How Does This Sound So GOOD?

[@ActionRetro]

Shargeek 140 Official website link: bit.ly/4ckFIcz Amazon link: amzn.to/3AiiEhn Sharge Disk Official website link: bit.ly/4dhOppw Amazon link: amzn.to/3SFViIU

[@codyisrude]

These macs truly were amazing for music creation

[@realbenactually]

There’s a little black dot on your wall. I caught myself three times trying to clean it off my screen.

[@mikepartin571]

I'm not a musician, I play bass... As a fellow nerd and bass player, that was simultaneously hilarious and hurty.

[@fuelvolts]

Well, he did pronounce arpeggio as "are-preh-jee-yoo". So not a musician checks out. 😂

[@kloroformd]

As just some nerdy guy with a friend group mostly comprised of musically inclined individuals that I did websites for 20 years ago... the bass player was the butt of the joke until the keyboardist didn't get put back on the stage in time from his crowd surf. And there was no way to pause the iPod. Oh no.

[@spaceghostmiid]

@@fuelvolts i have horrible news for you... that's the proper pronunciation.

[@markdaga1711]

@@spaceghostmiid It's Are-pej-ee-oh not are-preh-jee-you

[@hardlyworgen71]

I look forward to all the bass players leaving comments.

[@SullySadface]

If you can hear them, the bass is too loud 👀

[@sirram_e]

​@@SullySadface one of my mentors used to say "bass is like salt... you won't notice it if its there... you'll notice it if its not there"

[@_mnejing]

Davie504 and Charles Berthoud would like a word!

[@DJKr15py]

​@@_mnejing if you like them check out Nathan Navarro

[@esra_erimez]

Wow, after my dad Laurie Spiegel has been a huge inspiration to me. I didn't think anyone else know who she is

[@greatquux]

Oh we know!! Love experimental electronic music. And drugs!

[@OfficialJaska]

Bro!!!!

[@SockyNoob]

I had to look her up. She seems amazing.

[@bobsawey]

me too! this is incredible

[@FurbleFawks]

Yes! More music experimentation with old hardware, please. This was great.

[@ErnieDulanowsky]

Music Mouse was also available for the Amiga, and benefited from the Amiga's superior sound architecture. I keep an Amiga 500 around just to run Music Mouse. Also, you should probably learn about MIDI...

[@joeconti2396]

at 7:56 my eyes absolutely lit up. That sounds INCREDIBLE

[@radish64]

we're one step closer to macintosh shoegaze

[@lilymakesnoise]

someone already made wii shoegaze

[@alc5440]

It's wild how good that sounds going through the guitar petal.

[@willm5032]

And through a practice amp ha

[@kaitlyn__L]

@@willm5032 tbh room-sound from a cheap amp often helps make these kinds of sounds way more textured and interesting

[@Ramza042]

A bass player, a sax player and a drummer get into a taxi cab. Which one is the musician? The cab driver. What's the difference between a bassist and a pizza? Pizza can feed a family of 4. How can you tell if your drummer's kit is level on stage? He's drooling from both sides of his mouth. :)

[@madvillainelle4009]

What a great little piece of oddware.

[@infraviolet]

that bass player comment at the start killed me. how could i endure such slander from one of my own people

[@SamwiseOutdoors]

Such anti-bass sentiment from a guy with a strong Stuart Hamm vibe is jarring!

[@Fay7666]

idk if I believe him, the video lacked an exaggerated "OMG" and the most monotone "lmao" possible.

[@DissociatedWomenIncorporated]

Such treachery cannot be taken lightly… you must assemble the Council.

[@brianlindgren1445]

Laurie Spiegel's (amazing) album Unseen Worlds was composed using Music Mouse & a TX816 FM synthesizer. Thx for sharing this important & often overlooked piece of retro computing & music tech history! one of my fav action retro vids yet :)

[@hackthis02]

When you started playing with the petal, it gave me hard 'The Outer Wilds' vibes.

[@DarrenLandrum]

Ah! Laurie Spiegel! I have her first album!

[@xard64]

5:52 Normally Velocity tracks the "loudness" of a midi note by measuring the time from a key being up and then being hit down: the faster the travel was the more force the key press had. As the velocity is measured only once for note it cannot be used to modify the sound without lifting the key and pressing it again. After Touch is an additional (often high end) mechanism which allows key pressure measurement after pressing a key (hence the name). Usually After Touch is used as more intuitive way of handling modulation wheel features: for example adding more vibrato to pad sound with a delay by just pressing the keys more over time is very easy compared to using a traditional modulation wheel for the effect. After Touch comes in two variants: the regular, where a single source of After Touch value is shared between all keys. The key with the most pressure dictates the output value of the After Touch. Then there is the After Multi Touch variant where each key has an individual pressure value.

