I Blink In The Face Of Angels (Hardcore/Chipcore) (Page 2 of 3)

Thanks!

Here's another idea. Don't upload or release any new ep's or tracks for like 3 months, longer if you can. Keep working on getting more technical with LSDJ (if that's what you're going to use). I love chiptune, but I don't listen to a lot of LSDJ chip stuff regularly. But there are a few releases I come back to over and over. I listen because the synthesis is interesting, the sounds captivate me, the composition is awesome, and the channel economy blows my mind.

Lo-Bat - Gameboy
USK - Picopicodisco
Knife City - Knife city
AMU - Set Diamond
Ctrix live RRR

to name a few. Listen to these.

Maybe it's like giving them the middle finger in their angelic culture. . .

okay then what's hardcore about a Doctor Who reference

yo the angels are hard as fuck

I have a few suggestions/responses/etc. I don't want any of them to seem condescending, but some of them might, especially as we both create music in the same kinda niche.

1) The Vocal

I think part of what you're coming up against with your vocal (the space between where we can tell you want it to be and where it is) is your age. I am not really a pro when it comes to screaming (I can barely make it through my own shows) but goddamn, getting anywhere with it took me quite a while and having a broken voice really helped (I think you might be quite young judging by your soundcloud profile picture - forgive me if you're not). As someone who mumbles constantly, projecting my voice has always been a really important factor to remember. If you're screaming from below your lungs, you can go lower in pitch, louder in volume and do it for much longer. Practicing it (in a soundproof room, or out somewhere far from people - you're bound to have the latter in Armidale) really helps. Most of the genres you've listed as the soundcloud tags have screamed lyrics, but they are (for the most part) understandable - understanding yours was difficult at times. Watching the level of distortion and your diction in delivery will help on that front, unless you're going for the shitbird vibe (which does have its own sexy place in the genre - but it is more breakcore than anything else you're referencing).

2) The Game Boy

You're actually getting better on the Game Boy, in my opinion. You're adding more elements to your songs and that is a good thing. However, it isn't quite there. In my experience, in order to create a song that sounds "hardcore" or like a band that plays in the style of your desired genre tags, you tend to need to think about replacing each element in a "hardcore" or "emocore" song with instruments on the Game Boy. That means, you need to essentially create a band in a game boy - or at least that is how I see it with my music. I create as much of a drum kit as I can (a kick in pulse... a snare with a sample and noise, or pulse and noise, or just noise if I have no space... hi-hats with noise and crash cymbals...), bass guitar (I like using wav best for this - it sounds best pitched down low out of all the instruments on the game boy in this context) and a guitar (I like using chords on the pulse channel to fill the harmonic/chord instrument of the band). It takes time to place all of these elements across four channels, but it can be done - chances are to start with it will take more than four hours (songs off -what I call- my first EP took me many, many nights work to write on Game Boy). Think about how hardcore songs work. Usually the riff from an intro, is not the riff in the chorus. Perhaps ask yourself which instruments would play what in each section and emulate it with your game boy.

3) Your release structure

This is very general and not specifically about your song, but something I wish someone told me. I literally released the first few songs I wrote on a Game Boy as an EP and later asked to have it removed from the web because I hated it so much on reflection. You will get better and better and once you break the initial barriers of composition and the learning curve gets much easier, you will not like the initial stuff you've put together. Show them to your friends, or upload them on sites like this to talk about it... learn from them. You're not going to want to have released them when you've written another 20 songs. Finally, it seems like you're already getting some hostility here for over posting in this section. Perhaps work on five songs and bring the best one or two back to this section of the forums. You are making progress, but it is a gradual change that we'll see more clearly if you're making bigger jumps between asking for help - the people here are some of your most likely audience if you don't encourage them to dislike you.

Listen to Kool Skull, godinpants (imagining vocals), Nullsleep's collapsed desires tour live recordings (again, imagine some vocals) and just more chip in general to understand the things that appeal to chip music listeners.

Remember, egg whites for strength in the pit. Keep it up, keep it brutal. Sorry if shit dudn't make sense - I am not reading this back to check. haha.

Basically going to agree with everything tenbro says here and add that in terms of instrumentation, think about it in relation to the genres you are referencing here.
The snare for starters, hardcore typically has really short clicky snares, yours has quite a long envelope and is in general overpowering. Snares are an important thing. Probably the most important part of music as far as I'm concerned. So having a weak or poorly timed snare really drags a song down.
I think in general, writing drums like a drummer would help.

Watch this I suppose.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkb3r9filcM

If you want your music to sound agressive, it's probably better to write it in a minor key atleast.

Last edited by godinpants (Jun 19, 2012 5:42 am)