Making sound effects for the Gameboy is a complicated procedure. Since the Gameboy only has four channels, sound effects have to interrupt parts of the music. Being limited to using 1 to 3 channels of the sound, it can be very tricky to convey a certain action or sound successfully in such a limited medium.
This series of articles will cover how to create custom sound effects using the VGM format for GB Studio games. There are other ways to generate sound effects, but VGM has lots of benefits, including easy file management, extremely full-features effects, and even the ability to make longer than usual sounds. There’s quite a lot to learn, but we will start from scratch so you can get up to speed. This first article will cover getting the right tools installed and how to start creating sound effects. The second will have an in-depth look into the effects and commands needed. Finally, we will look at how to ready your sounds for use in GB Studio.
Get The Needed Tools
There are two important programs you’ll need to install in order to make your own VGM sound effects. There are various ways to create VGMs you can use with GB Studio. However, the path shown here is the easiest option if you want to avoid editing Hex code and dealing with surprises. You can do this project on either a Mac or Windows. If you have the option, however, Windows is preferred.
Install Furnace Tracker
If you are on Windows, download the latest version of Furnace Tracker and install it. If you are on a Mac, use Furnace v0.6.1 since the hex editing you’ll need to do needs VGM exported from that version. We will dig into Furnace in more detail later.
Install VgmGbStudionator
By default, the VGM that Furnace makes has some codes that kill all the channels at the start. This is bad for your game. It will mute all the music when a sound effect plays. PotatoTeto has made a nice little tool called VgmGbStudionator (the name was my suggestion, don’t blame him!). This allows you to batch-strip all those kill codes you don’t need. If you don’t have a way to run it on a Mac, we’ll cover how to manually remove the hex kill codes, but it’s not fun.
If you can’t get this running on a Mac or Linux box, you’ll need a hex editor. I recommend ImHex.
Setting Up A Furnace Template
You will design your sounds in Furnace Tracker. This is a full-featured Tracker, so it can be overwhelming. For this reason, we will only teach you what you need to know for making sound effects.
Follow these steps to prepare a template. You’ll only have to do it once.
- Go to File > New…
- Select Gameboy from the list (you can filter i needed)
- Find the Speed tab in the upper right corner
- Set the Base tempo to 640
- Go to Save.. and put the .fur file somewhere
You’ll want to start each new sound effect from this template. I usually open it and do a “Save As…” immediately, or else I end up overwriting it.
Creating An Instrument
When you build a sound effect, it is basically creating a very short song. If you’re familiar with GB Studio tracker or hUGETracker you won’t have any trouble getting used to Furnace Tracker.
- Go to the Instrument Tab
- Click +
- Double click the instrument to open its window

We will very quickly cover the settings of an instrument.
Gameboy Tab
Volume – The volume is the starting level of the sound.
Length – This is how long the sound takes to play. Imagine it as how fast you turn down the volume knob after hitting a note.
Sound Length – While Length is like a volume knob, Sound Length is like a Mute button. You can cut the sound off quicker than its natural fade if this suits you.
Direction – This basically says are you turning the volume knob up or down. It starts at the volume value and goes up or down at the speed of the Length.
Macros Tab
The macros tab has lots of things to further refine your sound. To edit one of the parameters click the icon next to them. You can then click the arrow button to make a sequence of parameters. In the picture above you can see a series of notes which change pitch up and down. You can click the … to control how fast it cycles through the parameter changes. You can draw them with the mouse on the yellow graphic or write in the numbers below.

The Arrow Button
Arpeggios – The classic up and down jagged pitch changing you hear in classic chiptunes. In the context of sound effects, it’s great for making motor sounds or power up sounds.
Duty/Noise – This is one of the most important settings. Often you only need 1 slot here, meaning it will only change once. The settings work like this:
Duty channel
0 – 12.5% duty – a thin sounding tone
1 – 25% duty – a middle ground tone with a hint of a second octave
2 – 50% duty – a softer, thick, round sounding tone
3 – 75% duty – a middle ground tone with a hint of a second octave
Waveform – This is used to change wave bank forms. However, it doesn’t work in GB Studio, so just ignore this.
Panning – You can use panning in GB Studio but I don’t recommend it because it can throw off the songs stereo. You can either choose left, right or both.
Pitch – Pitch is another very useful one, this is for portamento style pitch bends up or down, instead of jagged arpeggios.
Making Our First Sound
Let’s use what we learned to make a classic cartoon “Boing!” sound. Your goal is to make a short length instrument that starts loud and gets quiet quickly. It should be 50% duty so it feels rubbery and thick and has a bending pitch for the “boing” sound.
Set up the “Gameboy” tab as shown:

Set up the “Macro” tab as shown:


Also click the … and set the step length (this slows down how fast it goes through the notes).

Laying Down Notes
Now that your instrument is created, you need to learn how to lay down the notes. This is done in the main tracker area:

Press Space Bar to switch between read and write mode. The blue bar means you are in read mode (this is used when you don’t want to accidentally lay down a note). The red bar means you’re in editing mode. Press buttons on the keyboard to make notes. When in read mode you can test what the notes sound like before writing them. Press X to put down a D-3 note. You can change the octave at the top center area if you need.
Now press Enter to hear the sound play. You can download the .fur file here which has what we built in this article.
There! You’ve got your first sound effect made. There’s still a lot more to learn. We will get to that in the next two articles.

Beatscribe has composed and produced soundtracks for games on Nintendo DS, Nintendo Switch, PS4, Xbox1, Sega Genesis and numerous iOs and Android games for over a decade, but his true passion is creating epic moods on ancient hardware like the Game Boy and NES.