Ed for Prophet 5

[chysn]

Ed for Prophet 5 is an upcoming editor/librarian for the Sequential Prophet 5 (and Prophet 10) Rev. 4 analog synthesizer.

The original Prophet 5 (1979-1984) and the VIC-20 (1981-1985) were contemporaneous products; but as far as I know, they never spoke, not in any serious way. The latest Prophet 5 has a decent MIDI implementation, and I've developed a reliable Bluetooth MIDI interface and software system for the VIC-20.

So now it's time for the nichiest of all niche products, an editor-librarian package for the VIC-20/Prophet 5! It'll be on cartridge, leveraging the Jolly Cart platform, allowing me to put 8KB RAM on board for storage of an entire bank (40 programs) of sounds. Sounds can be edited in the VIC-20 and sent to the Prophet, or simply sent from the Prophet for backup purposes.

Ed for P5 will also feature program generation in several forms, including genetic (wherein the user specifies two "parent" programs, and multiple "child" programs are generated by pulling parameters from each parent). It will also feature a sequencer, or some other form of MIDI playback, so you can play sounds as you edit.

It should be ready by the end of December. I've been working on the design since March, and the hardware all year, so this will be my only new VIC-20 release of 2023. The basic functionality is done, and now I'm going into "Big Feature" mode.

[huffelduff]

Ed for Prophet 5 is an upcoming editor/librarian for the Sequential Prophet 5 (and Prophet 10) Rev. 4 analog synthesizer.

The original Prophet 5 (1979-1984) and the VIC-20 (1981-1985) were contemporaneous products; but as far as I know, they never spoke, not in any serious way. The latest Prophet 5 has a decent MIDI implementation, and I've developed a reliable Bluetooth MIDI interface and software system for the VIC-20.

So now it's time for the nichiest of all niche products, an editor-librarian package for the VIC-20/Prophet 5! It'll be on cartridge, leveraging the Jolly Cart platform, allowing me to put 8KB RAM on board for storage of an entire bank (40 programs) of sounds. Sounds can be edited in the VIC-20 and sent to the Prophet, or simply sent from the Prophet for backup purposes.

Ed for P5 will also feature program generation in several forms, including genetic (wherein the user specifies two "parent" programs, and multiple "child" programs are generated by pulling parameters from each parent). It will also feature a sequencer, or some other form of MIDI playback, so you can play sounds as you edit.

It should be ready by the end of December. I've been working on the design since March, and the hardware all year, so this will be my only new VIC-20 release of 2023. The basic functionality is done, and now I'm going into "Big Feature" mode.

Screen Shot 2023-12-04 at 10.56.06 AM.png
Screen Shot 2023-12-04 at 10.55.51 AM.png
Screen Shot 2023-12-04 at 10.55.15 AM.png
Screen Shot 2023-12-04 at 10.54.41 AM.png

Hi there Chysn,

Whoah a Prophet 5, what an amazing synthesizer.
I like the bar meters. Thanks for the code you posted.

I hope your project rocks the Prophet 5 world.

H

[javierglez]

Vic20 and music keyboards. Are you the 8 bit guy undercover. Anyway, it would be a good topic for one of his videos.

[chysn]

Vic20 and music keyboards. Are you the 8 bit guy undercover. Anyway, it would be a good topic for one of his videos.

Oh, yeah! Maybe I'll let him know about this when I'm done.

I hope your project rocks the Prophet 5 world.

Thank you. I expect that it might rock the Prophet-5-players-with-hardware-VIC-20s-set-up-in-the-same-room world, population: me. I sort of consider this performance art.

[beamrider]

wow I got to admire you on this..

The intersection of Prophet 5 and Vic-20 users must be very small

[chysn]

The intersection of Prophet 5 and Vic-20 users must be very small

No doubt! Not only that, but the package of cartridge, interface hardware, and printed manual will come in at around $100USD. But I bet at least one sells in 2024!

