In Hardware

How did the producers for NES Games create the music? Did they use computers, synthesizers, drum machines, or anything like that?

A difficult subject, but most likely not. Unlike today, when game music can be created in almost any way, then used as an MP3 or similar format, it's difficult to realise that, in the 8-bit era, game music was practically a black art, and virtually unrecognised.

Most game musiscians would have their own method of creating music and getting it into a game. In the NES's case, for example, most music is actually part of the game program, since the sound chip is controlled by the CPU. In a sense, creating a tune is identical to coding anything else.

The tune might well have been created on another platform (like a synth or a real instrument) and then ported to use the NES sound and channels, but there's no single way of doing it.

I'd imagine the most common way of doing it would be to set up an interrupt that would frquently call the music program, but it's not my own area of interest. Nonetheless I have a healthy respect for anyone that can produce music on an 8-bit system.

You might be interested to take a look at .

I just started fooling around with NerdTracker 2 myself. It's a bit confusing, but I think I'm starting to understand it. If I could only get it to playback... I'm doing something wrong, but I'll figure it out eventually

i couldnt figure out the playback feature either :\

I posted over at NesDev, and they told me to make sure that Hold Note is on. If you don't use that, you have to set a number on Time Length. I get it to playback now It's still tough to figure out how to do some of it. It's one of those programs you just have to mess around with for awhile... do alot of experimenting.

Right now I'm trying to figure out how to make different instrument sounds, but I can't really catch on