Video Game Synthesizers and Microtonal Tuning: Super Midi Pak and GenMDM

Author
Nick
Post date
Monday, January 2, 2023

Ever since the chiptune music genre became a thing in the mid 2000s may independent developers have been creating software and hardware that either emulate vintage video game sound chips, use old stock sound chip in new synths, or even use the original game system hardware and building out sound chip triggering features. These would essentially turn a video game system into a midi controllable synthesizer in the form of custom carts and/or controller inputs. At Deep Signal Studios we have called a number of systems such as:

Of these, GenMDM can have its octaves equally divided by any number just by entering the number into a file using the GenMDM M4L Tools or OSX GenMDM editor. By the way, check out our GenMDM Facebook group.

In 2021 Rian Hunter aka Cejetvole announced the Super MIDI Pak, a cart that turned a Super Nintendo in a synthesizer. It is 16 part multitimbral, can import samples for the voices/drum channel, and also microtonal capability. Here is an example of some actual SNES game music in 24 EDO aka quarter tone.



The cart has midi in and out via a pair of Type A (Korg, Make Noise) TRS 1/8 inch midi plugs and micro USB. It is programmed through a web midi interface. The documentation lists out the method by which you can add custom tunings using the 30 year old and greatly underused Midi Tuning Standard but I could find no tools that would be able to send the right data to it. Thankfully Rian is very dedicated and attentive to the users on his Discord channel and listen and respond to my request even through I was probably the only owner that was actually interested this feature. He built an interface and put the tuning parameters in the .jsond file.

I sent an email to Sevish aka Sean Archibald to describe the tuning import method that Rian had come up with and asked if Scale Workshop could support this. Scale Workshop is currently the best way to create and convert tuning files. Rian's tuning import method that placed the tunings at the end of the jsond file from my initial request also contains all of the other SMP settings like the samples which would make the file large and take a long time to import. And any import of the jsond would have to include the samples or there would be no sound. Importing the jsond would overwrite the presets. Could we import only the tuning? Sean posted my request on the Scale Workshop GitHub. I shared the link with Rian and he responded to the thread, asking for a suggestion about supporting an SCL/KBM file combo. SW dev frostburn shared some SW code with Rian and recommended TUN files import into the SMP web app since it is just a single file. From this Rian was able to quickly update the SMP web app to include TUN file import.

To create a tuning scale for Super Midi Pak you can visit the Scale Workshop web app, create your tuning, and then download the TUN file. Then head over to the SMP web app, upload your file, and click the Import and Upload TUN file.

Super Midi Pak is currently sold out but Rian is working on another batch for 2023.