sounds kewl to me...
an-cat-max wrote:
yes yes yes yes yes. do a drum and bassline machine.
this.
focusing on drum and bass sounds would be clutch...
neil, we all need some NES doom bass ;D
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▐▐▌▌▐▌▌█▐ ▐▐▌▌▐▌▌█▐ ▐▐▌▌▐▌▌█▐
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WOW MAN!
I'm thinking along the lines that a "drum" or "instrument" would actually be a multi-voice patch (like a multi-oscillator synth) then have, say, an 8 track step sequencer so that the tracks are not explicitly tied to a NES voice. Then have a priority system, top-to-bottom. Would be quite cool to have a 3-voice bass sound with 2 phasing square wave and triangle taking up the sub octave. 
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Tacoma WA
holy fucking awesome.
personally i'd prefer 16 steps but really that's not a big deal.
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sweden
neilbaldwin wrote:
Something I've been thinking about for a while so I thought I'd see if there'd be any interest in it.
I've got some cool ideas on how to make quite a smart drum machine on the NES. It would be a 16-step (or less) pattern based thing with simple song structure (just a string of patterns with a repeat count). The cool thing is that on each step you will be able to assign settings for all five NES voices and also on each step you'll be able to modify parameters such as envelope, amplitude, duty, pitch sweep, (simple) table etc. for all five voices simultaneously.
What do you think - any interest?
Kinda sounds like a nanoloop version for the NES.
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Brazil
ACID PNES should be the name.
Desintegrating electronic virginity since 2011
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Abandoned on Fire
neilbaldwin wrote:
I'm thinking along the lines that a "drum" or "instrument" would actually be a multi-voice patch (like a multi-oscillator synth) then have, say, an 8 track step sequencer so that the tracks are not explicitly tied to a NES voice. Then have a priority system, top-to-bottom. Would be quite cool to have a 3-voice bass sound with 2 phasing square wave and triangle taking up the sub octave.
I like that idea a lot. It's weird that you mention it now 'cause I've been playing with NL2.3 in pretty much the same way (same pattern on all channels and combining all the voices for each "note") and it can sound really cool.
The priority system -- you mean that lower priority tracks would only play if there's "room for them" when higher priority tracks aren't playing?
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WOW MAN!
egr wrote:
neilbaldwin wrote:I'm thinking along the lines that a "drum" or "instrument" would actually be a multi-voice patch (like a multi-oscillator synth) then have, say, an 8 track step sequencer so that the tracks are not explicitly tied to a NES voice. Then have a priority system, top-to-bottom. Would be quite cool to have a 3-voice bass sound with 2 phasing square wave and triangle taking up the sub octave.
I like that idea a lot. It's weird that you mention it now 'cause I've been playing with NL2.3 in pretty much the same way (same pattern on all channels and combining all the voices for each "note") and it can sound really cool.
The priority system -- you mean that lower priority tracks would only play if there's "room for them" when higher priority tracks aren't playing?
Yes. Say you had a hi-hat sound (using noise) and also a snare (using noise and perhaps triangle), if you put a hi-hat and a snare on the same step, only one of them can use the noise channel. In this case, one of them would have to be deemed higher priority. I'd probably just do it on track order so the tracks at the bottom of the step sequencer grid would be highest priority. So depending on which track you have the hi-hat and snare, either you'd hear the noise+triangle components of the snare or you'd only hear the triangle part with the hi-hat taking over the noise channel.
Sounds more complicated than it actually will be
I was messing around with a pixel editor today to try to figure out a layout. Trying to keep it really minimal and pack everything on one screen. This is the kind of look I'm wanting to achieve:
AMP A = amplitude settings for Square 1. A = amplitude, E = envelope (two digits, one for Attack and one for Decay), then T = gate time
DT A = duty for Square 1. L = loop/one-shot. 1=first duty setting, 2=second duty setting. In one-shot mode, the two duty settings will play in order and end on the 2nd one. In Loop mode, the duty loops between
OSC A = pitch settings for Square 1. C = coarse (semitone), F = fine (detune), H = hard frequency effect (from Pulsar) on/off
Just sketching ideas at the moment. Back to finishing off Pulsar manual now
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california
neilbaldwin wrote:
I'm thinking along the lines that a "drum" or "instrument" would actually be a multi-voice patch (like a multi-oscillator synth) then have, say, an 8 track step sequencer so that the tracks are not explicitly tied to a NES voice. Then have a priority system, top-to-bottom. Would be quite cool to have a 3-voice bass sound with 2 phasing square wave and triangle taking up the sub octave.
I love that idea. Voice stealing would be the tops. I've always wanted LSDJ to work that way, so I could make a complex snare or whatever.
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perhaps it could be "playable" also.. like an MPC.. using the game pad, or using two game pads
one could control the "sound" or effects and the other play the drums
this could record into patterns which are quantized for dorx like me who may miss the note
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effects - hard distort/clip, eq band on off, delay like pulsar, beat repeat, short looping within a phrase (beat repeat) ...
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WOW MAN!
Cool. Keep the ideas coming.
Not sure what "eq band on off" is but the rest of that stuff I would plan to include. Might try to do some probability stuff too - would be nice on the beat repeating stuff (tag a step with a repeat but assign a probability to it so that it doesn't always repeat etc.)
Writing Pulsar manual was a bit boring so I hacked around with a screen layout. I think I'm close now.
Might drop it to 6 tracks though, not sure. Either that or I will limit how many drums you can place in a vertical line (say 4). I'd also prefer if there were 32 steps per pattern but not sure how I could easily do that without having to page left/right to access beats 1-16 / 17 - 32. The big gap at the bottom will be used for the pattern arranger etc.
The area to the right of the grid will be where you'll set the root pitch of the trigger (set per step/square blob) and beat repeat etc. Kind of a bit like Monomachine. Also when clicking in the grid, the first click will set a beat, the 2nd will set a beat with a slide, the third will clear the beat etc.
Oh, the names of the little parameter boxes don't mean anything yet (or the letters preceding the parameters). Just temporary so I can get the layout right with the correct number of parameter to control all 5 voices. Comes to about 48 parameters per drum!
Last edited by neilbaldwin (Nov 14, 2010 12:03 pm)