Gyromite (NES) - Game A BGM (Sega Master System YM2413 Cover)
Channel: Andrew Ambrose
Date: 2023-05-07

It's about time I did something with the Yamaha YM2413 (a.k.a. the OPLL), a sound chip utilized by the likes of FM expansions for the Sega Master System and MSX computers (not to mention, I haven't done anything related to the Master System in over a year). Despite it being a stripped-down version of Yamaha's YM3812 chip (a.k.a. the OPL2) with some quantization noise, it's very much capable of producing some great music with an almost unique sound of its own. I've been meaning to try doing something with the YM2413 ever since I started using tildearrow's Furnace tracker more often, and I finally came up with something. I've been wanting to do a cover of the Game A BGM from Nintendo's 1985 Famicom classic Robot Gyro (known on the NES as Gyromite, though both releases call it Robot Gyro on the title screen), a wonderfully peppy tune that took perfect advantage of the 2A03's limitations. I imagined that the YM2413's preset vibraphone instrument would be a perfect fit for the song, so I decided that would be my chip of choice for this project. I had some misgivings about not taking advantage of all 9 note channels (which is a tad silly in hindsight), but remembered that the drums mode of the YM2413 replaces the last three note channels with five channels dedicated to playing preset kick, snare, tom, top, and hi-hat instruments, which is similar to the five ADPCM preset drum channels in the YM2608. Speaking of which, the toughest part of this project was the brief "drum solo" part, because I couldn't figure out how exactly to get the right sound from the tops. Eventually, I figured out that those percussion channels affect the sound of one another, so I managed to at least make it sound somewhat correct. It's not perfect, but I'm still very pleased with how the whole project turned out (as well as the few liberties I took to extend some parts and "expand" the sound at least a little). I hope you guys enjoy this, and be sure to let me know what you think of it. ^w^

Here are the downloads for this song: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1X013EDbB9D7lFhcjipb7AiqaVEcUpoK7?usp=share_link

Composed by: Yukio Kaneoka and/or Hirokazu Tanaka
Master System Arrangement by: Andrew Ambrose



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Austin Kaiser
Holly
Andyana
Eric M Ambrose

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