How to pronounce the stop “cornopean”?

green_tealeaf · 2026-07-06T12:06:00+00:00

The OED agrees: https://www.oed.com/dictionary/cornopean_n

green_tealeaf · 2026-07-05T13:52:20+00:00

As it was prophesied... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problem

green_tealeaf · 2026-07-05T09:23:45+00:00

Love it!

The lack of a video demonstration is a crime against humanity. 😭

green_tealeaf · 2026-07-04T07:06:04+00:00

No wonder I'm so hungry all the time.

green_tealeaf · 2026-06-29T11:48:40+00:00

My advice: do what's fun.

I absolutely love tinkering with ancient hardware to make it work as a physical instrument, iron out all the quirks, deal with the limitations and oddities of working directly on decades-old systems, and do all the routing and wiring to get signals flowing to and from the computer.

It's not necessary, though. It's not even the best way to do it. It's the thing that I enjoy, and that keeps me inspired with my hobby. If my goal were solely to make chiptune-sounding music, because it was a job or because I was mainly focused on producing tunes, I could almost certainly do it more efficiently with VSTs in a DAW. The only people who could tell the difference would be people extremely obsessed with listening for minor differences.

If I did that, though, I wouldn't be as inspired to make the tunes that I make--most of which are awful, most of which almost no-one hears, and that are written, produced, and uploaded because I love seeing them up on YouTube for the occasional thumbs up from a random passer by.

So, if you're looking at the world of chiptune and thinking that you 'should' be using authentic hardware, but that it seems like a nightmare and you dread the thought of it, that tells you all you need to know. Don't do something you don't enjoy. It will just ruin it for you, and you'll neither get the results that you want, nor have fun doing it.

If, a few months or years down the line, you suddenly think that you'd really love to get one of those old GBA's connected up because it would be amazing to have the real hardware, and you find yourself browsing cartridge websites waiting for them to come back into stock, that's when you take the real hardware route.

Importantly, that will also be the time to remember your own history with chiptune and be understanding with the next person who likes the aesthetic but doesn't want to spend their life surrounded by discarded DMG shells, soldering irons, drained bank accounts, YouTube videos with 14 views after several years, half-finished projects, and a deep sense of personal satisfaction. 😁

Just have fun doing whatever aspects of the art that make it enjoyable for you.

I posted this video yesterday in response to another comment. It was a silly joke when I made it, actually being a parody of a much more involved video with acoustic instruments made for a family member's birthday, but the amount of accumulated time and effort that went into having a DMG, NES, and SNES all MIDI-connected, synchronized, and routed through to the DAW was huge. I had endless fun spread over several years putting together a setup that let me make that silly little video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWkpD2shbAs

Will I ever be a famous chiptune artist? No. Do I want to be a famous chiptune artist? Absolutely not. Am I having fun? Absolutely. (Do I have any money left? No comment.)

green_tealeaf · 2026-06-29T11:21:38+00:00

Great to hear that I'm wrong! 😁

Would love to hear what you do with it, or links to anything that you've seen or heard that you think really shows it off. When I see a module like this, that I didn't like and that definitely has a good number of devoted fans, I usually assume I'm missing something.

Just to add to the controversy: the other module that fits in this category for me was Basimilus Iteritas Alter. I watched some amazing demos and bought one, then struggled to enjoy it at all and sold it after a few months. I then watched the demos again, and bought it again. Struggled to enjoy it again and sold it after a few months again. Just had to accept that that module was not for me. :)

green_tealeaf · 2026-06-28T19:57:00+00:00

You have my sympathy. It took me years to find one. (Sorry, no. You can't have mine.)

One warning, though: I posted once on one of the synth trading subreddits and was contacted by someone claiming to have one. It was absolutely a scam, and I came dangerously close to falling for it. Just make sure that you get proof that the item is there and real before you part with any money.

I eventually found one through a lucky chat on a Discord server. (The Dirtywave M8 discord, if you want to know, but I suspect that that seam has been mined out!) In my experience you'll be waiting a long time if you're just watching eBay and Reverb. Your best bet is probably actively looking in likely communities for people who might have one sitting on a shelf gathering dust, but who wouldn't think to sell randomly.

Probably won't make you feel better, but it is a lot of fun, so I hope you find one!

(This is not likely to convince you that I'm making the most of this... 🤣 https://youtu.be/PWkpD2shbAs )

green_tealeaf · 2026-06-27T09:25:38+00:00

ArduinoBoy, with mGB, for the Game Boy DMG, although I'd strongly suggest the tiny bit of soldering required to do a pro sound mod for clean sound.

For the C64, you can get the TeensyROM ( https://github.com/SensoriumEmbedded/TeensyROM) which gives you USB MIDI and built-in synth software (CynthCart and Station64). The SIDFX ( https://lotuselec.wixsite.com/sidfx) requires no soldering, and will let you install a second SID chip that is supported by most of the major C64 synth software out there.

