My Favorite SID Tunes by Laxity

Thomas Egeskov Petersen, known as Laxity in the European C64 demo scene, composed more than 200 SID tunes on the Commodore 64 from 1987 and up, most of them in his own music player.

Question: SID tunes? What's that?

SID tunes are chiptunes created on the Commodore 64, or an emulation of the C64 or its SID chip.

The SID chip in the Commodore 64 was quite advanced in 1982. It had three channels across eight octaves, ADSR, four different waveforms, pulsating on the square waveform, three ring modulators, and multi mode filtering. The music players written for it were usually called 50 times a second, quickly changing waveforms and frequencies to simulate vibrato, drums and arpeggio chords.

I’ve been listening through all of Laxity’s tunes in the latest High Voltage SID Collection which was at #65 at the time of publishing this blog post. I selected more than 180 tunes I liked and created stereo MP3 files for easy listening here. You could call it sort of “Laxity’s Greatest Hits” as compiled by JCH.

21.G4 Demo Tune #1
2005 Vibrants / Maniacs of Noise
One of three demo tunes Laxity made to test music player v21.G4 for my music editor.

21.G4 Demo Tune #2
2005 Vibrants / Maniacs of Noise

21.G4 Demo Tune #3
2005 Vibrants / Maniacs of Noise

2000 A.D.
1987 Wizax
Made in Rob Hubbard’s music player.

3545 II
1988 2000 A.D.
Made in Rob Hubbard’s music player.

A Trace of Space
2005 Maniacs of Noise

Adventure
1989 Flexible Arts

The Alibi
1989 Maniacs of Noise ADLIB SB
I converted this to both AdLib and Sound Blaster in 1992.

Anne-Louise
1988-90 Flexible Arts

Arabian
1989 Flexible Arts

Atmo Spherical
1990 Vibrants

Atom Rock
1989 Flexible Arts

Ausfahrt Asia
2010 Recollection
Composed in SID Factory, Laxity’s own C64 music editor.

Axel F
1988-90 Flexible Arts
Conversion of “Axel F” by Harold Faltermeyer.

Basics
1990-92 Vibrants

Beastie Boys Intro Music
1988 2000 A.D.
The title refers to a demo group in the C64 scene, not the American hip-hop group.

Beat the Shit 3
1988-90 Flexible Arts

Beginning
1993 Vibrants

Blue Blop
1993 Vibrants

Boney
1990 Vibrants

Bossa Nova
1989 Starion

Break Free (Tune #1)
1990 Vibrants

Break Free (Tune #2)
1990 Vibrants

Break Free (Tune #5)
1990 Vibrants

Break Free (Tune #6)
1990 Vibrants

Break Free (Tune #7)
1990 Vibrants

Bright
1989 Flexible Arts

Broken Ass
1988 Zetrex
Made in RockMonitor. Features a fourth channel with digital drum samples.

Complete 2
1989 Flexible Arts

Cool Kaffe
1990 Vibrants
The title is Danish and translates to “Cool Coffee” in English.

Coop 6581
2013 Onslaught / Wrath Designs
Composed in SID Factory, Laxity’s own C64 music editor.

Crosswords
1988 Starion

Depressed
1988 2000 A.D.

Digidag
1987 Zetrex
Made in Rob Hubbard’s music player. A fourth digi track starts at 1:01.

DNA Warrior (Tune #1)
1989 Flexible Arts / Artronic
Cooperation between Future Freak and Laxity. Used in the C64 shoot’em up DNA Warrior by Artronic.

Remix: Click

DNA Warrior (Tune #3)
1989 Flexible Arts / Artronic

Remix: Click

DNA Warrior (Tune #5)
1989 Flexible Arts / Artronic

Continued on page 2. There’s a page selector below.

2 comments on “My Favorite SID Tunes by Laxity

  1. Great! “Zimxusaf I” is one of my absolute favourites – I wonder what the title means though ??! 🙂

  2. Never heard “Fairly Green” before – shows me that Laxity is the jazz master 😀

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