Cool Hunting interviews Bitshifter about making music with Gameboys.

via coolhunting:

In our third installment of the 8-Bit series, we interview Bitshifter (Joshua Davis) about creating music with a pair of Gameboys. The interview takes place at ‘Barcade’ in Brooklyn and also features Mike Rosenthal, Experimental Music Director at ‘The Tank.’

Cuckoo demo’s the new Plogue Chipsounds.

via cuckoomusic:

I bought this new plug-in called Plogue Chipsounds and took it for a spin. I must say it sounds fantastic. I’m going through a couple of the chips, perform and loop live to see how it all sounds.Best regardsCUCKOOMore on Cuckoo:http://www.cuckoo.noMore on Plogue Chipsounds:http://www.plogue.com

Synthtopia regular Torley takes a look at Plogue Chipsounds, with a preview of the standard patches and a few hickups along the way.

Don’t forget to check out Torley’s site sometime, where he’s got 100s of free, gorgeous pieces, including play while answering email & Vangelis meets Ryuichi Sakamoto.

It’s starting to look like old 8-bit computers are the new Roland TB-303.

Petsynth is a free, open source application described as “the only program for rocking the Commodore PET that the cool kids use”:

Petsynth features a two-octave keyboard layout, selectable note length, many selectable octaves, selectable pulse-width, vibrato, distortion, and noise or “drum mode” depending on how you use it.

All this without adding or hacking the Commodore PET in any way. Plus, it’s compiling from C, so it’s FAST – with very low latency.

The drum sounds are also crazy weird. You can also set the vibrato so high it sounds more like a laser gun or alien telephone.

Here’s one, slighty distorted, demo of Petsynth in action:

via RetroThing

This video demos an Atari 2600 being played by a MIDI keyboard.

via littlescale

Saltone peforms the Michael Jackson Thriller 8bit tribute mix. 

via JapanPost24:

Michael Jackson Thriller 8bit Chiptune tribute Remix Live at Exp2.

(tokyo Japan)

http://www.myspace.com/saitone

Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite! by Burnkit2600k comes from the new 8-Bit Operators 2009 Beatles tribute compilation Wanna Hld Yr Handheld.

via burnkit2600:

Burnkit2600 pay homage to one of their most influential bands with a psychedigital cover of The Beatles’ song, ‘Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!’ – one of John Lennon’s most playfully visual songs, and one of the group’s (and of course George Martin’s) most experimental productions.This song was created expressly for the  (8bitoperators.com/beatles/)

The video was made with archival footage supplied by the Internet Moving Images Archive in association with Prelinger Archives.

Last week, we brought you the news of Plogue’s new 8-bit style software synth, Chipsounds.

According to Plogue, Chipsounds emulates more than eight vintage 8bit-era sound chips (on top of their variants), down to their smallest idiosyncrasies.

Now you can decide for yourself:

chipsounds EP by chipsounds

These tracks were made by the chipsounds beta team and show the
variety of styles and sounds that can be achieved with the software.

The only guideline given was that the music’s chip content had to be made using chipsounds.

Check out the demos and let me know what you think!

Plogue has announced a new soft-synthesizer, Chipsounds, that turns your VST/AU/RTAS host into a classic video game console, vintage 8-bit home computer and even an 80’s arcade.

Plogue Chipsounds authentically emulates more than eight vintage 8-bit era sound chips (on top of their variants). But more interestingly, it also faithfully allows you to dynamically reproduce the accidentally discovered sounds effect tricks and abusive musical techniques that were made famous by innovative chiptune composers and classic video game sound designers, which for the good part of the last 2 decades, have pushed beyond the boundaries of the original chip designs.

No pricing or release date have been announced. Details and audio demos are available at the Plogue site.

Despite its popularity, though, the music of C64 games has rarely been analysed in academic articles.
Karen Collins’ Loops And Bloops: Music of the Commodore 64 Games discusses the technical constraints of C64’s SID soundchip and how this shaped the musical aesthetic of music on the Commodore 64:

Technological constraints are nothing new to musical composition, although most discussions arising about the subject have centered on twentieth century concerns.

Mark Katz discusses how the 78 RPM record led to a standard time limit for pop songs, and how Stravinsky famously tailor-made Sérénade en LA for the length of an LP; although he points out, however, that Stravinsky may have been shaped by “his penchant for self-imposed limitations” (Katz, 2004: 3-5).

Critiques of “hard” technological determinism as it relates to musical technologies have dominated the discussion (e.g. Taylor, 1993: 27; Théberge, 1997: 160; Katz, 2004), in favour of a softer approach in which the relationship is more of a negotiation. As with other recent approaches to music technology, I would argue that the relationship between technology and aesthetics is one of symbiosis rather than dominance, what Barry Salt (1985: 37) refers to as a “loose pressure on what is done, rather than a rigid constraint.”

