The order plays patterns by number. A pattern can appear in it as often as it likes; there is only ever one of it.
Click a column to put the cursor in it, then play the keyboard:
Z–M is one octave, Q–U
the one above. − stops a ringing note. In the other columns
type hex digits, and in the effect column a letter first.
A sequence is read one value per video frame — sixty a second — and holds its last value forever unless it is given a loop point, which is the difference between a note that decays and one that sustains. Drag across a sequence to draw it; click the strip beneath to set where it loops.
A pitch on this chip is not a frequency but an integer divider off one
1.789773 MHz clock, so most notes are slightly wrong and the error
grows as you go up: middle C is under two cents flat and the top of
the range reaches a fifth of a semitone. The readout beside the
pattern prints the error for the note under the cursor. The pulse
channels run out of divider at A-1 and the triangle an
octave below that.
The noise channel has no pitch, only sixteen periods. A note picks one and the octave is ignored, so a run up the keyboard is a run through sixteen timbres that starts over every twelve keys.
Tempo is quantised. A row lasts a whole number of video frames at 60.0988 Hz and nothing finer, which is why the speed control is in frames and the BPM beside it is a readout rather than an input: speed 6 is 150.2 BPM, speed 7 is 128.8, and there is nothing in between.
The mix is not a sum. The console drives two resistor ladders that are deliberately non-linear, so two channels at half volume are louder than one at full. The measured curves are used here, along with the analog filters on the console's output — high-passes at 90 Hz and 440 Hz and a low-pass at 14 kHz — which are most of why NES audio sounds thinner than a bare square wave.
| Column | What it does |
|---|
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| Z S X D C V G B H N J M | The octave shown in the Octave box, from C upwards. |
| Q 2 W 3 E R 5 T 6 Y 7 U | One octave above it. The rows carry on through , L . ; / and I 9 O 0 P. |
| − | Note off: stop whatever that channel is holding. |
| Step | The cursor drops by the step after a note and after nothing else, so a two-digit column can be typed in one place. |
| 0–9, A–F | Digits, in the instrument, volume and parameter columns. In the effect column, the letter of an effect; entering one moves across to its parameter. |
| Space | Play, or stop if already playing. |
| Enter | Play from the row the cursor is on. |
| Arrows, Tab | Move the cursor. Tab moves a whole channel. |
| Page Up / Page Down | Sixteen rows at a time. Home and End go to the ends. |
| Delete, Backspace | Clear the column under the cursor. Backspace steps up first. |
| [ and ] | Drop or raise the entry octave. |
| Ctrl+Z, Ctrl+Shift+Z | Undo and redo, fifty deep. |
Note entry wants a physical keyboard. On a phone the pattern can be read and played but not usefully typed into, and the page says so here rather than pretending otherwise.