Music from the Tandy/Radio Shack Color Computer 2 & 3

PMS...

The Pierce Martin Syndrome with myself (Bill Pierce) on guitar and John Martin on Keys, Flute and Sax.

We were playing on the main stage for the Pender County May Festival in Burgaw NC (?93-94?)

If you look real close, you'll see the Coco 3 sitting on the floor at the far end of the keyboard stand,

along with the small color TV. The Coco and Ultimuse3 are controlling 2 of the 3 keyboards,

supplying the bass, drums and orchestra. John is actually playing only one.

The power supplied for the stage was inadequate enough to run all

the equipment I had on stage. So after booting the Coco and starting UltiMusE3,

I had to turn the tv monitor off and run the computer blind just to be able to turn on the PA system.

Sometime around late 1984 or early 1985, I was working for Pine State milk company in Wilmington, North Carolina, as a route delivery man... yes my Kid belonged to the milkman ;-). I was at one of my stops and decided to run over to the Radio Shack store that was a few doors down. I went to get some adapters for my audio equipment. As I walked in the front door, I heard the now infamous but then strange version of "The William Tell Overture". Looking over to the stereo system it was coming from, I noticed a cable coming from behind and going over to the "Manager's Special" table. This cable was connected to a cartridge that was plugged into a small, white box with a typewriter keyboard built in. The box was then connected to a portable TV also sitting on the table. I asked the salesman, who was by now an old friend, as to the nature of the music and the box. He proceeded to tell me about the Color Computer 2 and the Orchestra 90cc. explaining that I could compose music with this thing in 5 voices over a 6 octave range. Being a working musician/guitarist, this thought hit me just where it needed to. I looked at the banner above the table and the 16k Standard Basic Color Computer 2 was priced at $69.99 and the Orchestra 90cc program pack at $79.99. Hell, I paid 6-7 times more than that for my last guitar... Needless to say, I walked out the store with both units and I've never regretted it. This one act started a chain reaction that is still going today! BTW... I forgot the adapters I went into Radio Shack for to start with.

Getting the computer home, it didn't take me long to pull out the manual and discover some of the capabilities of this machine. Over the next year, and many trips to the "Shack" I discovered BBS's. For those of you who are too young to remember what a BBS is... let's just say, they were the forerunner to the internet. Small single line (some multi line) communications sytems you could log into from your computer and read/leave messages to and from other computer users. I would like to thank all those guys and girls from Wilmington-80 and New Hanover High School BBS's for all their patience and help. Without them, I would never have come as far on computers as I have today. As a matter of fact, one of the first people I met on Wilmington-80 has become a life-long friend to whom I owe a ton. He decided to buy a new 64k ECB Coco sytem and give me his old one (64k ECB as well) so that I could teach him the things I was learning. Thanks Mike Guatier :-) It was still a few years before I aquired a disk system for my Coco. I stored my files on cassette tape for about 5 years. When I finally got my first drive, a 360k single sided floppy, I was in heaven. Another BBS friend, Dean Holder & I would pull many "all nighters" using his Delphi account to download and transfer many files to my Coco. Needless to say, my wife soon learned the term "Computer Widow"

Still using the Orchestra 90cc I started messing around with a program I had typed in from Rainbow magazine, Bells & Whistles II (BW2). BW2 not only allowed you to compose in 4 voices, but also give you the ability to create 8 waveforms to use for your sounds as well as 8 volume envelopes and a 256 band Equalizer, all in software!! It didn't take me long with my new-found knowledge in machine language programming, to modify BW2 to use the stereo, 8 bit DACs in the Orchestra 90 cart. The only problem was I had no Multi-Pak interface so I couldn't use the disk drive and the Orchestra 90 at the same time... I played with this system for some time, but was tired of being limited to only saving on cassette so I started looking for something else. Looking through some issues of Rainbow magazine, I finally found what I was looking for. "Lyra" by Lester Hands.

Lyra is an 8 voice, music staff oriented MIDI sequencer for the Coco. It had all the features I was looking for and the price was right. I think I paid $49.99 for the Lyra software and a few more dollars for the Coco serial-to-MIDI cable needed to connect to the outside world. Being an avid reader of music trade mags, I knew about MIDI and knew I needed a MIDI keyboard so when I purchased Lyra, I also purchased a Kawai MS-710 keyboard from the local Best store (not "Best Buy"). Finally... 8 real instruments connected through my very large sound system. I wrote many songs with this system and performed them live with the Color Computer as a backup band, some of which I still perform today. I also moused in many pop tunes as well. This was awsome! Then I aquired my Coco 3 and had delved into the world of OS9 Lv 2 and wondered if there was something out there more up to date with my new system. Again in Rainbow I found it!! "UltiMusE3" by Michael J. Knudson.

