Tag: Chipflip

  • Blip vs LCP on CHIPFLIP

    Goto80 has an interesting essay on the differences the live 8bit warriros of the Blipfest and the monastic demo gurus of LCP

    It seems that Blip and LCP shows two different schools of 8-bit computing. The Blip-way is to amplify artifacts and platform-specific features, often involving glitches. The LCP-way is also highly platform-specific since a hardcore demo only runs on a specific set-up ie Amiga500 but not Amiga600. It is technically platform-specific, but usually not aesthetically. A good demo does not have glitches and other artifacts of the platform. It seems important for a demoscene-author to show that s/he is in control.There are tendencies in the demoscene towards the embrace of the quirks of hard/software, somewhat similar to what Viznut calls post-technical. It is a good term from a demo-coder perspective – leaving code-skill-flexing behind for more expressive productions. But from a broader aesthetical perspective I think it makes more sense to call it techno-centric, because the inate character of technology is not supressed.

    I would go even further, in saying that the blip festival kids are working towards a more innate sense of what is correct per their intuition, versus the demosceners constant strengthening and testing of common best practices.  My approach to gameboy music personally has more to do with the excellence of LSDJ, than with any affection for the gameboy sound as a whole.

    via CHIPFLIP.

  • CHIPFLIP Interviews SounDemon

    CHIPFLIP > Tell us a bit about your different projects. How did you come up with ‘the new waveform’ in Pico? How did you do it and what does it actually do? Will there be new experiments with the waveform editor?

    SOUNDEMON > As with Perkele, we needed a very small tune for Pico which is also a 4kb demo. I decided to include some metallic drum sounds by using the “testbit trick”. While trying different parameters for the sounds I got some weird pitched sounds. Only after releasing the demo I spent some time analyzing the behaviour of the SID chip to find out how and why the trick works.

    via Interview with SounDemon, the Sound Chip Hacker « CHIPFLIP.

  • Chipflip on Other uses of Computer Hardware

    Not being a huge Queen fan, i’ve avoided posting this:

    [kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/Ht96HJ01SE4" width="425" height="344" allowfullscreen="true" fvars="fs=1" /]

    But leave it to goto80 to make the subject fresh with this excellent post on chipflip.

    An excerpt:

    I just found a version of Bohemian Rhapsody performed by an Atari800XL, 8? floppy drive, TI 99/4a, 3.5? floppy drive and four HP ScanJets. It’s apparently the hottest youtube-clip in Canada right now, yip yip! The same author also has Funkytown performed by C64/modem/printer and TI99/4a. Mentioned as his inspiration is James Houston’s Big Ideas (Don’t Get Any) which had a slow start of its Internet career, but has received lots of internet attention by now. It’s James’ final project for design school, so the visual aspect is also well worked through. A very special clip. It’s a ZX Spectrum with scanners, harddrives, and printers that performs a Radiohead-cover. James “placed them in a situation where they’re trying their best to do something that they’re not exactly designed to do, and not quite getting there”.

    Fun reading! Rock the Matrix!

  • Goto80 one-ups the rest

    In a previous news post, Peter linked to a write-up (yes, another one) that tries to sum up the history of “chiptunes” (god I hate saying that, it’s chipmusic, ok??). It seemed pretty well balanced but I didn’t like it from the start (because of the previously mentioned terminology pet peeve).

    Here comes Goto80, which posseses, as I said many time before, what can be considered as the most serious work in progress of “academization” of chipmusic, and analyzes, dissects and corrects the article.

    Rip it a new one, Anders!

  • Chip Flip on “Noise Music”

    Chipflip has an excellent write-up on the state of chip-noise.

    “8-bit noise music is not very common, which means that good 8-bit noise music doesn’t really have best of compilations (yet!). It is maybe a bit like someone over at 8BC said about breakcore: the certain particularities with a genre that make it so good, are quite tricky to reproduce with an old soundchip and is therefore often completely lost.”

    Its a great primer of a little subsection of the chip sound, and features a load of artists you should check out.