No 80’s revival without the Commodore64!

As unmistakable part of our cultural history, the commodore64 cannot be overlooked. The unit was made between 1982 and 1993 and about 30 million were sold!

There was a Special Sound Interface (SID) chip inside for music syntheses. Music accompanied games, but music programming was also possible. There were three voices and 4 waveforms, so creativity was needed to make complex sounding music. In those days musicians needed to be programmers and vice versa to make music with the C64. Two of those allrounders were Jeroen Tel and Rob Hubbard. They had composed and programmed the themes of many games and their music was incorporated in the minds of the players. The C64 did groundbreaking and pioneering work to prepare us for nintendo, playstation and the X-box, but still has it’s charm. It is sought after by vintage collectors to play games and by electro musicians for the special sound of it.

Nowadays, retro-games community Micromusic and productiehuis Oost-Nederland combined forces with the Dutch Ricciotti ensemble . They approached Jeroen Tel and Rob Hubbard to arrange the tunes for performance with an orchestra. They were enthousiastic to show how good the music still is. Since the autumn of 2006 The C64 Orchestra has performed the songs a few times, and audiences are delirious. If it is for sentimental reasons and confrontation with your childhood, or for a new encounter, the show is a blast to be present at! Last wednesday I witnessed a show they played in Vredenburg in Utrecht. It took about an hour, but the limited time was the only downer of the night. I was overwhelmed, not even knowing the games nor the songs (I had an atari). There was no dull moment during the performance. The songs were beautifully arranged, with trumpet solo’s, beautiful violin arpeggio’s and sometimes combined with the original SID-chip sounds. During the show, there were projections of he C-men, who showed cool clips of the original C64 games. The combination of the visuals and the sound make the show an experience to watch with your mouth open wide. The songs that were played, came a.o. from these darksounding games: Commando, Monty on the run, One man and his droid, International karate and Delta.

If you get the chance to see them, do so!
- july, 14 2007: Forma Nova Festival, Fredericia (Denmark)
- september, 06 2007: Nazomer festival, Middelburg (Netherlands)
- october, 12 2007: 013, Tilburg (optional) (Netherlands)
- november, 17 2007: Metropool, Hengelo (Netherlands)

Here you can find the original Cybernoid II-theme, made by Jeroen Tel. Check the sound of the SID-chip!

This is where you can listen to the same song in the version of the C64 orchestra. Compare and behold!