Category: Chipmusic

Toons from various consoles.

  • Duty Cycle Generator

    Came across this rad thread where game music Programmer Neil Baldwin has a website.

    “I wrote my first music on the NES 20 years ago and have recently been amazed to discover that the “chip music” scene is still going strong. So, in a bid to do my bit to keep the history alive and because some of my music is either missing, mis-credited or in some cases never even saw the light of day, I decided I’d put together a little document of my work and experiences.”

    He seems to be writting a series of post-mortems about working on various commercial games. Look like one to keep an eye on.

  • Hidden Village Interview

    The flood of great chip coverage continues. from the Little-Scale blog:

    LA: Do you perform as though playing a game, thus building a piece out of personal responses to unforeseeable dilemmas hidden from the audience, or do you largely compose pieces in advance with a focus on musical development in the more or less traditional sense?

    HV: Our performances are a mix of through-composed music and improvisation in the sense that the structure and form of a work is not set but certain phrases and instrumentation are set beforehand. In our performance for the AFUM, we are combining aspects of chipmusic, live sampling, improvisation, and field recordings, with a healthy dose of humour and reflexivity, as well as some more serious minimalism.

    Worth a read, especially for those with process and techniques obsessiveness.

  • Yatagarasu – Lobster Mage + Interview.

    mageNSF Tech Grindster Yatagarasu has a extremely in-depth itnerview on  the No Funeral Blog. In it he talks about his methodology behind his works, including the following nugget:

    No Funeral: What role did video games play in the development of the band?

    Chris Yatagarasu: I have this fascination with the old NES and Commodore programmers. The idea of creating something people want to spend time with using only 32 kb of memory, it fills me with awe and joy. That’s what I want to do – to make something interesting out of very little. In this case, it’s a stack of obsolete, consumer electronics. Trash to some, but refashioned to do something new. Also I still get totally inspired by game music – namely that by Tim Folin, Martin Galway, Ramiro Vaco, Genesis games and Konami NES stuff.

    Also the inteview gives a link for his newest release “Lobster Mage“. You can get more info on his myspace, and check him out on his East Coast U.S Tour.

  • LISSAJOU – TSY MISY

    tsymisyfront

    Lissajou’s new release is available for order via his Myspace. Expect more of the madcap retro futro cyberphunk nanoloop styles from his earlier cd’s but this time with a few suprises. He writes:

    COMPRISED OF BUSY ELECTRICITY PATTERNS BOTH TURGID AND LISSOM, IT IS PERHAPS THE ULTIMATE PROFOUND EXPRESSION OF LISSAJOU FEELINGS WHICH CANNOT BE CONTAINED NO MATTER HOW HARD YOU TRY!!!

    IN ADDITION, REMIXES BY THE FOLLOWING RAVE PROFESSIONALS CAN BE FOUND THEREUPON ALSO:

    ODDKNOCK
    KEEP BULLFIGHTING
    EPILEPTIC FIT
    C-C

    Grab it quick, before the dystopian future kicks in, and he can only accept credsticks for stuff like this.

  • Pulsar Mini Chip v0.8 appeared

    [kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/bsLOYBUKpQg" width="425" height="344" allowfullscreen="true" fvars="fs=1" /]

    via Starfire’s blog.

    So I was working on a xoxbox kit (Still haven’t finished it actually) very cool all analog, based of the TB-303 and I started thinking that this mass of hundreds of components would have the be able to be replaced by modern tech.  So after some research, learning and remembering what I was taught in college (was a computer science major for about 3 years) I have come to learn and understand somewhat how small simple microprocessors can do a lot more then I had ever thought.

    Welcome the Atmel line of 8-Bit RISC microprocessors, always loving the old 8-bit game systems (I still own my Atari!) and also having a place in my heart for chiptune music I decided to work on a chip based version of the good old TB-303.

    Its buzy, its lo-fi, and it’s definitely embryonic, but let’s keep an eye on things and see how they develop.