Pixel Heaven, via Loniek, celebrates 8-bit music, early video games, 70′s and 80′s tech, boomboxes and all sorts of old school entertainment. Continue reading
Pixel Heaven Celebrates Old School Entertainment
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Tag Archives: chiptunes
Free Album, Abinox, Features A ‘Super Setup’ Of Nostalgic Chips & Synths
Free Music Friday: Joe from video game music netlabel Pterodactyl Squad let us know about a new release, lpower’s Abinox:
The Canadian composer wanted to examine and explore how 16-bit video game soundtracks were put together in the old days, and he assembled a ‘super setup’ of nostalgic chips and synths (TurboGrafx-16, Sega Mega Drive/Genesis, NES, OSCar synth, Yamaha DX7) with which to do so.
The music on Abinox does not always loop, allowing lpower more freedom than usual to study the emotions of in-game progression, the ups and downs, victories and failures. So rather than focus on a specific storyline or genre, Abinox is actually a game soundtrack about game soundtracks.
It’s available to download for free from the Pterodactyl Squad site.
Mode Machines SID Synthesizer (Sneak Preview)
This is a sneak preview of the Mode Machines SID synthesizer.
Specs and pricing are to come.
The Pianocade Is An Open Source Chiptunes Synthesizer Arcade Keytar Thing!
If you took all the stuff we like – synthesizers, video games, open source software, etc – and combined them, you might get something like the Pianocade chiptunes style synthesizer & MIDI controller.
The Pianocade Synthesizer
The Pianocade is a synthesizer designed to sound, look, and feel like vintage arcade games.
The Pianocade’s built-in synthesizer is based on the sound hardware of the Nintendo NES and Game Boy (specifically, one of the square wave channels: it’s a monophonic square-wave synthesis engine with a 4-bit digital-to-analogue converter). Because it’s monophonic, it does what many early games did in lieu of chords: it cycles through the notes of the chord rapidly (arpeggiation).
SynthBoy+ GameBoy MIDI Dock (Sneak Preview)
Here’s an in-depth sneak preview of the SynthBoy+, a dock that turns a vintage GameBoy into a MIDI synth.
Synthboy+ is being funded as a Kickstarter project, and is about a third of the way to their goal. See the project site for details.
Pretty Eight Machine – 8-Bit NIN!
Pretty Eight Machine is NIN’s Pretty Hate Machine, re-imagined in its entirety by Inverse Phase on eight different 8-bit systems.
Sound configurations include: SID/6581 (Commodore 64), POKEY (Atari 800), straight 2A03 (NES), AY/SCC+ (MSX+Metal Gear 2 or Snatcher cartridge), SN76489 (Sega Master System), 2A03+VRC6 (Famicom+Castlevania 3 cartridge), LR35902 (Game Boy), and OPLL (MSX-MUSIC or Japanese Sega Master System).
Pretty Eight Machine is available at the Inverse Phase Bandcamp page.