Diversi-Tune

Diversi-Tune was the name of two different music programs written by a brilliant programmer and skilled musician named Bill Basham, who sadly died of ALS at age 70 in 2021. The original Diversi-Tune was written for the Apple IIGS, a personal computer first released in 1986 that had the most advanced sound capabilities of any personal computer of its generation. This version of Diversi-Tune was first released in 1988 and last updated in 1990. The second Diversi-Tune was released in the 2000s, for Windows and web pages viewed in Internet Explorer. Finally, Diversi-Tune is the name of a YouTube channel where Bill posted MIDI arrangements of many songs with lyrics displayed in the style of these two programs.

Who is behind this site?

My name is Matt Campbell, and as a professional programmer and amateur musician, I am a fan of Bill Basham's work. The original Diversi-Tune was one of my favorite programs for the Apple IIGS when I was a child. After Bill passed away, the DivTune.com domain name expired and was put up for sale. With permission from Bill's brother Mike, I bought this domain to set up a memorial to what was, in my opinion, Bill's best work as both a programmer and a musician.

The original Diversi-Tune, for the Apple IIGS

Here's a video demonstrating the original Diversi-Tune:

More about this demo video

You may also be interested in a third-party demo video on YouTube that was apparently recorded from a real Apple IIGS without a stereo card.

Here is how Bill Basham described the original Diversi-Tune in its instruction manual:

The Diversi-Tune program is like a videocassette recorder (VCR). Most people will use Diversi-Tune to play back pre-recorded songs, just like most people use their video recorders to watch pre-recorded movies. You'll be able to buy Diversi-Tune pre-recorded song disks from a variety of sources, like you can buy video movies by mail or at the local video store. Using Diversi-Tune to play back pre-recorded songs is as simple as putting a video cassette in your recorder and playing it. The first part of these instructions describes how to do this.

A few people actually use the record button on their video recorder. This takes a little more effort, but you can then record movies off the air when you're not home, fast-forward through commercials, and do all kinds of fun things.

Diversi-Tune also has a record button, and fast-forward, rewind, etc. You'll notice the Diversi-Tune tape recorder controls are always present at the bottom of the screen. The second part of these instructions describes how to use some of these more advanced features of Diversi-Tune.

Finally, some people buy video cameras and use their VCR to make their own home "movies". These may not look or sound as good as pre-recorded cassettes, but they're much more meaningful to the person who made them.

With Diversi-Tune, you can buy a "MIDI" music keyboard and interface, and connect it to your Apple IIGS. This will allow you to record your own songs. The third part of these instructions describes how to do this.

You can find Diversi-Tune for the Apple IIGS on the Internet Archive. Unfortunately, the Apple IIGS emulator embedded in this page is broken; it freezes as soon as the first song is supposed to start playing. Still, you can download the disk image and run it in your own emulator or on a real Apple IIGS.

I've also posted the Diversi-Tune instruction manual, minimally adapted to be readable on modern computers, but with its original formatting preserved. In my opinion, this manual is fascinating reading even if you can't run the program.

The second Diversi-Tune, for Windows and Internet Explorer

In the early 2000s, Bill Basham released a second program called Diversi-Tune, for Windows PCs and web pages viewed in Internet Explorer. Like the original Diversi-Tune, this program played pre-made MIDI music files, optionally with song lyrics. It could also display song lyrics in sync with music CDs and MP3 files.

Here are the current download links for the Windows version of Diversi-Tune:

I've also preserved the original Diversi-Tune website, which includes full instructions for the Windows version, plus links to individual MIDI files and audio CD sync files. The original website is preserved exactly, down to the last-modified timestamps on individual files. As such, some of the links no longer work. In particular, the links to download the zip files containing songs are broken; that's why I provided the link to the full set of songs above. The links to individual MIDI and .dtcd files do work.

Unfortunately, because this program was written in Java for the Microsoft Java virtual machine, which was discontinued long ago, users get mixed results when running the Windows version on modern Windows PCs. I wasn't able to get sound output from the Windows package on a Windows XP PC in 2007. However, I have been contacted by a long-time user of this version of Diversi-Tune who has very recently installed and used it on a Windows 10 laptop, though with some difficulty, and I was recently able to run it in a virtual machine running a clean installation of Windows 11, with the above caveat about installing the Microsoft Java VM. I would be happy to receive more reports from users about their experiences running this version of Diversi-Tune.

I was unable to retrieve the web/applet packaging of this version of Diversi-Tune, that could be used in Internet Explorer. The page that hosts the applet is there; you can get to it from the preserved website. But I couldn't find all of the Java class files that make up the applet, due to limitations of the Wayback Machine. This applet isn't usable in modern browsers anyway. Still, for the sake of complete preservation, please contact me if you have the full set of class files.

Like the Apple IIGS original, this version of Diversi-Tune is a case study in master-level programming, including deep expertise in both the Windows platform and the Java programming language. Despite the ultimate fragility of this approach as described above, the choice of Microsoft Java was reasonable for the early 2000s; it allowed this version of Diversi-Tune to be packaged as both a Windows application and an applet that could be embedded in web pages. This program ended up being difficult to use on modern computers simply because change is the only constant in software.

After the second Diversi-Tune

In late 2008, Bill started a Diversi-Tune YouTube channel, where he posted many songs, complete with lyrics. He continued to post to this channel as recently as 2016. Some of the musical arrangements are recognizably identical to their Apple IIGS counterparts from 1988, but rendered with a more recent MIDI synthesizer, and sometimes transposed to a slightly different key. I don't know whether Bill created these videos using the early 2000s Java version of Diversi-Tune, or a later version that he never released. What matters most is that some of these videos, especially the Christmas songs, were enjoyed by many people, long after it was no longer practical for most people to run either released program.

Email Matt Campbell