I have a classic NES...

gsga · Joined: Jul 22, 2004 Posts: 267 Location: allentown, pa

Ok. Just bought the old 2nd gen NES control deck (w/ cartridges and all the hookups). This is the classic mini console. How can I tweak this? What can I do with it? I've seen new cartridges for Atari 2600 (through AtartAge, I think) that can turn that console into a synth. Is there anyhting out there like that for NES?

Anyone into 8-bit/Nintendocore?

Any ideas/links are appreciated! Very Happy

Kassen · Posted: Tue Oct 11, 2005 5:40 pm Post subject:

Yay, micromusic! Fond days, that machine.

Anyway, on to business. There was this one guy that did a cartridge with a means to controll the internal soundchip, probably with MIDI but my memory is hazy. Aparently that was a rather crude implementation.

Yah, gotit.
http://www.wayfar.net/

I think that's the only one around since all of that crowd is on the gameboy.

gsga · Joined: Jul 22, 2004 Posts: 267 Location: allentown, pa

rhombus · Posted: Tue Oct 11, 2005 8:58 pm Post subject:

Yeah I've got the GBA cart, Nanoloop, made by some guys in Germany.

www.nanoloop.de

It's a little tough to use, not easily interactible for live performance. You can save songs though, which is nice.

dnny · Posted: Wed Oct 12, 2005 4:31 am Post subject:

take a look on this bended NES
Gijs Gieskes NES

Posted Image, might have been reduced in size. Click Image to view fullscreen.

is that cute or what ?

Kassen · Posted: Wed Oct 12, 2005 4:50 am Post subject:

opg · Posted: Wed Oct 12, 2005 6:38 am Post subject:

Don't get me started!

Yes, there's MIDINES (http://www.wayfar.net/0xf00000_overview.php), the cartridge. I've heard good things about it.

I wish someone would go a step further, and create a synthesizer with a keyboard using the 2a03 chip. A friend of mine loves using NES equipment for robotics (http://www.lathan.org/Gallery/MyProjects/index.html), but he thought this may a bit lofty of a task. I was trying to see if I could design the synth around the logic of the MCK/MML programming language.

Those Gameboy carts (LSDJ, Nanoloop) are so hard to get a hold of that I've about given up. I was told Nanoloop 1.3 (for the classic Gameboy) is going to be sold again this month (70 euros). If you just get the ROM image, you have to go through the horrible mess of finding the right mix of gameboys, flash cards, bridges, etc, that it seems unlikely that it will work.

I looked around for other handheld devices (PDAs, Pocket PCs, etc), but it's pointless when you know you're not going to get that warm Gameboy sound, even if you are able to run an emulator on something.

This is why we need an NES synthesizer (call it the "2A03"), but with MIDINES available, I guess it's not necessary.

Let us know what you do.

deknow · Posted: Wed Oct 12, 2005 6:46 am Post subject:

i do have an original palm pilot (one of the first ones), and have used a step sequencer with it to run my paia fatman. i would probably use it more if it could sync to external midi clock.

deknow

mosc · Posted: Wed Oct 12, 2005 7:44 am Post subject:

http://www.wayfar.net/ is a great link. I love the musical examples. love

What fun! The NES is a wonderful instrument. I'm too old to have gotten into playing the games, but I did enjoy listening to the music on some of them when my kids would play them. If I remember correctly (doubtful) there was a game called Zelda that had exceptionally nice music.

Kassen · Posted: Wed Oct 12, 2005 8:50 am Post subject:

Yeah! Zelda is a classic.

What's going on in those games is that space on the cartridges was so expensive that all the coding, including the music, had to be increadibly tight. That made for some particularly inventive strategies in synthesis and composition.

opg · Posted: Wed Oct 12, 2005 10:52 am Post subject:

mosc · Posted: Wed Oct 12, 2005 12:57 pm Post subject:

microjackson · Joined: Aug 24, 2005 Posts: 9 Location: St. Louis, MO, USA

this topic makes me remember a wonderfull night a few years ago. i went to a beige records party ( www.beigerecords.com, from st. louis usa, luckily where im from). and one of the guys gave a demonstartion on hacking the nes. except he didnt really "hack" it. he had programmed a bunch of new popular "hip hop" and rap songs onto some chips ( im not very technically inclined Smile

). Audience members would randomly select a chip from the bag, he would somehow insert it into a nintendo cart, and then the song would be played, in 8 bit glory. very wonderfull show. he also had some crazy video hacks for mario where all that happened was the clouds would scroll by the blue background. so pretty i even bought a print of it Smile

wish i knew what they were up to now!

bye,
dennis

distolectric · Joined: Oct 18, 2005 Posts: 15 Location: Linz

Just downloaded all the super mario "soundtracks" from NES over SNES to GBA...i dig this type of freaky bleeping sound...

I know the wayfar page for some months...will get a NES and the cartridge to play around with this...

flipside · Joined: Jan 02, 2006 Posts: 6 Location: Norway

I read about this MCK/MML stuff but I am a bit confused.. Is this just another way of emulating the NES? Or is this the way music was written for the original NES games? How can one do that? I have the MIDINES, but I'm interested in knowing how you program the NES directly.. the programming techniques described in the MCK/MML document is very very cool, just what I'm looking for.. like all the macros.. pitch, cycle, etc.

