To quote the replacements:

"I hate music
sometimes I don't
I hate music
it's got too many notes."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBh5ZtATqOY

Thanks chums. I do appreciate the advice. I'm just a bit overwhelmed with other work and despite Josh's assurance that I'm fine, I must insist that my left ear is, in fact, pretty fucked up. But it's not that big a deal and I'll know more once all the tests are done. In any case, I'm glad you guys are listening to the collection (or at least planning on it.)

If you'll notice I'm not calling it an album because I really don't think of it as one. The only uniting theme apart from my authorship is the fact that its a chronology of stuff I've done that I never thought fit anywhere else - some of it not-quite-successful experiments and some of it things that I'd put on other websites for people to enjoy.

In any case, if you prefer my Game Boy stuff I insist that "The Greased Cartridge" is the best thing I've ever done and may very well be the best thing I ever will do. I don't know what other people think of it, but it is something of a concept record about modern India. I'm tempted to write something explaining it a bit more because I'm sure most people don't want to spend their time looking up the references. But who knows!

Thanks guys!

Damn, you need a beer. If I was close, I'd solve it in a minute.
Chillax, and don't be depressed or I'll be forced to slap you

Hey I was just stating my a440 trick.. i havent even heard the release yet

Haha, I wasn't slanting you man, just trying to offer some advice IF it was the case. To be honest, I haven't even listened to the tracks yet as I'm on a computer with no speakers right now.

Man, I should wear earplugs with my rock band. Tiny room + Energetic drummer means everyone else turns WAAAAYYYY up. I'll regret it when I'm 40 for sure...

Natty, I'm sure you're fine, and I didn't mean to turn a thread simply announcing your release into an unsolicited critique session. Detecting & correcting subtle pitch differences can be really tricky, and that's no indicator of tone deafness. And headphones can really exacerbate that (and I'm sure that most of us are primarily making music using headphones). Not sure if this is just me or if this is the case with everybody, but in some cases, music I've made that sounds perfectly fine in headphones will sound surprisingly different when later heard through proper speakers, which can reveal problems (mix levels, renegade volumes, pitch issues) that get concealed by headphones. Not sure why this is, scientifically. The impression I get is that headphones can impart what's almost a "virtual compression" effect (which becomes more pronounced as headphone volume increases), wherein elements of a track are perceived as "sitting" well together, and this can mask pitch/volume/mix issues.

Anyway I think it's abundantly clear from your music in general that you've got a good ear and a good sense of melody, consonance, and dissonance. Wrangling samples & getting them to play well together is just tricky, no matter what. Plus if you've got a natural ear for it (and I'm sure you do), it's an easy problem to fix, and then voila -- SILENCE BEFALLS THE COMPLAINERS.   8X

Thanks for the concern, Akira. I don't actually take any offense. I know your style and it's cool. I appreciate your honesty.

As regards my ears, I'm not just guessing at that diagnosis. I've already had several tests from various doctors in the past few weeks and they agree that what I have is not tinnitus but Hyperacusis, which can sometimes accompany tinnitus but that doesn't seem to be the case in my instance. And it does effect matters of tone because my left eardrum feels like a tattoo needle is being stuck into it when I hear certain frequencies - the pain is often so bad that I can't really hear a particular note. I'm too busy wincing and writhing.

And I know I don't have absolute pitch but I have played guitar since I was 13, picked up a bit of harmonica along the way, and even took voice lessons for a couple of years. So it's not like I randomly picked up a tracker and decided that I'd give music a try. I know my ears and they were far more accurate in the past. I used to have no problem tuning an instrument. the issue here is that I'm using samples from various sources, and while i do try to retune their root note to match a middle c, I've found that I can't fine-tune things as accurately as I once could.

In any case, I have a mountain of work to do and this is really depressing me. I know that in many of the LGPT tracks (the ones that were my experiments to get the hang of the platform,) in the collection there are sample clashes, but in a few of them I honestly don't hear any problems. So when other people do I get very concerned and thoroughly unhappy.

Dude, take no offense from what I said, I tried to help as best as I could. If you get offended you are a pussy (hey that was a joke too.. Sheesh, anglosaxons! )

Even if you have ear damage, that would affect the volume you hear stuff at, I don't think the tone would be affected. But I am no doctor.
One other thing that doesn't make sense either: this doesn't happen in the Gameboy tunes you have. How could it be?
I think this is a "getting used to" problem, and no physical damage, nor being "tone deaf". If you were, you wouldn't get it right by chance. Maybe you are too used to the way the GB sounds and when incorporating new sounds, you get confused. Not everyone can know that a certain tone goes well wit ha certain other since they were born ors something, people train, and very few have what they call "absolute pitch".

As per your problem description, you might be having tinnitus or the beginning of it. You have to take care, and also, keep in mind tinnitus is very influenced by your mind. It could be caused by stress, not only high levels of audio.

Oh snap! No way we're slanting you man! You need to learn to accept criticism.

But DEFINITELY you have to wear earplugs. Sometimes I wear them when I play too, certain audio systems are fucked, specially booth monitors. Don't be ashamed to take care of your ears, specially if you are a musician.

