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  • Hard restart techniqueA player-routine trick that gates a sid voice off and loads a special ADSR value one or two frames before the next note, so that every note's attack starts from a known envelope state. It exists because of the SID's …
  • Instrument design beats note count techniqueA lot of "chiptune magic" is in the instrument, not the pattern: a fast pitch drop at note start makes a kick out of any voice; a couple of frames of noise before a tone makes a snare or a pluck; a tiny downward pitch …
  • Wavetable programming (waveform / arp tables) techniqueChanging a voice's waveform (and pitch) every frame from a table — the way C64 instruments get their attack transients, percussion and arpeggios. A couple of frames of noise before a tone makes a snare or a pluck; a …
  • ADSR envelope conceptAttack · Decay · Sustain · Release: the volume contour of a note. On the sid it is hardware — two registers per voice (attack/decay, sustain/release, one nybble each), started by the gate bit and released when the gate …
  • Instrument tables (wave / pulse / filter) conceptOn the sid — and on the game-boy in lsdj — an "instrument" is not a sample but a small program: a set of tables that the player steps through frame by frame to change waveform, pitch, pulse width and filter while a note …