Free Music Software: HoustonTracker 2 is a free app that turns your Texas Instruments graphing calculator into a chiptunes synth + sequencer.
HousetonTracker is a music editor/sequencer for the Texas Instruments TI-82, TI-83/82STATS, and TI-83+/84+/SE. It allows you to compose and play multi-channel 1-bit music directly on your TI graphic calculator.
Features:
- 3 tone channels
- 1 non-interrupting drum channel
- up to 128 note patterns
- up to 64 drum/fx patterns
- sequence length up to 255 pattern rows
- 16-bit frequency precision
- 8-bit speed precision, can be configured per step
- various effects, including:
- L/C/R stereo hard-panning for tone and drum channels
- 8bit duty cycle control
- duty cycle sweep
- 2 user definable samples
- up to 8 savestates
- edit during playback
HoustonTracker 2 is free and open source and is available to download from the project site.
wow thats bad ass… the chip actually has real synthesis parameters? crazy
that song at the end is fuckin cool too
The chip does not have synthesis parameters. The software does. The thing that makes HoustonTracker impressive is that the calculator does not have sound at all. The software generates ALL sound, rendering it on-the-fly, and then uses the link port for sound output by twiddling bits of (presumably) a register somewhere.
Devastatingly good!
1 Bit? Is that pure squarewave then? The calc is not cheap too although it’s quite mighy indeed.
Yeah, looks like it has 8 bits of duty cycle and duty cycle sweep. So, sounds like a pulse with some PWM.
The only output the TI calcs have is the TTL level link port. So it would be fairly lo-fi PWM, which can actually sound pretty good with some filtering.
I am the operator of my pocket calculator.
you pretty krafty there
Hmm, so what you’re saying is that by pressing down a special key it plays a little melody?
The Kraftwerk references are inevitable!
or volkswagon
That is just awesome, the program itself and the music composition too !!! excellent work !!!
Very nice.
Too bad I don’t have one of these laying around anymore…