I just don't get live bit music concerts at all. It comes across as sort of a mockery of actual live performance - there isn't any reason bit music can't be recorded with 100% accuracy and replayed anywhere you want. Also, I wish they would graduate to SNES-era sounds.
there isn't any reason any other music can't be recorded with 100% accuracy and replayed anywhere you want
If you want to get all fair about it, they aren't just getting up there and pressing "Play."
There's a Live mode in the software that lets you trigger different parts of the song at different times and mute/solo/mess with the tempo/volume/instrument settings
Being at one of these shows in person also has the benefit of being around people who share your interests and listening to (sometimes) great music
Having said that, yeah, sturgeon's law. Almost everything is dubstep/techno bullshit using the "chipmusic" label as a gimmick
All I want to know is the name of the song that was played at the end of episode 2.
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LosarThane Vector, Rock StarTucson, AZRegistered Userregular
edited August 2010
I think it's really cool of 2PP to release their years-long project for free to the Internet, especially since they actually sell the DVD.
You can buy it to support them, along with some other RTP- and chiptunes-related swag from the Fangamer Store.
I'm not really a fan of most chiptunes. I've browsed 8bitpeoples and downloaded a few albums by different artists to give the music a fair chance, but in the end there are only a few artists besides Anamanaguchi that I really enjoy listening to. Anamanaguchi isn't really completely chiptunes, though. They have a band aspect that I think makes them stand out.
Perhaps chiptunes is best considered an instrument rather than a genre. Guitars and pianos can sounds pretty good solo, too, but they often sound even better when accented by drums and/or a bass.
In fact, the band I Fight Dragons comes immediately to mind as a group that uses chiptunes effectively as an instrument in the band.
(By the way, I'm Fangamer staff, so if this counts as self-promotion despite it being on-topic I understand and will edit it out. It's the same link as the one on the RTP PATV page, I believe.)
I like chiptunes and I really like 2PP and I thought this was really cool. I only watched the first part since I'm here at work but I'll get to the rest later when I get home.
I don't know that I'd ever go to a chiptunes concert though. I just really don't get into music enough to enjoy concerts of any sort and would rather just stay at home and listen to stuff when I'm on the computer or in my car, but it's still pretty cool that that sort of thing exists and that people enjoy it.
I really liked this. I'm glad it's here. If it weren't I don't think I would ever have found it or knew it existed. I didn't even know "chipmusic" or "8-bit music" was a THING until recently.
This may not be as heavy a documentary as something on war or poverty, but there are tons of those out there. Seemingly miniscule and mundane things are what most documentaries are about. Also, I think this topic is kind of important. This sort of thing is a big contribution to art that our generation has to offer. I know it doesn't seem like it, but there is serious potential here.
Line-art in comics used to be completely utilitarian, but now that we don't HAVE to ink comics, the inking can finally be an art-form and not a "necessary step". Similarly, 8-bit, 16-bit, and 32-bit pixel-art is no longer a product of the limitations of the devices we use. Therefore those images are now free to be treated as "Art" as opposed to being utilitarian. The same can be said for the chip-music.
During my years in music-school, I kept trying to tell my composition professors about how underrated video-game composers are/were for the NES and SNES. The work and mechanics they had to put into their craft is really staggering when you look at it. Stuff like this documentary helps me to believe that more serious composers might someday come around to the idea. If not, at least it helps to know that this generation has some people who get it.
Yeah..... watching dudes push buttons on their Gameboys and then wave their fist around a bit is..... lame.
I get the shared-experience thing, but this should be more a dance party than a concert and the Gameboy dudes shouldn't be musicians, they should be DJs like some of y'all said earlier.
Frankly, I don't call the guys on their Gameboys "musicians" at all. They program what they want and hit a button and the music plays (if I'm understanding this right). That's not being a musician, that's being a composer. They aren't playing music in front of us, they are composing it and their devices do all the playing. This isn't a value judgement, it's just semantics.
