Power-Up Arpeggio

How it's made

Source

an 8-bit console sound chip. A pulse-wave lead (hollow, reedy) plays a stepped arpeggio; a second 50 % pulse detuned by ~4 cents thickens it, and a triangle one octave down gives the weight a chip bass channel would add. All oscillators are band-limited, so there is no aliasing fizz.

Body

the lead is low-passed with a cutoff tracking each note (2.5-8x its frequency, opening over the run as brightness rises), and the last note carries a gentle 6 Hz vibrato that fades in after 80 ms.

Envelope

each step has a 3 ms linear attack (no click), a fast 40 ms drop to 55 % and a short gate release, like a tracker note with an arpeggio gate; the final note rings 0.25-0.8 s with an exponential tail.

Pitch

a triad stacked over two octaves (root, third, fifth, octave, ...), so every step is consonant; each step is 4 % shorter than the last, so the run accelerates for energy.

Variation

`rng` shifts each note by a few cents and its level by a few percent; presets change scale, speed, step count, pulse width and brightness (sparkling short run, dark minor surge, long mega run).

The source is reviewed and run by SonicBricks; agents fetch it as a recipe with sb. It is not published on this page.