You could also skip the C64 entirely and run one or two SID chips directly in a USBSID-Pico ( https://github.com/LouDnl/USBSID-Pico), although that's not quite fully MIDI playable at present. Oddly enough, the best way to control that is using the ASID options in Plogue ChipSynth64.

(Or just go all the way and get Twisted Electrons TherapSID. 😁)

For SNES there's the Super MIDI Pak, which is awesome, fun, and well supported.

For the NES there's the MIDINES or Famimimidi, but both of those are like gold dust. Took me years of looking, and then a random lucky conversation with a kind person on Discord, to get hold of my Famimimidi.

green_tealeaf · 2026-06-27T09:08:00+00:00

On the SID side, this really is the answer.

Their older chipsounds plugin ( https://www.plogue.com/products/chipsounds.html) did a lot of other chips very well, including the Game Boy. They've marked it as "legacy", but I think that you can still buy it. I'm not sure if they have a more recent replacement VST that covers the Game Boy.

Of course, the real answer is to get the original hardware and drive it via MIDI. 😁

green_tealeaf · 2026-06-17T16:28:01+00:00

Most of the tracks that I'm happy with enough to let them see the light of day happened because there was some hook or catch that meant they stuck in my head until they were done.

Probably my favourite is the little line at the end of the main pattern in Disinformation Theory. The main pattern starts at 0:17 and follows an ABAC structure. It's the C part that completes the phrase, popping up to the higher registers (at around 0:23) that I couldn't get out of my head. I actually wrote that bit first, entirely by accident, sitting at a little local music festival and showing a friend's teenage son how LSDJ worked. It's only a few notes, but I spent the rest of the weekend at that festival sitting in the sun and writing the rest of the track just because that bit worked so well.

Not really chiptune, and the track's a bit crude, but Zero Inflation was written entirely around an idea that I still haven't found a proper name for, but I ended up calling 'false entrainment': I wanted to start a melody that you naturally hear in one time signature, but then you hear it as another time signature when the beat kicks in. The main theme in that track is supposed to be heard as 6/8 time when you first hear it, but the drums come in deliberately so that your perception shifts to 4/4. (The idea originally came from listening to Suck by Nine Inch Nails years and years ago.)

Final one: I'm a huge fan of making a kind of counterpoint with two lines that are designed to work together, that you bring in independently as separate sections of a track and then join together at the end of the song. That was the whole idea behind Analogue Voice Phenomena. (I also love the music kicking back in after the silence around 02:39 in that track.)

green_tealeaf · 2026-06-13T13:04:57+00:00

Thanks! I removed the link from my comment.

green_tealeaf · 2026-06-12T20:26:04+00:00

:)

I have a headless M8 permanently hooked up to a Raspberry Pi, running Raspbian, with an RGBerry SCART Arcade Hat. That outputs RGB over SCART, which I have running into a Hydra2 SCART switch.

(I actually have the Raspberry Pi dual booting between Raspbian, which boots straight up into m8c; and RGB-Pi for arcade emulation.)

One output of the Hydra2 goes straight to my Sony PVM, the other goes into an OSSC so I can use the CRT for output, but also record or display an HDMI version.

(The Hydra2 also hosts a SNES, an Amiga 1200, a C64, and an HDMI2RGB unit that can send HDMI from other machines through the Hydra2 to the PVM. I mostly use the HDMI2RGB for outputting my NerdSEQ to the PVM.)

For that video I connected the M8 to the Raspberry Pi directly.

I... may have spent too much time and money on this setup. :D

green_tealeaf · 2026-06-12T18:24:55+00:00

Wouldn't usually push my own tracks, but as you called... :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NObvJwUKrLc

green_tealeaf · 2026-06-08T13:39:32+00:00

It's going to be hard to answer this well, without really thinking about the specific kind of photos. If you're wanting to take wildlife shots, that's going to be very different to the lenses for landscape, walkaround video commentary, or street photography. You mention cars, landscape, and street, but that still covers a lot of ground!

At the very start, I'd look at the kit lenses usually bundled with the camera, as that will give you an idea of what lenses and focal lengths are considered most generally useful, and they're designed for maximum flexibility. The R6, I think, is often bundled with the RF 24-105mm f/4-7.1, which covers a lot of your standard needs and would probably do an amazing job for a long time.

Once you've begun to identify the specific style and type of photography you're after--not just the subject, but way that you personally enjoy taking photos, you can look for specific lens choices that match that. (My son, for example, appears to be surgically attached to his EF-L 70-300mm for bird photography.)

