Creating PO-20 Arcade style patches (some now attached!)

Could someone point me in the right direction - where to start on creating those lovely bubbly playful gaming sounds from the Arcade from scratch on a Jupiter-8, Juno, Casio CZ or OP-1? That pretty much exhausts what I have at my disposal lol.

Or gas some clever forum member already created them for OP-1?

Help and pointers would be much appreciated.

CB

Hello,
Cuckoo has a pretty good video using op-1 8-bit style.
http://youtu.be/ZZjNBTltSe0

Yep - thanks - I’d seen that. But he doesn’t really explain how he approached creating the patches in a systematic (rather than trial and error) way. And also doesn’t document the parameters.


It does sound quite good though.

I’m kinda keener to work out how to get close the the Arcade specifically. And with an ‘educated’ approach. :slight_smile:

CB

I have my op1 but sadly left Arcade at the office:( I think Dr. Wave synth would be a good place to start then maybe add phone bit-crush effect and/or an LFO. The Korg Gadget iPad app has a nice arcade specific synth too!

If you go to cuckoo’s soundcloud page there’s this dropbox link, which contains the patches and drums from the video.

Aw thanks for that @el_wombato.


CB

Basically it is a bit crushed downsampled square wave with various fast arpeggios (triangle wave for bass). Since you don’t have bitcrushing or downsampling in op-1, harsh square wave from dr. wave can work (red knob way down counterclockwise, blue knob making square). And downsampling means there can’t be very low bass, so filtering low end may help. Arpeggios can be made with endless sequencer, 1/32 speed and fast bpm. Search in youtube for “8 bit arp, 8 bit arpeggio, chiptune arpeggio” etc. There is some examples there. But maybe better to use more suitable instrument like SidTracker 64 on ipad or Sunvox (it’s free for windows and mac);

Many thanks @tralivallo. Exactly what I was looking for.

I actually used all of your advice but stopped short at looking around for arpeggios - I just guessed LOL

These are my first 2 PO-20 Arcade patches for the OP-1. Please let me know if anyone finds them of any value :slight_smile:

CB

Cuckoo’s Feena patch sounds great as a basic 8-bit arpeggio, here are a few steps:
1) Change playmode from Mono to Poly or Legato
2) Set your tempo to 120 or faster
3) In Endless, set 4 notes, two in each octave. (Such as e-flat, b-flat) and set the speed to 1/32

4) Change the envelope curve for the synth to suit tastes. Best to curb any “pop” sound that may happen at the beginning and end of DrWave notes with the blue and orange knobs.

Pretty cool result and a fun use of Endless.

i wonder what percentage of op1 users has used the cuckoo 8 bit patches. gotta be like high 90’s haha

Another way to get this 8 bit sound is to choose a sampler synth and get a very very narrow distance between green and white points.

Shift+move them to find the right tuning.
This way you can achieve rather good bass, depending on the portion of wave you chose.