The humble square-wave-generating AY-3-8910 and later its Yamaha-branded counterpart YM2149 had a long ride in computers and arcade games from the late '70s into the early '90s in the Atari ST and later MSX machines. Clever coders found ways to get more complex sounds from it, which gave Arnaud a challenge as he emulated the AY using the Amiga's Paula chip.
If this interests you then Kevin has been researching the modern replacement options for these 8-bit sound chips and has taken a deep dive into the inner workings.
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So without further ado, read on for more musical news, views and reviews.
Since the last newsletter I've posted an update on my Haxocorder project. I've been hacking the open-source haxophone project to make it closer to a recorder, which I'm more familiar with than the sax.
I've received new boards with a more recorder-like key layout. It looks sweet and plays nicely too.
The MIDIPan is great by itself but I wanted to improvise over a backing track, so I tried looping eight bars from a current work-in-progress.
It gave me a little trouble because the backing had a chord change that's not diatonic, and so I had some conflicting notes to work around.
This worked extraordinarily well and I'm really satisfied with the result.
Tsuneo.Ohnaka is taking advantage of the capacity of an FPGA chip to see how many oscillators he can cram onto a single device. He's managed 10240 voices.
That doesn't mean 10240-note polyphony, it handles 80 notes at a time with many voices combined to produce very complex sounds.
A little vibration motor play the tines harvested from a music box. The result is like an overexcited windchime.
At first I thought this would be a musical project but it's a rather Heath Robinson machine to step up 1.5V to 12V using a speaker driver!
Digisynth consists of two glove controllers. One hand has flex sensors to send MIDI control codes, the other has tactile buttons. Both have LEDs for visual effects.
This is fully open-source so you could use the information to build this yourself.
hackaday.com/2026/04/21/wearable-midi-controller-built-with-raspberry-pi/
MIT researchers have produced a computer simulation of a violin, which allows luthiers to play around with their violin design and hear how it sounds before producing the instrument.
news.mit.edu...mit-engineers-virtual-violin-produces-realistic-sounds-0429
I'm watching MIDI 2.0 develop with interest, although I fear that, like many things, something that's beautiful in its simplicity may grow into something more complex and ugly.
One suggestion that has caught my eye is this proposal for a standard for sending text over the MIDI connection for assistive text. It would be used by the receiving application to display braille or text-to-speech.
A binaural microphone uses two microphones and a model of a human head and ears to capture sound exactly as a human would hear it.
Such things are expensive but not if you build one yourself as David has done.
The video contains some ambient sounds recorded using the device and the effect is remarkable if heard through headphones or in-ear monitors.
The WhatChord app works offline and claims to identify chords.
The team behind the app have been open about how it works. Using a large lookup table of chords / notes is not an issue today. The problem that they had to solve was naming the chord as a musician would. This requires a 'scorecard' with weightings on a number of parameters.
Kevin has had several projects involving the AY-3-8912, notably this one which drives four of the 8-bit sound chips for twelve square-wave voices.
As he points out in this blog post, getting the original chips is a lucky dip. You'll get a used one that may or may not be what it claims and may or may not work.
So he dives into the many 'modern replacement' options, and goes into some detail about its inner workings. Don't miss the 'AY chip from discrete logic' project.
https://diyelectromusic.com/2026/04/06/ay-3-8912-8910-hardware-emulation/
This project is the result of some banter between Atari and Amiga enthusiasts.
Arnaud Carré has written a blog post about playing Atari ST music using an Amiga's Paula chip. The initial step was simple since the ST's soundchip uses three square-wave voices. But Demoscene coders found ways to get more complex sounds out of the chip and this gave Arnaud more of a challenge.
The video finishes with the demo showing a record-breaking number of animated dots on-screen at the same time as playing music using the AY emulation.
FMS is tracker software or an "FM Groovebox" for the Game Boy Advance.
Wings of Death is a groundbreaking game known for its visuals, gameplay and soundtrack by Jochen Hippel, aka Mad Max.
This CD set from German Remix Group will contain the music from the original game and remixes. The project has been funded and stretch goals activated.
www.kickstarter.com/projects/drf/wings-of-death-reworked-anthology
This track by Nordischsound shows what musicians/coders can do with the SID chip today. The video has an oscilloscope view which allows you to see exactly what's going on with the SID's 3 voices, along with some pixel art.
If you like this music as much as I do then don't forget Max Hall's monthly Chip SID Show.
I hesitate to include this because it has been everywhere on the internet and I guess everyone has seen it, but in case you haven't, this is an electronic kalimba with an amazing list of features.
I'm linking to Hainbach's review. The Kickstarter is still running and has exceeded its target around 200 times over.
I own an Artinoise Re.corder and although I have some issues with that, at least one of them has been addressed here.
This instrument is clearly aimed at youngsters and beginners and is slightly smaller than a soprano recorder but it does have many more features than the re.corder including MIDI over USB, built-in sounds and audio out.
All I have to go on is the description. I don't think it's for me (especially now that I have the Haxocorder) but it's fully funded and I'll be looking out for reviews.
This isn't a new idea, little boards have been around for a long time. They're usually breakout boards for chips like the MPR121. Some have large pads like this for you to use croc clips and who doesn't want to make a piano from fruit?
However, this has no less than 27 capacitive inputs and comes with CircuitPython code on the device that you can use right away or tweak if that's your thing. Plus browser-based tools for making music. Pimoroni claim that "the barrier to entry is about as low as it gets".
It's aimed at everyone from educators to musicians.
Smooth McGroove has performed his own a-capella arrangement of Ice Cap Zone from Sonic 3.
8-Bit Ukulele has performed perhaps the most recognisable piece of video game music ever.
This is as much a story of rediscovering a culture (some of it a little grizzly) after generations of oppression as it is about indigenous instruments.
Labaga Taru is promoting the music and instruments of his culture as well as making them.
These include a xylophone, flute and mouth harp. There are some interesting connections with the present day, such as tuning them to A=440 and producing some 3D printed models.
I wasn't aware of the Orchid ORC-1 from Telepathic Instruments but it's a neat form factor. a short single-octave keyboard for the right hand and chord-organ style buttons on the left to choose the type of chord. This allows you to make a chord sequence and then play a melody.
Love Hulten has reimagined this in his own retro-futuristic style. It includes an eye-catching tape loop for tape delay.
All that remains is for me to thank everyone who blogs, vlogs, writes articles or posts pictures on the subjects I'm excited by.
Nor can I do the things I do without your support, so thank you for that.
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Happy music-making!
Shiela Dixon - Editor / curator
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