your least favorite thing about producing chiptune (Page 7 of 7)

Consider the diatonic harmonica, an instrument that only plays the notes of a particular major scale, only plays the tonic chord when you blow through several holes, only plays the dominant or subdominant depending on where you suck in, and sounds a little like a train wreck if you pick the wrong spot. Then there's John Popper.

Like the harmonica, chips have extended tricks that dazzle instead of just toots and beeps, so there's room for virtuosity. Also like the harmonica, you can't escape the inherent limits of timbre and range.

Only as long as you think these nonsensical limiting thoughts will they be true. The L and P and V commands, along with some well-placed pulse modulation and volume envelopes, add massive presence and life to a simple pulse channel melody. Just listen to Chibitech and tell me that's not expressive! The problem is that people don't have the patience or motivation or knowledge or whatever to juice it up, or they're distracted by the limitations of a genre.

Last edited by PlainFlavored (Oct 28, 2016 5:58 am)

I'm not saying I can't juice things up, just that the tools I use are an essential part of composition. If someone writes a song with a tracker and it ends up the same as a song he'd write with a guitar, then he's not approaching his work with enough playfulness and creativity to be worth listening to. Wouldn't it be better for him to play off the limitations of his instrument and come up with something entirely expressive of that instrument? An instrument that changes any time I touch it is going to sound less calculated than an instrument that has to be intentionally fucked with to sound at all different, and that's going to be frustrating at times and liberating at others

Yes the diatonic harmonica is limited, and you can get creative with the limitations. But even with a harmonica, blowing at different velocities, Moving your lips slightly in any direction, how you hold the harmonica, the temperature of the reeds, the shape of your mouth; these will all yield very different harmonics, with minimal effort. That instrument is a good example of a different set of limitations  that can be very inspiring.

Techno != Electronica.    I think he was saying that bleeps and bloops sound like techno, I may be wrong.

Last edited by breakphase (Oct 28, 2016 6:02 pm)

Can you elaborate on this?

not what i said, but i'd probably go to that show tbh... for a while, i toyed around with putting together a show with stagediver, nikaena vizukae, ccdm, 8cylinder & myself which would have been a nice combo of different darker styles of music done with chip gear

Least favorite thing about chiptune:

Not enough people know about it.

And how "genres" within chiptune get negatively approached, creating some sort of turmoil. Musical diversity and variety should be encouraged. Step one in creating chiptune or any music for that matter, should heavily include the desire to create the music that you yourself actually want to create. No need to get discouraged when your "genre" gets compared to other "genres." Do what you like and keep it up!!!