The sound of a square-wave sequencer instantly brings to mind the sounds of some of the earliest video games as well as—for some—the earliest computer music. A square wave is the simplest waveform to produce digitally, as it can be generated from a single digital line, without needing an analogue-to-digital converter. You may be familiar with 8-bit music from videogames or the chiptunes scene; we’re going to make something even more primitive: it’s “1-bit” music. It’s possible to get it to sound a bit like Space Invaders or Pong, but more sophisticated tunes, or even playing more than one note at a time are beyond its capabilities. Don’t expect it to hold a reliable pitch for anything really musical that you could sing along to. However, it’s still a lot of fun to play with. It looks and sounds a bit like the old analogue sequencers seen on modular synthesizers. --Rob Cruickshank, excerpted from Musicworks issue 112