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MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS

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2600 sequencer kit

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for Windows/MacOS/Linux and Atari 2600




Sequencer Kit is a music driver and music contruction kit for the Atari 2600 game console. Traditionally Atari 2600 games did not have much music aside from a few out-of-tune riffs due to the system only having two voices, 5-bit pitch, and a minuscule 128 bytes of RAM. But I discovered some ways to produce good music using the existing sound chip while only using a tiny amount of RAM and CPU cycles, allowing the driver can easily be integrated into most homebrew games. I even integrated the music driver into some of Atari's original games.

Sequencer Kit songs are created by editing music data in a text file to create patterns and a pattern list, then the music data is assembled into an Atari 2600 ROM that will run on 2600 emulators or a real Atari 2600.

Unlike Pitfall 2's music, Sequencer Kit does not require any special cartridge hardware to operate.

Atari 2600 music programming can be a bit challenging, so I've written an Atari 2600 sound and music programmer's guide which covers almost everything I know on the topic. It includes three useful sets of in-tune notes to help overcome the 2600's very limited pitch.

If you are a musician and develop songs or backing tracks using the sequencer, you can have an actual cartridge made of your sequences by sending the ROM image to Atariage.





  


Atari 2600 music that I made with sequencer kit:


Starfire game music

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Phase Demo

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Thrust game music
(inspired by the C64 version)

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Marble Craze game music A

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Marble Craze game music B

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Music Kit 2.0

2600 Sound And Music Programming Guide

Old Music Kit 1.0




     


Mac users: Look at Michael Barber's webpage about how to use the kit on a Mac.

Linux users: Try the linux version of DASM on this page first. If that doesn't work, there are several 6502 assemblers for Linux listed on this page.