Just for fun!
Ever wondered what 8-bit music actually is?
I started asking myself: why 8-bit? What gives it that distinctive sound?
I learned that 8-bit music is mostly a nickname for the sound associated with old game hardware. Those systems used 8-bit processors, had very limited memory, and could not store and play full recorded songs the way modern systems do. Instead, they used dedicated audio hardware (an APU) to generate sound in real time through a small number of voices (channels).
Each voice could only play one note at a time.
The NES APU had 5 channels:
- 2 pulse voice (square-like waves): melody / harmony
- 1 triangle voice: bass
- 1 noise voice: percussion / effects
- 1 DPCM voice: short samples
That sounded simple and fun enough that I wanted to try building something inspired by it.
So I built my own browser-based NES-style sequencer: Ocho(8)-it!
Open source and MIT licensed.
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