I really dig the live instruments played along with the chipmusic. I'm inspired to get into this now.
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Quoththe RavenMiami, FL FOR REALRegistered Userregular
edited August 2010
did you guys know that there is an iphone app for this
and their devices do all the playing. This isn't a value judgement, it's just semantics.
This is an interesting sentiment. I don't think it's quite as clear cut as that. For everything except singing, stomping, and clapping, we use some sort of device to produce sound outside of our inherent abilities. In a sense, all instruments do the playing and the musicians merely compose and guide them. It's just a matter of how, whether you're plucking a string or pressing a button. Should we say that an electric guitarist using some crazy effect isn't actually a musician? I went to a Mux Mool (electronic, but not chiptune) live performance a few weeks ago, and with a laptop and one or two other pieces of equipment, I'd say he was doing as much if not more than a musician playing a traditional instrument, using loops, 1-1 sound mappings, effects, and more.
Making some cutoff for complexity/effort vs product sound to decide musician/not-musician on the scale is very difficult. It's like asking of a situation where you deposit one grain of sand at a time, when does it become a pile?
I'd say that the electronic/chip artists who don't actively participate in the live performance, who aren't changing things up, breaking things down, experimenting, are DJs or composers, but I don't have any solid foundation on which to base that assertion.
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Raneadospolice apologistyou shouldn't have been there, obviouslyRegistered Userregular
edited August 2010
no
he means it seems like these guys just press a button and it plays the track
and then do a bit of dancing
then they queue up the next track
it's seemingly almost exactly what they do at shows, they may do things back at home where they compose and upload but there's no live performance, they're just pressing a button to bring up whatever track is next
comparing this to a guy sitting up there playing an actual guitar instead of hitting a button on his iPod and saying "yeah i made this earlier" is pretty insulting
Saying all of these guys just press a button and it plays a track and queue up the next is pretty damn insulting.
It's just easier to see what someone's doing on a big guitar with forward facing important bits
than a tiny device with small performer-facing buttons and screens
And that's also why I had the further clarification in my original argument, saying that there are some who do just do that, and those particular individuals I would consider composers/DJs.
Does the software they use in the system have a tracker interface in it? I never could get a good look at it. It looked like something was streaming past, so I assumed each button mapped to a note.
Hahaha awesome. That's the first level of DOOM.... or DOOM II I'm so embarrassed that I can't remember. While most everyone else (it seemed) was playing Mario, we had no NES. I played PC games. DOOM was my life for a long time. DOOm and Comic books.
@BoomShake
It's true that there is a similarity between giving an instrument instructions to produce noise (plucking a string, or pressing a key) and programming a Gameboy to produce noise. There is a fundamental difference that I think removes the Gameboy from being a played instrument.
First I can think of rhythm.
Regular acoustic and electric instruments have to be played in real time and every single note has to obey a very specific rhythmic input from its user/musician. What separates "musicians" from other people is the technique and physical capability to produce those notes in real time with proper rhythm (IE lots and lots of deliberate practice). But even with this pile of practice and a professional wealth of technical ability, not every note is perfect, and not all notes are in perfect rhythm. With a Gameboy, all the notes are exactly the same pitch and all the rhythms are perfect.
Beyond that there is a great deal to consider in terms of intonation or "The Human Element". This is the thing that is brought up a lot in SCI-FI stories with robots. "Can a robot produce/play a beautiful symphony?" In Star Trek the fact that Data could was a big point to his character. Perhaps a nod that he was more human than he believed himself to be.