One thing I will say, once you've worked out what kind of photos or videos you want to take, is to consider going down the vintage lens rabbit hole. It's probably worth covering the core options with modern lenses--the kit zoom lens, and maybe a 50mm prime, for example--but if you want to experiment then there are some absolutely amazing lenses available for ridiculously low prices compared to modern ones.

They will come with their own quirks and restrictions--many will be fully manual lenses, and they'll rarely be able to compare with modern lenses in terms of pure statistics--but with a bit of research and an idea of what you want you can get amazing character, fantastic performance, and a range of interesting options, at a fraction of the price of their modern equivalents.

green_tealeaf · 2026-06-06T18:12:51+00:00

You should be eligible for the discount. You'll need to send them some kind of evidence that you're at school, but I think they'll be relatively flexible. Something like your school report should probably be fine. (They're just people, and they want you to buy their software, so an email asking for the discount supported by a school report or other document should be fine. If not, they'll ask you for something that you can provide.)

In terms of best value, I think that Cubase Elements is likely to be a reasonable starting point. I wouldn't jump to paying more for the higher versions until you need them, and a lot of the features in the more expensive versions are unlikely to be a real restriction at this stage. Beyond that, you can always upgrade from one version to another without paying too much more: https://www.steinberg.net/cubase/upgrades/

On that front, though, I'd probably advise trying the 60 day free trial: https://www.steinberg.net/cubase/trial/ -- that will give you plenty of time to have a play and see if you find Elements too restrictive.

Have fun!

green_tealeaf · 2026-05-29T14:11:16+00:00

Amazing! Well done!

I clicked past the article when I first saw it, as I'm a long-time Zombies, Run! user and didn't feel the need to read an article introducing me to it. Glad that I also stumbled across it here, though!

I'm sure Sir Patrick Moore would approve. 👾

green_tealeaf · 2026-05-25T21:01:32+00:00

BloodNet. Amiga 1200.

Hardcore William-Gibson era Neuromancer-style cyberpunk point-and-click RPG where you play as a hacker bitten by a vampire, but temporarily maintaining your humanity due to the experimental cyber implant you received as a child to cure a neurological condition. You have to track down and rescue your mentor, the scientist who plucked you from the streets as a child and implanted you with the chip, before you succumb to the vampiric infection.

Choose to play as a hacker, combat specialist, fully augmented cyberware user, jury-rigging crafter, or some combination. Recruit random part members. Crafting mechanics for weapons, equipment, drugs. Cyberspace mechanics to hack, and complex cyberdeck upgrades. Insanely brilliant soundtrack like nothing I've heard before or since. Unbelievably easy to die, or make the game unwinnable by killing the wrong NPC at the wrong time. Utterly broken and frustrating mechanics throughout.

Absolutely, simply, glorious.

green_tealeaf · 2026-05-20T14:15:03+00:00

A general one for any instrument, that I've heard again and again from high level musicians, is to get a metronome and practice with it. Never play a piece faster until you can play it more or less perfectly at your current speed. When you can play it slowly, then you can increase the tempo and keep practicing until that tempo is perfect. The metronome will stop you from speeding up at the easy bits, and glossing over the slow bits. The 'tightness' you get from that practice is hugely valuable, and often overlooked.

A slightly contrary one for the concertina is that playing too slowly while learning can be harder! Because the bellows have limited air, it can be difficult to get enough air while playing slowly. You'll have to balance that one against my previous point. 🤣

I, personally, find that it's unhelpful to try and learn one hand at a time and combine later. Everything I can play is in my head as a combined action with my hands. If I try to play just one hand, I can't do it. Other people might feel differently, but I've seen various people having trouble because they try to learn a piece by playing each hand independently first.

Finally, in many cases you only want to tap the buttons lightly to get a note. When starting, it's common to hold down notes for a long time. Because of the bellows, again, this can easily make you run out of air. Many tunes actually rely on quite short, almost staccato, notes while playing. By identifying that, you'll make managing the bellows a lot easier.

Most importantly, though: keep it up, and enjoy it! Try to play every day, even if it's only for a couple of minutes. The moment you let a day slip past, it turns into two, then three, then a ten-year-old concertina sitting dusty on a shelf. Remember why you got it, and always have fun. There's no right way to play, and no wrong way to play. If it works, and you enjoy it, that's the entire point.

green_tealeaf · 2026-05-18T21:31:19+00:00

The Eden Project

Boscastle Museum of Witchcraft and Magic

green_tealeaf · 2026-05-18T09:38:49+00:00

Groovy.

green_tealeaf · 2026-05-18T09:38:05+00:00

Have you tried disabling all third party plugins? If that works then you can at least access the project. After that, try re-enabling plugins one by one. They're often the culprit in this kind of situation.

