Fearofdark
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Brighton/Southampton

Anything I wrote before 2009 I consider pretty awkward to listen to nowadays Though before 2009, almost all of the music I tracked was non-chip, and is unreleased. I've realised my tracked music gradually switches from "real" to "chip+instruments" to "entirely chip" over time, because I now write almost no instrumental tracker music anymore. Even stuff I made in 2010 I now think is becoming a little dated and dodgy.

However, every now and then I look back on them, and discover techniques or odd things that I admire. I don't remember exactly when I started tracking but the earliest tracker songs from me I can find on my computer are from 2004, and man do they suck (they don't even sound like they were even written by me tongue ). But they still evoke a sense of nostalgia.

All that awful music we write when we start composing helps shape our compositional identity for years to come smile

Last edited by Fearofdark (Apr 17, 2013 12:58 pm)

gwEm
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London

These days we are just playing The Man Machine at the special shows so we don't get bored with it ourselves. As for the rest of it, I'm not embarrassed with any we've done and I do often put older stuff into the set list. Its good to blood new material, and also have some hits people know. Generally though its rare I play anything prior to our 8bitpeoples release "Live From Hell" (2008) now.

Aly James
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FRANCE

Sometimes you feel like...damn why I did not released that b4 !! smile sometimes if your creativity is kind o stuck, it might gives you some nice boost!

Victory Road
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Gosford, Australia

nah, listening to my old music makes me think that i should have been making what i make now back then and been way ahead of the game haha :<

Bit wish
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New Albany Indiana

Right when i figured out about chip music i downloaded the demo version  of renoise and a bunch of chip samples and otheer tracker food, that crap was teerrible.

Dauragon
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Washington DC

I have never written a bad song.

chunter
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Brunswick, GA USA

I made things in college with terrible balancing and too much reverb because i hadn't learned to mix yet. Anything I wrote before college is certainly lost or disposed of in some way.

Some of the things I did while learning to track are weak, but nothing I consider terribly embarrassing.

sleepytimejesse
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Youngstown, OH

Most of the things I wrote as a kid (like 16 until maybe 20) were pretty cool, musically. I'll go back and listen and the fact that I was still early with my grip on music led to some cool out of the box ideas. I try to pop them into my music now a few years later. My biggest issue is probably the eq, reverbs, etc. Very amateurish mixes.

Last edited by sleepytimejesse (Apr 17, 2013 3:35 pm)

donotrunwithpixels
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Swansea, UK

I've been pretty much obsessed with documenting keeping and filing every track I've ever made since I started recording music at around age 14.

The early stuff was, of course, pretty dreadful, because I didn't really have an understanding of what makes good music - I hadn't listened to a lot of electronic music and hiphop, and yet found myself making it. I had no heritage.

Around the year 2001 (when I was 17) the quality of songwriting, melodies, harmonies, etc. really jumped as I started to listen to a lot of different bands, and became an obsessive music consumer. But the quality of my mixes and the quality of sound in the recordings still really sucked for a long time.

Then, at 21 I took a year out to play bass in a pop/rock band, and then other people were doing all of the sound side of things for me. I was just playing. And this made me appreciate how much I needed to work on this aspect, but didn't really know how to.

It wasn't until March 2010 when I started working with Bex on our first EP together (kineticmonkey.bandcamp.com/album/the-beauty-and-the-rage) that I took great care making sure writing, recording, mixing and mastering were all separate processes and great care was taken for each.

So I'd say that I'd stand beside most of the music I've made in the last 10 years or so, but sound-quality wise, only the last 3 years or so.

Elektronikz
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Everything I have ever made is stored somewhere on my computer... I really hate everything from like a year ago, and I still sort of hate the stuff I make now. I remember the first "song" I ever made on Fruity Loops was a 7 minute loop of the same 4 bar riff over and over.

UncleBibby
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Canada

Some of my old stuff, on Korg M01 and Korg DS-10 Plus especially, was really good for some reason. With my music now, I get lazy after the first good part and just copy and paste with slight alterations. On my old Korg stuff, I would basically make more new sections than I even needed. Something about the ease of use of the interface made me do that, I think.

XyNo
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Joliette, QC, Canada
n00bstar wrote:

I've kept every single track I've ever produced. All the tracking done before I got an actual studio with real software, all the 'serious' music, and even jams and weird recordings done on the fly for no reason.

I even still have my first tracker song... circa 1989 on Sound Tracker!

But everything I wrote after like.. 1995-6, I'm okay with. There's even a good number of these songs I'm still very proud of. Sometimes I listen to them and go "damn.. that was good. I should totally remix that". And of course, I never do.

1989 !!! yikes
This is why your stuffs sounds so old-school chip (one of my favorite branch in chipmusic !!!)

...back to the subject...It depends. I love some of my old tracks but most of these are so dumb imo...always feels like it is missing a little something in it !!!
...and there is still people asking me to play my first LSDJ, Creatures with Glasses !!! :S (I hate it lol)

n00bstar
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Montreal, Canada
XyNo wrote:

1989 !!! yikes
This is why your stuffs sounds so old-school chip (one of my favorite branch in chipmusic !!!)

Yeah I'm old, I KNOW smile

XyNo wrote:

and there is still people asking me to play my first LSDJ, Creatures with Glasses !!! :S (I hate it lol)

Hahha yeah I've been there. People usually get stuck on the first few track they hear from you and even if YOU feel you've made so much progress and your new stuff is better, people still want to hear what made them like your music in the first place.In a way it's flattering smile

danimal cannon
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buffalo, NY

Programming wise, there's some "wrong" decisions that amuse/irk me.  Although I can honestly say in some cases it was for the better.  Now that I "know" more I program much differently, some of the cool parts in old song probably would have never happened today.

Composition wise- I've been reasonably satisfied with it for a few years now.  If there was a song I would hate today, I would have scrapped it then.

extreme zan-zan-zawa-veia
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my old music is painful arp hell and people love it.

my music is better in 2013 because I Don't Make It And Nor Should You

Wizwars
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Los Angeles, CA

I wish I still had the various pre-Wizwars but still basically chiptune tracks I made in Acid, Reason, and various midis and shit from 2002-2006...would be a trip to hear that stuff again. Some of the melodies were pretty great and occasionally I've re-used what I remember of them.

These days, I'm more embarrassed I guess by my newer stuff (the chipthrash days) than I am some of my older stuff, and a typical Wizwars set now is mostly tracks from 2008-2010. I went through an angsty phase and just wanted to beat people up with sound. Somewhere along the line I forgot that I can also craft fairly decent melodies. Some people like that stuff and that's cool, if I'm at all remembered in the scene when I eventually go away it will most likely be for Chipthrash and not happy stuff like "Game Boy Rock". Put a lot less work into the chipthrash tho, to be honest.