Anyhow, when approaching an instrument there are literally infinite variables to consider when a human user comes in contact with it. More than just the desired note or the exact rhythm, but also the desired tone, timbre, and a bunch of other music-school words. These infinite variables make up the "human element" that is lacking in the Gameboy music. In chip music the user inputs the notes and rhythms (s)he wants and presses "play" (as far as I can tell). There is no room for human variable outside of the notes that were composed. This is a huge reason why live concerts are so important to people because no two concerts are ever the same. There are usually so many variables (the musicians weren't warmed up properly, or they are on fire that night, or it's a hostile crowd and it reflects in the playing), but in chip-music the room for those variables seems as though it has been nearly eliminated. Thus why the Gameboy-only chip-music seems dumb to have a live concert of. Like I said, it would make for a better dance-party with Gameboy-composer as the DJ.
You have, for instance, an orchestra and a conductor/composer. The composer wrote the notes and tells the band when to play, but the band does all the playing. The composer just waves the baton. Or the composer sits in while a conductor does the waving. With chip-music we have replaced the orchestra with a Gameboy or series of Gameboys. Composing can be done on the spot, but it's still the Gameboy that's doing all the playing.
It would be foolish and unprovable to say that a live band is greater or lesser than a dude and his Gameboys. However, I will say that there are more human variables to a live band, which makes it more interesting to most people, and I like WATCHING a live band way more than a dude and his Gameboy.
I just don't get making a documentary about something so trivial. I mean why not do a documentary on something important like war or poverty or disease or politics or...well anything else?
I'm sorry I'll leave now.
you're implying that documentaries about war, poverty, disease, or politics don't get made? what?
also we're talking an artistic medium, you're basically saying the equivalent of "well picasso was a pretty good painter but he should've been painting still lifes or something"
i mean you can complain about the content all you want but to state that it has no value intrinsically because of its subject matter is pretty fuckin' insulting
I didn't say no value I said less value
way less value.
Yeah, why would anybody spend their time finding out about something they find interesting and then putting their findings on film for others to learn about.
Why would anybody do that?
What a waste of time.
Seriously Trent, what is going through your head right now, you are not making sense.
I just don't get making a documentary about something so trivial. I mean why not do a documentary on something important like war or poverty or disease or politics or...well anything else?
I'm sorry I'll leave now.
you're implying that documentaries about war, poverty, disease, or politics don't get made? what?
also we're talking an artistic medium, you're basically saying the equivalent of "well picasso was a pretty good painter but he should've been painting still lifes or something"
i mean you can complain about the content all you want but to state that it has no value intrinsically because of its subject matter is pretty fuckin' insulting
I didn't say no value I said less value
way less value.
Yeah, why would anybody spend their time finding out about something they find interesting and then putting their findings on film for others to learn about.
Why would anybody do that?
What a waste of time.
Seriously Trent, what is going through your head right now, you are not making sense.
By that rationale you probably consider 2/3 of the social science Ph.D dissertations written to be trivial wastes of time. This may not be a thesis, but like all works, it advances our understanding of the world in which we live. Chiptunes is now a growing part of the music world and popular culture. My Russian professor did his dissertation on a dying regional dialect in a small Ukrainian community. Was that trivial? Of course not.
Creating things, such as this documentary, serves a purpose. That purpose is probably in the eye of the beholder. You say that they should have devoted their efforts to producing something like a documentary about the war in Iraq? Why? So a certain group of people with an interest in that topic could view and learn about it? Isn't that exactly the purpose of this chiptune documentary? Okay, it's not life and death, but you can't tell me that there isn't a real human experience happening on the screen.
I think that's the problem. There's just so many elements in creating music, or art in general, that it's tough to categorize people. I will say that many people don't realize how much goes into electronic/chip, but in the studio and on the stage. It's more than just "play note A in this order" - they craft the particular sound using a range of tools and effects and filters, playing with the wave form itself. In live shows, many of the artists will do a lot, both simple things like pitch and tempo, but complex things like improving new distortions/sounds and composition. There's a number of concerts I've been to where I could tell what base song was being played, but there was certainly a lot of experimenting, improving, and feeling the crowd, yielding something completely new and unique.
