The Genesis Machine (teaser)

Posted on June 8, 2011 by Tim

Lately I have been wanting to try my hand at Little Sound DJ, a native GameBoy tracker to see if it might make a worth addition to our arsenal of chiptune hardware. Quite a few chiptune musicians seem to use it and it has a few differences from the NES in terms of sound.

Early this week I ended up getting enough parts in the mail to start playing around with things and ended up making a neat little song that uses both the GameBoy and NES (actually FamiTracker since I was sort of lazy and haven’t yet exported the sound out to the PowerPak to record it properly):

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/16770956″ params=”show_comments=true&auto_play=false&color=340080″ width=”100%” height=”81″ ]

The song is really just an idea, but it already has a name: "The Genesis Machine." No idea if this will end up being on Chipsurf Pipeline or not but it is a neat little track just the same. You can definitely hear the differences in the audio produced by the GameBoy versus the Nintendo. In fact, I tried making the song using the MMC5 NES mapper for the extra square channels and it didn’t sound at all the same.

This song was a good test to see how involved using both the NES and GameBoy would be. Right now, they are not synced to each other at all, so I cannot hear both parts of the song at the same time without first exporting them out to Live. It makes things a bit more challenging but also more inward – I have to think of the song more in my head before putting it down and, in a way, that is a benefit. I do plan on building the ArdunoBoy so that I can sync the GameBoy via MIDI. I have tried doing that before in FamiTracker and didn’t have much luck. Though a solution to that problem is to get a MidiNES, I tend to prefer the workflow of FamiTracker. I could simply control MidiNES using Renoise if I wanted to keep a tracker-style interface but all the tracks we have composed for Chipsurf Pipeline use FamiTracker. Really, my problem is solved if FamiTracker had more sync options, or even rewire. Then I could compose everything at once and simply have to output the results to an NSF file and dump it on the PowerPak for a final recording run.

In any case, the GameBoy is indeed a worthy addition to my arsenal. Turns out my particular GameBoy is one of the first runs and has issues with the wave/digital output. So I haven’t been able to use what is arguably the coolest feature of using the GameBoy but I have another GameBoy I just purchased off eBay that should work nicely. After that, it’s modding time!

Symphony of Vengeance Ready For Mastering

Posted on May 30, 2011 by Tim

We have finished the arrangement of Symphony of Vengeance and it is now ready for mastering. That in it of itself is a time consuming endeavor, mostly due to having to record out the NES audio into separate tracks. This is where we take a bit of license over using the standard mono out of the NES since we need to balance out the audio with all the guitar parts. Plus the standard mono out is super noisy. Tim was able to get around most of this by creating an audio mod he called the NESA. It is basically a CMoy-inspired amp designed to safely and cleanly route audio off the 2A03 chip directly. The results are awesome and it still is in the spirit of all that is the NES – the only audio work we do is to adjust volume, panning, and sometimes add a bit of reverb. Everything else is direct off the NES.

Symphony of Vengeance itself is a rather dark song depicting an epic, revengeful battle, our character has to endure in order to avenge the death of his loved-one. Though dark, it still has some pounding an energetic moments with twists and turns along the way. We are not yet sure if we will release this song before the completion of the album itself, but we think the wait will be worth it either way!

Tidal Riders of Doom

Posted on May 30, 2011 by Tim

We have had this track finished for quite some time but finally put some of the finishing touches on it to warrant its release. This is our second completed song and a worth sequel to Tsunami Gaiden. It, too, tells a compelling story, but we like to think of you coming up with your own story as you listen to this. This song only uses the original NES soundchip (the 2A03) and, in fact, does not use any digital samples in it. All just pure chiptune and surf guitar awesomeness! We especially like the call and answer bits as well as the chill before the harmony.

We have plenty more songs in the pipeline (no pun intended). We hope to finish recording all of Chipsurf Pipeline before the end of the summer which means a full release should be hopefully this fall. For now, thanks for listening to the tunes! If you like what you hear, we would love your support, however you can including simply spreading the word about our work!

[wp_bandcamp_player type=”track” id=”1249342122″ size=”grande” bg_color=”#555555″ link_color=”#cccccc”]

Tsunami Gaiden

Posted on January 10, 2011 by Tim

Tsunami Gaiden is the first song we have completed on the forthcoming Chipsurf Pipeline album. It is a bit on the dark side and, as the name implies, inspired by the Ninja Gaiden games and story. This song features fast surf style playing alongside the stringly style melodies of the 2A03 and VRC6.

[wp_bandcamp_player type=”track” id=”2055757578″ size=”grande” bg_color=”#444444″ link_color=”#aaaaaa”]