Pokey Player?

neglectoru · July 31, 2016

Atarimania has an entry for Pokey Player, a music editor written by Craig Chamberlain and Harry Bratt. The two later went on to create a C-64 music editing solution (sidplayer), which was very popular in the Commodore 64 BBS music scene.

Their Atari product, according to sidplayer.org, was created in 1982, but I can find little other information about it. Atarimania has a 1984 entry, but no disk / manual / other materials.

Does anyone have any more information (or perhaps a disk image) of this product? I think it is probably a very early example of music creation software.

Other interesting early music editors out there?

+MrFish · July 31, 2016

Yes, I remember this and used it. I liked it quite a bit and created at least a handful of tunes using it; works very nice with BASIC programs.

There exist Revised and Enhanced versions of the program. I don't recall the differences. I only remember using the enhanced versions back in the day.

I've put what I have in a zip file. It contains two atr's with the editor and compiler on side B, three atr's with just example tunes, and documentation for the Revised version. I think I have partial documentation for the enhanced version somewhere as well.

The editor looks like this, one thing I liked about it compared to most trackers is that is used standard music notation. So it's useful if you've got some sheet music you want to turn into a POKEY tune. Some very nice classical music has been entered into this editor, which you'll find on the tune disks.

There's probably more stuff over on the Page 6 website too.

Pokey Player.zip

Edited July 31, 2016 by MrFish

+CharlieChaplin · July 31, 2016

Well,

I simply named "Pokey Player" as Pokey Player 1 and the "Enhanced Pokey Player" as Pokey Player 2.

Some years later a programmer did Pokey Player III (named Pokey Player 3 by me) with ST-mouse support in port B and some nice scrolling and DLI effects.

Chuck Steinman wrote some valuable information and released plans (schematics?) about the Pokey/Gumby stereo-upgrade and he also released a stereo-version of the Pokey Player.

Attached are Pokey Player 3 (normally two disksides, but I have two slightly different versions, thus four disksides a,b,c and d) and Pokey Player Stereo.

There is also a stereo-player program for AMS sounds by Dan Knauf, two versions exist - one that plays only AMS sounds and one that plays AMS and Pokey Player (*.V) sounds. Alas, this AMS+Pokey player program does not play the Pokey Player sounds very well (strange noises appeared with many sounds and some PP sounds did crash the player program), so I mainly use the version that only plays AMS sounds in stereo. Attached it here as Gumby2.ATR: AMSPLAY.COM should play AMS+PP sounds, AMSGUMBY.COM should only play AMS sounds.

(On some disks I used the XF551 version of Turbo-DOS XL/XE, so you will notice some strange noise when booting and some speed-up when using an XF551 with these disks. Press the HELP key to get an overview of all available commands or simply replace Turbo-DOS with DOS 2.0 or DOS 2.5 if you want to...)

Other early music editors are e.g. the "Atari Music Composer" available on cart. since 1979 or 1980. Alas, it looks like many Atarians do own this cart, but there were very few sounds or sound-demos produced with it. A little later arrived the "Advanced Music System" by Lee Actor (and also version II, named AMS II) and thousands of sounds and various music-demos have been produced with it. I think, that every A8 PD library and every A8 user group that existed or still exists has at least one disk with AMS sounds in their collection...

http://www.atarimania.com/utility-atari-400-800-xl-xe-music-composer_15784.html

http://www.atarimania.com/utility-atari-400-800-xl-xe-advanced-musicsystem_27136.html

http://www.atarimania.com/utility-atari-400-800-xl-xe-advanced-musicsystem-ii_s11276.html

Pokey_Player_3_and_stereo.zip

Edited July 31, 2016 by CharlieChaplin

neglectoru · July 31, 2016

Thanks for the resources! It is amazing to me how similar Pokey Player is to their later SID offering (see attached screenshot)

I'm considering starting a research project / blog about the early computer music creation software, which would be limited in scope from first home computers, and ends with the first Amiga trackers (after which music creation exploded and would probably be too much to cover).

Any interest?

+MrFish · July 31, 2016

Thanks for the resources! It is amazing to me how similar Pokey Player is to their later SID offering (see attached screenshot)

Yes, very similar.

I'm considering starting a research project / blog about the early computer music creation software, which would be limited in scope from first home computers, and ends with the first Amiga trackers (after which music creation exploded and would probably be too much to cover).

Any interest?

Sounds like a good idea to me.

rdefabri · September 23, 2016

I'd love this. However, what would really be cool would be a true "synthesizer" type program, because POKEY has a lot more power than many realized (see Analmux's work). The average schmo (me) doesn't know how to extract those sounds / effects.

Think of a Moog-type interface with waveforms / analog pots to make those changes...THAT would be cool!

+bhall408 · October 14, 2020

I knew Craig Chamberlain back in that time period. I ended up adapting a vertical blank music library for my own games, but I do recall using Pokey Player to first mock up the music before transcoding the result to the player I was using. A friend of mine had also been a beta tester for SIDplayer, and I had been a beta tester for PCS (Player Control System), another project Kurt Vogel and Craig Chamberlain had done in 1983.

I've recently been resurrecting my old projects and disks. So far I have found some materials for PCS, but nothing yet for POKEY Player. If I find any, I'll post.

I know the users group I was in had a few PP disks at the time, and it may be that those disks surface at some point. Similarly, you should be able to find Pokey Player on other user group libraries of the time and place (Michigan in 1982-1984) such as MACE and/or CHAOS.

+MrFish · October 14, 2020

I was living in Michigan (Bay City) when I first started using POKEY Player. I believe I found it in a store that sold Atari PD disks somewhere in Flint, or thereabouts.

eegad · November 3, 2021

Was just looking at a little program I made back in 1984 that used Pokey Player in it to play background music. Vaguely remember PP, so I googled it and ended up at this thread, and also Atarimania. And got confused. Because the "enhanced" and "revised" versions were on disk and released in '84 and '85. But in 1984 when I made my little program with it, I still had only a tape drive. So, when was the original Pokey Player released then??

After some continued searching, I found that the original was in SoftSide Magazine in October 1982. Unfortunately the link I found to download the program is no longer working. :-(

Hopefully someone stumbles upon this and has that original version that they can post.

El Destructo · May 21, 2022

On 7/31/2016 at 7:14 AM, CharlieChaplin said:

There is also a stereo-player program for AMS sounds by Dan Knauf, two versions exist - one that plays only AMS sounds and one that plays AMS and Pokey Player (*.V) sounds.

Ah, "The Music Player". Does anyone remember the keystroke to switch this program's playback between 8M (8-bit mono), 8S (8-bit stereo) and 16 (16-bit voices, two per channel)?

+CharlieChaplin · May 21, 2022

Use the "M" key.

Full instructions? Here you go.

STEREO2.zip

burkhart87 · December 8, 2022

I've come across a version from 1982. I can't find a copy of it on Atarimania or A8SP.

The trouble is I can't get either version to run in Altirra.

Here's the atr.

PokeyPlayer.ATR

phaeron · December 8, 2022

The programs in the above disk are truncated -- see the original Pokey Player I listing in AtariMania's copy of SoftSide volume 6, number 1:

http://www.atarimania.com/mags/pdf/SoftSide_Vol_6_No_01.pdf

The copy on the disk stops at the end of page 69.

Madi · December 8, 2022

Pokey Player II (Disk side A)

SoftSide (1982-12) (1982-12)(SoftSide Publications)(US)[disk].zip