MEGA MEGA MEGA DRIVE

im still waiting on the filters for the gameboy megamachine. blooming Christmas slowing up the proceedings! shooting the gameboy animation submissions and fredrik mini machine video tomorrow amongst other vids.

But! time to talk about my findings this evening after playing with little scales GENMDM.

If you don't know its a midi interface for the Sega megadrive (genesis) which has the YM2612 fm chip aswell as the master systems SN76489.

6 channels from the 2612 and 4 from the 76489 resulting in a whole 10 channels (even more in special mode). (spread out on midi channels 1-10)

So I have played around with it, its pretty damn cool in its own right. But I wanted to talk about the project I am planning for it. 

so the first 5 channels are exactly the same on the Sega megadrive, just straight up 4 operator fm voices, kinda like the ones in a DX7. it struck me I could probably make a pretty good 5 voice fm polyphonic synth out of it. 

Im not the biggest fan of the weird elastic sounding nature of fm sounds which has always prevented me from delving into fm synthesis. but I want to change my mind!

I did have a dx7 at one point but the lack of tactile controls, reasonably complicated menu system and clunky iPad interfaces stopped me from really messing around with the synthesis engine.

however I see the megadrive/genesis as a tangible way to get into it. 

how?

this breaks down what the fm chip has https://www.smspower.org/maxim/Documents/YM2612#regb0

and amazingly little scale has managed to allocate it all to midi cc commands :-

http://little-scale.com/GENMDM/GENMDM_103/GENMDM_103.txt

I just sat and messed with them all pretty cool!

so it's time to make a big interface for it with cv inputs for nearly every parameter and a knob. 

you have control of the algorithm of the fm voice, aswell as many controls for each of the 4 operators, i'm going to break it all out into a big panel.

resulting in 49 knobs and 1 rotary switch (for the algorithm select)

in poly mode these will connect to each of the 5 voices simultaneously, but i'm also going to add a function to be able to scroll between the 5 voices incase its not in polyphonic mode. 

another great feature little scale has added is 16 preset spaces. so i'm going to pop 16 buttons for recall, and a write button for writing them in. 

im quite excited with this one because fingers crossed it will be nice and useable!

it will be similar to this interface you used to be able to get for the dx7 :-

http://www.spheremusic.com/Bargaindtl.asp?Item=18317

but for the Sega megadrive hahahaha.

im ordering all the parts today! its gunna be a Christmas at my parents not feeling James Bond on the tv kinda project, im hoping it won't take more than a couple of days but I may be very wrong! it wont be the first time haha.

as usual ill post my findings on here first!