Hey all,

Is anyone familiar with the music of Bit Shifter?

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Bit-Shifter/5986252865

listen to some tracks on the playlist....they are all impressive use
of 8-bit gameboy type sounds. I particularly like the glurpy-squelchy
'wah-wah-ey' sounds. Are those really fast filter sweeps? I would
think Csound would be a natural environment for such work.

Anyone, check it out.....I want to experiment with doing this style
with a focus on intense exploration of tuning systems, which is my
particular predilection of course!

I'll do a proper blog about it, but here's the quick-quick run down
for old school video game sounds.

1) Use a triangle wave, a pusle wave with duty cycle of 25% or 50%, or
noise stored in a table.
2) Limited number of voices. 1, 2 or 3. In composition, you often have
to imply a melody, very Gestalt like.
3) Control signals, for LFOs and envelopes, are updated very slowly
and/or have a very low bit rate. I'm using the samphold in the Ms.
Pacman example to emulate this.

There is obviously much more than this, and chips vary greatly. The
atari 2600 used a bit shift register that produced sounds by turning a
signal on and off (1-bit) with the frequency tables determined by
dividing the clock by an integer. In some game machines, like Marble
Madness or Paperboy, they basically had full blown Yamaha DX7s in
them.

More on this later.

Best,
Jake
-- 
The Csound Blog - http://csound.noisepages.com/
Slipmat - http://slipmat.noisepages.com/

On Thu, Jul 29, 2010 at 5:51 AM, Aidan Collins
 wrote:
> There was a post not too long ago on the Csound blog, by Jacob Joaquin,
> where he reproduced a little bit of Pac Man sound.
> http://csoundblog.com/2010/05/blue-ghosts-are-fine-fixins/
> I love that old video game tone too and I'd been meaning to explore it and
> ask him some more about it.
> I think the samphold opcode might have a lot to do with getting that sound,
> but I haven't figured it out yet.
>
> A
>
> On Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 9:56 PM, Aaron Krister Johnson 
> wrote:
>>
>> Hey all,
>>
>> Is anyone familiar with the music of Bit Shifter?
>>
>> http://www.facebook.com/pages/Bit-Shifter/5986252865
>>
>> listen to some tracks on the playlist....they are all impressive use
>> of 8-bit gameboy type sounds. I particularly like the glurpy-squelchy
>> 'wah-wah-ey' sounds. Are those really fast filter sweeps? I would
>> think Csound would be a natural environment for such work.
>>
>> Anyone, check it out.....I want to experiment with doing this style
>> with a focus on intense exploration of tuning systems, which is my
>> particular predilection of course!
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Best,
>>
>> Aaron Krister Johnson
>> http://www.akjmusic.com
>> http://www.untwelve.org
>>
>>
>> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
>>            https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
>> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
>> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe
>> csound"
>>
>
>


Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
            https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe csound"

Jacob,

Thanks for the sage advice and description. This blew my mind
wide-open to the possibilities! I also have to subscribe to your blog
because I always find a thing or 2 to steal from your orchestras. (I
made heavy use of the splice and stutter stuff from a while back in
one of my pieces)

Although I knew about the basic waveform types of 8-bit, and how drums
were just filtered noise of various frequency and modulation/envelope
characteristics, it was great to hear your knowledge of chip
architecture plus how the LFO modulation worked to produce various
textured effects. I'm really loving those glitchy bleeps and glurps
that can come out of video game orchestras.....there's a certain
playful humor while at the same time one can try to stretch the genre
to do things that might even have a certain emotional depth.

Life is too short!

AKJ


On Thu, Jul 29, 2010 at 8:38 AM, Jacob Joaquin  wrote:
> I'll do a proper blog about it, but here's the quick-quick run down
> for old school video game sounds.
>
> 1) Use a triangle wave, a pusle wave with duty cycle of 25% or 50%, or
> noise stored in a table.
> 2) Limited number of voices. 1, 2 or 3. In composition, you often have
> to imply a melody, very Gestalt like.
> 3) Control signals, for LFOs and envelopes, are updated very slowly
> and/or have a very low bit rate. I'm using the samphold in the Ms.
> Pacman example to emulate this.
>
> There is obviously much more than this, and chips vary greatly. The
> atari 2600 used a bit shift register that produced sounds by turning a
> signal on and off (1-bit) with the frequency tables determined by
> dividing the clock by an integer. In some game machines, like Marble
> Madness or Paperboy, they basically had full blown Yamaha DX7s in
> them.
>
> More on this later.
>
> Best,
> Jake
> --
> The Csound Blog - http://csound.noisepages.com/
> Slipmat - http://slipmat.noisepages.com/
>
> On Thu, Jul 29, 2010 at 5:51 AM, Aidan Collins
>  wrote:
>> There was a post not too long ago on the Csound blog, by Jacob Joaquin,
>> where he reproduced a little bit of Pac Man sound.
>> http://csoundblog.com/2010/05/blue-ghosts-are-fine-fixins/
>> I love that old video game tone too and I'd been meaning to explore it and
>> ask him some more about it.
>> I think the samphold opcode might have a lot to do with getting that sound,
>> but I haven't figured it out yet.
>>
>> A
>>
>> On Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 9:56 PM, Aaron Krister Johnson 
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hey all,
>>>
>>> Is anyone familiar with the music of Bit Shifter?
>>>
>>> http://www.facebook.com/pages/Bit-Shifter/5986252865
>>>
>>> listen to some tracks on the playlist....they are all impressive use
>>> of 8-bit gameboy type sounds. I particularly like the glurpy-squelchy
>>> 'wah-wah-ey' sounds. Are those really fast filter sweeps? I would
>>> think Csound would be a natural environment for such work.
>>>
>>> Anyone, check it out.....I want to experiment with doing this style
>>> with a focus on intense exploration of tuning systems, which is my
>>> particular predilection of course!
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Best,
>>>
>>> Aaron Krister Johnson
>>> http://www.akjmusic.com
>>> http://www.untwelve.org
>>>
>>>
>>> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
>>>            https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
>>> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
>>> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe
>>> csound"
>>>
>>
>>
>
>
> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
>            https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe csound"
>
>



