Do you fancy turning your Game Boy Advance into a 16-step sequencer? Well then, you're in luck.
The developer Bad Diode last month released Stepper, a new 16-step sequencer for the Game Boy Advance (Thanks CDM for the spot!).
Stepper is a free and open-source tool inspired by Elektron Instruments. It features per-trigger parameterization and allows access to the 4 DMG sound channels in the console (2 square waves channels, 1 custom wave channel, and 1 noise channel). The sequencer also supports 4 banks of 8 patterns, which can apparently be queued for live performance.
Unfortunately, there's no MIDI sync functionality at the moment, but the developer is currently looking into solutions. For now, though, it should be easy enough to manually time the instrument with the use of a metronome or click, or sample patterns from Stepper to other machines to arrange.
Here are the GBA controls taken from itch.io:
- D-Pad: Moves the cursor.
- Start: Start/Stop the sequence.
- Select: Context dependent mod key. Used for:
- Quick saving the current bank.
- Copy pasting.
- Adjusting notes by octaves.
- Adjusting bpm by multiples of 10.
- B: Toggles channels/triggers and play/pause/stop, switches banks and patterns.
- A: Hold it to adjust trigger parameters.
- L/R: Change trigger notes, parameter values, or BPM.
If you want to give it a go yourself, you can download it for whatever price you want from itch.io or from the project page. The download comes with a .cia file for the 3DS, which will require a jailbroken console to install, as well as a .gba file that requires a flash cartridge to get up and running on original hardware.