3 Ways To Make Music On The ATARI 2600 

warning flashing animations. have a shot everytime you hear arp 2600 instead of atari 2600 Song used in the build :- ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-1MlFDDqYYZI.html FART BOX PCB's NOW AVAILABLE LIMITED INVERTED RUN :- store.lookmumnocomputer.com/ Stems with 2600 beats and sounds from these takes are available on my patreon :- www.patreon.com/lookmumnocomputer Jamloopy :- hackaday.io/project/171454-jamloopy-for-atari-vcs Synthcart :- atariage.com/store/index.php?l=product_detail&p=101 Little Scale A26F :- little-scale.blogspot.com/2008/10/atari-2600-full-midi-interface.html SD Card Cartridge UNO :- thebrewingacademy.com/products/uno-2600-cartridge?fbclid=IwAR3tbJYhOwoTYxKP8xqzA3M1bU-D_SjkIPpmk80zcL8mQEEu6-DcvCu7KCE

Having grown up with an Atari 2600 in the house, the unique sound from it, the waveform, is hardcoded in my brain bits. It is kinda frightening to feel how deep it runs. Thank you Sam for rustling those neurons.

Did you steal that shirt off my mum's washing line? Great vid as ever mate.

4th way to make music: just smack the system to produce a drum beat.

As a child of the 1970's, the sounds here are sooooo familiar in timbre, if not in melody.

Look mum, I'm not saying it's computers, but.... computers! One day you're going to have to make an orchestra of midi controlled retro computers!

That makes You Atari teenage riot

Hasn't Korg re-released the Atari 2600? Oh wait ...

Jamloopy is quite an innocent name for that wicked synth :D

Still one of the coolest guys in music breaking the mold going against the grain I love the creativeness. Thinking out of the Box and taking every thing and being the master of it that's awesome.

Loved it, but did you record a few Atari VCS (2600) music tracks?

09:50 You have a mission 13:48 you accomplished this mission

Oh so cool ! and from Crystal Castles 🏰

That was so damn cool to watch! There are some other ways to make music too, which involve tracking on a computer first, then compiling as a ROM image. TIAtracker which uses all the limited range of the TIA chip, a bit clunky but it works, great for making tunes for games and demos. TIAtune which is a tool of some sort that converts XM modules to a compatible ROM image. What is nice about this one is, as the name implies, the tuning is actually pretty good since it is generated by the CPU. Literally all the resources are taken for generating music so no video code is left, but definitely good for more in tune stuff :D

Santa brought me one in 1983! and a C64 in 1987! Addicted I was!!

the Atari 2600 was my first! Hooked ever since.

It's just mind blowing how crazy your channel is I love it!

Dude! You could probably do Aphex Twin or Squarepusher on that thing! That'd awesome! :)

IM SORRY. IS "two thousand six hundred" NOT "twenty six hundred"

That must be what Aphex Twin used 😁 love the 2600! If you need a spare, I have about 5 👍

Look Mum I'm having a seizure from the display.

The music starting at 13:50 is absolutely incredible. No clue why you wouldn't latch on to that sound and continue forward with it in the video! I'd love a sequel to this if you were to down to give Atari music a second chance.

Got some crinkly-dinkly noise on it after the mod, but i'm not enough of an electronics to know why, maybe a bad ground loop?

Yo this is the coolest... Can u make music with the 7800... ✌

2:20 i feel like making a beat like that takes him 5min but would take me 2h

great video

My Toyshop Trouble game uses C F and G on the saw wave bass, and (g a bb b c d eb e) on a treble voice, and works out sorta well except that the bass g is horribly out. My Stella's Stocking intro game uses a music engine I wrote to achieve four-voice polyphonic music with two volume settings per note and a five octave full chromatic range. Search RU-vid for "Stella's Stocking" to see a short capture off an emulator, and a longer capture off an actual TV (the TV sound is unfortunately rather distorted, but you can hear more of the music).

*Excuse me, that's called an Atari VCS*

God bless youtube for recommend me this chanel.

This is amazing. I've been working on a trilogy of albums in my head for the last several years...One of the albums deals with the relationship(s) between humans and computers and I want it to have sort a a spacey Flaming Lips vibe, and the Atari 2600 is a fantastic tool for what I'm wanting to accomplish. I ordered the Synthcart from Atari Age...I can't wait to receive it.

Seizure warning at 9:55 for photosensitive people

You don't have a TV that can take RF? What planet do you live on?

It's sound like all out on ps1 game music at home page

I recommend you to use flux for solder and desolder.

Atari 2600 oh the memories..14:10 Those Macs would swallow your floppy disk and not give you them back...lol

You sir are a Mad Musical Instrument Genius!! Love dropping into your laboratory to see what adventures await.

