Deko
Offline
Indiana

I thought it might be interesting to ask, "How did you become interested in Chipmusic / start making Chipmusic?". I feel like the different amounts of stories would be pretty cool.

How I got interested was almost 4 years ago when DI.FM had a Chiptune radio station and I thought I'd check it out. It was really cool to hear something much different than what I was already listening too. So I kept listening to that for a while until during the radio show I heard a track that really caught my ear (xylo ft nyhlin - subway). So I thought I'd do a bit of searching on xylo and found out that he's actually the other half of xyce. Then after that I began to really immerse myself into the music. I found out about hundreds of artists and started to build my music library. Then about a year later I dug out my old Game Boy, bought a LSDJ cartridge and started having fun.

ShintarouMusic
Offline
Boise, ID

that's how it goes man!

I was already really attached to some 8-bit game soundtracks as a kid. When I was in high school I got super in to crystal castles first album, then read about the theft/plagiarism, started listening to covox and found a bunch of other people on youtube which led me here. Around that time my dad got me Reason so I started making "fakebit" during 2011~2012 and after a few years I mostly transitioned to lsdj and other gameboy software.

Last edited by ShintarouMusic (Aug 13, 2016 11:10 pm)

toasterpastries
Offline
Salt Lake City, UT

I was in school for music, mostly playing keyboard and guitar and composing in Reason when I biffed it going about 30mph on my longboard. Broke my shoulder blade and collar bone. Couldn't play guitar, keys, couldn't use my computer...

I had heard of Nanoloop and some chiptune before that and had done some fakebit in Reason, so I dug out my old DMG, ordered a flash cart, bought LSDJ, and got to it. I found that I liked the deliberate approach to making music, especially when I was trying to integrate a lot of the new ideas I was learning in theory. I've since healed up and can play the other things, but LSDJ took over as my #1 DAW. I use public transit to get everywhere so it's still a part of my everyday routine.

my.Explosion
Offline
Finland

The getting into LSDJ/Game Boy thing was inspired by finding cool chipmusicians on myspace in the late 00's. I remember clearly that Knuckle Joe, Hurrigame Boy, Chipzel, Sabrepulse and Shirobon were all sorta roped into a friend-circle that was easy to navigate on myspace. So all those guys kinda planted the seed in me that Game Boy chiptunes sound freaking GREAT. I was pretty much raised on listening to SID tunes as a kid, so this realization was both alien and amazing to me.

But years went past, tried some FL, Milkytracker and some Renoise. Took until about late 2012(I think? timeline gets messy) until I actually got my LSDJ copy and an EMS cart AND... a Game Boy.

The confined sort of universe LSDJ presented was a very manageable experience because getting your first sounds out of LSDJ is REALLY simple. But it grows in complexity as you gain more knowledge, I'm still a noob. That's a far smoother entrypoint than a DAW or a tracker for me at that time. So I got to it, and I found cm.o too for some reason... I was never on 8bc but I remember browsing that site a bunch back then so it's my first chiptune community online whatever.

chunter
Offline
Brunswick, GA USA

My entry here was the exodus from 8 Bit Collective. My entry to 8bc was S3M2WAV, when all of #mod_shrine used it to enter Famicompo Mini Classical.

My entry to #mod_shrine was that I had a question for reduz regarding Cheesetracker  (I think that was its name) and I stayed for the compos.

I got into Cheesetracker because I was using Impulse Tracker to mess around. I previously used MIDI sequencers and I had a composing block, I knew about trackers from a disk someone gave me in the 90s with .MOD files and a player for PCs.

Feryl
Offline

This game:

Deko
Offline
Indiana

Great stories guys. Keep it up!

XyNo
Offline
Joliette, QC, Canada

Here we go again...
It was October 2006, I just finished high school, got my first laptop and I saw the trailer of the movie We are the Strange and the song in it was a TATU 30 minut cover made by the one and only Yerzmyey ! Totally fell in love with it went to the movie's website trying to get more info on this song/artist and clicked on a link that was simply called 8bitpeoples.com I saw some release with some mp3 links. At first I thought meh these are surely just 60 seconds snippets of the songs (it was how websites tried to sell mp3s back in the days) but still click on one song because I totally wanted to find THE SONG of the trailer and to my surprise these mp3s were complete songs and albums...for free !!!
This day I discovered great names like Snoopdroop, vim!, Anamanaguchi, Handheld, Bitshifter, David Sugar, Nullsleep, etc. and I discovered at the same time that you can actually make music with gameboys without sampling videogames' SFX and tracks. Got my Nanoloop 2.2 cart in summer 2007 and I had the chance to grab a LSDJ cart on 8bitpeoples website in early 2008 ! Since then even if I can make electronic music with synths, DAWs and drum padding on MPC like crazy, chiptune is my way of life !

