You can grab it as a free download over at the FamiTracker site.

Full real-time emulation of all channelsĬreated by jsr, FamiTracker is a Windows application that emulates the 2A03 chip – and its various expansion chips – and lets you program music in the tracker style (rows, which are filled with various data and then scroll upward during playback).įamiTracker has been around for about a decade, and new versions are released fairly regularly.

That allows music created in FamiTracker to be played on the real hardware, or to be used in NES-applications. One of the features of FamiTracker is NSF-file exporting. If you want to make music like the soundtrack to Silver Surfer, the free app FamiTracker is one way to do it.įamiTracker, above, is a free Windows tracker for producing music for the NES/Famicom-systems. The music for Silver Surfer is by Tim Follin and Geoff Follin.

It comes from one of the most acclaimed NES soundtracks – Silver Surfer – which came out in 1990: The Sound Of The NES – The 2A03 8-Bit Processorīefore we go any further, here’s a reminder of the sound of the 2A03.

And one of the most popular ways to program this chip is with FamiTracker. The NES redefined the home console experience when it was rolled out across the globe in the 1980s, and these days its sound chip (commonly known as the 2A03) enjoys a prominent role as one of the most popular tools for making chiptune/8-bit music. One of the best places to start is the Nintendo Entertainment System, above, or the Famicom, right, as it was known in Japan. Perhaps this will whet your appetite and encourage you to learn more in your own time. In this series, I’ll be introducing programs that you can use to make music on old video game consoles, or more specifically, the sound chips found inside these machines.Įach of these programs can be learned using information and tutorials found online – so through this series, I hope to simply offer an overview of the software/hardware in question and the artists that use it. Allen takes a look at making 8-bit music with FamiTracker – a free windows tracker for producing music for the NES/Famicom-systems.

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