It's also difficult to know exactly what's going on for anyone who doesn't understand the program/hardware being used. Looking at chip and electronic programs, and people using them, it's not immediately apparent what everything does or how the hell many of the effects are achieved, so it can end up appearing much more simplistic in a live show. Something like a guitar is more clear, that "pluck string, get note. Strum a few strings, get chord" (excluding something like a whammy bar).
I guess my main point is that I don't think it's as easy as people seem to think to dismiss everyone who uses these particular devices, sets of devices, etc. as nonmusicians.
I don't think a Chip Tunes concert is any worse than, say, a Girl Talk concert or anyone who really just has to mess with a laptop and bounce along to the beats in between clicks.
A Daft Punk live show, or an Aphex Twin's, or Fatboy Slim's, for example, could be considered just a session and them acting as DJs. That being said, I would spend a hell of a good time there for sure. On the other hand, I've been to a lot of live band concerts that were damn boring.
I don't see the need to compare playing instruments live with setting some gameboys on, switching a couple of buttons on a mixing console and making a session.
They are musicians because they made the songs, so I can see some art in that. They manage to congregate a crowd, and they offer a good time to them, so I can see why they do live shows. I even find it appealing.
As an extremely hard-core fan of all kinds of electronic music (and especially EDM), I honestly cannot stand this kind of music at all.
I think it's cool they made a documentary on it though. I wish someone would make something this in-depth about any kind of EDM, especially with the recent comeback of Electro (in comparison to Trance or House).
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Nevermind figured it out. It's Hotel California. Woo that was bothering me.
there isn't any reason any other music can't be recorded with 100% accuracy and replayed anywhere you want
edit: Though there's sampling for instruments and pre-recorded parts
There's a Live mode in the software that lets you trigger different parts of the song at different times and mute/solo/mess with the tempo/volume/instrument settings
Being at one of these shows in person also has the benefit of being around people who share your interests and listening to (sometimes) great music
Having said that, yeah, sturgeon's law. Almost everything is dubstep/techno bullshit using the "chipmusic" label as a gimmick
people think edm is either dubstep or techno
But god forbid anyone makes a station that just plays random songs from the 8bc catalog
The set played by Amanaguchi caught me off guard. That's surprisingly good.
I noticed some resentment towards Anamanaguchi at some parts from people in the scene, though.
You can buy it to support them, along with some other RTP- and chiptunes-related swag from the Fangamer Store.
I'm not really a fan of most chiptunes. I've browsed 8bitpeoples and downloaded a few albums by different artists to give the music a fair chance, but in the end there are only a few artists besides Anamanaguchi that I really enjoy listening to. Anamanaguchi isn't really completely chiptunes, though. They have a band aspect that I think makes them stand out.
Perhaps chiptunes is best considered an instrument rather than a genre. Guitars and pianos can sounds pretty good solo, too, but they often sound even better when accented by drums and/or a bass.
In fact, the band I Fight Dragons comes immediately to mind as a group that uses chiptunes effectively as an instrument in the band.
(By the way, I'm Fangamer staff, so if this counts as self-promotion despite it being on-topic I understand and will edit it out. It's the same link as the one on the RTP PATV page, I believe.)
I don't know that I'd ever go to a chiptunes concert though. I just really don't get into music enough to enjoy concerts of any sort and would rather just stay at home and listen to stuff when I'm on the computer or in my car, but it's still pretty cool that that sort of thing exists and that people enjoy it.
Steam | Live
This may not be as heavy a documentary as something on war or poverty, but there are tons of those out there. Seemingly miniscule and mundane things are what most documentaries are about. Also, I think this topic is kind of important. This sort of thing is a big contribution to art that our generation has to offer. I know it doesn't seem like it, but there is serious potential here.
Line-art in comics used to be completely utilitarian, but now that we don't HAVE to ink comics, the inking can finally be an art-form and not a "necessary step". Similarly, 8-bit, 16-bit, and 32-bit pixel-art is no longer a product of the limitations of the devices we use. Therefore those images are now free to be treated as "Art" as opposed to being utilitarian. The same can be said for the chip-music.
