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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 24 พ.ค. 2013
- ZX Spectrum 1-bit multichannel music by Tim Follin. Recorded from the real hardware.
Yerzmyey says about 1-bit music:
Many people think that attaching AY chip into ZX Spectrum was a regress. AY has only 3 channels of sound and pretty simple square wave based synthesis, whereas music generated by Spectrum's native sound-source, the Z80 chip (with help of ULA chip) was expandable to even 8-10, even 12 channels (software mixing) and it was able to generate really interesting envelopes.
This music has been written by Tim Follin. I strongly doubt it would sound good on 3 channels only and simple square-wave synthesis.
What is interesting, he has never made such great songs for any other music-chip or other platforms.
And I say:
TIM FOLLIN IS A GENIUS! - เพลง
this dude took a 1 bit beeper and made it sound like its playing multiple instruments... as a teenager. thats talent
it goes beyond talent, it is pure genius. bro was performing dark magic at 15 years old.
Tim Follin is the living embodiment of the phrase "Overqualified for the job."
the fact he was only a teenager and could manipulate the spectrum in this way absolutely blows my mind. what an incredibly talented guy.
That’s true but also he had so little experience at the time. I mean when I was a teen I barely knew how to use a computer let alone development music for video games, that’s amazing
Mr. Follin was a sorcerer of soundchips from the very beginning and he had no idea!
@@SkyTheLeafeon Especially the NES. Don't believe me? Listen to Silver Surfer's (insanely hard game) music.
@@20thcenturydenzel_alt Dude. Every single song in that game is rockin'!
@@20thcenturydenzel_alt Listen to pictionary for the NES
When I first hear this at nine years old, not having a clue how to program, it sounded so advanced compared to anything else it was mindblowing. , it sounded like a magic trick. Two decades later, having now learnt assembler on half a different processor architectures, my 36 year old self finds this even more mindblowing, and Im now even more convinced that its a magic trick.
you made me laugh!!!! heheehe
nice one!
He seemed to be able to do this on any hardware he got his hands on too...I heard he didn't even bother composing on real instruments/synths first, he'd just program straight into whatever the hardware he was using to get his results. And they always sounded like nothing else on the machines at the time.
crazy to think he was a teenager making this stuff. simply blows my mind.
@ironmike southern Its... really not. This is using the beeper only basically.
Tim Follin was probably like
"A ZX Spectrum? That's, like, equivalent to a professional synthesizer keyboard, right?"
Let's see what this baby can do...
Yes, maybe, but remember this was done in only 48k of memory. Well, less, actually when you take into account memory used for graphics as well. I think he had about 32k to play with! It's still amazing.
@ It's not so much the tiny memory as the fact that the computer didn't even have a sound chip, it was just a beeper.
It's incredible that a man who could make multi-channel music with such limited hardware was also a great musician, and he came of age just at the right time to write chiptune music.
you killed me lol
@ The amount of memory don't matter all that much. The impressive thing is that he was able to do this on a Z80 clocked at approximately 3.5MHz. Getting that music into so little RAM is the easy bit: quickly mixing ~10 channels of audio into a single 1-bit beeper with a processor that was designed for use in embedded systems is the impressive bit.
I think the truth is: it was a massive ZX Spectrum demo...with a game attached.
Danny O'Brien Great Game...
I reviewed it in My School Magazine...(unofficial)
Agreed, the game was crap, but bloody hell this was amazing!!!
What is ZX spectrum?
Reuben Walton
An 8-bit computer produced in 1982. It's normally only able to produce one sound at 10 octaves. However, Tim Follin, the genius that composed this, managed to pump out more than one and practically turned it into a synthesizer party.
Solar Flare [Who now uploads SSBU replays] yeah those are some pretty complex chords with many notes 📝 in them for this level of equipment. I think 💭 I’m hearing suspensions and sevenths etc.
The way he imitated the sound of percussion is mind blowing, given the technological limitations here.
Press a key? Why would anyone do that?
@RedEyedSlimeBoi thanks explain it Peter
Never has the illusion of polyphonic music been so well demonstrated.
Danny O'Brien how is it an illusion?
@@ReubenWalton cause only one sound is playing at one time.
dogen what is one sound?
