Teknoise: computing, music, computer music

About ten years ago, I read about a Gameboy based synthesizer in a computer music magazine.  It seemed cool at the time, but 200$ was a completely prohibitive price for me then, and I forgot that it existed.  Recently though, I read more about using Gameboys for music and decided to explore the world of the emulated game boy sequencer/synths, the most famous of which is Little Sound DJ (LSD).  I’ve spent some time with soft synth NES emulators (mainly Jack Dark’s) and wanted to mess around with something close to the original.

What follows is a quick but hopefully through tutorial about setting up and using Little Sound DJ.  Hopefully you will find it useful in your lo-fi explorations.

1. Install The Gameboy Advance Emulator BGB

The BGB emulator was the only emulator I could find to download, fortunately it is very easy to use and seems stable.

BGB is an Gameboy Advance emulator.  if you’ve never used an emulator for a game system before, they are programs you install on your computer that can mimic the hardware and OS of a game platform.  This mimicry is emulation, and it allows you to run this game system’s games.

Once you’ve downloaded BGB, it’s on to step two.

2. Getting Little Sound DJ for Gameboy

LSD’s physical cartridges are no longer produced, but you can download a ROM of LSD at their website (see “How to Get it” for details).   They charge two dollars to download a fully working version of the ROM, but you can also download a demo that has its save feature disabled.

Once you’ve installed Little Sound DJ, you can open it with BGB.  To do this, just start up BGB and choose “Load ROM…” (see BGB’s included HTML manual for more on BGB’s controls).  You will see that LSD is a tracker with four channels (if you have ever used Renoise you will find LSD familiar) and it includes an arpeggiator, a synthesizer, and a drum machine with various Roland samples.

3. Glitch Away

I decided to record LSD’s output into Ableton Live in order to use it to make samples; to do this, I routed my headphone output into an instrument line in.  Little Sonic DJ produces a variety of glitchy sounds that can definitely be useful, and I think that it’s unorthodox interface might provide an interesting contrast to the familiarity and sterility of your usual VSTs.  LSD also has considerable depth if you are interested in learning more about it (LSD’s manuals are here).

Have fun with Little Sonic DJ–you might even end up making entire songs in it, like the Swedish electo pop duo Puss.