lo fi music

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

via littlescale

Yeah, yeah – here’s that “talking piano” video that’s been bouncing around the Internet for a week.

I didn’t feature it here, because I thought Conlon Nancarrow was doing a lot more interesting things, and more musical things, with player piano sequencing back in the 1940s.

And, if you’re going to make a talking instrument, in my book – it’s either got to make music, or it’s got to say “Exterminate!”

But others are obviously seeing potential in this. Or that je ne sais quoi that makes an Internet meme.

Anyway, this video captures a”speaking piano” reciting the Proclamation of the European Environmental Criminal Court at World Venice Forum 2009.

Composer Peter Ablinger basically pixelated sound, at a resolution appropriate to the range of the piano, and used the pixelations as “notes” to sequence and reproduce a lo-fi version of the original sound. Read more…

Andy Baio has announced a project to create an 8-bit CD version of Miles Davis’ jazz classic Kind Of Blue:

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)

I hope to have the entire album download ready for Kind of Blue’s 50th birthday on August 17. (Printing and shipping CDs will take longer.)

The 8-bit take on this jazz classic, Kind Of Bloop, could be epic or awful, but we’ll have to wait until August to know.

Will Kind Of Bloop join its predecessor as one of the ultimate collegiate make-out albums of all-time, or will it be a monstrous carbuncle on the face of an old friend?

Leave a comment with your thoughts!

Here’s an 8-bit hip-hop medley, with an old-school Mario paint-style graphics to go with it.

It’s NSFW – but in an 8-bit way.

via dslxs, via pranksterdice

This is a demo of a modified Commodore 64 – the C64 Vader II White, featuring an acid jam with Mssiah and Renoise.

via kilobyte242:

Demonstrating the C64 Vader II White w/ Mssiah …. check out kilobytemodshop.blogspot.com for more info