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First impressions are everything, and when I first heard that http://www.wayfar.net was coming out with a MIDI device for the Nintendo, I was thoroughly impressed. But, would the MIDINES meet my expectations? In this review I will tell you just that.

Luckily I logged onto http://www.micromusic.net before the first of the auctions started and saw gwem’s post about the wayfar MIDINES. So I was able to see, and bid on, the first of the MIDINES auctions. I was not able to win one the first time around, but soon after I won one the second time around.

Packaging was great, and wayfar was quick to ship. The package shipped out of California and I live in Oregon so it arrived in three days. Besides the main game cart, it comes with a print out of the manual that is downloadable from the wayfar home page. Naturally I tossed it aside and just popped it in my NES, and started up my EA-1 – not your best MIDI controller – but it will do for now.

Once everything was hooked up I assigned the two MIDI channels on the EA-1 to channel 1, and 2. That’s when I realized the limitations of the first two sound channels on the NES. The frequency response lowest point is at A2, and that note doesn’t carry much bass across the channel. Luckily the third sound channel on the NES is the triangle channel, and this channel has the largest frequency response, and a nice fat bass sound to it. The forth channel on the NES isn’t much to write home about, its just your standard noise channel. The fifth is a wave channel – a sound bank with multiple drum samples, plus some little weird ones. It’s great for just messing around, or making cool drum beats, although it is just one channel so it has it limitations as a drum machine (that’s what I’ve always liked about LSDJ, http://www.littlesounddj.com , you can run two samples at the same time over the wave channel).

In a email from x|k (wayfar) he had this to say about the channels: “…keep in mind that the separate channels are monophonic, so if you hit a note, keep it down, hit a second note, and then release the first, the first note turning off will silence the second.”

I know that is kind of hard to get a grasp of what he is talking about if you haven’t much experience with MIDI keyboards so I will tryto sum it up: Basically what he is trying to say is you can’t hit two keys at once. The NES freaks out and wont even play a single note. So maybe it isn’t best to have this in a live setup where you play all your notes live, because most likely you will mess up somewhere along the way and press two keys at once, and that would be murder on a live set to have your notes mute each other out – forget chords anyway. One could compare this phenomenon to using the LSDJ+keyboard if one is familiar with that.

The way that x|k suggested in the same email to use the MIDINES was by making MIDI files with FL Studio then playing them with WinAmp over a open MIDI-out port. For me this isn’t good enough. I like complete control over the device while it is playing live. That is why I’ve opted to make a MIDIbox64 described here: http://www.ucapps.de/ Basically it is a DIY MIDI controller that would allow a person to have a keyboard input and still have control over the device with it’s MIDI merger. Like changing volume, etc – all the CC commands you need while letting the sequencer do its job. I have yet to start this project, because school is about to start, but once I get it up and running I’ll post my results here.

Some of the main features you will want control over are: The pulse length envelops on the two pulse channels, and on the noise channel. Fine pitch mod, and sweeps, also on the two pulse channels. Oh, and of course volume. If you are not so sure about long hardware projects like described on the pages of http://www.ucapps.de/ don’t worry, because you can achieve all the control you want with FL Studio. And you will need control to get the NES to give you those awesome chip sounds you crave. x|k had this to say: “to be honest, if you want to get deep down with it, your going to want to modulate the midi CC parameters, to get crazy sounds, and that is best done with a laptop / pc + midi out.”

So did the MIDINES meet my expectations? Yes, and then some. It is probably the most innovative piece of hardware that has come out for the NES in a long time, but that could be because NOTHING has come out for the NES in a long time!It has it’s limitations, like only being able to control the MIDI commands with extra software or hardware, I would have liked to be able to switch stuff around with just a regular NES pad on the fly. Being monophonic limits it, but that’s the hardware of the NES. Even with those stigmas the device out does itself – bundled with the NESFX visualizations, and pure “badassness” of the hardware. It was everything I expected.

I will leave you with a cuple songs I’ve made with FL Studio and a dream. Enjoy!

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