Chiptunes

So one of my stranger interests is Chiptunes. Chiptunes is a gnere of music characterized more by the technology used to make it than by any particular style. The reason is because the technology places a huge limit on the music produced. Basically, huge nerds either dig the sound controller chips out of their old nintendos or use special software to hijack the chip in their gameboy (etc.) to make music.

It can get kinda strange sometiems, but in general I think the music is pretty cool, and the idea is really cool. One of the really neat things about the whole scene is that since it's such an underground (read as: "no one but them gives a shit") scene, just about every artist involved provides their music for free either through their personal or label webpages. one label I particularly like is www.8bitpeoples.com , a label that makes their entire discography available for free download.

I actually first discovered chiptunes through that label. I had just discovered the website www.rocketboom.com , a Vlog that sort of does the news and is responsible for that annoying "ask a ninja" podcast. I was watching a video on rocketboom where they were describing this neat experiment someone did with an NES game called Gradius where they overlayed 15 people playing the game to observe patterns and successful strategies (the experiment was published in a video game developers industry journal). At the end of the video were 2 website names, one of which directed me to 8bitpeoples. After rewatching the video, I'm fairly sure the music is from the original game, but whatever. I just figured this story was worth telling given how random my encounter with this music was. You can watch the video or read about it here: http://thenewgamer.com/content/archives/averaging_gradius

So I just embedded this flash player from Last.FM, which apparently has a shit-ton of chiptunes on it, to try and give you a taste of this stuff from the convenience of my blog. Ironically, the first song that came up after I put it up was a Venetian Snares song, which is NOT chiptunes (cool IDM, but not what I wanted). So as a disclaimer, if it doesn't sound like music you might find in an old NES game, just click the next button.

This Spartan Life

Machinima: a portmanteau of "machine" and "cinema," machinima is a broad genre of animation chracterized by the use of videogame engines as 3D rendering platforms. A classic example of machinima is the video series "Red vs. Blue", which is filmed and about the game HALO.

"This Spartan Life", TSL, also filmed in halo, is at the top of my list of favorite machinima. It has one various awards within the machinima community, and has a rather original format for a machinima: most machinima are science fiction chronicles, TSL is actually a talk show. Topics on the show generally are focused around the general theme of emergent media particularly machinima, and are not above touching on the postmodern. TSL guests run the gamut from media theorists to multimedia artists and video game designers. They even got Malcolm Maclaren. Here's one of their most recent interviews, it's pretty good: http://www.thisspartanlife.com/1004_mod3.html

One other reason I like the show is that they feature some excellent 8 Bit music, AKA Chiptunes. More on chiptunes later, but for now feel free to check out the playlists available through TSL at http://www.thisspartanlife.com/8bit.shtml or go straight to the source and check out on of the most active labels, http://www.8bitpeoples.com (their entire discography is available for free download, but don't be afraid to show them some support).

I guess i'm just that big of a nerd.