little-scale — Syncing something *to* LSDJ, and the un-sync piece (2006–2008)
Every other post in this series makes the Game Boy a slave. These two make it the master clock for the rest of the studio — and the third, from 2006, throws the clock away entirely.
Key claims#
LSDj as master (2008-01-15, 2008-02-03)#
- "A simple CMOS circuit appropriately divides the LSDJ sync output so that an LED lights up on odd sixteenths and goes dark on even sixteenths. LSDJ needs to be set to master sync mode."
- The divider, read from the schematic: the Game Boy connector's clock pin drives a 4040 12-stage binary counter (IC1, clock on pin 10, reset to ground); the LED tap is taken from Q5 — pin 3, i.e. ÷32 — into the clock of a 4017 decade counter (IC2), whose Q0 drives the LED and whose Q2 is wired back to RESET, so the 4017 wraps after two counts and gives a 50 % square. Two chips, one LED, no programming.
- That ratio is itself a finding: ÷32 into a ÷2 means one LED transition per sixteenth, so LSDj's master sync line carries 32 clock transitions per sixteenth-note step (inference from the divider ratio and his description of the result, not stated in the post).
- Part 2 puts music on the end of it: "it is quite simple to build / add a sequencer section for standalone operation. Furthermore, if this sequencer is clocked using an external source (such as… LSDJ!) then it can be quickly synchronised to other sources of music." The thing being clocked is a C64 filter — a sid sweeping in time with the Game Boy.
- Nobody else was doing this. Three years of comments ask for variants — an LED on 8ths or 4ths, a metronome click, the DMG's own power LED pulsing to the beat — and one puts the demand plainly: "I've been looking everywhere for something like this (lsdj master not slave)."
Deliberate un-sync (2006-03-17)#
- The oldest post in this collection, and it is a composition idea rather than a circuit: "a piece of music that explores the subtle unsyncing of gameboys… uploaded to three old grey gameboys, who have all had their start-buttons hardwired to the same switch. When I press the swtich, they all start at the same time. Eventually they will drift, causing an unsyncing… a glitch of sorts." The LSDj song is "very simple, using just the two pulse voices".
- Asked whether this is how you sync LSDj, he corrects the reading: "My idea is to produce UNsyncronisation, slowly, by the fact that the gameboys wont be accurate in speed when compared to each other… (and there is not data link between them…). LSDJ syncs very nicely to another LSDJ. The timing is great."
Practical takeaways#
- LSDj set to master puts a usable clock on the link port that plain CMOS logic can divide — no microcontroller, no MIDI. A 4040 gives you every power-of-two subdivision at once; pick the pin.
- Once you have that pulse you can clock anything: an LED, a step sequencer, a filter on another machine. It is the cheapest way to make a Game Boy the timing centre of a live rig (live-tracking).
- Two Game Boys started by one hardwired switch, with no link cable, is a phasing instrument: identical parts drifting apart at the rate the crystals disagree. The opposite of everything else in this series, and deliberate.
Notable quotes#
"Eventually they will drift, causing an unsyncing... a glitch of sorts..."
"LSDJ syncs very nicely to another LSDJ. The timing is great."
Relevance to the wiki#
sync documents the Game Boy as a follower. This is the other direction, with the divider ratio to build it, plus a sourced piece of process-music aesthetics for live-tracking.
To verify#
- Which Game Boy connector pin feeds the 4040 is drawn but not labelled in the schematic; from the pin-level wiring in s-little-scale-teensy-usb-midi-sync it should be SC (pin 5), the same line a sync box drives in the opposite direction — not stated here.
- The ÷32-per-sixteenth figure is derived from the schematic, not from the text.
- Whether the 2006 un-sync piece was ever finished or released is not said.
Pages touched#
sync · lsdj · live-tracking · game-boy · sid · little-scale · shuffle-funktempo