C64 Wally Beben's Tetris music oscilloscope view 

NES/GB: Classic stuff. Tetris DS: Kinda cool. Tetris 99: Awesome! Tetris Effect/CD-i: It's... Perfect... C64: H O L Y S H I T

Wow, this piece actually has a classical sonata form structure, of exposition, a broad and sophisticated development section (nice variations of the themes), and a recapitulation (including a coda). Composer must be classically trained - most impressive.

Might as well get this off of my chest, Ive listened to this track all the way through many times, and the 26 minute track seems to have this cinematic Structure to it. most if not all movies follow this structure, prologue, rising action, climax, epilogue. And this track starts off slow and rather simple, sad, and dark... and slowly gets faster with an ever increasingly happier tone, untill we reach the mid way point at about 12 minutes into the track where the track is at its fastest and most uplifting. then, it slowly and subtly transitions back down into its slower and sadder tones, but because the process is going in reverse this time, the tracks last parts feel satisfying and more sweet. this feels like the soundtrack to an art film or a fantasy film, very magical! AND THEN IT HITS ME THAT THIS MUCH EFFORT WAS PUT INTO A FUCKING TETRIS OST.

This is some strangely epic music for Tetris of all things.

I remember the game got 98% for music in Zzapp 64. By the time I could afford it (I was 13) I had read the review. I loaded it up and listened to the whole 26 minute track twice before I played it for the first time. Outstanding for it's time, and outstanding even by today's standards.

Incredible piece of music. It always astounds me how they managed to get the 3-sound-channel c64 to play a 4th channel as a sample track by bit-banging the volume register to cause a click many times per second.

This song is the reason I fought myself through the game, till I got an awesome routine. When later my nephews came along with their Game Boys, I battled them to the ground :D hella good, from that day I was their cool uncle....

Well, when I think of think of falling blocks that form rows at the bottom, this is NOT what I imagine would be the soundtrack! But it's an absolutely fantastic song. It really shows what the SID chip was capable of.

I love how the music blooms over time. Truly a masterpiece.

So long between comments, i guess, but i am - in the year 2024 - extremely happy you did this. If you ever come by Trondheim i will buy you a beer.

9:33 the seamless transition to 5/4

c-64 had the best tetris music!!!!!!!

So it is Sunday afternoon. The wige and kids are out and I'm re-sealing the shower. And this music is playing and it has elevated me beyond thinking about the mundane tasks that come with middle age. This must be one of the greatest 64 tracks ever.

god, can't believe there's episode-length porn on youtube

I just learned everything about music.

This is such a masterpiece. Emotional SID music! I was spending hours listening and staring on that great Tetris artwork ... Ah... memories...

I first heard this tune in my friend’s C64C and the guitar part was missing (owing to the “fix”). It wasn’t until I played the game on my bread bin at home that I realised it was there at all!

26 minutes in length, 13665 bytes in size. Eat your heart out Bill Gates ;)

THE Tetris track if you ask me.

If I drink enough wine, this becomes like one of those magic eye things

One of the greatest electronica tracks and my all time favourites! Thanks for posting.

2:59 That's when the fourth voice comes into play.

Holy crap I never realized this had samples in it. I feel a bit daft now lol

Listened to the whole thing

How does a Tetris port game have such a amazing song?!

Think about Wally that took all the time programming this note by note. This was clearly not done in a single day, given the fact it had samples and looped for 21 of the 26 minutes. Kudos to this talent from the era!

it looks like all waveforms are somehow "centred" , why is that? are you doing this on purpose or is it some kind of artefact?

Музыка убаюкивает и поднимает настроение. Спасибо.

Wow, this is epic, never knew it was this long...and 4 channels, nice hack! :)

If you got a Wii, an SD card, an external hard drive (or USB), and some Wii games on it including CFG (Configurable USB Loader) and hear this you know you're about to have fun.

This track’s so long that it can play over an average full length of TV episodes & still not loop.!.!

What a timeless MASTERPIECE... ❤❤❤

This is one of the reasons, why I find the C64 way more interesting than something like the NES....

I'm coming here from a wii homebrew app dayum, didn't expect c64 in my homebrew app.

Oh boy, how I loved it when the game loaded and the sound started.

masterpiece

This is bloody fantastic. Well done.

this is the weirdest music on my playlist, but its so freakin cool

This just reminds me of the homebrew channel for wii

Mr. Tel and Mr. Hubbard may have perfected the SID chip's capability of making great music, and get praised about it a lot. What about Wally? His work is great, if not, equal to both Tel and Hubbard's work.

Currently listening while hacking my 3DS.

Wow, this is about to hit 100K views!

