MODBOY

Circuit bending, in software

you reach into a live Game Boy and bend the chip itself. the picture and the sound come apart together, and nothing is destroyed. MODBOY is a console rebuilt to be performed, not reproduced. every part of it is yours to move, every register a knob. the game is just raw material: take it apart, or break it while it runs.

Bend the chip

drop the battery and the chip browns out. voices thin and clip, but the pitch holds while everything around it gives way. bend the clock and the pitch drags down, or wows and flutters.

push corruption into the wave RAM, the registers, the video memory, and the running game has to answer for it. the picture tears, the sound shreds, the chip itself coming apart. not a filter on top.

every bend is a knob. ride it on a fader, automate it across a set, undo it cold. a scripted glitch lands once and drifts; this one holds its pitch and lands on the bar. the same break, in tune, take after take.

Split it into stems

stems come out of the Speaker, a second device that reaches into the live sound chip as the game plays. load a cartridge and every voice lands on its own Live track. mute the lead, keep the bassline. solo the noise channel for percussion. morph one pulse, leave the rest.

it runs the tools the scene already lives on, LSDj, Nanoloop, FMS and the rest, but split per channel, bent and automated. the parts the hardware locks away, opened into your set.

Under the hood

the cores hold. the Game Boy passes Blargg and dmg-acid2. the Advance runs to an exact cycle budget and plays commercial games clean.

owning the core is the point: every register the chip computes is one you can read, route or bend.

Built for Max 9 (Max for Live, Ableton Live 12).

made in the same studio as ASCIIMATTER.