UltiMusE3 is a 16 voice, multi staff, MIDI sequencer for Coco 3 and OS9 Lv 2 with almost as many features as the then fledgling "Cubase" for Mac and "Cakwalk" for PC at only a fraction of the price. I paid $54.99 for UltiMusE3 and even today I would pay twice or three times that in a skinny minute!! I have paid 10 times that much for PC MIDI and Audio software since. Along with my "new" studio system, I decided I was due a new keyboard to reap the capabilities of the new software so I purchased a Yamaha PSR-500. This keyboard was packed with tons of PCM sampled sounds and a whole arsenal of effects. There was nothing like it.. Coco 3, Ultimuse3, Yamaha PSR-500 and my Fender Stratocaster! I spent a few more years writing and mousing in my own music as well as more pop tunes and classics which I used UltiMusE3 for live performance as my official Coco band. As with all good things... even the Coco would come to an end..... almost....

Somewhere in late '94, I realized my computer needs were out-growing my Coco and since Tandy had decided to drop the Color Computer from it's ranks.... I knew it was time for change. I broke down and bought a <uhhhhg> Windows machine. A Packard Bell 100mhz DX4. Soon it was one computer after another... chasing the new processors and memory. Many Computers and Many MIDI programs later, I now run a 6 core AMD 64-bit system linked to an MOTU 24 channel audio interface and controlling 2 racks of gear recording unlimited tracks of audio in my home studio "The Barn Studios". For a few years, my Coco sat on the top tier of my 3-keyboard stand and acted as stage sequencer and librarian for pulling up sounds on the keys for my shows. Then in mid '99 came Hurricane Floyd. I live on the North Carolina coast so a hurricane is no joke. Having experienced Bonnie and Fran the year before, I had moved most of my major equipment from my studio to inside my house. Without realizing it, my Coco, drives, and monitor were left sitting on my now empty keyboard stand in the studio. My studio is just a 14' x 16' building in my backyard and the floor only sits about 9 inches from the ground. When the storm was over, the river, about 1/2 mile from my home, overflowed about 17 feet above normal levels. This was due to 5 weeks of heavy rain and the release of about 7 dams and the failing of two other dams on the Tar and Cape Fear rivers which in turn connect to the North East Cape Fear river which was the one near my home. We had 2 1/2 feet of water in my yard! We were boating to my front door! Luckily, the water stayed within 1-2 inches of coming in my home. But the studio was trashed. The roof caved in places and the water poured over the Coco for a few weeks not to mention it sat about 3 foot above standing water for about 4 weeks until the water receded.

The one thing I had done, was a few months before the storm, I had purchased Jeff' Vavasour's Coco 3 emulator and had started moving some of my Coco files to my PC. I would have had them all but had a drive failure and hadn't gotten a new one up and running when the storm came. I had transferred maybe 10% of my disks. Luckily the first thing I transferred was my music. Most of which resides on my PC today in one form or another. I managed to copy some of my programming projects but most were lost and ALL my original disks but for 1 small case of disks which were in my house for some odd reason.

Now I do my renewed Coco programming efforts on the VCC and Mess Coco emulators and still enjoy "poking" around on the Coco. I have all of the stuff available from the net for the Coco and I'm loving every minute of it!! I have acquired another CoCo3 with 3 drives, 2 hard disks and a muti-pak interface and hope to have them up and running soon. I will be making some videos and MP3s for your viewing and listening pleasure.

My goal with this site is to try to preserve some of the amazing music that was produced on our little 8-bit wonder. So if you have Coco music of ANY kind and would like to contribute to the archive, it will be treated with pride here. For this is an effort of love... love for a little white box playing "William Tell Overture" through a 1000 watt PA system.... with a smile. :-)

Coco-nut Forever!!

Bill Pierce

My 2011 Christmas present from Michael Knudson... Thanx Mike :-)

CoCo 3 w/Disto 2 meg Memory, Eagle PC Keyboard Interface & Cooling Fan

Eagle PC Keyboard w/Programmable keys

"Grey Goose" Multipak Interface

J&M Disk Controller (No-Halt)

Burke & Burke Hard Drive Interface

Glenside MIDI Interface

5.25" 40trk Disk Drive

5.25" 80trk Disk Drive

3.5" 80trk Disk Drive

(2) Seagate ST-225 Hard Drives (20 meg each)

RS Deluxe Color Mouse

RS Hi-Res Joystick Interface

3-way Serial Splitter

PBJ Printer Buffer

Tandy CM-8 Color Monitor

Tandy Computer Power Controller

Man, what a system!!

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