Post #1430029

2026-04-19 17:51 UTC

Okay. So this post should make @FreakyFwoof@universeodon.com and @batworx@mastodon.africa either very happy, very pissed, or something. They should at least be amused. Early this morning I decided to give Claude a crack at figuring out what was wrong with an Apple II program from 1978. The program is called Appleodion, and the file I sent Claude plays three Bach fugues. Part of the third fugue is corrupted. Amazingly, Claude was able to deduce the entirely undocumented (except in the Integer BASIC composer program which I hadn't yet sent it) format of the music data. It correctly identified the problem and recovered what it could. Then I got to thinking it'd be cool to be able to convert between Appleodion and MIDI. So I sent it the BASIC source code for the composer program, and it wrote a few scripts for me. There are a few things wrong, but it basically works. I took the #NVDAComposer version of "Bouncing Round the Classroom" and converted it to Appleodion music data. Before you play this, please be aware that the whole thing is just a bit flat (this program from 1978 isn't exactly concert pitch!) and a few notes are wrong, most noticeably with the highest notes. This ancient program has an approx. four-octave range, so any notes outside of this range are clamped to the nearest allowable note. Also the tempo is much, much slower than it should be. But for a program from 1978 to be able to play this song at all is something else. So, here we go with…Calmly Walking Around the Classroom? You decide.

Replies (6)

@jaybird110127@dragonscave.space 2026-04-19 18:29

Re last: Just for kicks, I took the MIDI conversion of the original Bach Fugues binary which got this whole project started in the first place, imported it into #NVDAComposer, transposed, and adjusted the tempo so it sounds almost like it would have on the original hardware. Note that the original Appleodion program lets you use six different voice timbres which, of course, is not reproduced here. This text file is way too long to post on my instance, but if anyone wants it, here's a Dropbox link. https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/1amkkvsaekmivg39wa20d/bach.txt?rlkey=6z38sol142ox8ti6yh9wjr7ah&dl=1 @FreakyFwoof@universeodon.com @batworx@mastodon.africa

Open ##1430028
@FreakyFwoof@universeodon.com 2026-04-19 17:52

@jaybird110127@dragonscave.space @batworx@mastodon.africa Now port NVDAComposer to Apple II.

Open ##3049738
@FreakyFwoof@universeodon.com 2026-04-19 17:53

@jaybird110127@dragonscave.space @batworx@mastodon.africa It does help you understand the unnecessarily sick complexity that Gavin put into this. I mean that's totally get paid worthy honestly. The original, I mean. I go back to this and still think it is 100% a work of art.

Open ##3049741
@pitermach@dragonscave.space 2026-04-19 17:57

@jaybird110127@dragonscave.space @FreakyFwoof@universeodon.com @batworx@mastodon.africa Oh man it's trying to do those arps soooo hard except everything is at half speed and not quite in tempo. It's like you went to a friend's house who had a c64, heard the kind of music and composition style people did back in the day at least in Europe, but then your mom says but we have a sid chip at home. This is the SID chip at home.

Open ##3049743
@remixman@kind.social 2026-04-19 18:06

@jaybird110127@dragonscave.space @FreakyFwoof@universeodon.com @batworx@mastodon.africa What's the original like?

Open ##3049746
@jcast432@mastodon.social 2026-04-19 20:52

@jaybird110127@dragonscave.space @FreakyFwoof@universeodon.com @batworx@mastodon.africa Oh, this just tickles me! Calmly walking around the classroom, indeed! Thank you for your creativity!

Open ##3049749