I’ve been meaning to make a post on the recent creations of NES composer Neil Baldwin. He’s made several programs for creating NES music and sfx that push the sound limitations, and are capable of creating sounds rarely (or never) heard before in classic NES soundtracks. I’ll talk some more about his stuff in the future, but I wanted to reblog this post from Nick Maynard.
Skip to 52 seconds in if you want to hear the NES pulse wave channel make unusual sounds! :)
Pitch bends can be used to create heavier drum sounds with the triangle channel.
I’ll save triangle kick drum instrument data for a future post. Right now, the best way recreate the examples in famitracker is with v0.3.8 beta. They’re adding new options to the arpeggio envelope that will allow you to fix pitches that aren’t relative to the starting note. Just learned this today!
(An Alberto González kick drum recreated)
This matters because the pitch bends on some of these kicks aren’t relative to the note they sustain on (it’s the same pitch bend down regardless if you wind up on a C or F). So in the v.0.3.7 release you’ll need two different instruments for the pitch bend and the melodic note. I’ll wait for the v.0.3.8 official release, but if you want to go ahead the beta is available publicly on the famitracker forums.
NES Audio: Single Channel Echo by Neil Baldwin
The previous example of single channel echo was applied to sustained notes. Using the music from Hero Quest, we can see a different way to create echo for faster, changing notes.
Greetings! My name is bucky. I'm a sound-chip enthusiast, interested in the history of video game audio and sound design. If you have any questions, feel free to ask and I'll do my best to give an answer.
