SoundMonitor

About

Soundmonitor was one of the earliest music tracker programs created for the Commodore 64 in the mid-1980s.

It was developed by Chris Hülsbeck around 1986 and allowed musicians to compose music using the C64’s built-in SID 6581 sound chip. Instead of writing music in complex machine code, users could arrange notes in a step-based, pattern format — a concept that later became standard in tracker software.

Soundmonitor was important because it made C64 music composition more accessible and influenced later tracker systems on other computers, including the Amiga. It was widely used in the demoscene and in early game music production.

In short, Soundmonitor was a pioneering C64 music editor that helped shape the tracker music tradition.

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