a ralph lauren polo shirt and you just call your music "indie"
it's like SEO but irl and the objective is to get no one to notice you
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Sweden
I'd be happy if people stopped referring to this thing as "music" and call it whatever physical phenomenon it really is, like "sound" or "audible vibrations"
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Frist, I don't think the mainstream/underground distinction applies to anything any more. The only reason there ever was an underground of any genre was because the mainstream was controlled by a small group of companies. The amount of people who get new music from mainstream sources is dwindling every day. Everything is accessible now. One of the things that made a sub-culture a sub-culture was it's exclusivity and the difficulty in obtaining media from that sub-culture. In the 70s and early 80s, you couldn't just go to a record store and buy a Bad Brains or Minor Threat album. You had to know somebody who would dub it for you onto tape. Now, anyone can just download whatever they want. And before that, in previous decades, the "underground" was only accessible through seeing live performances. ie If you didn't live in Mississippi in the early decades of the past century, you had no idea what Blues was.
Having said all that, there will always be a type of "underground" as a collection of like-minded people who have a genuine love of something vs. posers who are only into something because it's "the cool thing to do." No matter how widely accepted something becomes, there will always be outliers in the fringe experimenting and trying new things. To go back to the Blues analogy. For every mainstream Blues success like B.B. King, there were others like R.L. Burnside and Jessie Mae Hemphill who were simultaneously cranking out raw "underground" work. So, really, "mainstream" success doesn't matter. Even if there is mainstream chip acceptance, there will still be a "hardcore" scene going on simultaneously.
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DC
I also noticed that chiptunes created with an atari, commodore 64, LSDJ, NES, SNES etc. sound waaaayy different from chiptunes made with other, more common media, like garageband, etc. The distinction is quite obvious, and you can put chiptunes into 2 very basic categories:
-made with 8bit instruments
-not made with 8bit instruments
8bit instruments being the NES, gameboy, atari, etc.
I have a feeling that the category of chipmusic that would become mainstream would be the one that is made with programs that mainstream composers already use, since the goal would be to crank out more songs faster and easier, I suppose.
The chipmusic that would remain underground, then, would be the one we are all used to. It simply takes more time to make a song in LSDJ than in garageband. You have to program the instruments in, and then even give them commands in the table screen. Also, LSDJ has a high learning curve, and I doubt that any current composer would adjust to it when they can "replicate" the sound in the programs they already use.
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CHIPcinnati Ohio
I dont really seeing dmg based gameboy chiptune becoming mainstream. Now i could be wrong, in all honestly i would love to be wrong. I know a few hip-hop artists/producers have sampled or tweaked chipartists melodies/phases. People tend to like that. 
I like the fact that people tend to love chipmusic when they hear it but most of them, not all dont take it as serious as we all do. The ones that do end up becoming a chiptune artist themselves that one of the many reasons i love this artform, anybody can pick it up. Most older people dont see a computer as a instrument, which is hillarous. If chiptunes were to become mainstream it would probably be very polish and very digital 
and probably with a singer/rapper and a thick beat yo, thus the death of chiptunes. I want nothing more than chipmusic to be widely accpected but mainstream nahhhhh they would rape gameboy music into oblivion and man that isnt cool.
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Planet Zaxxon
I thought the purpose of this post was talking about straight up 100 percent chiptune tracks becoming mainstream.. Such as, a song made from 1 gameboy, or an NSF, or a 4 channel .mod becoming "mainstream." As opposted to using a couple channels from LSDJ and syncing with a band and synths, etc..
and dotMatrix, not all chiptune is 8bit.. but really though, that is a whole other discussion which no one ever wins, or helps inform anyone in any way.. heh
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Also, keep in mind, chip is unique in that it's a retro sub-culture based on something that was a mainstream phenomena to begin with. Everyone growing up during the time when these devices were popular were exposed to chiptune. Every kid in the 80s had an Atari 2600 and C64, and every kid in the 90s had a NES and Gameboy. Granted, a lot of the people in the scene didn't grow up in those times, but I think the fact that the music from these devices is immediately recognizable by mainstream audiences means that the hardware itself isn't really the dividing line between mainstream and underground.
