Hack a Day » 8bit

Part arcade, part guitar

Jakob Griffith — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 11:33:50 +0000

Finally a guitar that all of the arcade gaming geeks can jam with. [Mike Davenport] sent us his 8bit arcade based guitar for his senior project. Details are a little sparse if you intend to build you own at the moment, but he does mention the basics: such as it uses an FPGA for logic and function, the strings and joystick modify pitch, it has selectable waves and other parameters, and even includes save banks! Check out a video of him playing street fighter rocking out after the break.

Filed under: digital audio hacks

Gameboy foot controller

Caleb Kraft — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 14:11:41 +0000

[Joey] sent us a link to the newest version of his Gameboy foot controller. In the video above, you can see how he uses it to control the loops in the background while he plays his guitar through an 8-bit filter. That is an old video, using the previous version. He tells us that several gameboys were used in the construction. At one point, he had to replace the guts because the music was so loud it knocked his equipment over and destroyed it. We can’t help but feel just a tiny bit of excitement as memories of renting a NES cartridge for the weekend fill our heads when we hear these riffs. His music isn’t too bad either. There is a growing crowd of people that support “chip music”. You can see what looks like a decent sized gathering enjoying a show with a little bit of a history lesson after the break.

[This video, and the original version of the controler were posted about a year ago, good catch commenters]

Posted in digital audio hacks, gameboy hacks

8 bit digital sampler kit, bendable too

Caleb Kraft — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 18:39:55 +0000

No, it’s not flexible, its bendable. As in, you can hack it to sound different by connecting parts in random ways. “Where’s the Party At?”, or “WTPA” for short is a bendable 8 bit sampler made by [Todd Bailey]. Still curious what it is? Watch his video showing it in action. The video is huge, 93Megs, so be patient. The overall attitude of this project is built around hacking. Consider this quote from his page ” I’ve got lots of things to poke, bend, illuminate, invoke, distrust, regulate, and otherwise get jiggy with. It’s like being 15 at the mall again! “. Sounds like fun to us.

[via Create Digital Music]

Posted in digital audio hacks, news

Music and visual arts at The Last HOPE

Benjamin Eckel — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 03:40:00 +0000

[Peter Kirn] from Create Digital Music has an article up highlighting many of the great music and visual performance pieces planned for The Last HOPE on Friday night. If you are around New York and not accustomed to hacking conferences, this could be a great excuse to go check it out. Here are some of our favorite projects.

In the field of visuals, [Joshue Ott] and [Ezekiel Honig] are scheduled for an exhibition. [Ott] is best known for authoring superDraw, an amazing app used for generating visuals for music. The above video shows superDraw in action. [Honig] will provide his usual brand of warm and noisy ambient soundscapes.

Representing the 8-bit scene, [Paris] (video above) and [No Carrier] are also scheduled to attend.

[Michael Una] will also be on hand to showcase his live looping and robot assisted performances. The above video shows one of the robots he will be performing with. This robot was built around the Highly Liquid MIDI kit.

Nintendo DrumAxe controller

Juan Aguilar — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 23:15:00 +0000

We can’t remember the last time a new cart or peripheral for the NES was released, but [Tony Amendolare] at ElektroKraft has just changed that. In conjunction with Nesdev.com, [Amendolare] created Super Synth Drums, a NES-compatible cartridge that turns button presses on the NES gamepad into drum sounds synthesized by the NES’s sound chips. To complement his software, he created the Sonic DrumAxe, a controller that looks a bit like a potato gun and is played like a guitar.

The Sonic DrumAxe controller uses a PIC microcontroller to drive a serial to parallel shift register. It has six touch sensors on the neck and one large one on the thick end. Unfortunately it requires custom inputs on the NES console, so it can’t be used with an unmodified NES.

[Amendolare] wrote the Super Synth Drums in 6502 assembly language. He puts the software onto carts using a NES console that has been modified to read and write to cartdridges. The software can be controlled with either the DrumAxe or with standard controls. [Amendolare] also did most of his demoing on a clone Yobo Machine, and it worked perfectly.

If you’d like to get in on the 8-bit circuit bending action, ElectroKraft is selling Super Synth Drums for about $49. This does not include the Sonic DrumAxe, but [Amendolare] told us that he’ll be selling a full package- cart, DrumAxe, and modded NES- on eBay later today. We’ll give you the link as soon as we get it; keep in mind that part of the proceeds of all sales are going to a children’s hospital and a charity to feed the hungry.

UPDATE: [Tony] just sent us a link to his eBay auction for the DrumAxe set. Again, this includes the cart, the DrumAxe, and the modded NES.

[via GetLoFi]

Game Boy foot controller demo

Eliot — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 03:20:00 +0000

This is a video of [Joey Mariano] from animal style demoing his Game Boy pedal board. He added a D15 port to the back of the Game Boy, which is wired to each of the 8 buttons. The port is connected to a breakout box for 8 piano sustain pedals. The box also provides power to the Game Boy. The Game Boy is running the Nanoloop step sequencer. If you’re wondering about the guitar sound, he’s probably using an 8-Bit Fuzz pedal.

[via GetLoFi]