-- 
Best,

Aaron Krister Johnson
http://www.akjmusic.com
http://www.untwelve.org


Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
            https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe csound"

http://www.archive.org/details/8bitpeoples

This has all the chip music you could want. I personally recommend a
one-off project under the name 'i, cactus'.
Nullsleep is the guy who wrote the more-popular software for gameboy
(LSDJ). iirc, Bit Shifter uses another, slightly-more-experimental
piece of software that I can't remember the name of.
There's at least two forum/communities for this.
There's micro-music (net?/com?) and another one whose name fails me.
There are two yahoo mailing lists, one for getting the hardware to put
lsdj on a cartridge to play on an old gameboy, and another for
bugs/sharing/what-have-you.
I haven't subscribed in awhile, so this might have changed by now.
Hope that helps.
greg



On Thu, Jul 29, 2010 at 8:10 PM, Aaron Krister Johnson
 wrote:
> Jacob,
>
> Thanks for the sage advice and description. This blew my mind
> wide-open to the possibilities! I also have to subscribe to your blog
> because I always find a thing or 2 to steal from your orchestras. (I
> made heavy use of the splice and stutter stuff from a while back in
> one of my pieces)
>
> Although I knew about the basic waveform types of 8-bit, and how drums
> were just filtered noise of various frequency and modulation/envelope
> characteristics, it was great to hear your knowledge of chip
> architecture plus how the LFO modulation worked to produce various
> textured effects. I'm really loving those glitchy bleeps and glurps
> that can come out of video game orchestras.....there's a certain
> playful humor while at the same time one can try to stretch the genre
> to do things that might even have a certain emotional depth.
>
> Life is too short!
>
> AKJ
>
>
> On Thu, Jul 29, 2010 at 8:38 AM, Jacob Joaquin  wrote:
>> I'll do a proper blog about it, but here's the quick-quick run down
>> for old school video game sounds.
>>
>> 1) Use a triangle wave, a pusle wave with duty cycle of 25% or 50%, or
>> noise stored in a table.
>> 2) Limited number of voices. 1, 2 or 3. In composition, you often have
>> to imply a melody, very Gestalt like.
>> 3) Control signals, for LFOs and envelopes, are updated very slowly
>> and/or have a very low bit rate. I'm using the samphold in the Ms.
>> Pacman example to emulate this.
>>
>> There is obviously much more than this, and chips vary greatly. The
>> atari 2600 used a bit shift register that produced sounds by turning a
>> signal on and off (1-bit) with the frequency tables determined by
>> dividing the clock by an integer. In some game machines, like Marble
>> Madness or Paperboy, they basically had full blown Yamaha DX7s in
>> them.
>>
>> More on this later.
>>
>> Best,
>> Jake
>> --
>> The Csound Blog - http://csound.noisepages.com/
>> Slipmat - http://slipmat.noisepages.com/
>>
>> On Thu, Jul 29, 2010 at 5:51 AM, Aidan Collins
>>  wrote:
>>> There was a post not too long ago on the Csound blog, by Jacob Joaquin,
>>> where he reproduced a little bit of Pac Man sound.
>>> http://csoundblog.com/2010/05/blue-ghosts-are-fine-fixins/
>>> I love that old video game tone too and I'd been meaning to explore it and
>>> ask him some more about it.
>>> I think the samphold opcode might have a lot to do with getting that sound,
>>> but I haven't figured it out yet.
>>>
>>> A
>>>
>>> On Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 9:56 PM, Aaron Krister Johnson 
>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Hey all,
>>>>
>>>> Is anyone familiar with the music of Bit Shifter?
>>>>
>>>> http://www.facebook.com/pages/Bit-Shifter/5986252865
>>>>
>>>> listen to some tracks on the playlist....they are all impressive use
>>>> of 8-bit gameboy type sounds. I particularly like the glurpy-squelchy
>>>> 'wah-wah-ey' sounds. Are those really fast filter sweeps? I would
>>>> think Csound would be a natural environment for such work.
>>>>
>>>> Anyone, check it out.....I want to experiment with doing this style
>>>> with a focus on intense exploration of tuning systems, which is my
>>>> particular predilection of course!
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Best,
>>>>
>>>> Aaron Krister Johnson
>>>> http://www.akjmusic.com
>>>> http://www.untwelve.org
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
>>>>            https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
>>>> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
>>>> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe
>>>> csound"
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
>>            https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
>> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
>> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe csound"
>>
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Best,
>
> Aaron Krister Johnson
> http://www.akjmusic.com
> http://www.untwelve.org
>
>
> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
>            https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe csound"
>
>


Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
            https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe csound"