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Abrasive

entity person Game Boy #person #gameboy #lsdj #tuning #microtonality #tools #rom-hacking
aliases Abrasive, Professor Abrasive
sources little-scale — Abrasive on LSDJ Microtuning (2009) · little-scale — LSDJ Tuning Tables (2009) · little-scale — Nanoloop Tuned to 18-TET, Hacked ROM (2009) · little-scale — Microtonal Chipmusic Compilation, call for tracks (2009)
created 2026-08-31 · updated 2026-08-31

The person whose idle question started Game Boy microtuning: "can LSDJ be retuned to non-standard tunings?" The answer, in his own account, took "a few minutes in a hex editor and half an hour in Perl" and became lsdj_tune — the tool that made alternative-tunings on the game-boy a workflow instead of a stunt (source: s-little-scale-abrasive-lsdj-tune).

Facts#

  • lsdj_tune (March 2009, Perl): "takes an LSDJ ROM, and rewrites the tuning table (and optionally the note names) into a new copy of the ROM. Frequencies can be manually specified (all 108 notes), or generated in equal temperament, cent steps, cent series or ratio series." Published at bur.st/~abrasive/lsdj_tune/, announced on the 8bitcollective forums (thread pid=169505), "works with LSDJ 3.9.9" (source: s-little-scale-abrasive-lsdj-tune). Command syntax and worked examples are on rom-retuning.
  • Rewriting the note names is the feature nothing else had: a hand-patched ROM plays a new scale but keeps displaying the old note names.
  • His examples show what he was after: 24-TET, Wendy Carlos' alpha scale as a 78-cent step, and a Pythagorean 13-tone scale given as ratios with custom names — historical and xenharmonic tunings, not just quarter-tones.
  • Credited twice by little-scale in the same week: for the idea behind the LSDj tuning tables — "Special thanks to Abrasive for the idea of course as well" (source: s-little-scale-lsdj-tuning-tables) — and for the nanoloop 18-TET hack, "Special, special thanks to Abrasive for his help and his idea with this - all of the credit goes to him of course" (source: s-little-scale-nanoloop-18-tet).
  • Still the first route little-scale names nine months later when calling for microtonal chip tracks: "The ever-brilliant Abrasive has made an LSDJ tuning script" (source: s-little-scale-microtonal-compilation).
  • He posts his own limitations plainly: "Base frequency specification is a bit dumb — it won't take custom note names, and sequences (--cents, --ratio) always start on the base note."

To verify#

  • Whether bur.st/~abrasive/lsdj_tune/ still resolves, and whether the script was ever updated past LSDj 3.9.9, is unknown here — the offsets it writes are version-specific (source: s-little-scale-underclocking-and-retuning, where a 4.0.5 patch bricked a cartridge).
  • He appears in the wiki's little-scale blog scout as "Professor Abrasive", also associated with the Drag'n'Derp flash cartridge (inbox/scout-little-scale-2026-08-31.md); no ingested source states that, and it is (unverified).
  • His real name, and the 8bitcollective thread itself, are not in any ingested source (8bitcollective is defunct).

alternative-tunings · rom-retuning · lsdj · nanoloop · little-scale · nitro2k01 · game-boy

Sources#

s-little-scale-abrasive-lsdj-tune · s-little-scale-lsdj-tuning-tables · s-little-scale-nanoloop-18-tet · s-little-scale-microtonal-compilation

source file wiki/entities/abrasive.md · 1 unverified · graph