How would you transfer this to the nes? The chips-in-a-bag partytrick was also very very cool. I'm not very much into the electronics of the NES, or in general, but I'm very eager to learn about this. I would love to create little tunes, and say, transfer them to cartridges that I can put in the NES. Or play them directly on the NES.

Best,
Alex

opg · Posted: Tue Jan 03, 2006 7:19 am Post subject:

Yes, unfortunately it is only an emulated version of the NES sound, but the good news is this is how the music is actually programmed!

MIDINES is, as far as I know, the only way to successfully create tunes that the NES itself will play (not emulated). I haven't tried it or seen anyone use it yet.

Playing songs directly from an NES cartridge would be cool, but besides the fun part of programming the songs in the MCK/MML language, you would also have to create code for the actual "game" itself (video, etc). I've been spending a lot of time with the Gameboy, and this has all been done and is well-documented, but I think the NES is a bit trickier than the Gameboy.

I took a look at http://www.robwebb.clara.co.uk/shop/copiers/copiers.htm to see if there were flash carts or transferers for the NES, but it appears they started with the SNES. This would have been the best way to program a cartridge and actually pop it in the NES to play songs. The only other option is to hack an existing game cartridge. There are sites out there on this, but from what I have seen, it is harder than the Gameboy. Check out this: http://nesdev.parodius.com/

Let me know what you find. I still have the dream to build a synth with the 2A03 sound chip in it.

flipside · Joined: Jan 02, 2006 Posts: 6 Location: Norway

Maybe it's possible through this? Just found it, haven't read much, have to go to bed..

http://www.tripoint.org/kevtris/Projects/copynes/

A hardware NES synth, that'd be awesome Smile

Alex

flipside · Joined: Jan 02, 2006 Posts: 6 Location: Norway

"With the NSF cart, it can play NSFs up to 128K in size."

Woho, I'm getting one!

opg · Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2006 7:01 am Post subject:

I'd be stupid NOT to do this!

glitched · Joined: Mar 25, 2006 Posts: 80 Location: phila., pa USA

I have MidiNES and it is great. It totally blew me away; I wasn't expecting it to perform very well. The MIDI integration is tight and it acts just like any other hardware instrument (but in a very special way).

MIDI CC# are used to control the parameters of the five audio channels (2Xpulse, 1 tri, 1 noise, 1 sample).

My favorite feature is the sample channel. Although it's filled with 256 drum hits (typical Roland machines, breaks, and wacky kung-fu yelps), it's so much more than a lo-lo-lo-fi Akai. It's more akin to a circuit-bent SK-1...with granular synthesis and wavetable scanning. Yep.

Trust me, it's sick.

I highly recommend updating the NES' outputs if you do get the cart. I have some pictures that I took when I modded mine for separate outputs, so I will eventually create a little tutorial on how to do it. It's easy. Watch http://www.glitched.org/upd -- I'll put it up there soon along with some examples of how messed-up it can sound.

-[d]

destroyifyer · Posted: Fri May 19, 2006 10:35 am Post subject:

it's interesting how, we have all of these great new high-tech vid games coming out now, like PsP and Xbox360, and all we can think of doing is whacking out old NESsies...

but, i can't make fun, i thought of doing the same thing a couple of weeks ago

it would be cool if they would just make a keyboard-controller for the X360 and make some actual synths for the machine, like, ones that aren't game-based. like, a sampler and drum machine or whatever. I've played a few games music like this before but i've never been impressed before.

latre

opg · Posted: Mon May 22, 2006 6:37 am Post subject:

There's already stuff for PSP:

http://www.dspmusic.org/psp/

http://pspkick.com/

http://www.psprhythm.com/

Thanks to Micromusic.net for the links. They, of course, are the first to know about these things.

smokris · Posted: Sun Jul 01, 2007 5:21 am Post subject:

danielwarner · Joined: Dec 18, 2006 Posts: 65 Location: Sacramento

Speaking of NES and MIDI... I have a keyboard called the "Miracle" that was an NES accessory, I don't think it was made by Nintendo but by a third party. It's a MIDI controller that also has an output to the NES controller plug, and you plug it in along with its own cartridge, and you would play this game that would teach you how to play piano by controlling a sidescrolling character. You'd read musical notation and play the correct notes and that would make the character jump, run, etc, so if you fouled up your character would be hurt or perish.

It's the only MIDI controller I own, and I use it with a PAiA Fatman.

ftheletter · Joined: Jul 05, 2008 Posts: 1 Location: dover nh

I ordered the MIDINES from the guy at Wayfar in mid-May.. never got the synth or heard anything from him, so i started emailing and calling him once/twice a week through the month of June. Now it's July, still no word from the fine gentleman, and it's too late for Paypal to do anything. I ultimately had to dispute the charge on my credit card, and they refunded the money.

What nonsense.. if you're one of those bold enough to try to get one of these from him, then make sure to make full use of Paypal's dispute center and escalate the claim when needed. i bet the thing sounds great, too bad the maker/seller is a rip-off artist.