@@ReubenWalton a single tone. the illusion is that there's multiple you can hear at once, but it's really just switching between tones rapidly
@@jc_dogen excuse me wHAT
If I were alive in 1985 to experience this music, I would be so hyped for my game.
I actually bought this on budget when it came out - I remember being astonished by the music and hardly ever playing the game (the driving bit is okay, the mine bit is dull, I always got stuck on the shooty-shooty gallery). £1.99 as well, cor.
+Ashley Pomeroy same. I thought the game was bad, but would load the game just to hear the music.
Thanks for the stories!
Yep, Mastertronic £1.99 range, they weren't all as good as this but I was earning £3.00 a week as a paperboy so could easily afford it and still get a few sweets as well - Simple times
lizardizzle - It was as good as you can imagine, loved this game when it came out. This one's for you!
How he crammed this artistry into the speccy’s “spare” memory and tiny processor is still an outstanding achievement. What a polymath!
It actually occupies just few hundreds of bytes in the memory.
Everyone always talks about Tim Follin and his music on the NES- Solstice, Pictionary, etc.
I feel like this track is more technically impressive and amazing, given what he had to work with!
Truly an awesome track. Impossible to believe it was 1-bit!
I'm a big fan of his NES tunes but this is astounding.
Absolutely BLOWS my mind that this is _1 BIT_
And before anyone thinks this is a joke
It actually is just 1 bit, a single square wave channel that can either be on or off
I bought this game at a garage for just over a pound, tbh the game was terrible but I just used to listen to this intro music over an over in awe at the sound, everything else I had access to at this time was simple tones and clicks but this showed what computers could do and was a real portend of things to come.
Pound of what?
@@marvinkmooneyoz A pound sterling. 1 GBP.
this song alone is easily worth a pound so fair deal
Thank you for using the word portend correctly.
When you realize the zx spectrum had only a beeper for music
An upgraded model had an AY Chip.
Which is often before you have ever heard this.
0:52 Excuse me WHAT
yep
Imagine a teenager making freaking music in 1 bit fuckin machine insane
I recorded the audio from my Spectrum on to tape and played it non stop for weeks on headphones,I just could not believe what I was hearing.
It's incredible to this day and to think Tim Follin was only 17 when he made this music.
nikamota what is a Spectrum?
@@ReubenWalton It's an old computer from the early 80's
Correction, 15.
Tim was born in 1970.
@@SkyTheLeafeon jeez
@@roilo8560 Unreal, isn't it? A sorcerer of soundchips at such an early age.
Dude was like 15. Damn.
This is being done on a one-bit buzzer with one channel that can only play one sound at once.
Its been almost 40 years, and A has still yet to be pressed...
I really like the part around the 0:52 - 1:35 part. It sounds soooo cool!
It's really special isn't it?
He put a fucking drum beat in it! This shit has to be some kind of magic!
this is expressive being just one channel on something that wasn't even meant to produce music
For anyone seeing this at a later point, it could actually be tricked into essentially having 3 channels.
the thing is, this isn't just creativity at an insanely high level, it's also the ingenuinity and coding knowledge needed to make music like this on such a limited soundcard.
To think that Mr. Follin made this when he was only 15...
All of you who say that he's a legend, you're dang right!
actually, 14
his birthday is late december
@@Avrelivs_Gold Thanks for correcting me!
Dude was literally a kid when he did this, then.
This hurts a little, but god damn does it slap.
Fun Fact : A free game is included with this song ;-)
Allister Bimble does a great cover of this on his album “The Spectrum Works.” He recreates the song perfectly with the original playing in the background. Strongly recommended if you love this tune.
The album also does the same for Chronos. I wish he’d do Agent X II as well.
Ooh, I didn't know about this, and having posted about my love of the Chronos theme before seeing your comment, I shall now offer my thanks as I begin the hunt for that album!
It’s available here on TH-cam. A search for “alistair bimble chronos” should do it.
Tim Follin really hit us with noise music before anyone was prepared for it
accidentally became one of the best noise artists in the game before anybody else was even playing
Noise?…? Not this.
I can't even fathom how you could get this music from a 1-bit speaker. Jeeze
Flarpyz what does 1-bit mean?
