MT32-Pi DIY synthesizer: bare metal 80s nostalgia
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- čas přidán 31. 07. 2024
- This week, let's build and take a look at the #MT32 PI, another "bare metal" synthesizer running on #RaspberryPi. This is an emulator for the late #80s Roland MT-32 sound module, which was used by a lot of games for their sound track. The MT-32 PI can also load soundfonts, so you can use it as a ROMpler in your setup. Table of contents:
00:00 introduction
00:36 hello
01:28 hardware needed
02:34 breadboard explained
03:09 building the UI
03:28 wiring
03:55 LCD setup
04:32 software installation, ROMs and soundfonts
05:04 config file setup
05:31 using the device, soundfont editing
06:31 important considerations
06:48 demo 1 (MT-32 emulation)
08:43 demo 2 (soundfonts)
09:45 bye-bye
Resources for this video:
MT-32 PI github.com/dwhinham/mt32-pi
@SpeedySPCFan 's video on the Roland MT-32: • Roland MT-32: Redefini...
Polyphone www.polyphone-soundfonts.com/
Some soundfonts: rkhive.com/piano.html
My video on Polyphone • Perfectly looped sampl...
Audio hat ("soundcard"): raspiaudio.com/
LC Display: amzn.to/3y9ylo5
Rotary encoder: bit.ly/3KSts6o
GPIO expander: amzn.to/3M8Kduf
You can also buy one of the sets by Freenove: amzn.to/3rtuvBR - these will get you a lot of components useful for synth projects.
Join us on Woody Piano Shack's Discord server: / discord
Get 7% off on DistroKid with this link distrokid.com/vip/floyd
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Shop a Huge Selection of Synths and Drum Machines at PerfectCircuit.com!
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Here's what I have in my setup at the moment. Want to have that, too? Please use the followings links and support me:
Yamaha EX5 www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=...
Kasser Synths Arcade www.tindie.com/products/kasse...
MPC One, Novation PEAK, Reface DX, Strymon Nightsky, Strymon Volante, Strymon Iridium, Zoom MS 70 CDR, Korg NanoKontrol 2, Korg NanoKey, Akai EWI USB, Zoom R24, Zoom H5, Yamaha MT7:
www.thomann.de/de/thlpg_3wyep...
Some bands / artists I've been following for a long time are (among others) Massive Attack, Pink Floyd, Pet Shop Boys, Archive, A-Ha, Yes, Porcupine Tree, John Mellencamp, Jean-Michel Jarre, Metallica, Peter Gabriel and Perturbator. So my music will kind of sound like those (without ever reaching the greatness of those artists, of course). :-) - Hudba
I'm really enjoying the bare metal series - keep up the great work!
Thanks you very much! I'll try to. :-)
yeah agreed - really enjoying these!
You have composed a really beautiful soundtrack there! It is a joy in every regard to watch your Videos!
Thank you very much!
Love the MT-32! Awesome little project.
Thanks!
Amazing as usual, Mr Floyd!
Thanks, Scott!
Fantastic tracks !
Once more a great demonstration of talent versus equipment.
Thank you very much!
Great tunes! love mt32 and the sound canvas for rompler sounds
Thank you very much!
You are everywhere brother with the magic of video editing! just the way i like it! and demo 2 was reaaaaaaaly nice!!! enjoyed it
Thank you so much 😀
yeah, demo 2 killed it! 🙂
Thanks for sharing. I'd heard about this while playing around with mini dexed and plan to house this and minidexed in a rack soon.
Thanks for watching! 🙂
Another excellent video, and in less than 30 minutes, all up and running. Three PI's now acting as an OBX (Zynthian), a TX816 (MiniDexed) and this...
Cool! You should record a song with that setup. :-)
@@mr_floydst There's a lot more going on, but I have posted quite a few songs (covers) on SoundCloud
Also, given Zynthian is not running baremetal, and is more than capable on a PI4 of delivering an OBX, I can bet that a baremetal implementation of at least a 4 note poly JP6/JP8 is viable
Really cool
Thanks for watching! You're right. They even got the LCD right. :)
Definitely reminds me of demo scene music from back in the day!
Thanks for watching! The demo scene used _a lot_ of Roland D50 samples - and the MT-32 uses a subset of those patches (or variations of them)
Nice!!!
Thanks!
i have , build this ,fantastic sound is clear , good job
Congrats and thanks!
Your channel keeps getting more interesting. Have you ever considered starting your own synthesizer business? I can see a lot of people being interested in buying those gadgets, if nicely packaged in some little box, with some knobs, like the 1010 Nanoboxes. Take the multi-timbral DX synthesizer the last week, would love such a little midibox with some included effects and built in mixer…
Thank you very much! Well, at the moment, I'm content with what I'm doing here, discovering things and telling my viewers about it. But yes, sometimes I feel the same, some of these open source projects are mature and stable. Adding a hardware user interface custom tailored for them would take them to the next level.
@@mr_floydst I would love to se such a project with the TAL sampler with audio input (I know it's not freeware, but I tnink it'd be the most suitable sampler). Would probably require a graphic display though.
Thanks to @speedy dtm for letting me sample her excellent video. :-)
Resources for this video:
MT-32 PI github.com/dwhinham/mt32-pi
Speedy's video on the Roland MT-32: czcams.com/video/ejmLjde1dp8/video.html
Polyphone www.polyphone-soundfonts.com/
Some soundfonts: rkhive.com/piano.html
My video on Polyphone czcams.com/video/keCSodUsj2k/video.html
Audio hat ("soundcard"): raspiaudio.com/
LC Display: amzn.to/3y9ylo5
Rotary encoder: bit.ly/3KSts6o
GPIO expander: amzn.to/3M8Kduf
You can also buy one of the sets by Freenove: amzn.to/3rtuvBR - these will get you a lot of components useful for synth projects.
