Overthink
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Greetings.  New album is out on betamod.com!

http://betamod.com/releases/beta057-overthink-gcs/

Full length and featuring a dual-SID 8580 rig, this was entirely composed within MSSIAH Sequencer without any modern sequencers or outside instrumentation.  The songs run the gamut from quick and dirty gametune-styled tracks writtin only days before shows, to more complex pieces meant to take full advantage of the additional power a dual SID rig provides.

The name, GCS, means a couple of different things.  It's up to you to figure it out... and then decide.

The download is free and comes in MP3 and FLAC. 

For a quick listen to one of the new tracks, here's an old link to an unmastered, raw recording of one of my favorites from this album:

https://soundcloud.com/overthink/rothernot

irrlichtproject
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Nomad's Land

Downloaded. This has some pretty rad stuff!

Solid State Disaster
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St Louis, MO

I love this album!

Overthink
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Thanks!

qb
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Arad, Romania
Overthink wrote:

more complex pieces meant to take full advantage of the additional power a dual SID rig provides.

That's good but I don't really like the panning\stereo separation that comes with it. Most of the songs sound as if they were recorded live. I would also have preferred a bit more work in the sound design department. The songs are good but they don't really stand out from so many other C64 songs.

Last edited by qb (Apr 7, 2014 6:47 pm)

Overthink
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QB,

I appreciate your comments, even if they are mostly critical tongue 

I am mainly a non-chip musician who built my dual-SID computers for use within a project studio environment alongside "real" synths, because I really enjoy the tone/rawness/quirks of the SID. 

If it were your recording, would you have left the entire thing mono? 

How to present it in a recorded format was a big question, because I am working with 2 monophonic SID chips with 3 channels each... how to pan/mix them was not obvious, since when the songs were made I was sitting there with both chips almost hard panned to each side.  I liked the separation, and then worked to make some sounds thicker by having them in both sides.  Leaving it in stereo, some things were really off to one side or another, making it mono, I would lose the width I had created with some sounds.

So this was the compromise.

qb
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Arad, Romania

Well, if you make other types of music then you should know how to master this kind of music too. I generally feel that percussion instruments should be centered and that's how it is done in most genres of music. The other instruments can use stereo but it sounds overdone in your songs.

It's not that much of a big deal. The songs are still listenable and enjoyable, but it is a bit annoying.

Overthink
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Yes, but that would have required recording each channel (or even instrument) individually on my main DAW, and then handling the mix/panning there, which to me felt like too many steps away from simply making chipmusic on the C64 and just having fun with it.  I may try that approach next time though.  Call it laziness, call it philosophy, but I didn't want to make things complicated with this album.  Quite the opposite.

Thanks again for the comments.  Gives me some stuff to think about for next time.

Jellica
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England

Hello fellow stereo sid composer!

do you have a mixer?
I always write and record both channels at the same time and just center pan each sid.

Heh, you should try composing for 3 sids smile

Overthink
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Hi Jellica,

I've got a mixer - and actually, for the sake of being used as MIDI-controlled standalone instruments, three dual-SID C64s!  So if I wanted to get nuts, I could compose with six chips!  Not tempted to do so but who knows, I could try that too eventually :-)

I've seen a lot of people just center pan both chips, seems to be pretty standard and in retrospect I can see why.  I just fell in love with the way some things sounded in stereo, and I do live shows in stereo too.

What are you using to compose btw?

Jellica
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England

Goattracker.

I cant be bothered with real C64s anymore.

too bulky and slow and annoying smile

YERZMYEY
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The Rubber Man

Overthink:

Hey,
nice to know somebody still uses old machines. Also using the 2xSID mod is interesting.

I will be listening to it today. At the moment there's "Tunewise" playin' - and it's COOL! smile

Overthink
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I tried Goattracker briefly, excellent tool, but I really do prefer using actual hardware.  I don't worry about speed - my systems are also modded with JiffyDOS and uIEC/SD, so everything is plenty fast.  Sometimes I will use SID-Wizard instead of MSSIAH, in VICE with an emulation keyboard (I bought one of those sticker kits), for when I am away from home and want to compose (and then I can move my files over to the real system later). 

Yerzmyey - I'm familiar with your tunes, great music, thanks for listening :-)

playertwo
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St. Louis, MO

to QP, A purist, perhaps?
It actually doesn't get more pure than running it all live and recording it that way.
It's true, that if you use an external sequencer you can record audio one channel at a time then really get in there and mix then finally master.
In this case I see the overthink album as raw sid in a pure form. 2xsid chips playing everything they got, sequenced right on the c64. That's cred right there.

Pugbath
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St. Louis

So good!