[Schlowski]

Every serious collector will need one.
Keep it a small run, wait a little bit and see the prices skyrocket on Ebay

[chysn]

Damn, this is a really fun feature. You choose two programs in the library (of up to 64 programs), and press "G", and a program is randomly generated based on the two chosen programs. Sometimes the result is nothing. But sometimes it's a really cool hybrid. I'm actually saving a lot of these results.

I want to sit around and play with this, but soon I must move on to disk operations. Tedious and boring work ahead. Blah. Good news is, I can basically crib from the ZEPTOPOLIS cartridge disk code. But it's still way more dull than playing with what I've already done.

I'm on schedule to get this thing wrapped up over the next week, though.

I like the way that the hybrid program names turn out, too:

[mathom]

The intersection of Prophet 5 and Vic-20 users must be very small

No doubt! Not only that, but the package of cartridge, interface hardware, and printed manual will come in at around $100USD. But I bet at least one sells in 2024!

Now if you produced a version for the Casio CZ line...

[chysn]

Now if you produced a version for the Casio CZ line...

I used to have a CZ-101, and if I still had it I'd totally do that.

[mathom]

I used to have a CZ-101, and if I still had it I'd totally do that.

Ha! That is exactly what I have sitting here. It's been on my project list for a long time to do an editor for it. I NEVER thought about doing it on the VIC. I have one of the Retro Innovations VIC MIDI boards so I have all the pieces. I guess I'll move this up on the list.

[chysn]

I've added the sequencer functionality. It's super-simple, because the idea is just to have notes playing as you edit. Hold down Commodore and press RUN/STOP to record. Then, RUN/STOP by itself toggles between... well... run and stop.

I have 2.5K left in the project to build a file manager. No problem. Then the huge "tear it all down and rewrite the code" part of the project.

I used to have a CZ-101, and if I still had it I'd totally do that.

Ha! That is exactly what I have sitting here. It's been on my project list for a long time to do an editor for it. I NEVER thought about doing it on the VIC. I have one of the Retro Innovations VIC MIDI boards so I have all the pieces. I guess I'll move this up on the list.

If you do want to write MIDI software for the VIC-20, I'd encourage you to consider targeting my MIDI interface rather than the Retro Innovations one. It's open source, uses the user port, can be built with ten bucks worth of parts, and has an easy-to-use "MIDI KERNAL" behind it for receiving and building MIDI messages. The connectors can be anything, traditional DIN, 3.5mm, or Bluetooth*. I'm planning a BASIC extension to drive it, too. I think it's going to become the de facto MIDI interface for the VIC-20.
________________
* Although Bluetooth brings the parts total up to $40.

[chysn]

To increase the generative possibilities, I've introduced a "Mutation" feature. Instead of simply picking one value from each seed, Mutation will introduce between zero and ten random parameter changes to the generated program. One interesting use of this is that you can use the same program for both seeds, and create a subtle (or not) variation of it with Mutation.

I've started the disk operations. This is going to be fairly simple. I forgot that ZEPTOPOLIS didn't really need much storage, so I was able to devote over 2K to the directory. I can't do that this time, so the user will just have to specify the filename. I might use some sort of "save slot" system, like old-fashioned console games used* to keep it simple.

________________
* I dunno, maybe they still do this. My last console was a Wii.

[chysn]

Ed for Prophet 5 is functionally complete, in terms of the originally-planned features.

I have about 1.5K remaining, so I plan to add some more library management features. Probably some sort of high-level selector, with a good way to move programs around more freely. There's currently a Copy utility, but it might be tedious if you want to re-organize lots of things.

Other than that, it'll be a lot of testing and revision. The 8K RAM chips should be here in a few days, and the cartridge labels in a week or so.

[chysn]

Here's the new Library View. It's a high-level overview of your library in memory, so you can make sure the programs are in the desired order, are going to the right locations in the instrument, etc. To get to it, it's Commodore+Function key, for four pages. You drill down to the selected program with RETURN.

This view only used a couple hundred bytes, so I've got more to think about doing. It's probably going to be some kind of Undo. I'll see how much RAM I can cobble together for a good number of Undo levels.

Update: The magic number was 64 levels of Undo for parameter changes. Undo is activated with Commodore-Z. 1K left!