One minor correction. Speedy actually uses she/her.
@@cleverhardy5230 Thanks for pointing it out; corrected. Please accept the apologies from this dinosaur, @speedy_dtm :-)
Bought a MT-32 about 15 years ago (it was price started to get crazy), that was the beginning of why my wallet do hate me... :D And through a complex path the reason I'm hear today :D
This is a quite faithful clone-even the LCD output is quite similar to the original :-)
@@mr_floydst what patch/preset are you using in your MT-32 demo? I don’t recall any of these instruments in the default patch set
@@godzil42 Ugh, I made this video a week ago, you're asking challenging questions here! ;-)
One of the patch names can be seen in the first seconds: "Warm bells". One was named "bare square", if I recall correctly. There's only one drum set, so that's what I used. The bass is one of the synth leads (fruitily misused by adding some CC controls via QY70). :-)
What I would love is a low latency sequencer like the one in the QY70, but for the raspberry pi. It be really cool to see what hardware diy build could accomplish with such a platform. You could build a sequencer with all the benefits of hardware, without the cost. It could also probably work as a sampler since there are so many for the pi already. Renoise, sunvox and daws etc are far too busy. I love how simple something like the QY can be. Jobs menu is so easy to navigate, 16 channels, pattern mode is a breeze to work with. Do I need to learn how to code? Haha
Thanks for watching! You are right, at the moment, there is no real "modern" replacement for the QY series.
And yes, you'll need to learn to code (or take a rhetorics class and persuade Yamaha to issue a revival of these). :-)
@@mr_floydst I'm really interested in the retrokits rk008! It's a calculator sized midi sequencer! Doesn't come with its own wonderful XM midi module though lol 😂 Would love to see Yamaha make a QY comeback!
Eh you could just hire me :D
Thanks ,,,,
Thanks for watching!
I still own a MT-32. :)
Cool! :)
thanks, now i need to go find a few Rpi 3's...lol
Thanks for watching! You can get them, but at ridiculous prices...
Hi Floyd, great work! I've assembled a mt-32 pi myself, just the sound module with no physical interface. I see on the mt-32 pi wiki that they advice against plugging the "+" pin of the ky-040 encoder to the 5v output, because it could blow up a fuse in the raspberry pi. Any thoughs/issues you experienced?
Hi! I didn't read that advice and so far, my PI is still working. But they won't post such advice without reason, so I guess it's better to use their solution to that problem.
This looks awesome. Too bad it can't run the D50 ROMs also. Does it also have a reverb or other FX built in?
Hi, thanks for watching! Yes, it has. You can set it up in the sound font itself or in the config file.
Will it work with large multi-timbral soundfonts, like the ”Live Natural HQ SoundFont GM V2.5.1” which sound-wise outperform the MT32?
I loaded a 512mb soundfont, I guess RAM is the bottleneck here.
Just a tiny correction: you call it the ”Roland MT-32 Sound Canvas”, but those are two different (and not entirely compatible) devices. The Sound Canvas series of synths were based on the MT-32, but you can’t always count on one of the devices correctly playing back a piece of music made for the other.
You're right! The MT-32 laid the foundation for the General MIDI standard, but the SoundCanvas implemented it in the early 90s
The SC line are just a ROMpler where the MT-32 is a LA based synth like the D-50, with lower quality attack samples and multi-timbral, the MT32 mode of the SC-55 do not support most of the MT-32 sysex. So I disagree even if similar in concept of “low cost” mid expanders, the Mt-32 and Sc-55 are really different type of beast.
But also yeah the MT-32 is nearly General MIDI, it help shaping the patch set of GM as we know it, some GM patch are directly from the D-50/Mt-32 like Soundtrack
nice upload! question, you are showing the 16x2 screen at the begining and then using the 20x4 screen, is it because the 16x2 did not work?
Thanks for watching! Ha, you have a keen eye! ;-) The 16x2 screen won't work. The 20x4 is mandatory. I don't have too much time to make these videos, though, so I needed to shoot as much stuff as possible before the 20x4 screen arrived.
@@mr_floydst that what I thought sadly, wanted to try to keep it as original as possible and have the 16x2 green screen :) who know maybe one day it is possible :)
So i feel kinda stupid ;) i finally got it work, my fault was contras was way down so i didnt se anything :( it works well as it is only "16" in lenght i am missing ":100" after VOL, so i guess thats why the 20 character is best.
How is your QY70 linked to the MT32-Pi ??? what the connectivity on the PI side
Hi, thanks for watching! That red cable is a simple USB to 5 pin MIDI adapter. It's connected to the PI as the MIDI in port.
@@mr_floydst I was asking as I didn't see the connexion to the device.
Unfortunately RPI is so expensive here in Pakistan :(
At the moment, it's expensive everywhere in the world. But I guess that might go back to normal one day. Some people also have one or two idling in their drawers. :)
Lol.. for the price of these components - you can grab yourself a REAL synth!!
That's true, but there's a large number of people who have these things at home, gathering dust. (Plus people who generally enjoy building things). Also, B.C. (before Corona), these parts were really cheap. ;-)
@@mr_floydstyeah... I have a few of these pi 3 b and arduino boards just gathering dust as well... 🙂