Homebrew Lameboy Sound "glitch" reproduction

[Anti]

OK, you know that sound thing that happens when You use speedup in lameboy, then unspeed? It changes super low-pitched sounds into high-pitched sounds. How do I do this in a music editing software? I have goldwave, sony vegas, and can get audacity. I can change the pitch of the entire piece, but not just the low-pitched parts.

Any help would be appreciated. thanks.

Actually i think its the frequency... please help! thanks

 

[RodrigoDavy]

I am no sound expert, but I think this bug is possible because the gameboy has 3 separate monofonic sound channels. If you put many sounds in one or two sound channels you won't be able to alter the pitch of just the lower notes.

If you record the sounds you want to apply this effect separatedely, you can obtain lots of great effects like increasing/decreasing the pitch/tempo, apply reverbaration/echo/modulation effects/distortion. Whereas applying these effects in the music as a hole wouldn't be as good as applying them to only the instruments you mean to.

 

[Fishaman P]

The pitch of the sound automatically changes when the sound changes speed.
The hard thing to do is to prevent the pitch from changing with the speed.

EDIT: I'm an idiot.
Though, if you know anything about programming, this task should be a piece of cake when you have the Audacity source available.

 

[geoflcl]

Ah! I don't think you'll be able to reproduce that in a music editing software, I'm afraid! Because of the way the Gameboy processes its sound and music, it can't be manipulated in a sound file.

The Gameboy's sound works by using a bunch of individual sound channels, and playing them at once to make the music and sounds you hear in the game. Think of it as a music group and its members. If you're at their band rehearsal, and you want to change only how the guitar sounds, you can tell the guitar player to play differently. But if you have an MP3 of one of their songs, you can't tell the guitar player play differently, because it's just a recording of what they played.

The same goes for how the Gameboy's sound works. Lameboy's speedy-uppy music quirks can't be replicated in sound-editing software, only when you're actually playing the game. In Lameboy, the game "commands" how each of its "channels" are to sound, the same way you can "command" band members to change how to play. When you speed up the game in Lameboy, it sort of messes up the commands due to emulation quirks, leaving some of the channels sounding borked when you resume normal gameplay speed (at least until the Gameboy issues another command, in which case the channel may fix itself).

The same thing can't happen in an, say, an MP3 of the song in Goldwave or Audacity, because it's not an actual Gameboy and each of its individual channels, but just a recording of all of the sound it makes, mixed down to a single channel. Because of this, you're only able to change the pitch of the entire piece in music-editing software.

Sorry if it doesn't make sense! Explaining this sort of thing is really tricky business. Maybe someone else can explain it better?!

 

[Anti]

AH ok geoflcl. so what if i got a MIDI file?

Also, in a gameboy emulator, can the sound channels be played with? Is it possible to run the lameboy emulator on PC?

 

[Anti]

fishman I dont but thanks

 

[FAST6191]

In some ways this is a variation on the "how can I remove the voice from a piece of music" question if you are indeed editing in wave type format as opposed to tracker/midi style.

Still it is potentially slightly easier I guess- copy the track and run a low pass filter to drop all the higher pitch sounds at your chosen cutoff. After this you can try pitch increases or some variation on the theme (tempo, plain speed increase) and hopefully get something like what you want.

Others have taken tech examples and were I to add to that I would probably ponder whether the emulation itself cuts off the now far higher pitched stuff (if it is now above 20KHz it is not worth playing so do not" sort of thing).

 

[geoflcl]

I suppose a MIDI file would work, considering the individual channels are preserved in MIDI editors. You'll just be sacrificing that classic 8-bit sound!

As far as I know, no Gameboy emulators let you meddle with the sound on-the-fly. One thing you can do, however, is record each of a game's individual channels in a PC emulator (the method varies with each), then import them all into a music-editing program. Then, you'll have the freedom to change the pitch of each individual channel!

Here's an example I whipped up using the intro to Pokemon Gold/Silver. When you extract the .rar, you'll find two files, "pokemon_mixed.wav" and "pokemon_channels.aup" (you'll need Audacity to run this one).

"Pokemon_mixed" is a .wav file. It shows what you'd usually get when recording game music/sounds. All of the channels are mixed together in one file.
"Pokemon_channels" is the same music, but it shows what it's like to record each individual Gameboy channel, then import them all. Here, you can mute individual channels, change their pitch, etc. This way, you have much more control over how it sounds. It's really nifty!

 

[Anti]

how do you get them separate?

 

[geoflcl]

how do you get them separate?

For that, you'll have to record each of the channels individually in an emulator, then import them all into Audacity/the program of your choice.

The emulator I used to create my example file was BGB. It allows you to disable individual Gameboy channels. So to record a single Gameboy channel, you'd simply disable all of the channels except the one you want to record, so that it plays by itself. Then record it (BGB also allows you to capture sound and export ti to .WAV). Do the same for all the channels, and you'll be able to make an example like the one I provided!

 

[Anti]

I did it, but I'm just stuck now. Pitch won't become a super-high-pitched sound, I did record the one channel from BGB directly onto Audacity. Thanks for the help!