Ableton Live instrument rack created with the sound card of a Nintendo Entertainment System

May 4, 2011 · Posted in Uncategorized 

Chip Tune aficionados and video game lovers rejoice; this weeks Ableton Live instrument rack was created with the sound card of a Nintendo Entertainment System, accessed via WayFar’s MidiNES. (awesome piece of gear… http://www.wayfar.net ) It contains a pulse wave channel and a triangle wave channel. True to the original NES with some extra features. Very warm, familiar, gritty, dirty, and nostalgic.

Nintendo EP by AfroDjMac

Dirty, lo-fi, 8-bit, nostalgic.  This weeks Ableton Live Rack was created with the sound card of a Nintendo Entertainment System.  Maybe it’s just because I grew up spending more time playing video games than I’d ever admit, but the bleeps and blips that come from this magical machine have a warmth and familiarity that hits home.  The samples that make up the virtual instrument were made by connecting a MidiNES cartridge to a Nintendo and sampling certain notes.First, allow me to explain how the Nintendo’s sound engine works… There are five channels in total: 2 pulse wave channels, 1 triangle wave channel, a noise channel, and a sample channel. They are all monophonic, but each can play simultaneously, for a total of five sounds at once.  Considering the limitations of the NES, listen back to the music from some games (like Super Mario Bros. or The Legend of Zelda for example) and I think you’ll agree, it’s quite a show of the composer’s creativity and songwriting skills.

So, what I am giving you are the Pulse wave channel and the Triangle wave channel.  The triangle wave channel does not offer much in the way of expression (not even volume control), but the pulse wave has four different duty cycles.  I have sampled all four.  I should also mention that there’s a lot of buzz that comes out of the Nintendo, so I applied a De-noiser to clean things up a bit.  I personally don’t think that the integrity of the sounds is affected; this synth is still pretty gritty.

Here is the download link for the rack.

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