The Flaming Lips - Suddenly Everything Has Changed (NES + DMG Arrangement)
48Get notified when the Kickstarter campaign to press the entire album to vinyl goes live:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctoroctoroc/soft-bits-in-tribute-to-the-flaming-lips-0
An arrangement of 'Suddenly Everything Has Changed' from the 1999 album "The Soft Bulletin" by The Flaming Lips using a Nintendo Entertainment System and a Gameboy in conjunction with a MidiNES cartridge and a Teensyboy Pro, which allow the sound hardware on the systems to be manipulated using MIDI CC signals from a sequencing program (I used FL Studio).
This will be part of a full cover album entitled "Soft Bits In" which will be pressed to a double vinyl LP and funded via Kickstarter in march - follow the Facebook page for updates!
https://www.facebook.com/theflamingnes
MidiNES cartridge created by Wayfair.net but unfortunately, the website is down and the carts are no longer in production.
Teensyboy Pro created by Catskull Electronics, who also makes the Famimimidi, a great alternative to the now unavailable MidiNES.
https://catskullelectronics.com/
The visuals were created with a program called 'Midi trail' which displays the notes along a scrolling piano roll as they are played.
https://osdn.net/projects/miditrail/releases/
Below is the breakdown of each channel by color:
NES
- (Ch01) Pulse 1: Light Yellow
- (Ch02) Pulse 2: Dark Yellow
- (Ch03) Triangle: Light Purple
- (Ch04) Noise: Light Grey
- (Ch05) DPCM (sample): Dark Grey (bottom row)
Gameboy
- (Ch01) Pulse 1: Brown
- (Ch02) Pulse 2: Brown
- (Ch03) Wav: Dark Purple
- (Ch04) Noise: Dark Grey (back/middle area)
While the piano roll doesn't display duty cycle, volume, pitch bend or other 'fine tuning ' parameters, it is still a great way to present the track in a comprehensive way that illustrates the limitations of the hardware and gives insight into finding ways to utilize or work around them.