Wave Mixing in LSDJ with Monowave

Hax › Tutorials
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Within the recent updates to LittleSoundDJ comes a fix for the kits wave mixing, meaning better sample playback and improvement of a  great sound design trick for LSDJ hackers. I started off with importing a complex waveform with single cycle elements, Monowave. The results were pretty interesting. The key to all the below sounds is using wave mixing and manipulating the resulting offsets between the waveforms to make interesting drones that you can control in various ways. The basic process is:

  • Load the kit file (at the end of the article) into a blank space on your ROM
  • Load a instrument and load your kit into both slots
  • Pitch is very broad, so you might want to layer the sound on top of a pulse note to help tune it. AFAICT it is in cents, more or less.
  • Offset will select which step in the waveform the loop will start. You can set both to the same value or slightly offset for cool phasing tricks.
  • Len is how big the looped section will be. a LEN of 1, is basically a single cycle, and big LENS play more of the sample. Monowave has cool fake filter sweep sections in it, so play around with the kit.
  • LOOP should be set to on
  • Speed can be used to half the drone pitch. Heavy Bass!
  • DIST is another tool to really grime the sound up, be sure to dig the settings mentioned in the manuals hidden mode.

The biggest issue  is this process will murder your DMG-01’s CPU. You will probably have better results on a GBA SP, or even a Color Gameboy. Using the latest version of LSDJ is strongly recommended as well. I posted some screenshots of the patches in the demo below:

Snare Sound

Bass Sound

BASS

Drone Sound

DRONE Download the Kit Patch your ROM Let me know feedback on the kit and what cool sounds you guys come up with. The next project will be making 12 voice kits of pitched waveforms. Four voice chords anyone?