This was about my favourite SID piece. I know nothing of the audio artist. But it easily compares if not betters Hubbard, Daglish, Galway. It was a pity the control system was improved by Nintendo. This version was the first, and the joystick drop wasn't perfect. This is the best initial version. I'm just glad we even saw it. Mirrorsoft, Nintendo Tengen all had rights. What a publishing mess. It might be the "Tetris Effect" but the pieces on this version are predictable. Do your pieces placed change the random maths of the blocks?

I listened to the song all the way through last night. It's good, but it does get a little repetitive as it plays the same sections over and over again.

Weird song I discovered thanks to CFG Loader (People back in the Wii era will understand) I dunno how did I discovered it but awesome song

How does this have 4 tracks? I thought the c64 only has 3...

The classical music of the Computer era

Are the digi samples played independently from other channels by SID? It is great to have control over the volume of triangles and the duty of squares.

The guy who composed this is my kind of musician. Superb stuff. Listening to the beat at the start is MOST rewarding, but unfortunately it doesn't last. An epic opus for such simple game doesn't seem to fit.

Joke: 4:46 - It briefly switches to the Main theme of Runescape

Guys, I recon one would enjoy the dancing waves the best on a 144Hz monitor.

Do you know anything about the copyright status on these tracks?

One of my C64 favorites!! But how come it's got 4 voices? SID can only do 3

Does anybody know how old was Wally Beben when he composed this?

This sounds like something from a Western movie to me, for some reason.

The perfect music for playing Tetris, but Nintendo will always get the plaudits because the version of Tetris that accompanies this masterpiece of chip music isn't actually very good.

awesome. fantastic music . 3+1 channels? All from what's left 64 (game etc).

Anyone else kinda hear Destiny’s theme from 19:44 onward?

Epic.

this makes the sonic spinball options music sound like the halo theme

Ah, this was my first ever experience with c64 music. I thought the arps were so cool, then that guitar hit. Wow.

The first part reminds me of Engi Space in FTL.

Unfortunately, gameplay of this version was "meh". But modern renditions of Tetris should include a remix of this, just as they often include a rendition of Korobeiniki.

This shit's incredible.

What is the tempo? I think it's 110 bpm.

Do have a Skate or Die version we can watch?

Still good :)

Wait a minute! The C64 has only 3 channels, not 4.

Okay when you see the square shapes do you see hills or holes

4-TH channel ???

At the beginning i think only about "Home depot" theme

is that not 4 channels ? or is 2 channels separated

13kB

Do Frightmare and Total Recall!

I thought the Commodore 64 had but 3 sound channels; where did the 4th come from?

Wait But The C64 Only Has 3 Voice Channels

Horrid implementation of the game though. Random colors and instant drop. :D

If you wanted to port this to the Game Boy, you would need to add extra RAM. ROM is not much of a problem. You would need 8 KB of extra RAM.

this is absolutely terrible. what a meandering, uninspired mess. why is it 25 minutes long?

no me gusta

A great track that i discovered in the weirdest way possible. Through CFG USB Loader on the Wii.

"It's just a silly little stacking puzzle game for a cheap 8 bit home computer, a 30 second loop should do." Willy Beben composing a 25 minutes long banger track that takes up 1/5th of the system's available memory for no reason:

Boss: "C'mon, Wally. All ya gotta do is make a 30 second loop and you can call it a day." Wally: "No, I don't think I will."

Oscilloscope view helps a lot understanding how those SID effects work. You can read the timing of pulse wave duty cycle changes, ADSR envelopes and hear how they sound. Good stuff.

Playing Tetris on the Commodore 64,wow,whole family around the TV with this incredible music coming out of the speaker,we were all transifixed! Incredible soundtrack and unique.

I used to play this back in the day on my C64 all the time, occasionally I even played the game!

Don't know why, but the first few minutes remind me of a lonely heart beating in space slowly as the universe takes it's shape.

I remember recording this to a cassette in the late 80's (along with some Galway & Hubbard). I used to play it while I was coding 6502 on the C64. It reminds me of debugging code more than Tetris!!

Tetris on the C64 😊 I used this music to get asleep when I was younger

SID was great, it was one thing that set the C64 apart from the rest. There was even a hack to install a second SID for stereo and a huge library of music just for that with the SIDplayer.

I started seeing some sort of landscape in these visuals.

SID Music's Opus Magnum. Has there ever been an orchestrated version of it?

Oh Nostalgia - I remember booting this up and leaving it play on the credits just cause the music was soooooo daaaamn AMAZING !!!!

imagine if this replaced the interstellar soundtrack

This is surely the greatest videogame soundtrack of all time - and one of the greatest electronic music compositions of all time too

Wow! Are you sure this is Tetris we're talking about here. From the sound of this music i'd think I was embarking on an epic quest. I had no idea that the C64 had this kind of sound.

I absolutely love this music....all 26 minutes of it

How the hell does changing the master volume so fast have almost no effect on the normal 3 channels :π

My beloved Configurable Usb Loader

I just adore this music, especially from about 12 minutes onwards!