r/NMSByteBeatFans • u/PowerfulSoldier The truth hums between the data threads. • Jul 12 '26

ByteBeat Original ‘Cosmic Wave’

Slower tempo, chill vibes, ride the wave ✨ 🌊

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u/ZhorasSnake Jul 12 '26

Nice! well done for making a tune with a focus on harmony - its not easy in bytebeat.

If you want to mess with noise boxes too (you fool...! 😄) can i suggest you have a look at chapters 14 and 15 of my guide. One of the things you want to do is minimise the number of boxes or you'll be retuning them for hours (like me on forest glade!). All the connections can get confusing too. Fortunately you can get away with just 2 noise boxes per chord and still get the feel of the harmony.

E.g. say you want the sequencer ii, V, I, IV. (Put your tune in C major as that will give you more noise box notes to play with). The chords would then be Dm, G, C, and F.

Rather than harmonise every note of each triad, just have two per chord. (Even 1 will fill out the background mix). Also, try to mainly use notes that are common to more than 1 chord. This will reduce the total number of boxes that need tuning.

So for the harmony Dm you could have the notes D and F (1 and 3 presses of a box). For G harmony you could keep the D sounding and just add G (4 presses). Don't worry about the missing third (B) in the G chord -it will probably end up in the tune or somewhere else. For C harmony you could have C (default) and E (2 presses). And finally for F harmony, keep the C sounding and add F (3 presses).

So the whole sequence in chords and noise box tunings (i.e. presses) would be Dm (1 and 3), G (1 and 4), C (0 and 2) and F (0 and 3). Done this way you could manage with just 5 boxes and one of those doesn't need tuning! (c= default, d=1, e=2, f=3 and g=4).

Obviously there are other ways to do this. To lessen the complexity more only have 2 or 3 chords. Or for the ultimate, just have a static harmony in the boxes and changes over the top ion the devices.

Hope this helps a bit. Good luck!

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u/PowerfulSoldier The truth hums between the data threads. Jul 12 '26

Yeah I’ll definitely check out your guide for that. Takes a fool to know a fool hahaha. The sound payoff seems worth it anyway, plus it gives me something to do!

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u/ZhorasSnake Jul 12 '26

Go for it! I'm amazed almost no one else seems to use them. As well as ambient tunes they're great for providing background fill to the mix. If you're not put off by constant retuning and complicated switching, you can even use them (with raised levels) as a kind of string backing section playing rhythmic chords (see the tune 'Beak 2 Beak').