STUTTER-DS

STUTTER DS is a 9-voice glitch sequencer that runs on the original Nintendo DS. The nine voices are spelled out on every screen: P1 and P2 are pulse waves off the DS's own PSG, F1 and F2 are software-rendered 2-op FM voices with live touch-pad control, N is the PSG noise channel, and S1 through S4 are PCM sample channels that can each flip from a stored sample to a built-in 1982 SAM speech synth. Type a word into an S voice, hit a key, hear it sung.

The top screen is a text-mode tracker: those nine voice rows, 16 steps per pattern, per-cell octave shifts that color the grid magenta when you push up and cyan when you push down. The bottom screen carries the song arranger, with up to 96 patterns chained across 6 pages. Row clipboard plus full pattern copy-from for fast composition.

Hit L and the whole rig flips into PERFORM mode. The D-pad becomes loop FX (2-step, 4-step, 8-step, half-time). Hold A and the directions become tape-slur up and down or a capo octave. Hold B for four live arp shapes climbing through the playing notes. Hold Y for harmony intervals that stack on top of the capo, with the five Y combos editable per project so each groove gets its own palette of jumps. Hold X for a 32nd-note stutter on whatever step is sounding.

The bottom screen has two tap bands running across the P1, P2, F1, F2, N, S1, S2, S3, S4 labels: the upper band silences a channel cold, the lower band keeps that voice playing straight while every PERFORM effect skips it. Two X-Y touch pads underneath the song arranger drive F1 and F2 live, X for modulator ratio and Y for FM index; lift your finger and the sound ramps back to the patch defaults over about 100ms.

16 project slots per SD card with autosave 3 seconds after the last edit. Settings hold tempo, the per-project Y harmony semitones, an FM fine-tune knob, and three MIDI modes (off, slave cart, or master out, available when using the mDS slot-2 cart). The mDS cart parses MIDI clock and reads its state by direct memory-mapped read; lock is sub-millisecond once detected.