Category: Chipmusic

Toons from various consoles.

  • Buskerdroid – Mnemonic Backup

    bkddSummer is here, and in my opinion sometimes there’s nothing like a high-octane, high-NRG fist pumping soundtrack to get you going, and Italy’s Buskerdroid (or BKDD to his mates) certainly provides that! The feet-blisteringly forceful LSDJ dance chaos mastery is not to be dismissed, as storming opener “Stregatto” demonstrates!

    via CalmDownKidder Records

  • Aliceffekt – Howl’s Virgil Systems

    Cvr_hvsAliceffekt is borderline on the chip purism scale, but the results are always interesting.

    Tracklist

    • HVS01 – Libri Qvinti Appendice
    • HVS02 – Visiting God First Era
    • HVS03 – Gyroscope VI
    • HVS04 – Theorem of Theories
    • HVS05 – Wise Persons
    • AVCESAR – VY00RGYL

    via 8bc.org

  • The origin of the chiptune phenomenon

    chiptunes_sidmon_song-editorAnders from Chipflip has linked to an interesting interview he conducted with Metin Seven, one of the developers of SIDMon. In it, they discuss the transition from c64 to amiga, and the retro-origin of the intial use of the chiptune term. Great read!

    AC: Hi Metin. I’m a tracker musician researching the history of chipmusic for a master thesis. Currently I’m looking the epistemology of the word chipmusic or chiptune. Since you were involved with SIDmon the first synthetic Amiga tracker, right? I wanted to ask if you have any memories of this.Hi Anders. That’s the coolest master thesis subject I’ve heard of so far.

    :-SIDmon was indeed the first synth audio editor for the Commodore Amiga. Its name refers to the legendary MOS Technology 6581/8580 SID Sound Interface Device chip, best known from the equally legendary Commodore 64 home computer, the Amiga’s predecessor in terms of Commodore flagships. The “mon” part of SIDmon refers to “monitor” and was inspired by the first music tracker I can remember: Soundmon for the Commodore 64.SIDmon’s interface was primitively designed compared to today’s design standards, SIDmon’s graphics reflected the game-oriented 2D graphics style of those days. It was divided in four parts: a waveform editor for creating synth sounds, a sound sample editor, a pattern editor for arranging the sounds into music patterns, and a song editor where you could combine the patterns into a four-channel song.

    via Metinsevendotcom

  • C-Jeff – Electric

    c-jeff-electricPause continues to release high quality chipmusic. “Electric” by C-Jeff mixes chip sounds (mainly NES and C64 sounding) with guitars in a very impressive way, creating very powerful and emotional music in melodic prog rock style.

    Pause writes:

    The plot of Electric is the life of one man – from his naïve childhood, through happiness and darkness to the final light of heaven. This album is dedicated to memory of my father, Oleg Zhemkov, the great rock-musician whom I lost in spring of 2008. I miss you.

    via Pause

  • Amiga Music Programs 1986-1995

    sidmonJohan Kotlinski (he of LSDJ fame) wrote a extensive overview of Amiga Music programs for a college course.  It ahs now been translated to english and posted on chipflip:

    As it was written for a technoculture-course at university, there is a relatively extensive historiography of the early demoscene and how it evolved from cracking. This means that the specific Amiga software part starts only half-way through the text. It starts with describing the brief birth of Amiga-trackers in the commercial sphere: Soundtracker didn’t sell well but was reverse engineered and appropriated in the demoscene. It became the dominant software on Amiga, and set standards still used in contemporary trackers such as Renoise.

    via  CHIPFLIP.