Nice Zibra t-shirt, Sam. :)

I just realized, one of the big bonuses of making your own music is that you can add it in post production to segments of your vids and it fits perfectly.

That one we used to play silly games on at my schoolmate's parents attic 30 years ago ❣️

Wood looks great on consoles

Stands for Ffffffffff....... FUNky :D

So are you suggesting making music with the 2600 has certain Pitfalls?

Now you have an UNO all you need to do is wrangle TIATracker... enjoy!

The jamloopy thing reminds me of Square pusher's early stuff. Lots of beautiful bleep bloops.

You dont own a tv? The difference with a tv and a monitor is that the monitor doesnt include the rf circuitry. Plug the rf lead into the antenna socket on your modern tv and perform an autoscan for channels.

15:00 - 15:55, can you - please - "just" make an album? like.... pretty please!?

Bonkers clonkers!!🤘

Well Which console he still not turned to a synth? :D

I think I've read that the Pokey chip sounds very out of tune if you try to squeeze out more polyphony than two channels :)

That Jam Loopy straight-up sounded like Making Orange Things, mate ;-)

You creativity and willingness to share consistently blows my mind!

My first game computer! My mom bought it for us but we ended up fighting with her about who could play because she got addicted to Pac Man :-D

simpcart

Mmmmmmm formicawave

There's multiple versions of the touch pads. I have ones that have much more pronounced buttons that are dome shaped. You can also use the sesame street pads, which makes it fun to play on stage because the pads are so big you can lay them a table and play them.

I was curious how you would make this thing sound "Good" I grew up playing atari for many years and it always sounded like shit to me even as a small child. Good attempt its hard to make this machine sound remotely good lol. Most games didnt have any music, Mostly sound FX E.T. was one of the games that stood out to me because the intro had music and PitFall 2 did as well but i think that was generated from an extra chip in the cart because the music almost sounded to good to come out of that machine lol

I like 7:05

The vacuum desolder pump is cool. I love how it makes proto-perma pcbs like breadboard again but reliable. The only thing i dislike about that tool is trying to get the glass tube in/out.

Sweet baseline there =D Better than most music heard on the 2600 games!

LMAO oh the ambience ..you big kid

Watcha gonna do with that ColecoVision back there? Robotic hand controlling the Driving Module? Hacked ADAM computer module MIDI interface? Glitch Smurfs?

That's actually a light sixer 2600. IT came after the actual original 2600 which is a heavy sixer. The heavy have a wood grain lip on top and rounder corners in the front....and yes.... it's much heavier....weight wise.

By default, the TIA could only produce pitches ~Bb5 (937.5 Hz) or higher if anyone is wondering precisely how limited the Atari 2600’s sound hardware was: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_Interface_Adaptor#Noise/Tone_Generator_(AUD0/1)

11:00 2600 Music? You sir, are INSANE!!! Oh I think I wanna SAMPLE :) (sigghh, I HAD a 2600 - along with a bunch of OTHER Retro toot - til they privatised out Council housing and lost everything in a big nasty illegal eviction - now I have to be a LOT more compact - but your retro toot really DOES make me smile) - ROCK ON

Have you made a Cirklon walkthrough on this channel? I know nothing about it (except it's a powerful sequencer) and I think a lot of your audience would love to see your workflow using it!

beautiful that you put daydreamer as a "soundtrack", wow!

Dude, you were making me a bit nervous for a hot minute! When I say you open that console up and stuff I feared that it might get ruined. After all that's an iconic game console but when I saw that you can still play games on it I could relax again. Clearly, you know what you're doing. That's a really cool mod. I never knew you could play music with an Atari too.

When the robots in Berzerk get close to the wall they start generating beats. And then you can add to it by shooting your gun. As long as you turn off evil otto "game 1" and stay on the other side of the wall. You can stand there and collaborate with it. I have a tiny demonstration, my "Disco Berzerk" video. I can't help myself, as I walk through the game. Happens every time. Hehe..

Ethan Kath of Crystal Castles was saying that he was using Atari 5200 sound chip to make some of his first tracks. Which some of people claim to be nonsense and total bullshit. So it turns out that you CAN use Atari as a source for making music….?

I really wondered how. I had Atari 800XL and I didn't know. At least back in the days. When I first saw the software and the controllers, I was like, "oh, EZ...".