Ha, Akira, I'd forgotten all about your blunt style. Nice to be back on a forum with you.

In fact you can microtune in LGPT. And I don't just accept each sample as whatever it says the note is. If I'm using a non-osc sample (which is most of the time,) I usually do change the root note to tune it as best I can to match something actually at C.

Unfortunately, I fear that you might be right about something else:

As regards being tone-deaf, that may be a possibility, and a frightening one. In fact, tomorrow I'm going to have a full battery of audio tests because I've seriously damaged my auditory nerve and scarred the timpanic membrane in my left ear. For the past few months my hearing has been getting progressively worse in this ear. it isn't deafness. Technically, it's the opposite of that: Hyperacusis- certain frequencies are amplified, causing intense pain in that ear. One of the noticeable effects is that it's more difficult for me to tune by ear than it used to be back in the pre-Chiptune days when I played guitar in bands and I had a perfectly serviceable sense of sound. Back then I never had a problem tuning things. Old age is a bitch, huh? 

It's scary and unpleasant and all I can do is recommend that people wear earplugs in loud places and not be stupid like me. Otherwise you might find yourself on a forum being dressed-down by 8GB, Pseudo, Peter Swimm, and Bit Shifter for being tone-deaf.

Anyway, thanks for listening! I'm glad there are people out there who can hear the differences in the samples because, frankly, when I hit "start" all I hear is a single tone punctuated by clicks and a small voice telling me to hang myself. Is that normal?

or stickc an a440 test tone in your piggy sample lib.. i use that for the rare moments of not using osc instruments.

I swear I've had a program once that would automatically tune the frequencies of all your samples to the same note (or at least a proper musical note...), but I believe it got lost in a computer crash and now I don't remember the link.

Not particularly helpful, but maybe someone knows what I'm talking about to give him a hand.

Also, although I just started messing with LGPT less than a week ago, I find it very helpful to play a note on my keyboard while playing the sample and keep changing it until it matches. There's also some simple free online keyboards you can do it with as well. Here's one, not particularly great, but I'm too lazy to really do a proper search.
Online Piano

But if you really are tonedeaf, it might take a bit of practice to get it right. Or it just might be the particular samples you are using.

Hey, this post wasn't quite as useless!

If you gonna stick to LGPT, you have some serious issues to sort out, as briefly pointed out by Josh.
Seems to me you can't recognize what note the original sample is in so you just rely in mechanical methods (and here's a wild guess), like reading only what LGPT says the "note" is. C-3 will only be C-3 if the sample you use has its base on C-3. This is easily remedied by listening, but if you can't hear the problem and fix it by ear, you need to develop your sense of hearing. You might even need to use microtonal tuning with some samples, which I think you can't do in LGPT (not sure). I'd recommend getting samples that are properly recorded and sitting on a frequently used note (like C)

This is the best advice that can be given. I'd say you are tone deaf, but the DMG stuff is OK so it's very odd to me that you can match the notes on the DMG but not on the LGPT. I assume what happens is what I described above (which you mean you know what notes you should combine, but not how they sound like) but it's just a wild guess...

I say ditch the DMG and embrace the challenge of a new sound with bravery

Explanations are necessary.
Once I stop listening to this gabber shit I'm going to listen to this.

Why did I just waste so much time writing that?

Hey guys, I'm really glad you like the collection. Coming from the likes of you, it's high praise!

It's funny, while I was going back and listening to those old Game Boy tracks I realized that I hadn't finished the trilogy of EPs with Archive.03, so I may have to do that at some point in the future. And I'll still be doing Game Boy programming for NATO. So none of this speak of renunciation. Perhaps I'm just taking a break for a while while I learn how to use LGPT to make the kind of house and techno-inspired dance music that I love.

And I have been getting quite a bit of criticism for my Piggy Tracker recordings along the very same lines Josh pointed out. I should say that with the exception of Nerdy White Kids, Never Been to Japan, and These Unforgiving Hours, the Piggy Tracker material on this collection is mostly made up of experiments that never quite worked out. The earlier tracks are me getting the hang of the interface and the later tracks are me trying to use less conventional samples. Why release them at all, you ask? Because it will probably be a very long time before I get enough Piggy material that I'm satisfied with (and enough free time,) to do a proper album. I think the tracks are interesting for the very reason that they're a bit off - I think that using orchestral samples and layered waveforms in Piggy Tracker let me get across a particularly unsettling feeling I'd been having.

I've also noticed that people seem to enjoy listening to my Game Boy stuff when its recorded and prefer my Piggy Stuff live. That makes total sense to me. I think it has something to do with the universal appeal of TR-909 samples.

I just needed to stick my head above the deluge of Game Boy music for a minute (or a year or two,) and try to stretch a bit.

And frankly, I'm pretty sure that a lot of other people have the DMG stuff covered way better than I ever will.

BUT THANK YOU ALL AND HAVE A HAPPY VALENTINES DAY!

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to write a historical outline of the Greenpoint Oil Spill, a 2000-word piece about Beau Brummell's descent into gambling debts drawing on thirteen primary-source collections of Regency period diaries and letters, make a Flash timeline about Stuyvesant Town, and shower before my girlfriend gets here.