Compo info: CSDb
Listening: YouTube
Info
The Nonstandard Time Signature Compo was a yearly music compo held on the Commodore 64 demoscene website CSDb from 2016 to 2021 (though the final one only had a single entry) to write original C64 songs in a time signature besides 4/4 or 3/4. I listened to the first three years of these way back in 2019, but then I failed to keep up with the subsequent installments. I was going through some music and remembered that this was a thing that existed, and I ended up finding an incredibly cool song in the 2020 compo, so I figured I might as well properly listen to the years that I missed.
Commodore 64 music lives in a weird place for me because I like the SID sound chip—it has an interestingly harsh/crunchy tone and filter capabilities unlike its contemporaries—and a lot of the technicality behind pushing extra polyphony and cool sound design is really something else, but beyond that I find the vast majority of the music written for it to be kinda boring. Just in my experience, even though it wasn’t necessarily less capable in this regard than other chiptune systems, C64 composers seem to very infrequently delve into extended or unexpected harmonies, unusual tonalities, polyrhythms, all the stuff I mention here constantly because whenever I hear them in a song I immediately dart my head like I just saw a squirrel.
Thinking about that is actually how I ended up finding this compo in the first place years ago: I realized I literally could not think of a single piece of C64 music with odd time in it, so I punched something along the lines of “commodore 64 odd time signature” into Google, and the compo was one of the results!
I don’t really remember how much I liked the first three compos, but I only kept a single entry from each, so I guess I wasn’t super impressed at the time. This one was pretty good, though! Like, this may legitimately be my favorite overall “set of C64 music” of all time now, however a set is defined here. Some really cool sound design, some good chords, some very weird bullshit, etc. And several more classic-sounding tunes too, it’s not all goofy nonsense, but there’s definitely more goofy nonsense than I was expecting there to be. It’s just nice hearing areas being explored that I’ve always felt could’ve been explored but which I hadn’t personally ever run across before.
Recommended tracks:
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“I Am 10 Minutes Older Than Dirt and My Light Is Flickering” (Linus) hits some nice tonal jumps, reminds me a bit of coda I think
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“Music Box” (Shogoon) hits a bunch of sounds I have never heard come out of a Commodore 64 before
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“Rippin’ Off The Most Jazzy Lads Around As I Didn’t Come Up With Any Fresh Idea On My Own, Sigh.” (Jammer) is the fusioniest I’ve ever heard someone who’s not kulor get on this system
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“Predominant” (Deetsay) is the weirdest track of the compo, alternating between dark techno rave and cute but off-kilter swinginess
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