Greetings, friend, this time I dusted off my six lever VCS, light sixer, the atari in question turns on, gives video on the screen, but after three minutes of seeing the game on the screen, it loses the image, they seem as if it were blurred, the pixels of the figures in the game are dropped until the game is completely unviewable. I uncover it, check the voltage regulator and it shows me 5.1 volts on the output pin. I understand that it has to show 5 volts on the output pin, but in my atari it shows 5.1 volts on the output. I ask you, is this regulator good or bad, will this be the cause of the problem with my atari that the video of the game goes off the screen as I explained above. Please, what answer do you give me? Or rather the problem of my atari will be a malfunction of the chips, for example one of these, RIOT, CPU or TIA.

does anyone know if the little scale would talk to a synthcart? I have a composite modded 2600 and synthcart, but looking to figure out how to get 5pin external midi into the 2600.

Every time I watch a video from this channel, I end up terribly tired. He eats too much sugar

Even more famous than Asteroids is Space Invaders. Also Starmaster is an excellent game as well. I was a bit worried that you were hacking into a classic Heavy Sixer 2600, but alas, that one is the Light Sixer.

I got an AV modded Atari 2600 because 1.) Solder scares me 2.) I wanted to use Synthcart. The rest I didn't know about. Thanks so much! Synthcart is rad but if you want to use it with other gear or even itself you have to record it and then mess with the tuning. That or play along with a synth that can be detuned. The manual is good at showing how many cents everything is off by.

pretty cool how the jamloopy has a built-in creepypasta mode

omg I have two highly liquid boards stashed away with my Atari 2600 jrs and two synthcars. its an amazing set of programs as you can even control them with old Yamaha drum machines. ive just never been brave enough to open them up and make any kind of rca out....could you make a video about that? or is there someone who makes a board that we could add in with some simple thing...not sure how that would work....

I've really come to enjoy Sam's music and was wondering if anyone might be able to help me find more music like his to listen to. This is the first time I've looked into electronic music of any kind and am not sure the exact genre Sam's stuff would be considered in order to find similar stuff. It seems there are a lot of sub-genres and I'm a bit overwhelmed. Any recommendations people can provide would be very much appreciated. Thanks in advance!

This is insanely fantastic, madly engenius guy

Have you ever touched one the the venerable Atari 8-bit computers? You might find it's soundchip quite interesting.

LOOK MUM NO COMPUTER featuring a computer

Now you just need that Arp 2600 to go with your Atari 2600 and make a song with those two... Maybe call it AA 2600^2 or something.

Nice to see your Korg MS-10 in there... it's kinda funny to me to see it being used to play melodies 'cus mine was my "drum kit" for most of the time I had it.

I wish to find this guy and his music in Cyberpunk 2077. In game he's gonna live near his pawnshop of course.

Do you sell your DayDreamer song without vocals? Nothing wrong with your singing, I just like to listen to the music while drifting off to sleep.

little-scale also made an Atari 2600 sample pack! little-scale.blogspot.com/2008/11/atari-2600-sample-set.html

Just you just hook up 1/4 from atari into a tv??? You're a fucking genius! I really want to learn how! I have an OG atari

How Old are you LOOK MUM ''SaM" I'm 35 was Lucky to have a Brother 10 years older who had Atari 2600, Intellivision & Colecovision had fun at 5 playing the shittiest game ever E.T.

ATARI 2600 was my first Console next sega 16 bit and as last only pc i must say best the old but gold things ;)

The jam at 13:31 was pretty cool but thats to much hassle n not enough worth to use the atari not even for chiptune music.. You can make all these kind of noises n music on maschine and just load up your own 8bit sounds its way easier and you can achieve the same thing if not better music why would u waste time with this..

Laugh every time you call the Atari an 'Arp 2600.' Really awesome video

This how crystal castles made their self titled. Shit takes mad skills so thank you for making a video about this

The 2600, never owned one but I know the games from various clone consoles. When I was a kid I had girlfriend who got a knock off clone called the Nics TV boy. It was one of the first plug and play’s and the games had the copyrights removed from them. Whenever I think Atari 2600, I think of a trippy seizure inducing experience. Damn, that TIA chip does it’s name justice.... I’m 36 but I consider the 2600 beeing something from far before my time. I grew up with the likes of the Nessy.

Or you could just use TIA Tracker. www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=67648

If you get a chance, check out a tune I recorded with my Atari Synthcart. m.soundcloud.com/mystic-knight/adventure-time

Sam has the best Corona hair.

Hardest mainstream chiptune platform to use so color me impressed with you making it sing. :) Music tools for the 2600 have evolved a lot since practically no one can make music on it from scratch very well.

As a Retro game collector who spent year's obtaining one of these I have to admit it's cool seeing it taken apart

Those old 2600 sounds....part of my childhood. :)

There must be a means of utilizing the Atari St software without the computer right?