Micromusicians tend to agree, and embrace the constraints as an important part of the creative process, as Teamtendo intimates: “Working with this limited harmonic vocabulary forces you to be creative, and there are some very pleasant discoveries along the way,” or, says Goto80, “it’s fun working with such hardcore limits, forcing you to realize your ideas in other ways.”

In order to explore the constraints of the C64 on composition, I first discuss the limitations of the sound chip, showing the conventional ways in which the chip was used. I follow this with a comparison of well-known, pre-composed songs which were covered on the C64 in various games. I then explore approaches to interactivity and looping in Commodore games music, drawing comparisons between the C64 and its contemporaries.

Full article here.

Let’s get this out of the way up front: The answer is – because it was there.

This video demonstrates an iPod with TouchOSC controlling a vintage Commodore 64 synthesizer (SID Chip), with a home made C64 MIDI interface.

Hacktacular.

Littlescale, we salute you.

This is the music video for minusbaby’s A Large Part of Your Mind Sliced.

Credits:

• From “Left” [8BP101] • 8bitpeoples.com
• Music by minusbaby • minusbaby.com
• Video by Asif Siddiky • 2playerproductions.com

via truechiptilldeath

If you’ve been waiting a long time for that 8-bit cover of Smack My Bitch Up, your wait is over.

Russian chiptune artists got their lo fi on and put together three (3) – count ‘em – The Prodigy tribute albums.

The album site is sort of inpenetrable (when it’s not in Russian) so look:

• here
• here, and
• here

You can preview $ele?’s Smack My Bitch Up below.

8-bit Trip is an homage to classic video games – featuring a bouncy chip music soundtrack and 8-bit graphics visualized with stop-motion Lego animation. Music by Daniel Larrson.

via rymdreglage:

1500 hours of moving lego bricks and take photos of them.

This is the teaser video for Kind of Bloop, an 8-bit tribute to Miles Davis’s classic jazz album Kind of Blue, released on the 50th anniversary of the album on August 17, 2009.

Music by chiptune artists ast0r, Virt, Sergeeo, Shnabubula, and Disasterpeace.

I was prepared to hate this album – but after listening to the previews at the album site, I’ve got to admit, it kind of swings.

Digital downloads will be available starting August 20th at the KindOfBloop site.

About the project:

What would the pioneers of jazz sound like on a Nintendo Entertainment System? Coltrane on a C-64? Mingus on Amiga? For years, I’ve wondered what “chiptune jazz” would sound like, but there are only a tiny handful of jazz covers ever made.

To satisfy my curiosity — and commemorate the 50th anniversary of Miles Davis’s “Kind of Blue” — I’ve asked five brilliant chiptune musicians to collaborate and reinvent the entire album in the 8-bit sound.

The lineup, in alphabetical order:
Ast0r (Chris J. Hampton)
Disasterpeace (Rich Vreeland)
Sergeeo (Sergio de Prado)
Shnabubula (Samuel Ascher-Weiss)
Virt (Jake Kaufman)

NESynth is a virtual synthesizer designed to capture the 8-bit glory of old-shchool video game sounds.

Details on NESynth are available at the Newforestar site.

Now available in the App Store.

If you’ve used NESynth, leave a comment with your thoughts!

Supernova – a music video by Siggi Eggertsson for artist / musician Lawrence Cepstral.

Tracks include:

• Island In The Sun (Belmont’s Revisal) – videogame orchestra
• Holiday – Anamanaguchi
• El Scorcho – Tugboat
• The World Has Turned And Left Me Here – Bit Shifter
• You Won’t Get With Me Tonight – PDF Format
• Hash Pipe – seal of quality
• In The Garage – OxygenStar
• You Gave Your Love To Me Softly –
• We Are All On Drugs – Rabato
• Jamie – Unicorn Dream Attack
• Come To My Pod – Mahamajama
• Why Bother? – I Fight Dragons
• Buddy Holly – nordloef
• I Do – arcadecoma

via True Chip Til Death

The world of music lost one of its most iconic stars today, Michael Jackson.

It’s a cliche, but Jackson lives on in his music, not just in its original form but in thousands of permutations.

The world of 8-bit Michael Jackson covers, is a little strange, or maybe a lot strange, depending on your perspective. But, even in video game style arrangements, Jackson’s best songs are still insanely catchy.

Here are just a few examples…….

Billie Jean C64 Edition 8-bit

Click here to view the embedded video.

8-bit Beat It

Click here to view the embedded video.

Thriller – 8bit Cover by Superpowerless

Click here to view the embedded video.

Note: This post has been updated to focus on Jackson’s music. People universally hated the original post.

This is a two guys, one synth demo of what could be the ultimate Commodore 64 synthesizer, a C64 customized to work with Cynthcart.

via kilobyte242:

fully customized Commodore 64, enhanced for Cynthcart. Features SID2SID installation, Linear/Slider pot for Cynthcart filter, active guitar effects (overdrive and frequency filter) for each SID’s output, an mounted musical overlay, feedback knobs…..for more information check out www.kilobytemodshop.com