check out the C64 Games WWW Page at http://www.student.nada.kth.se/~d93-alo/c64/ It has the SIDPLAY and SIDPLAY/Windows homepages amongst other bits of C64 nostalgia. ---------------------------- Note, "Less Popular Artists" is perhaps not the best description for what was meant by this category. Basically, what was meant by this was for a list of tunes by either artists who were not known by the average C64 user or a tune by a popular artist that might not be as well known. end of document.