Chipmusic • In the News • Labels • Pop Culture

TCTD tweets from 2009-09-22

  • m-.-n article scanned http://www.10pm.org/nostromo/images/word.jpg #
  • That wired article we mentioned last week is now online: http://tinyurl.com/n6gdu7 Fanboy injoke?? #
  • Goatslacker and the cast of Futurama? Awesome. http://bit.ly/JZuok #
  • RT: @zx_spectrum: VHS talks to ZX Spectrum?! I don’t speak Spanish unfortunately, but still a super cute animation! http://bit.ly/3hXjoR #
  • Preorder IN HER GENTLE JAWS from the Deprecation Guild on CLEAR WAX http://tinyurl.com/l7ef6w #
  • Teletime NES Cart Preorder http://bit.ly/13dJME http://bit.ly/3P0C5a RT: @animalstyle #
  • Blip Festival 2009 ticket information to be announced on September 28th ! Stay tuned ! #blip09 RT: @blipfestpress #
Chipmusic • Featured • Interviews

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
Continue reading Interview with LGPT creator Marc Nostromo pt2

Featured • Interviews

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
Continue reading Interview with LGPT creator Marc Nostromo pt1

Chipmusic • Labels • Site News

Merry XL Mas

8bitpeoples gave us quite a treat with two hot new records from Gwem and M-.-n. Grab em while they are hot!

8bp091

8bp090

We are taking the weekend off, so check back next week for the TCTD 2008 awards!