Monopackung

written and performed by Dragan Espenschied
on an ATARI 1040 STE using MusicMon2

Replay instructions:

  1. Get a working computer from the ATARI 16/32 bit series. Valid models include ST, STE, Mega ST, Mega STE, TT, Falcon030. I recommend a Falcon or TT because you can connect VGA monitors to them. Don't get an ATARI monochrome screen, they are useless for this case. Ebay is the place to search.
  2. Download MusicMon2 from the Dead Hackers Society.
  3. Put that software and the provided MONOPACK.SNG on a FAT formatted 3.5" floppy disk. Be careful, many ST models can not read HD diskettes, so you might have to use DD disks! Format the disk on the ATARI so you can be sure it can be read again. You can use an USB floppy drive to transfer the files from the internet to the floppy disk.

If you are unable to obtain a working ATARI computer, you might want to use an emulator like hatari or Steem. But then, you could also install Ableton or Fruity Loops on that rack, right? Consider the reasons for your actions.

Monopackung was composed for the electronic drummer Oli Rubow, who needed a "chiptune" style example beat for his drum teaching book. One characteristic property of chip tunes is the synchopation of different sounds sharing one channel. For example, if a bass note plays, no drum sounds can play at the same time, and the composition has to adapt to this limitation. In this track i pushed this limitation to the max by using only one of the three channels of the YM2149 soundchip for everything.

Enjoy!