@@ReubenWalton It means the speaker only has two states 0 and 1, off and on, or at rest and deflected. Nothing in between. All other sounds are made by rapidly switching from one to the other.
Owain Green is it like switching so rapidly that it generates different tones at different cycles per second (or frequencies) and makes different chords?
@@ReubenWalton Basically, yes. Clicking/pulsing rapidly to generate a tone, and then also rapidly switching between frequencies of tone to create pseudo-chords. This is very taxing on the processor, which is why the fancy music is only on the title screen, and not during the game when the computer is busy doing other things as well. Google "gamejournal sound of 1-bit" for a fuller explanation.
Sony's Super Audio Compact Disc (SACD) format also uses a 1-bit DAC, driven at roughly 2.8 MHz using delta-sigma pulse density modulation.
I'm obsessed with this track. I hear it in my head at work.
Also, one song from Metric shares elements from this track.
Back to listening to this masterpiece on a loop. This lil beeper tune is a rush.
it hurts so good
An important thing to surface is obviously this is not a one bit bleeper if you are talking to it from basic.
It had a duration and pitch parameter.
OK. if you get down to the metal it was a 1-bit beeper.
That's how he programmed it in assembly so fair enough.
Very hardcore but I guess that's what it takes to achieve what he did.
Astounding work.
Luv and Peace.
banger, seriously
I can't stop listening to this?!
Good
And the best part is that the 48k's beeper is clocked at 400hz.
bro that is so FIRE NOISE ❤🔥❤🔥❤🔥🔥🔥
Music like a Chronos. SUPERSOUND!
Awesome, now I don't have to put nails in my vacuum to know what that sounds like!
minds were blown when this came out of our 48k Spectrums!
Mark R. Jones what are 48k Spectrums?
@@ReubenWalton
ZX Spectrums with capabilities of playing any games with had a maximum storage of 48KiB only.
@@ReubenWalton And most importantly only a 1 bit "DAC" controlled by the CPU for sound, no AY.
"What is interesting, he has never made such great songs for any other music-chip or other platforms."
HAHAHA Whaaaaat? Akrillic off the Plok soundtrack is like the greatest video game song ever my dude.
False. Time Trax on the Genesis.
Solstice
Silver Surfer might not be a great game but it has an excellent soundtrack
Have they not seen his works on the NES, Genesis, or even the SNES?
@@ninjacat230 Nope, Rock And Roll Racing on snes
Never made such great songs for any other music chip? Lies! He made amazingly complex music for every sound chip he ever used.
2:03-3:00
When you realizze something sounds similar to beach
HEH WAS THINKING THAT
Holyyyyy..!! This is insane. I have so much respect for Tim!
his music for Agent X 2 was just as impressive.
That's music ❤ very impressive
It sounds like farts, but the most impressive farts I've heard in awhile
I can't believe he could get this out of the spectrum
Words can't describe my astonishment!
Great music AND great game. Hard at first but easy once you know how to play. Lots of fun speech 💬 bubbles too.
fucking awesome
Koichi Sugiyama, a great Japanese musician, wrote "Dragon Quest" after saying, "If the NES can make three notes, I can make music." But Tim Follin made groundbreaking music with just beeps. For this reason, I think that Tim Follin is as great a musician as Koichi Sugiyama, if not more.
EDIT: Please replace "music" in the above sentence with "game music".
I had a 128K, there was no game music i ever heard that came close to this. This is a symphony. The yamaha chip was vastly overated. And only just discovered this masterpeice recently. I wish i had back in '86
EDIT - RoboCop was the only yamaha contender i can think of, but even so
Interesting piece of trivia. This plays better on a real Spectrum than emulation. Though this is a masterpiece, I prefer Agent X II Music.
One of the best songs ever made
the fact about Tim was just 15 years old
How did the musician squeeze that out of a spectrum. That’s called pushing a tech as far as it can go.