[@TheAwey21]

I WAS NOT EXPECTING IT TO SOUND THIS GOOD WTF

[@MaggieKeizai]

OK, this is incredible. I'm a MIDI nerd who got a Mac SE and all the MIDI trimmings for it, and I never knew about this program. Can't wait to try this out.

[@rjpete66]

When some of my favourite channels collide.

[@japhyriddle]

While I truly appreciate that there’s an internal speaker option, I think it's so much more fun to use Music Mouse with MIDI. I sometimes hook my SE up to a Roland MT-100 (very similar to the classic MT-32), and just let it go wild. You can route each voice to a different MIDI channel and have them all trigger different instruments. It’s a hoot having drum sounds accompany the notes.

[@BlakeBarrett]

Emily’s channel is fantastic! I’m sure she’ll dig the shout out. Keep up the good work! 🖥️

[@itdtv2510]

Yay! It's a guitar pedal channel now!

[@GarthBeagle]

What a cool program! In this setup you've made here, it reminds me of an Omnichord

[@fractalMD]

Hi! It's Amy! VCFMW!!!!

[@GarthBeagle]

@@fractalMD woo hoo!!!

[@theproudtransyuri]

lets go. Omnichord nerd here. i wish i will find one someday

[@FaithyJo]

That... Its the ringing/chorus/music i hear when I'm on a sick one. The sound of angels! 😮

[@TrackZeroFutzin]

I’ve got to wonder what the Action Retro/Emily Hopkins crossover audience size is. It might just be us.

[@Hans-KRC]

There are... dozens of us!

[@kaitlyn__L]

I'm one too! I was leaving obnoxious comments suggesting he slightly re-chop the intro music to beat-match with the intro animation, when the channel had like 5k subs or something lol.

[@draygosmith]

Another fan of totally normal computing and Harp Lady here!

[@pafawag5b6b5b]

i cannot even describe what i felt in the moment when it made the first sounds using the pedal, that sounded so fucking good

[@JohnVance]

Man this is inspiring, I've got a Mac Plus, and I like ambient music...

[@SCUBAelement-Intl]

Wow so cool, some really good sounding chillstep and melodic dubstep tones and patterns

[@ericwazhung]

This is really quite awesome, all 'round, Sean. Thanks for going to such great lengths with the links in the description, too.

[@michaelsavage554]

This rules! Bass player here. Would love to see you do more retro music hardware/software vids!!

[@megatronskneecap]

This+TheCursedSE/30+Somegoodexternalspeakers would go *HARD*

[@brianlindgren1445]

My thoughts exactly!

[@shaneallendunn]

Been watching for a long time but usually quiet. This is amazing and the sound's from that pedal are crazy good. Definitely a favorite video... keep it up and you should explore music on here more.

[@BollingHolt]

... and sitting right behind me is my (one of my) 1986 Mac Plus also with four megs of RAM ;)

[@BigBadBench]

This was super cool! You do a lot of entertaining stuff, but i think this is one of your best videos. Awesome sounds!

[@lumpytapioca5062]

I had that setup, a Mac Plus and Music Mouse, in 1986. Connected it to Alesis HR16 drums and a Yamaha FB01 FM voice. Wonderfully fun.

[@murdockscott]

I still have my floppy and manual for Music Mouse which I used to run on my 512Ke back in the 80’s. It was innovative for sure but I never really found much use for it beyond being fun and perhaps as an educational experience. I wonder if playing around with it helped develop my understanding of musicality a bit. The internal sound of the Mac is fun, but as you mention, it really shines when you get it hooked up to an external midi device! (FYI, after touch is a midi function for modulating sounds usually generated by pressing keys) Controlling external gear was almost certainly the primary motivation for her creating Music Mouse and the ability to use the sound from the Mac was included as a reference, or to let a wider range of people enjoy the software. Other amazing Mac-centric music software included things like TurboSynth, Softsynth and Performer. Early Mac music software is fascinating and is often overlooked as a driving factor to the success of the Mac.

[@Simon-ui6db]

What an impressive bit of software, and kudos for the casio cz-101 setting too. Bet that would sound amazing through one of them old synths.Needs a modern fl studio vst for this.

[@ktnjared]

Absolutely incredible! And the sound through the peddle immediately made me think of the score to Hyper Light Drifter or Fez or any other kind of works from disasterpiece. Simply mindblowing!

[@williambaldwin9487]

This is the coolest thing I've seen in a long time! Can't wait to check out the software myself

[@marknhopgood]

Just in case anyone is thinking of taking up music, the pedal or effects aleays make the sound amazing. Love the video. So joyous!

