Category: In the News

  • Grg Vs. Timbaland legal update

    CHIPFLIP writes:

    GRG and his crew were making three claims: sampling, performance rights, producer rights. The court did however only consider one of these: the performance rights. According to them GRG’s cover was not unique enough to grant him any kind of authorship rights, so the case was basically lost. This meant that they didn’t have to consider whether the song was sampled or not.

    Hopefully they can work out some kind of compensation from the douche who exclaimed “it’s a video game, jerk”.

  • 1UP Profiles Konami Composer Hidenori Maezawa

    1UP has a interesting interview with Hidenori Maezawa.
    1UP ‘Hidenori Maezawa Contra Music’ interview
    There are some intersting bits, like his ambivelence regarding his fame and those who cover his tunes, and this intersting tidbit about how he helped designed the vrc6 chip:

    1UP: Gradius II for Famicom was one of those games that never came to the U.S. because it had a special chip that improved the graphics and sound. Did you find it easier to work with those chips, like the VRC6?

    HM: (in English) I made!

    1UP: You made the VRC6?

    HM: (begins drawing diagrams) These are the waves for the sound. With Famicom, there were three types of waves — square, triangle, and sawtooth — and you were able to use one for each of the three channels. But with the VRC6, you could add an additional three channels for a total of six notes, six channels.

    I was actually the one who developed the chip. Of course, there were other technical people who put the parts together, but I was involved in its design. A chip is small, but the prototype is huge! I think the chip was first used in Akumajou Densetsu, which was Castlevania III in America.

    More on the 1UP site, or via these direct links

    An interview with Konami’s Hidenori Maezawa, pt. 3

    An interview with Konami’s Hidenori Maezawa, pt. 2

    An interview with Konami’s Hidenori Maezawa, pt. 1

    Maezawa’s Greatest Hits: Castlevania III

    Maezawa’s Greatest Hits: Bayou Billy

    Maezawa’s Greatest Hits: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

    Thx Bud for the tip!

  • While We Were Gone Mega Dump

    Ed: If There is anything we missed, let us know!

    Releases

    Blazar – TetraKinesis

    New Ak47 Mix Tape

    Blip Fest DVDs now on Sale

    Alex Mauer- Low Gear

    Leaves by mattisson

    Software

    Goto80 on Zerocycle Music

    “What kind of music do you make when the coder has used almost all the computing power, the designer had his/her go, and there is not even enough CPU-power left to play sounds? You make zero cycle music!”

    Port LittlePiggytracker to PSP Fundraiser

    Hardware

    4bit Synths
    4bitsynth is a MIDI-controlled digital synthesizer that uses the Atmel AVR ATMega48. Inspired by the NES, the sound is 4-bit. The digital output is put through an R-2R resistor ladder to get the analog waveform.

    Preorder Ultrasatan for your AtariST

    News

    Dutycycle with A_Rival magfest footage

    Syphus

    Relaunched his blog with a menifesto to only release on music disks.. COOL!

    More Chiptheft

    Unicorn Kid on NME and the inevitable Flamewar

    Role Model Interview Translated and Translated again

    Withering and Hilarious Dissection of Sonic Soundtrack

  • Nuff of the Hate howz bout da luv

    CREATE DIGITAL MUSIC  ARTICLE

    I have no doubt that we could have more screaming crowds of people in laptop music, for instance, and that even the world’s hot spots (hello, London, New York, Berlin, Melbourne, and company) would like their scenes to improve. Obviously, the 8-bit scene benefits from timing and their unique field. But that doesn’t mean you can’t learn from them and fight for your own Indietronica Augmented Microtonal Banjo movement.

  • Complete Bullshit

    Source

    Best continued source of inspiration: video games
    Nerds who played way too much Legend of Zelda in the ’80s are making music deliberately cribbed from the compressed ditties that soundtracked too many lonely afternoons. There’s Laromlab, who actually makes music using the same chiptune technology — with mixed results — but others have wrenched more beauty: Flying Lotus. On “Los Angeles,” he takes those videogame noises and makes them glittery texture on his cracked-out opus    …
    Rebuttal

    EDIT

    They updated their post:

    Best continued source of inspiration: video games
    Nerds who played way too much Legend of Zelda in the ’80s are making music deliberately cribbed from the compressed ditties that soundtracked too many lonely afternoons. There’s Laromlab, who released music using the same chiptune technology, but he plagiarized it from some German artists. Not cool, but others have wrenched more honest beauty. Flying Lotus, on “Los Angeles,” takes those videogame noises and makes them glittery texture on his cracked-out opus. Dam-Funk, on Stone’s Throw Records, sounds like a roller rink’s laser show playing inside the castle at the end of a Super Mario Brothers game. And you can find an a cappella version of Nintendo tunes on YouTube. (MW)     Photo: Nintendo *Item has been updated to include information about the Laromlab scandalette.

    1. Why not just drop the laromlab reference all together?

    2. Why not mention “some german artists” ? The songs arent worse now that some creep who looks like a living version of boogie boy isn’t performing them anymore, right?

    3. Scandalette? I would say that using others material to get a label to press your shit, and then do a nationwide tour is a pretty big fuckup. At least the label was able to admit their error in the matter, what about you, LA times?