Last edited by XyNo (Aug 15, 2016 7:58 am)

Skycstls
Offline
Granada, Spain

I was really crazy about pen spinning, modding pens and doing collabs with videos and stuff like that.
I was looking music for a video, searching something that matched with korean/japanese spinning style, ended listening a few artists, falling in love, then there is an empty space when i get really crazy about chip/breakcore, and here i am smile

bitpusher2600
Offline

My own story is slightly lame but simple enough. I used to dabble a little with music I would post to the old mp3.com, and was a live turntable DJ at a couple of local clubs. I was not a turntablist or scratch DJ, but I had alot of money in vinyl and tended to blend drum n bass, hiphop and electro. I had given it up after a couple years but still tinkered. One day, I randomly found a video on YouTube of Bit Shifter performing some techno mix on a pair of Gameboys (I never found what he was performing, it wasn't a tune from one of his releases and it didn't have that video game-like sound.) Anyway, I was totally blown away if not confused at how this was happening. Once I found out the phrase "chiptune", that lead me to 8-bitcollective and 8bitPeoples. I found out there was a way to make music with the very first console I fell in love with as a kid, the Atari 2600 and started tinkering. The rest is history. I moved to the Gameboy and so far, that's where I remain. Good times smile Chiptune and the sheer audacity of it all is among the coolest things I've ever known. Taking something and using it for something it was never remotely intended for. Just awesome.

DBOYD
Offline
Oklahoma City, OK

-College kid entering Junior year, 2010
-Finally switch majors from Music Performance on Trumpet to Music Composition
-Discover what chiptune is and 8bc, fall in love w/ Anamanaguchi, Fighter X, IAYD, Rushjet1, Je Mappelle, etc.
-Still focus on writing instrument music (piano, WW/String quintet, Brass)
-2012, Senior, finally say "fuck it" and write a song for me because at this point I've fallen so in love w/ chiptune that I can't get out
-Finally graduate in Spring 2013
-Play first show out of school, Oct. 2013, adopt the name Don't Blink Or You'll Die (DBOYD)
-Release first EP in 2013
-Still writing to this day, releasing like 3 albums soon lmao

in a nutshell.

Jazzmarazz
Offline
Michigan

Im old and game is life, so I am predisposed to enjoy the authentic sounds. When I found out people were making original compositions, I had to check it out. Before 8bc, I used to carry around my gameboy and a select few games that had a track-select screen in the options menu. Nothing has changed.

e.s.c.
Offline
IL, US

i grew up on c64 games, my dad had bought one when they first came out since he was into technology (he was an electrical engineer at Motorola for 23 years) so i grew up hearing those classic c64 scores... never gave the music in games much thought back then though, i've never been one of those people who listens to video game soundtracks (with the FEZ soundtrack being pretty much the only exception).. then in high school in the mid-90s, i got into Patric Catani's solo stuff and his work in Ec80r, but didn't really think of it as "chipmusic" at the time, didn't even know it was made on Amigas (though Amiga wasn't that old at the time either, my college still had some in 1998).. the first time i heard stuff and finally made the connection that it was chipmusic was Alec Empire's Nintendo Teenage Robots album and i immediately liked the sound of the noise channel.. i was already making music as e.s.c. (at that point, mostly strange downtempo psychedelic weirdness), so in 2003 i started looking into exactly how to make music on game boys.. LSDJ and nanoloop were still pretty hard to get your hands on back then, so i messed around on emulators first and sampled what i made and played it back on an SP202 (or back2basics after i traded the 202 for a yamaha cs01) until i tracked down a copy of nanoloop 1.1 off ebay sometime in late 2003.. met a bunch of people on the old nanoloop forums (like Calbee/DMG-01, Bit Shifter, Glomag, Jeremy Kolosine, Albino Ghost Monkey).. played my first chip-only set in dec 2004... eventually stopped lurking on 8bc and started posting (at first, only when drunk), somehow became an admin.. left 8bc staff fall of 09, left the site completely after Jose's weird meltdown in Dec 09.. a few weeks later, got drafted into helping get this site going

Trash80
Offline
Los Angeles

I am old now too.

Amiga tracking as a kid / teen in the 90s -> Hardware synths & cubase & Jeskola Buzz in 1997~1999 -> You can do tracker shit on a gameboy? (1999~2000) -> Here.

Boner
Offline
United States

account was logged in at the public library so i changed the password, 5 years ago.

herr_prof
Offline
Unsubscribe

Parents raw dogged it.