Monday, March 23, 2009

Nitro2k01's Shitwave


Game Boy musician and programmer extraordinaire Nitro2k01 writes:

"Little-Scale recently posted All 4-bit Waveforms That Have 32 Samples, a Max patch that would generate all possible wave frames that could be used with LSDj, given gazillions years. However, the result was a little boring because it would start out as a 1/32 PWM and slowly progress towards a longer and longer PWM. Even within many years, chances are you’d still have a very low duty PWM.

So I decided to find an algorithm that would produce more interesting sounds and still cycle through all 1632 possibilities. My choice was a Pseudo Random Number Generator using a Linear Feedback Shift Register. Actually not completely unlike the one in the Gameboy’s noise generator."

Nor sure that I would describe my outcome as "boring" - I prefer the term minimalist - but his approach is fantastic. Read all about it and download it here: http://gameboygenius.8bitcollective.com/wordpress/2009/03/23/shitwave-a-prng-based-drone-generator-for-gameboy/

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