Month: March 2009

  • Tag ‘Em All by Dispyz

    tag-em-all-mLive set + ep + bonus features from one of my favorite chip acts. From the website:


    LIVE FROM HOLLYWOOD: CIRCLE JERK GALORE! …erm, wait! I mean Dispyz galore! Ahem, recorded back in September, we revisit a night of lulz, hangovers, the strange people of Hollywood, that crappy salon turned to night club/bar, and a night of a few regrets and disappointment all thx to the “FUCKING MANAGER!”. Thanks go out to 8bitweapon & Computeher, lovely people. Extra special thanks goes out to none other than Starpause himself, clothed I may add, who was kind enough to record the Dispyz set! This Mezcal is for you, man! Bottoms up! Anyway, onto the circle jerk… I mean show!


  • Interview with LGPT creator Marc Nostromo pt2

    lvptThis is the conclusion of Monday’s interview with LGPT dev Marc Nostromo. We talk about the history of Piggy Tracker’s development, possible future features and some information on the excellent netlabel/band of hooligans Hexawe

    LB: So how did the idea for Piggy come about?

    Marc: well, I had been using LSDJ for a while and even tho I was in love with the program, I longed to have the same flexibility with another type of sound generation. No matter how you like the Gameboy sound, there is a moment where you get tired of it, especially if, like me, you do your tracks without mixing techniques, synths and so on. I wanted to have something similar for samples and midi. I remember having a few chats with Starpause and Firestarter about it and we all got very excited about the perspective. So I went for it.

    LB: Did you plan to work on the GP32 from the outset or were you deving on PC without a particular platform in mind?

    Marc: It’s always been the main goal to do a hand-held program and to stick with the LSDJ interface. I was looking at a couple of options possible at the time: DS, PSP and GP32. The home-brew scene on DS & PSP was already pretty strong but it was constantly moving, so rather than trying to base myself on moving ground, I decided to go for the GP32. Especially that the idea of a company distributing an open platform like Gamepark did was great so I was happy to jump on that boat
    (more…)

  • Protrekkr – an interesting tracker

    protrekkrspot/UP reports: “Salass00 has ported an advanced tracker called Protrekkr to the AmigaOS4 platform.

    It has a built in softsynth and a 303 emulator. You can also use ordinary samples.”

    The blurb:

    ProTrekkr (formerly known as NoiseTrekker) is a tracker program combining a software synthesizer together with a traditional samples tracker which can be used to create electronic music for small sized intros, demos or games.

    The tracker is available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X.

    Main features:
    – Open source.
    – 16 multi-notes tracks (with 256 virtual channels).
    – Samples editor (can load up to 64 bits stereo samples).
    – Patterns based tracker style sequencer.
    – Synthesizer with custom waveforms support.
    – Cubic spline interpolation.
    – 2 303s units.
    – Wav files import/export.
    – 16 or 32 bits wav rendering.
    – Multi effects engine with reverb, distortion, filters, delay, EQs, flanger, etc…
    – Midi in/out support.
    – Protracker .mod files import.
    – Samples compressor handling Gsm/Mp3/TrueSpeech (not on Linux/Mac OS X yet).
    – Replay routine source code to be included & used inside your own programs (Also featuring a replay routine for the PlayStation Portable).
    – Winamp/XMPlay plugin available.
    – And maybe more…

    This is a FREEWARE tool, this means that you can use it for whatever you want and for free.

    Download it here (AmigaOS4 version)
    Or here (Other platforms) 

    via Amiga.org – News.

     

    I wonder how optimized this is, since it advertises it as for use in demo productions and games. I tried the MacOSX build but it said it needed a mising library (tsk tsk), so I can’t test it. Reports?

  • Interview with LGPT creator Marc Nostromo pt1

    lvptThis week we speak with Marc Nostromo, the creator of the excellent Little Gamepark Tracker, a LSDJ style sequencer for various handhelds like the PSP and OS’s. He also records music under the name M-.-n, and blogs about electronic music at NoisePages. Today is part I of a two part interview, where we get into Marc’s background, his LSDJ based music, and what it was like playing the Blip Festival.

    LB: First off thanks very much for agreeing to the interview

    Marc: My pleasure.

    LB: Were you a programmer first then a musician or the other way around?

    Marc: I actually have still some trouble to consider myself as a musician.

    LB: I will talk about this a little later but I think most people would say you manage to do both pretty well. What sort of computers were about when you became interested in programming?

    Marc: My first programmable unit was a TI-98. Not really anything fancy but it got me hooked. Then I went Sinclair ZX-81 (my first assembly code), Vic 20, C64, Amiga and finally PC. I got really sad at the time to drop the Amiga since it took ages for the pc to even reach the level of sound flexibility of the Amiga but I had to keep with times I guess.

    LB: Why did you switch to the Vic20 after the ZX81 rather than staying with Sinclair?

    Marc: I don’t think there was a specific reason. Either it came out before or it looked more sturdy. The Sinclair experience was good but to be properly set-up the ZX-81 looked like a cobweb of wires and extensions all over the place. Compared to that, the all-in-one and proper keyboard of the VIC looked like heaven sent. I think I said to my mum at the time ‘this is the computer I well ever need’.. which was a little naive I guess

    LB: The ZX81 PSU got REALLY hot if I remember rightly too.

    Marc: yeah, and if you wiggled the extension a little too much you would easily loose everything

    LB: I had that happen a time or two myself. Which model Amiga did you have?

    Marc: A simple A500. I loved that machine. It’s been the playground of a lot of my first explorations.. sound, 3D.. multi-process environment. It was a truly amazing machine for the times
    (more…)

  • New Quarta330 Live Set

    Quarta330 has a new live setup up on archive.org. Chipflip writes:

    Quarta330 is a Japanese gameboy composer, who sticks out with his quirky and slow beats in hiphop/dub/step style (as mentioned earlier). He’s also one of the few chip artists that operates outside the “scene” – with appearances on Hyperdub and even Warp. So his music is not always easy to find free for download, which makes this live-set from Berlin even more interesting. It includes several songs that are new to me, and I like the development from melancholic melodies and quantised grooves towards a more skweee-ish playfulness. Maybe chip music has a future after all?!