Commander X16

I've been telling myself for a while now that I'm going to run an FM workshop for the Commander X16. I think the YM2151 has a bit of a bad rep as being "hard to work with" that just isn't deserved. Yes, there's a lot to know to get the full power of the chip to work for you, but it's really not that hard to make it play music if you take the instrument design out of the picture by using existing instrument files. I'd like to help people become more familiar with the YM2151 at least to the point where they feel like they can use it to make basic sounds for use in their programs.

My thinking is that I would like to start off with a scripted presentation with a basic overview and work our way down the iceberg so that folks interested in the basics can get what they need right away. Then stick around for geeking out on the deeper aspects of the YM such as how the registers work, and how to design instruments in tools such as Deflemask and actually import them to the X16 for use with your own music format. There's a lot of ways to go with this, and obviously not enough time to cover everything. Plus, I'm not a musical expert by any stretch, so don't expect to watch me compose a chip tune in real time or anything like that.

I mostly just want to share the knowledge I've amassed about this chip over the past 2 years of geeking out over it, and hopefully inspire others to love the FM the way I do.

I'd be planning for some time mid-November if the interest is there, as I want to get some practice with the streaming tools and swapping between windows and talking and such w/o too much dead air or "ummms" and "uhhhhs"

Does this even interest you folks out there?