C64 Theremin | Hacker News Reader

C64 Theremin

linusakesson.net

133 pointsfanf217 comments

Everything Linus produces just blows me a way. Especially loved his C64 organ [0] and also maybe the only "cool" NFT I've ever seen [1] (basically the source code for the demo is encoded in the token so it's on the blockchain forever instead of just being some link to an image hosted on some server that could disappear at any point.)

[0] https://www.linusakesson.net/sixtyforgan/index.php [1] https://www.linusakesson.net/scene/a-mind-is-born/nft.php

For those who don't know "A mind is born":

https://linusakesson.net/scene/a-mind-is-born/

That's in 256 bytes. Not kilobytes but bytes.

If you love that kind of thing you'll love the things being produced for https://lovebyte.party/

I cut my teeth on the Commodore64. "A Mind Is Born" gives me chills every time.

My favorite thing of his is the Chipophone

https://www.linusakesson.net/chipophone/index.php

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAuPIgD-TM0

I don't personally know him, but we went to the same school for a while. A brief memory I have of him is that he once showed up for some event with an umbrella attached to this head, like a hat of sorts. If my memory serves me the umbrella was multi-colored and he was accompanied by his girlfriend.

Did it rain?

It was a very, very long time ago (~20 years) so I am sure my mind is filling in the blanks, but I think it was a sunny day and it was some sort of event happening, although I don't recall it being anything like a costume party.

Oh I just realized it would shield his bald head from the sun.

I remember watching the great NoCarrier (Don Miller) 6502 assembly code a Nintendo “Uforce” into a functional Theramin in about an hour. With color flow! Bonkers.

Very cool.

For those who are interested in instrument design, I recommend Bela platform for you to get started with.

I have also an open source interactive instrument called Packing:

https://github.com/chaosprint/Packing

The idea is to recreate the Neutral tool from Trevor Wishart's CDP (Composers' Desktop Project) in SuperCollider.

Performance video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYu55YZJH_s&t=102s&ab_channe...

"electrons ... repel ... using the electromagnetic force, like these fridge magnets" - afaik this is a little deceptive, since the magnets use the magnetic aspect of the electromagnetic force, while the electrons use the electrical aspect.

I'm not an electrical engineer or musician, but I feel like there has to be some kind of hack here that would tickle a programmer like me. It felt like the video started getting into that around the 9 minute mark when he said what he was doing with the theramin was fundamentally at odds with the way computers work because computers are designed to be resilient to small changes in capacitance. Also how does this interact with the C64 software? It sounds like an EE project and the C64 is just mentioned in name only. This guy would also have more impact doing videos if he had more light and relaxation.

The C64 comes in after the 11:30 mark when the oscillator output is hooked up to the C64 pulse counters. The software counts pulses per video frame and adjusts the sound accordingly.

> This guy would also have more impact doing videos if he had more light and relaxation.

He's done so much cool stuff I bought a Pocket Operator pretty much because he developed it: https://www.linusakesson.net/music/po-2x/index.php

No need to worry about lack of impact due to low light, when you have treasures like the Craft project:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNCqrylNY-0

A single microcontroller (ATMega88) produces both graphics and sound in this demo.

More info: http://www.linusakesson.net/scene/craft/

He is using a 555 timer chip to measure the subtle changes in capacitance, and feeding it into two pulse counter inputs that the C64 has. Every video cycle, he pulls the values from those counters, and then resets them.

He then maps the values from that into frequency/volume values that he feeds into the SID chip and that produces the sound.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com