midisync for chiptunes
Although I hardly ever create chiptunes on my handhelds anymore, I have always wanted a way to sync the gameboy with a midi trigger. Often haunted by dreams of triggering my circuit bent TR-707 along with nanoloop. Such devices exist, but you have to make them yourself.
I first saw plans a few years ago for an external pitch control mod. It was only for LSDJ and involved some complex soldering and building, but it was awesome… It had two knobs for pitch control and a start/stop toggle switch. Aside from the work involved making it, the controls were not midi syncable and the device wasn’t removable (without soldering).
Yesterday I saw this ebay listing for a homemade midi sync that works for nanoloop or lsdj. With it you can run a sync from your midi source up to 3 gameboys. Although the maker used existing plans that can be found online, he has made his own improvements on the design and I think it’s definetly worth paying for someone to build one of these devices.
If you are interested in building your midi sync, there is a great wiki project over on LittleSoundDJ.com and a different set of plans here.
I’d be interested in seeing my buddy John at Highly Liquid develop a way to activate the sounds via midi (like he did with his midi Speak).
Speaking of Speak and Spells, I can’t believe this one is still availlable on eBay! Pushbutton Speaks are extremely hard to find… and a $95 buy it now is definetly not a bad deal. Seriously, I was going to post about this yesterday but I figured “Why bother? This is not going to be availlable for long.”
One more tip, I dig my midiNES.