[@TheParachutePeople]

David Holowitz needs to try this.

[@FurbleFawks]

Omg yes! I thought about David as soon as I heard the guitar pedal sounds.

[@QueerFam744]

Emily is super awesome. You should drop in one of her live chats when they pop up. Thanks for sharing!

[@ActionRetro]

I'm usually in there listening haha

[@Kizamime]

this is super cool! I’d love to see more music themed videos from you

[@Xe4ro]

Very chill, could let this play in a loop for a few hours :3

[@pteleac3537]

This video has inspired me to get back into tinkering with music stuff. Really awesome demonstration!

[@1BitFeverDreams]

thanks for sharing this! love the match between your music side's piece of equipment and my all-time favorite mac plus

[@docsnavely1010]

The music you made would fit perfect as a background track for any of retail archeology’s videos.

[@ruadeil_zabelin]

You cant aftertouch on a mouse. That's a midi keyboard feature, and a lot of cheaper keyboards dont even have support for it.

[@SymbioticHat]

Please tell me where you got this shirt! Seeing that image unlocked a core memory.

[@GuyJames]

"I'm not a musician: I play bass" 🤣

[@BenInSeattle]

I just learned about Laurie Spiegel earlier this year when I was researching the Voyager Golden Disk, the record we sent to outerspace in the 1970s, and discovered that Spiegel had composed the opening music for it based on the orbits of our solar system. Check out her Waveshaper interviews.

[@_mnejing]

Woah wait, the settings you had with the pedal right at the start was bordering on EDM-tier. That was really cool. I suddenly really felt like getting this software and doing silly stuff. It just kept getting cooler and cooler. The fact that this came out in the 80s is insane. My aunt handed us down a Mac Plus in the early 90s before I got my first PC in 93, and I thought the best it could do was play solitaire. If I knew I could have done stuff like this....

[@stephanemignot100]

I'm a drummer, I'm not an artist, I'm a technician ^

[@christophermcdonald5578]

I watch the "Chesty harp lady" also. Didn't know you were a fan!

[@O.V.]

This is awesome! I might mess around with this program a bit myself

[@helldog3105]

That made the hairs on my neck stand up. I have never heard this before, but It's almost like something I hear in my dreams from time to time. The resemblance is uncanny and unsettling to me. But I love this style of old school synth music. I remember when I was introduced to Suzanne Ciani. I believe she was a pioneer in the field of making synthesized music dating back to the late 60's or early 70's. What amazing music all of these artists make. And I understand the I'm not a musician comment. I'm not either. I play the drums.

[@retropuffer2986]

Awesome idea!

[@quickkennedy3226]

I got that enclosure a few weeks ago and I gotta tell you it is actually really fucking cool, and I use it to test the same OS across lots of hardware. It's super convenient when you don't have an m.2 slot but need m.2 speeds

[@ronsteed]

I think we need an Action Retro theme song! Nice post.

[@Emerald_Coast_Bonsai]

PLEASE make an album with this!!!

[@gentlemanbirdlake]

Recommend try to get a copy of HyperPrism running on a Quadra with an Audiomedia card for some mouse driven realtime modulated audio effects. The ‘blue window’ - then you have a retro mac that becomes the guitar pedal, or patched in series with them.

[@bthjf12003]

Need to get this Mac Plus on midi so it can play with you through mixing on the bass .

[@paulconnolly4483]

If you use a midi interface and connect it to an external sound module you will understand why the midi option was important.

[@channelite]

Cool video, there is an ios app called arpeggionome that is similar. Glad to see music software on this channel. Old macs and midi are a great combination!

[@apollolux]

That looks and sounds like a super groovy music program that I wish I had on the C64 as a kid!

[@DavidStahlOLDHAPPyMACs]

That’ is really something Sean would not expect that from the Macplus

[@jasons6491]

Just found your channel and love it! We had a Mac Plus when I was a kid and I still do art in MacDraw II today using the Mini vMac emulator. I love how so much on these old computers can still hold up in modern times. I never used Music Mouse, but I do recall having a lot of fun with a program called Musictime, I think it was. P.S. Is your shirt from this video going to be available on your store, or did you get it somewhere else? I've had that "About Finder" mountain sunset burned into my brain since I was a kid and it hits me with nostalgia every time.

[@BenInSeattle]

Does anyone know where other version of Music Mouse can be found? The link to Mac Garden only has version 2.0.2 (1989), but there were versions of it from the original 512K version in 1985 and v1.0 in 1986 to the final v2.1.2 in 1998. (And in 2005 Spiegel released "v2.1.2 Classic" which was tweaked for OS X's "Classic" mode and used QuickTime instead of MIDI).