During my years in music-school, I kept trying to tell my composition professors about how underrated video-game composers are/were for the NES and SNES. The work and mechanics they had to put into their craft is really staggering when you look at it. Stuff like this documentary helps me to believe that more serious composers might someday come around to the idea. If not, at least it helps to know that this generation has some people who get it.
Yeah..... watching dudes push buttons on their Gameboys and then wave their fist around a bit is..... lame.
I get the shared-experience thing, but this should be more a dance party than a concert and the Gameboy dudes shouldn't be musicians, they should be DJs like some of y'all said earlier.
Frankly, I don't call the guys on their Gameboys "musicians" at all. They program what they want and hit a button and the music plays (if I'm understanding this right). That's not being a musician, that's being a composer. They aren't playing music in front of us, they are composing it and their devices do all the playing. This isn't a value judgement, it's just semantics.
I really dig the live instruments played along with the chipmusic. I'm inspired to get into this now.
nanoloop
it simulates the old game boy program
This is an interesting sentiment. I don't think it's quite as clear cut as that. For everything except singing, stomping, and clapping, we use some sort of device to produce sound outside of our inherent abilities. In a sense, all instruments do the playing and the musicians merely compose and guide them. It's just a matter of how, whether you're plucking a string or pressing a button. Should we say that an electric guitarist using some crazy effect isn't actually a musician? I went to a Mux Mool (electronic, but not chiptune) live performance a few weeks ago, and with a laptop and one or two other pieces of equipment, I'd say he was doing as much if not more than a musician playing a traditional instrument, using loops, 1-1 sound mappings, effects, and more.
Making some cutoff for complexity/effort vs product sound to decide musician/not-musician on the scale is very difficult. It's like asking of a situation where you deposit one grain of sand at a time, when does it become a pile?
I'd say that the electronic/chip artists who don't actively participate in the live performance, who aren't changing things up, breaking things down, experimenting, are DJs or composers, but I don't have any solid foundation on which to base that assertion.
he means it seems like these guys just press a button and it plays the track
and then do a bit of dancing
then they queue up the next track
it's seemingly almost exactly what they do at shows, they may do things back at home where they compose and upload but there's no live performance, they're just pressing a button to bring up whatever track is next
comparing this to a guy sitting up there playing an actual guitar instead of hitting a button on his iPod and saying "yeah i made this earlier" is pretty insulting
It's just easier to see what someone's doing on a big guitar with forward facing important bits
than a tiny device with small performer-facing buttons and screens
And that's also why I had the further clarification in my original argument, saying that there are some who do just do that, and those particular individuals I would consider composers/DJs.
edit: From further research, they do. Neat.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azaJ0Hx7vJI
@BoomShake
It's true that there is a similarity between giving an instrument instructions to produce noise (plucking a string, or pressing a key) and programming a Gameboy to produce noise. There is a fundamental difference that I think removes the Gameboy from being a played instrument.
First I can think of rhythm.
Regular acoustic and electric instruments have to be played in real time and every single note has to obey a very specific rhythmic input from its user/musician. What separates "musicians" from other people is the technique and physical capability to produce those notes in real time with proper rhythm (IE lots and lots of deliberate practice). But even with this pile of practice and a professional wealth of technical ability, not every note is perfect, and not all notes are in perfect rhythm. With a Gameboy, all the notes are exactly the same pitch and all the rhythms are perfect.
Beyond that there is a great deal to consider in terms of intonation or "The Human Element". This is the thing that is brought up a lot in SCI-FI stories with robots. "Can a robot produce/play a beautiful symphony?" In Star Trek the fact that Data could was a big point to his character. Perhaps a nod that he was more human than he believed himself to be.
