[ Closed ] Your thoughts on the chip music community (Page 1 of 14)

I won't make comments on any specific community, each one has their own ideals and social structures and I think a variety of beliefs is valid. I'm glad there are communities that cater to different needs.

However, I have seen a trend in which the more light-hearted members of our communities have been shying away from public forums.  There seems to be this movement towards taking chipmusic very seriously and while I totally accept the validity of doing so, I'm not a fan of forcing that on others.  Many people are just big fans of making music and they have fun with it, forcing them to go "all in" or else stop calling themselves chiptune musicians is just super lame.

I've had people that have gotten upset at me not because my music is too mainstream but because I used a soundchip they've grown tired of.  Heck, I don't do it but I don't see anything wrong with people who want to make mainstream music.  A lot of people in the chiptune community are upset too easily by what other people are creating.

Chiptune music has been around for a very long time and it's not going anywhere soon. No matter how much tasteless, shitty music people make, you'll still be able to make your own music.  I just wish people would embrace the similarities between us and come together as a loving community again and just accept that we represent a very wide variety of aesthetic tastes.

although i feel your questions are kinda trolley and presume quite a bit about the chip scene, i'll tell you what _i_ see from my subjective point of view and hopefully that might offer a bit more of a rounded perspective.

my theory is that many of the older veterans tend to be people who have a cerebral interest in chipmusic as an artform, and they have no time or interest in educating/cultivating/coddling the wave of newer folks who may not be coming in with a similar respect and reverence for the artform.  i think what you're seeing is the manifestation of this frustration.

this is not new, btw; this conflict has existed for as long as a few years back when at some point the chip community collectively accepted that if you obtained a DMG and excreted an uncey track out of your bunghole, that meant that you now "know" chiptune and are automatically a chip artist worth listening to.

i personally identify as being in the "chipmusic as an artform" camp and i feel that frustration too.  as much as i would like the scene to be as open as possible to newer people, i also feel that the sea of dime-a-dozen snoozer chip tracks undermines the hard work and effort of those who thoughtfully approach the craft and seek to create works that endure the test of time and the critical ear. 

cm.org also used to be more of a place for focused discussion on the advancement of chipmusic, and relatively free from the hordes of noobs wanting to know how to make a chip musics, before 8bc went kaput for good.  you can understand the disdain when you consider the increased number of dumb questions and topics that have popped up around here lately, by people who don't know any better.

nowadays there seem to be fewer mechanisms for sorting out the gems from the crap.  on 8bc, the likes and comments system was a reasonable (though still imperfect) metric that allowed people to easily get a sense of which music was good.  i think that netlabels are the primary mechanism for that now, but i don't think that's enough. 

there needs to be more trusted curators, more recommendations from trusted artists, and more of a catalogue for finding good chipmusic - otherwise it's harder for the veterans to bother fishing around for stuff by newer artists.

so no, the chip scene isn't dying or anything.  but i would say it's in flux, particularly in the area of online spaces.  the idea of a "central hub" doesn't really exist right now, i don't know if it will (or should) exist again, but if there ends up being one again that most of the other substituent chip communities can get behind, then chipfolk will find themselves enjoying a new period of stability.

this guy.jeez

I think that's actually an awesome idea.  It'd be great if one of the chiptune community sites added the ability for users to curate playlists.  People could easily find playlists from trusted sources or people with similar tastes. More than a 'favourites' list, this would allow people to create themed playlists which would do a lot to help cross-promote deserving music.  When you listen to a track you'd see all the playlists that the song was a part of, so you could easily find more tracks of similar style/quality.

I strongly agree that chipmusic is an art form.  I listen almost exclusively to chiptune and Amiga/DOS music and I get sick nerd chills when I hear the PC Speaker rendering of the Monkey Island theme.  If chipmusic was a religion, I'd be living as close to chipmecca as possible.  That being said, I don't see anything wrong with people enjoying and having fun with chip music.  I don't think chip music has to be a dark, contemplative thing.  'Chiptune' isn't a genre, it's a very wide set of aesthetics and I think that it's great when people do a wide variety of stuff.

I personally like a lot of the musicians who I consider to be too anal about this distinction.  I love and respect the music that they make because I enjoy all sorts of styles and genres.  I'll admit that some of the overly "uncey" stuff can be annoying, but there are also plenty of chip musicians who make dance music that are bringing a lot more to the table than just four-to-the-floor and deep bass.

I'm fine with people telling me my music is shitty or that they don't like it, but it's annoying to hear that I'm not a real fan of chiptune music.  I can fully accept that people have different taste in music and it doesn't hurt me at all to hear that my own music doesn't resonate with you, but when you make it sound like you know the 'true meaning of chip music' and I'm just some unworthy pleb, it just makes you look silly.   I love you guys, but some open-mindedness and positivity would be nice once in a while.  Just stick with "I don't like it."

TL;DR:  I am extremely passionate about chip music and I'm tired of people telling me how I should be enjoying it.

This is defacto possible now. If you wanted to start a rotating monthly curated "best of cm.o" thread linking your favorite tunes for a month then passing on to another user for the following month I would totally listen.

you can do that already:

"profile" -> "Description" -> enter up to 5000 characters of text with BBcode of artists you like and why.

Heh, therin lies a trick.