Hi folks!
I made this chipmusic program for the DSi called Rhythm Core Alpha. I tried really hard to make it super cool, so I hope everybody likes it!
It's both a sequencer and a solo instrument! As a sequencer, it has both a drum grid and a piano-roll style MIDI sequencer. You can make up to 100 blocks (loops), of up to 64 beats. Each block has 12 drum tracks and 8 instrument tracks. There are 122 drum sounds, and 166 instrument sounds.
I included samples from C64 (thanks little-scale!) and Atari 800 (bassynth & syndrum) and square, saw, and sine waves for the old-school chiptune sound! There are also samples of a wide variety of synths (Poly 800, CZ1, mellotron, etc.), drum machines, and acoustic instruments, all done in glorious 8-bit crunchyness! It's like you dropped a ton of c64 sounds into a SNES.
Even better, you have full ADSR, pan, and volume control over every sound. This multiplies your sound choices immensely, and is really great for making NES style sounds with the simple square waves.
You can set velocity for each note. There are a bunch of editing options like copy, shift, transpose, scale velocity, echo, and randomize, and you can apply them to multiple tracks, or even subsections of tracks.
The solo mode lets you play solos with the stylus on a 2d grid. You can also trigger drum sounds from the solo mode.
When you make a sequence in the block mode, it automatically detects the key and scale. You can then change the key and scale live by pressing the +Control Pad or buttons. This allows you to finger chords sort of like playing a guitar, only much easier!
The current key and scale is used for the solo mode, so you can't hit a wrong note in the solo.
There is also a pattern mode for building songs. It also has a "jump back" feature for making looping chord progressions and beat changes. You can build a song with several sets of loops for verse, chorus, solo, etc. and then change them as you need to for playing live.
You can reassign any of the face buttons to change the block number or pattern step instead of or in addition to changing the chord. This allows you complete control of your sequences when playing live. You can play as much or as little as you want when performing. I designed it to be super-flexible.
Basically, I have tried to make the best possible machine for playing live music on a Nintendo DSi. The program is available as a 500 Nintendo Point download from the Nintendo DSiWare shop. That's just $5 US! It is currently available in the Americas, and will soon be available in Europe.
Please check it out! I've got a few videos and demo tunes on the website, but the really cool music is the stuff that you folks are going to make with it. When you do, please share it with me!
-- Tim Trzepacz --
SoftEgg
http://www.rhythmcorealpha.com
http://www.softegg.com