Anyhow, when approaching an instrument there are literally infinite variables to consider when a human user comes in contact with it. More than just the desired note or the exact rhythm, but also the desired tone, timbre, and a bunch of other music-school words. These infinite variables make up the "human element" that is lacking in the Gameboy music. In chip music the user inputs the notes and rhythms (s)he wants and presses "play" (as far as I can tell). There is no room for human variable outside of the notes that were composed. This is a huge reason why live concerts are so important to people because no two concerts are ever the same. There are usually so many variables (the musicians weren't warmed up properly, or they are on fire that night, or it's a hostile crowd and it reflects in the playing), but in chip-music the room for those variables seems as though it has been nearly eliminated. Thus why the Gameboy-only chip-music seems dumb to have a live concert of. Like I said, it would make for a better dance-party with Gameboy-composer as the DJ.
You have, for instance, an orchestra and a conductor/composer. The composer wrote the notes and tells the band when to play, but the band does all the playing. The composer just waves the baton. Or the composer sits in while a conductor does the waving. With chip-music we have replaced the orchestra with a Gameboy or series of Gameboys. Composing can be done on the spot, but it's still the Gameboy that's doing all the playing.
It would be foolish and unprovable to say that a live band is greater or lesser than a dude and his Gameboys. However, I will say that there are more human variables to a live band, which makes it more interesting to most people, and I like WATCHING a live band way more than a dude and his Gameboy.
the chips in the cd case
Yeah, why would anybody spend their time finding out about something they find interesting and then putting their findings on film for others to learn about.
Why would anybody do that?
What a waste of time.
Seriously Trent, what is going through your head right now, you are not making sense.
yeah, that's totally clever
By that rationale you probably consider 2/3 of the social science Ph.D dissertations written to be trivial wastes of time. This may not be a thesis, but like all works, it advances our understanding of the world in which we live. Chiptunes is now a growing part of the music world and popular culture. My Russian professor did his dissertation on a dying regional dialect in a small Ukrainian community. Was that trivial? Of course not.
Creating things, such as this documentary, serves a purpose. That purpose is probably in the eye of the beholder. You say that they should have devoted their efforts to producing something like a documentary about the war in Iraq? Why? So a certain group of people with an interest in that topic could view and learn about it? Isn't that exactly the purpose of this chiptune documentary? Okay, it's not life and death, but you can't tell me that there isn't a real human experience happening on the screen.
[edit] commas
I think that's the problem. There's just so many elements in creating music, or art in general, that it's tough to categorize people. I will say that many people don't realize how much goes into electronic/chip, but in the studio and on the stage. It's more than just "play note A in this order" - they craft the particular sound using a range of tools and effects and filters, playing with the wave form itself. In live shows, many of the artists will do a lot, both simple things like pitch and tempo, but complex things like improving new distortions/sounds and composition. There's a number of concerts I've been to where I could tell what base song was being played, but there was certainly a lot of experimenting, improving, and feeling the crowd, yielding something completely new and unique.
It's also difficult to know exactly what's going on for anyone who doesn't understand the program/hardware being used. Looking at chip and electronic programs, and people using them, it's not immediately apparent what everything does or how the hell many of the effects are achieved, so it can end up appearing much more simplistic in a live show. Something like a guitar is more clear, that "pluck string, get note. Strum a few strings, get chord" (excluding something like a whammy bar).
I guess my main point is that I don't think it's as easy as people seem to think to dismiss everyone who uses these particular devices, sets of devices, etc. as nonmusicians.
I don't see the need to compare playing instruments live with setting some gameboys on, switching a couple of buttons on a mixing console and making a session.
They are musicians because they made the songs, so I can see some art in that. They manage to congregate a crowd, and they offer a good time to them, so I can see why they do live shows. I even find it appealing.
This looks cool as hell.
I think it's cool they made a documentary on it though. I wish someone would make something this in-depth about any kind of EDM, especially with the recent comeback of Electro (in comparison to Trance or House).