I think you're 100% wrong.

100%?  That's really very wrong indeed!  Ah well, let's agree to disagree?

Welcome to the club   They're great fun!    But of course, you don't need one, a DMG and a tape recorder is all you need

Since most of the people reading this are into extremely pure and unaffected tones, I'd say you just need something that transmits that as transparently as you can handle.  For recording, a good cassette deck will do.  For mixing, anything that can take getting spiked by a hot signal will do.  Search for the property you want, and find out what it costs, then worry about how much money you need.

And also, for me at least, making chip music is about what gear I have (to a certain degree) - the music I write on a DMG is quite different to the music I write on a Mega Drive, and this is largely due to both the interface that I am able to write my music with, as well as the actual sounds that I can create / extract from the hardware.

BitPop wrote:

But I have to disagree with you there.  While there is no substitute for a good song, melody and lyric writing, (possibly even more so in chipmusic), good equipment and the skills to use it bring alot to the table.

I think just knowing your equipment is what really matters, be it good or bad.

Agreed

But I have to disagree with you there.  While there is no substitute for a good song, melody and lyric writing, (possibly even more so in chipmusic), good equipment and the skills to use it bring alot to the table.

I think just knowing your equipment is what really matters, be it good or bad.

But I have to disagree with you there.  While there is no substitute for a good song, melody and lyric writing, (possibly even more so in chipmusic), good equipment and the skills to use it bring alot to the table.

For music outside of chip and lofi, I'd say get the best money can buy.

I think you're 100% wrong. It doesn't matter what gear you have across the board. U can make a great recording using a cassette tape recorder, and an SM-57 and i can do the same using a C12 and a MM1200 multitrack. Will the C12 and 1200 sound better sonically.. of course.. but i bet if the subject matter that i was recorded was good enough that who ever was listening would be more distracted with the greatness of the song to really care about the audio quality differences.

It's not what you have or dont have. it's how you use what you have! be it for lo-fi music or hi-fi.

chiptune is the absolute least expensive music genre there is. i have friends who have literally FOUND all of their equipment, and soldered stuff together as they saw fit. other friends use 100% free trackers on old discarded laptops. and these are people who play TONS of shows and are well known.  i can do my entire set with 1 dmg, 1 lsdj cart, and 1 mic... ~$50?

Wise words!  Chiptune is definately affordable for everyone.

But I have to disagree with you there.  While there is no substitute for a good song, melody and lyric writing, (possibly even more so in chipmusic), good equipment and the skills to use it bring alot to the table.

For music outside of chip and lofi, I'd say get the best money can buy.

BR1GHT PR1MATE wrote:

there is no cost correlation in music; expensive gear adds nothing.

Until you get to proper production and mastering.

This isn't true. you can produce and master a record on next to nothing if you know what you're doing and have the ears for it.

Proper production and mastering should be defined as having the experience and ears for said job, not the tools that you have to do said job.
Nice gear  only makes the job either easier or move faster (most of the time, both).

Now... having an engineer master and having a producer who knows what he or she is doing work on your music will more than likely
cost a lot.

But i just wanted to point out that across the board, it doesn't really matter what gear you have, cheap or expensive... It's the music/song that makes it a good.
the rest is just icing on the cake.

Most commonly used example.. The Beatles. They had practically nothing to use for recording. no multi-track's, etc. they used what they had to achieve a record. And frankly i think a lot of the beatles records sound really bad (sound quality) compared to what can be done by pro-sumer gear of today. But it only proves my point that, the beatles had amazing song writing, which puts recording quality on the backburner because the listener cares more about the music then how it was recorded.

Another example. i believe it was led zeppelin III. Everyone raves over the drum sound on that record. And wants to know what was used. To the best of my knowledge they just grabbed 1 mic that was the only mic they happened to have, and worked on mic placement to obtain the best over all sound. nothing fancy, just put the time into working on the sound before hitting record.

I'll end my rant. teehee

there is no cost correlation in music; expensive gear adds nothing.

Until you get to proper production and mastering.