Loved this game :-) the music was A++
Tim switched it from 4/4 to 7/8 around the 2-minute mark. With one channel hardware that shouldn't even be capable of this. And he wasn't even old enough to drive yet. WHAT IN THE ABSOLUTE F-
This is better than any pop music for the last 20 years. He should be a millionaire.
limitation + creativity
0:53 onwards is the best part
very high quality sound for that technique
When the intro music was better than the game! PS. Definately used elements of this for the later Chronos music
Funkmeister Follin on the ZX Spectrum
This dude definitely sat around writing prog rock songs in his spare time until someone asked him for a game song.
the future games title theme video that played before this in a playlist reminded me of the same stuff. I said the same thing nearly hahahaa that it reminded me of the band yes and some of their 80's prog rock songs hahaha
Wow, this is awesome to hear coming out of a stock 48k ZX Spectrum!
dig the time change at 2:02
Listen to them CHORDS
Played this hundreds of times on my spectrum + and never heard it play the music ever then i got a +2 and heard the tune and thought it was 128k music. Years later heard it playing on a dead flesh speccy couldnt believe it was playing the tune, god knows why it didnt play on my + but remember the awe when my +2 kicked this tune out wow
SmokinSlo what is a +2?
@@ReubenWalton The ZX Spectrum +2 was the version of the Spectrum 128 with an integrated cassette recorder, made after Amstrad bought Sinclair. There was also the +3 that had the Amstrad style 3" (not 3.5") disk drive instead.
Tim Follin is a god.
god this is so impressive
This is more amizing if to dive into eighties, you surrounded by calculators, which only can to beeb-beeb, and simple beep melodies, and - bam! multiinstruments synthesizer in your calculator-like pc. I even recorded this melody to cassete recorder.
it is the highest art to make such music!
these sounds, like the imprint of time where I was young and alive are my favorite people was , I'm single now, but the memory is eternal as is the sound! thanks for the memories!
Responding to the description: Tim Follin has made hundreds of osts for games, many of which are just as impressive as this. If you take 5 minutes to listen to Plok’s, Pictionary’s and Time Trax’s soundtrack (all of which were written by Tim Follin) you’ll see what I mean.
c64 ghouls and ghosts
How much memory is this track even taking? The whole game had to fit into 48K, so good heavens how much of that was alloted to the music? iI'd be very surprised if it was more than 4K. 4 bloody K for this masterpiece.
Not much I guess, I suppose about 1-4K
@@aki_128 8K is the screen, so its 40K max for the whole show. What are we even feeding programmers on these days?
Yes, i know enterprsning young programmers used to hide game assets in the vast spaces of the 8K screen memory, but even so...
I hope people realise that the game was multiload. So you could have a full 48k used a level.
Tim Follin actually made amazing music for a lot of old systems- theyre maybe not AS mind blowing, but they’re still amazing and mind blowing :p
Plok: Beach. In my opinion, just as mind-blowing as this.
tim follin, the guy who made really good music for shitty games
WOW!
Butthole Surfers - Who was in my room last night sounds SUPER inspired by the intro of this song
HOLY SHIT MY EARS
Tell me what he should have done instead?
@@DerpDerp3001_plays no the songs great just loud
Like a beat boxer sounding like several instruments at once.
I wish Delia Derbyshire had had a ZX Spectrum to work with
0:49
It didn't have to hit that hard but because it's Tim Follin~
Crustiest music I've ever heard that actually goes hard as hell
When you try to make music for a crappy computer but it still messes it up
What should have he done instead?
Was this made using PCM Playback on a PC Speaker? At any rate, this is insanely good considering the source!
PWM in a ZX Spectrum beeper, which is much more of an achievement!
This song is really good, to bad it sounds like a NES literally exploded but continued trying to play a song...
1 bit...
The Bimble version is here: m.th-cam.com/video/OHpbYqaGDVI/w-d-xo.html
10 beep(exp(-1) ^^ Pi, mandolbrot set)
20 goto 10
I wanna know how he did it
Is this licensable somewhere?
Infuriating multiload game with great music.
ok i'm also 15 and making music, not nearly as good as this though, wow
not anymore
Кстати, а ведь на картинке больше двух цветов на знакоместо. Можно ведь эти артефакты использовать для вывода более цветной картинки.
better than c64 :)
You do not believe it or drunk
kiko fernandez - I'd like to see you try better with the Spectrum 48K's extreme limitations
@@retrogamer33 Kiki isn't criticising Tim Follin, but the patently daft statement Endre made.
1 bit music...
Worth the £1.99 the game cost