Last edited by NationalBroadcastNetwork (Nov 15, 2012 5:47 pm)
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Hungary
Right. But then I might just be looking on google and found out that chiptune. And you say that you will no longer be underground? So in a sense, because there is no longer a concept. But I think a musician who know me say fifty. And if you leave it in for more then thirty underground popularity. The chip is made of musical instruments I think it will never be mainstream, but I do not really underground ...
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DC
O2star wrote:
and dotMatrix, not all chiptune is 8bit.. but really though, that is a whole other discussion which no one ever wins, or helps inform anyone in any way.. heh
thank you. I didn't know that. I meant to say "sounds like chipmusic" and "is chipmusic" or as you said, 100% chiptune and "mixed"
I'm still learning terminology and its application. I don't want to start a debate on that.
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Godzilladelph
what the fuck is the underground? is that some side project of Lou Reed?
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BOSTON
Heosphoros wrote:
I thought only Bright Primate had sold out?
yall need to catch up!
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Brunswick, GA USA
I agree with the NBN's assertion that underground does not exist, because CDbaby keeps sending me spam asking me to recreate a false sense of exclusivity in the interest of driving sales.
I want to add that some of the impulse to "retro computers" is that some families couldn't have a home computer, but as time passes that aspect of chipmusic fades.
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I can't resist the urge to really rant, some peoples' assertion that sampled music isn't the same and that DAW users are somehow cutting corners...there are sampled kits in lsdj and tracker chip music is sampled music or based on waveforms that you learned to draw from someone else, very few have actually rewritten your trackers or patched any new soundmaking capabilities into your tools. This purist search for authenticity to help justify a more difficult way to do things....Track on old chips because you like to, use chipsounds because you like to, milky-tracker rules, iphone apps rule, gameboy music is great, adlib is great, mGB with algos coming from max-msp is wicked, renoise is dope. I've heard great songs made from sampling video games. You're all creative and amazing.
sounds from chips will go in and out of the mainstream as they are a tool for making interesting sounds like a guitar or your mouth.
Last edited by 9H05T (Nov 15, 2012 7:45 pm)
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Freiburg, Germany
I think everyone calling "chip music" a genre should stop it... it's like saying "guitar music" or "drum music" is a proper genre. It's really not. It's a good way to find together as a group who like to play the same kinds of instruments and talk about how to improve and tweak them, how to play or how to record them etc. In that respect we're no different than any other group of instrument players.
calling it "chip music" to the public audience is in my eyes trying to profile ourselves by highlighting the kind of instrument we are using instead of emphasizing WHAT we do with it. If I'm going to a "guitar music" concert, I better like rock, or metal, or acoustic guitar quartets, or nickelback, or flamenco ... I don't think I have to continue.
Just because so many chip artists seem to gravitate towards a certain genre, it's possible to understand "chip music" as a genre. Nothing prevents anybody from writing jazz, flamenco, ballads or polka on a NES, in fact I suspect it's all been done already (and I know for a fact some of these have been done). And when we call THAT chip music it becomes deceiving, because people don't get what they expect.
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I can agree with lastfuture to an extent. Chipmusic isn't so much a genre as it is a technique or artform. Like turntablism.
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Freiburg, Germany
I guess it's the same with any new instrument or new technique/art form. First it gets a novelty bonus ... turntablism is a good example, so is the electric guitar, and music made with it will be called out by emphasizing the art form or instrument, but sooner or later the emphasis on the instrument itself phases out because it's nothing special anymore. I think we are in the first phase still.
Oh also... Synthesizers! Remember when they were the big special thing?
Last edited by lastfuture (Nov 15, 2012 8:31 pm)