Neutral Milk Hotel - King of Carrot Flowers (NES Arrangement)

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An arrangement of 'King of Carrot Flowers' from the 1998 Neutral Milk Hotel album "In The Aeroplane Over The Sea" using a Nintendo Entertainment System in conjunction with a MidiNES cartridge, which allows the sound hardware on the console to be manipulated using MIDI CC signals from a sequencing program (I used FL Studio).

NES was modded by Low-Gain, which has the sound rewired separately from the power board (to remove the 'hum' present on stock systems) and also separates channel 1-2 from channel 3-5 via two 1/4" audio jacks, which I ran through an Alesis MultiMix8 for more control over stereo and treble/mid/bass levels. The mod also swaps out the standard red LED power light for a color changing one which cycles through during use.

http://lowgain-audio.com/NESmod.htm

MidiNES cartridge was created by Wayfair.net but unfortunately, the website is down and the carts are no longer in production so if you want to get your hands on one, you'll have to find one on the aftermarket or find an alternative.

The visuals were created with a program called 'Midi trail' which displays the notes along a scrolling piano roll as they are played.

https://osdn.net/projects/miditrail/r...

Below is the breakdown of each channel by color:

(Ch01) Pulse 1: Light Orange
(Ch02) Pulse 2: Dark Orange
(Ch03) Triangle: Green
(Ch04) Noise: Light Grey
(Ch05) DPCM (sample): Dark Grey

While the piano roll doesn't display duty cycle, volume, pitch bend or other 'fine tuning ' parameters, it is still a great way to present the track in a comprehensive way that illustrates the limitations of the hardware and gives insight into finding ways to utilize or work around them.