Ubik's Musik

Ubik's Musik

Creator	Dave Korn
Released	1987-0?-??
Platform	Commodore 64

For the example songs, see Ubik's Musik (C64).

Ubik's Musik is a Commodore 64 music and sound editor sold for £2.99 by Firebird. It remained popular up to the early 1990s, if almost exclusively in the UK.

At its release, Ubik's Musik was closest to Rob Hubbard's driver. It was the first editor to support his logarithmic vibratos, waveform swaps and then-new wavetable drums (although you could only use Korn's 8 fixed ones), and possibly the first driver to support echoes, where the sustain level is decreased (or increased) on every note. On every note, you can also decide whether to restart the modulations.

Unfortunately, entering a song is very tedious. Not so much because of the hexadecimal system, but more because commands are typed at a different screen position from where it is supposed to be placed, which in turn adds some cryptic key presses. Also, to restart the ADSR, you have to enter separate note-off commands with their own durations, and deduct these durations from the note-on duration. Of course, this does not apply to ties and arpeggios.

You can edit and save 26 songs and 32 instruments. Songs can also be used as sound effects; in fact, game programmers can call the driver to play a song on two voices and a sound effect on another voice. The editor is also efficient as it keeps all tracks and patterns small and tight. Most Ubik's Musik game soundtracks are around 7 KB.