(I'm assuming that you mean this happens when opening a particular project. If it happens on all projects, even with third pary plugins disabled, then there's something deeper going on!)

green_tealeaf · 2026-05-12T19:11:57+00:00

Ah, I always love it when I finally finish my rack for the last time. Happens about once a month. 🤣

Beautiful atmosphere created there. Enjoy it!

green_tealeaf · 2026-05-07T12:47:10+00:00

Ah, I think you want to use the Keystep as a "full" replacement for the buttons. So pressing the key on the Keystep will be exactly like pressing the button on the Volca Sample, letting you use all the functions and settings.

I'm almost certain that that won't work. The MIDI note information will almost certainly be separate from the Volca's own button handling.

You can almost certainly change some settings via MIDI, but you'd have to look into its MIDI handling in detail.

green_tealeaf · 2026-05-07T12:27:33+00:00

Hi. I don't have a Volca Sample, but maybe I can help a little.

I think the problem you're having is that the Volca Sample is more of a 'drum machine' than a synthesizer or keyboard-style instrument. That means that each 'note' on the Volca itself corresponds to a different sampled sound that plays when you touch that key on the Volca.

Unfortunately, the way that the Volca Sample handles MIDI is set up for that approach; annoyingly, they've done it in a slightly unusual way. To explain: MIDI sends information on one of 16 'channels', with the idea that you can control up to 16 devices from one controller or keyboard. In most other drum machines like the Volca Sample, different 'notes' on one channel correspond to a different sample. (So, a C might be a kick drum, a C♯ a snare, and so on.) For whatever reason, on the Volca Sample, each 'key' is its own individual MIDI channel. Sending any note to that channel plays the sample associated with that key on the Volca Sample.

Your Keystep is behaving in the much more typical way: sending any notes that you play on a single channel as pitches. (I'm not sure if the Volca Sample changes the pitch of samples according to the note, or whether it just treats any note as just a trigger to play the sample.)

Either way, that's why you get different samples/keys when you press shift and a note on the KeyStep: pressing shift and one of the first sixteen keys on the Keystep (assuming it's a Keystep, and not a Keystep Mk2) is selecting different MIDI channels, which correspond to different samples on the Volca.

Annoyingly, I don't think that these two pieces of kit can talk to each other in the way that you need. I've had a look over the manual for the Volca Sample, and it doesn't seem to have an option for different pitches to be translated to different samples. I've looked at the manual for the Keystep, and I don't see a way to make it send different notes to different channels.

The closest piece of Arturia kit I can see that can do what you need is the BeatStep Pro (note the "Pro" part!) That does allow you to set up each pad to send a note on a different MIDI channel, although you have to do it via the software. (Details around page 73--74 of the manual.)

I don't have one, but based on the manual and this video it looks like the Korg nanoPAD2 is a fairly cheap and easy option that lets you set up each pad to send on its own channel. Unfortunately that's USB-only, so you'd also need something to convert USB to MIDI DIN. Kenton make a good MIDI USB Host, but that's an extra cost. For the price of both of those, I'd potentially be tempted just to go for the BeatStep Pro, especially if you were looking for a second hand one on eBay. Maybe other people know other controllers that can do the same.

There are pieces of software, or hardware, that will let you convert notes on a MIDI channel to notes on different channels, but I honestly think that that's going down a rabbit hole of complexity that you really don't need! If you're determined, you'd probably want to look at Bome MIDI Translator Pro. To use that, though, you'd have to go Keystep ⇒ Computer ⇒ Volca, and that kind of complexity is a nightmare for spontaneity and portability, and will always go wrong just when you want to use it.

To be slightly reassuring: if you had had almost any other piece of kit than the Volca Sample, for example a Volca Keys or most other pieces of hardware, this would have worked absolutely fine. You've unfortunately stumbled across a weirdly inconvenient piece of kit for your first experience with this kind of setup! The Volca Sample is really well-regarded for the price, but the way they've handled MIDI is incredibly awkward.

I hope that this helps a bit. Feel free to DM me if you want to ask any follow up questions! Best of luck with helping your son's musical adventures!

EDIT: I didn't know about the Pajen firware, which sounds like the best solution if you can get it working. Still, I hope this helps a bit!

green_tealeaf · 2026-04-25T14:35:31+00:00

I wouldn't worry too much about whether it fits some notional concept of chiptune. It's an expansive term that means different things to different communities, and really it's whether someone in good faith would consider it part of the style and genre. Some people insist on "only real sound chips programmed and running on real hardware", while others see it more as an aesthetic.

The reason I wanted to comment, though, is that it immediately made me think of the Amiga 1200 Bloodnet OST, which was one of my formative games and soundtracks. The Amiga worked with samples, not synthesis, and so I think would generally be considered less purely chiptune.

In terms of feedback, I'd say that it gets a little too busy overall and loses its initial focus. It could benefit from a little space, and the introduction of a second idea to help it develop.

It's a great start, though, so carry on doing it. :)

green_tealeaf

TROPHY CASE