[@samuelbanya]

Sounds like a Casio CZ keyboard going through slight phaser with heavy reverb. I feel like you can do this with an emulated Mac on Linux and patch it up with Jack audio to further manipulate the sound in Ardour or something.

[@kinglocar]

Bummer. No luck getting 2.0.2 running on a Mac Classic II. Bombs out in 7.0.1 to 7.5. The demo version for OS9 did work on my mini 4G, but you have a 5min time limit to play with the software. Any way to register?

[@arkanewizdom9363]

Thoroughly enjoyed this! Has this software been ported?

[@2dfx]

1:02 Things Sean also likes: -MagicMatch Jukebox, his favourite audio player -The Sound of Magic, his favourite film -Now That's What I call Magic!, his favourite CD -MTV (Magic Television)

[@BradleyBrown]

That was neat and kind of mesmerizing.

[@molten_software]

Oh my god dude... Kind of want to hook a gameboy or a NES up to a distortion pedal after that

[@john1ptak]

This is so rad!

[@mickikaufman5360]

cool to see music mouse’s laurie spiegel get her due!

[@kaitlyn__L]

Phew! Thankfully I only got round to bass last after getting back into keys and sax. So I think that makes me more amateur musician than not :P Anyway, this thing sounds lovely. I love synths through amps and recording the room sound.

[@martinleger3435]

Ok, now you need to do a collab with LOOK MUM NO COMPUTER for the UK!

[@TaijanDean]

Amazing stuff! I have a similar hardware accessory for my Mac Plus called "MacRecorder." It essentially adds a microphone to the Mac and comes bundled with "SoundEdit" which, as the name suggests, is a sound editing application. You can record up to 22KHz of 8- bit audio and it sounds fantastic. The best part about it is the fact that it has a Mic input port which I can connect a phone, CD player or just about anything to and I can record onto the Mac itself... or at least its RAM which I can then save to an external Hard Drive. I've put all kinds of tunes on there, the only limiting factor being the Mac Plus' 4MB of RAM which limits the length of the recording at certain qualities, only a minute and a half or so at the full 22KHz but around 5 minutes for 5KHz. It might just be my favourite addon for the Mac yet and it is quite rare to find in box with the manuals and software.

[@NJRoadfan]

Good News. Someone just cloned the MacRecorder!

[@MarkTengPhoto]

This is fascinating. Do musicians still use software like this today?

[@Daudran]

Awesome!

[@neeneko]

Huh. I wonder if there is a historical connection between this and Douglas Adam's Dirk Gently books. Algorithmically generated music on a mac was one of the plot elements.

[@ValentinKovshikMusic]

There is an online emulator of this software. Great stuff!

[@foxtee2804]

I just KNOW aphex twin probably used this back in the day, sound awesome!

[@nomadic_shadow]

Genius app. I'll have to try this out.

[@subynut]

That's super cool!

[@szr8]

4:25 Is it me or does that sound really similar to Galaga music (might this Mac have a similar synth chip?)

[@AlsGeekLab]

What monitors would you recommend instead? I currently have a 24" and a 20" and it sucks. My workloads include coding, web browsing, email and always viewable slack/WhatsApp/terminal for monitoring servers

[@Sceneemofemboy0666]

You could make a song for a old NES, Master System/Game Gear and Game Boy music with this combo, i don't know, i feel that vibes

[@Aeduo]

I think for that sharge disk I'd prefer a metal passive cooler. But yeah I like this old computer music/synthesis stuff.

[@horstdunoch3546]

Portamento is when notes wil glide into each other instead of just being played one after the other

[@EposVox]

This is sick

[@EricsEdgeVideos]

THAT WAS SO COOL!

[@1plus68hehe]

1:51 I do NOT need the fancy USB drive I do NOT need the fancy USB drive I do NOT need the fancy USB drive I do NOT need the fancy USB drive I do NOT need the fancy USB drive I do NOT need the fancy USB drive

[@michaelsilverman341]

@emilyharpist - good shout out! Your Mac synth is belong to us. I love it. I have always wondered - DO THERE EXIST MACINTOSH DAWS, OR CAN A LINUX DAW BE INSTALLED IN A MACINTOSH PLUS???????

[@kobalt_ren01]

Really wasn't expecting an Old Blood Noise Endeavours pedal here of all places hahaha

[@mercury0x000d]

This sounds like something I'd expect to see in a Wintergatan concert. :)

[@zwallop]

Wow! Some of that sounds like something out of the Blade Runner soundtrack by Vangelis.

[@kevin34ct]

I saw that it can use a CZ-101. I still have that keyboard.

[@awsomewe360]

Man, I Love Fish!