Miscellanea

Music

I just love music since an early age.

My double interest for electronics and music has lead quite unsurprisingly to spend some times on toys such as MIDI protocol and expanses, sequencers, synthesizers and stuff like that. I do not have a very developed composing vein, you can find here some music pieces written or somehow adapted by myself. I wrote some articles here and there.

The sounds samples come from E-mu Proteus/1 and Proteus/2, a Yamaha P50-m, some virtual instruments from Apple, Arturia, Spitfire Audio and UVI, a Roland digital piano as well as a GEM S2 keyboard.


	My Soundcloud page (opened in 2020) I opened in 2020 a page on Soundcloud. I will publish there some new and old piece of music.
	New Star (2023) En Electronic music piece, with a touch of classical strings orchestra. If you want to support me, you can buy a digital download with high-resolution AIFF and MP3 files here.
	Catacombs (2023) I bought in 2023 an E-mu Proteus/1. I already have a Proteus/2 since 1996. This track is an exploration of what I could do using both expanders together.
	Silk Dust Original Soundtrack (2022-2023) I wrote a soundtrack for my text adventure game Silk Dust (see below). You can stream it on SoundCloud, or buy it on Itch.io (16bit 44.1kHz AIFF or 24bit 192kHz FLAC)
	The problem of the musical scale (2002-2007) Building a musical scale has not been an easy task. In this article, I describe briefly the path that lead to the modern tempered system for the tune of musical instruments. I present the mathematical rules useful to obtain the chromatic scale as well as the cents scale.
	How to exchange musical samples via the MIDI SDS protocol (2003) The MIDI SDS (Sample Dump Standard) is a protocol developed at the end of 1980's to allow different musical instruments to exchange sound samples via a MIDI link. I wrote a small command line utility for Microsoft Windows, to send a WAV file with this protocol to a keyboard or a MIDI expander able to understand this format.
	belle.mp3 (3,4 MiB, 2005) Belle qui tiens ma vie is a very well known pavane, written at the end of XVI century by Thoinot Arbeau (anagram of Jehan Tabourot) and published in the Orchesographie book, a sort of renaissance dance handbook. It is the only piece which is completely harmonized for four voices. A pavane is traditionally a slow tempo dance, written in a two beat measure. Here I propose a version which is quite far from the original for what it concerns the rhythm, the harmony (yes, consecutive fifths are for good) and orchestration. Far from being a philological work, it is more a kind of a fairy tale dream.
	tulip_ballad.mp3 (3,9 MiB, 2007) Sometimes, I am somehow attracted by minimalism in the style of Yann Tiersen. My tulip ballad is a small test in this direction. This piece is based on an irregular decomposition (3+3+3+3+2+2 sixteenths) of a four beats measure.
	bwv639.mp3 (3,8 MiB, 2007) An interpretation of a very well known Bach piece, the BWV639, from Orgelbéchlein. I do not try to do an historical interpretation, but just a thought to someone who is very far.

Programming

If you have already used my FidoCadJ (some of the links are also available in the Electronics section of this site), you might already have noticed that I have always been interested in programming. Here are some of my works.


	FidoCadJ (2008-2018) A Java editor for electrical circuits and technical drawings.
	Libraries for FidoCadJ Some libraries containing symbols for FidoCAD and FidoCadJ. The libraries have been published after their authors gave me the permission to do so.
	FidoReadJ (2007-2012) A Java applet useful for showing FidoCadJ drawing directly in the web browser.
	Silk Dust Third chapter of Emilia Vittorini's adventures, written 2020-2021 for the C64, Plus4, VIC-20+32KB, MS-DOS and many other computers
	The Queen's Footsteps Second chapter of Emilia Vittorini's adventures, written 2019-2020 for the C64, Plus4, VIC-20+32KB, MS-DOS and many other computers
	Two Days to the Race First chapter of Emilia Vittorini's adventures, written 2018-2019 for the C64, Plus4, VIC-20+32KB, MS-DOS and many other computers.
	The Innuh pyramid (2011-2018, it/en) A text adventure game, adapted from an article published in 1984 from the italian review MCmicrocomputer. It runs on many Commodre 8-bit computers.
	Alien Invasion: a VIC20 game written in 2018 A Space Invaders clone for the Commodore VIC20 written in 2018, developed completely in 6502 assembly language.
	Cavern Explorer, another modern VIC-20 game (2018) After the success of Alien Invasion, a new game for the unexpanded VIC-20 allows you to explore a vast cavern in the planet Zorf.
	3D maze for the Commodore 64 (2017) A simple game based on the exploration of a 3D maze, programmed in C and released in 2017.

Vintage stuff

Some vintage stuff I like...


	Olivetti M20 site (2005-2020) Since 2005, I am the webmaster of a website dedicated to the Olivetti M20. Yes, that picture on Wikipedia represents my computer.
	CPU and TED temperatures in a Commodore Plus/4 (2019) A controversial subject: are TED and CPU chips overheating in a Commodore Plus/4? Spoiler: Nope. This post contains a discussion I had with Bil Herd, the designer of the Plus/4.
	Sinclair ZX Spectrum (2017-2018) Playing with Clive Sinclair's masterpiece.
	Restoration of a Commodore VIC20 (2017) The restoration of a Commodore VIC20, my first computer. I also describe a modification for obtaining a S-Video output.
	HP9000/217 with HP7957B and HP9122 (2012-2018) Some pictures of the HP9000/217 workstation with HP7957B hard disk and HP9122 disk driver.
	Macintosh SE/30 from 1989 (2009) I spent some time to work on a SE/30 to clean and repair it. Now this computer, with some understandable difficulties, can browse the world wide web...
	Lancia Fulvia sedan from 1972 (2009) I own a Lancia Fulvia sedan from 1972, inscribed to the italian registry of historical cars. I uploaded in this article a few pictures.
	My MG TF 160 (2016-2020) I have a MG TF 160, a little british roadster which is a great fun to drive. Since I published this page, I received many emails with questions about the car. I tried to answer them the best I could.