Subway Sonicbeat wrote:
I am... the problem, but, well...
you heard him, it's Kurt's fault 
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Brazil
e.s.c. wrote:
Subway Sonicbeat wrote:I am... the problem, but, well...
you heard him, it's Kurt's fault
LOL
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buffalo, NY
Interesting thread, I think about all of the amazing opportunities that I’ve had in the past, some of that was very “right time, right place” - and then I think about how for a new artist there might not be all the same ones today.
All of the people who were putting on those amazing events across the world, were doing it as a labor of love. Sometimes life gets hard, or the passion wanes and new people either take up the torch or it falls away.
Anyways, I still hear badass new chipmusic a few times a year. And I played a tour in November where most of the audience had never heard chipmusic. In fact, it reminded me that there’s still a lot of work to be done, 90% of the world still has no idea about chipmusic. It was pretty invigorating for me to get that kind of feedback again.
Also the MAGFest chip shows are among the most bumpin’ chip shows I’ve *ever* been to, so there’s that.
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Hah! I just found chiptune and now I hear it's already dead! Just my luck...
btw hi all 
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Milwaukee, WI
Threads like this are a surefire way to keep it dead. If the question needs to be asked, it deserves to die.
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Unsubscribe
this thread is officially longer than the first wave of chiptune
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Philadelphia
Well I, for one, am doing my part to keep it going. I'm not a performer (although I did DJ a video game themed art show in Philly awhile back) but I'm trying to do exciting things to show that chiptunes isn't a fad or a phase. It may not be 'trendy' like it was a few years back but it's still legit and there is a lot of appreciation for it from music lovers of all kinds. i just released a new album on Kickstarter covering indie rock band Neutral Milk Hotel's "In The Aeroplane Over The Sea" record and many of the backers are fans of the band, not necessarily chiptunes, and are throwing money at the project so, there's that.
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I recently started to stream Chiptune music via Twitch. The idea is to build a 24/7 Chiptune Radiostation. So yeah, feel free to have a listen. You should find me on twitch. It's the same username as this ine here: dark_bit_
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London, UK
herr_prof wrote:
this thread is officially longer than the first wave of chiptune
lolz
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IL, US
herr_prof wrote:
this thread is officially longer than the first wave of chiptune
What wave are we on now anyway? 4th? 5th?
1st being the demoscene, 2nd early 2000s rise of game boy chip era, 3rd late 2000s-early 2010s blip fest era, after that...?
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Italy
we had a discussion about this matter relative to the chiptune scene in Argentina this summer and it's in this episode's interview of our podcast:
https://www.mixcloud.com/microbrixia/40 … argentina/
give it a listen if you like to, hope you find it interesting
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not jophish anymore
chipmusic will categorically never see mainstream success. mainstream music consumers will never have the stomach for the sound of chipmusic in the first place, let alone the image. i think when it comes to mainstream acceptance, the music itself is just as important as image and brand. ariana grande? cool, hip, neat -- oh, and her music is okay. 4mat? coda? c-jeff? not gonna fly. even chipmusicians with more outspoken personalities will have a hard time getting mainstream popularity. i think people generally think of chipmusic as a weird, geeky subculture, and are taken aback when someone who makes chipmusic takes themselves too seriously, or is too committed to the technicalities of it. look at anamanaguchi -- they've kind of become an exercise in self-parody since they've become more popular: ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc3JWo2iiGc ). people think of chipmusic as kind of a joke, so if you want to become popular, either brand yourself as a joke, or don't predicate yourself and your music on the fact that it's chipmusic.
on that note, one of my personal biggest gripes with chipmusic is how so many people present themselves as if their music being "chipmusic" proper is the coolest(!) and sickest(!) thing ever, and pigeonhole themselves into being accepted/listened to by the tiniest subculture imaginable, before they ever had a chance to present themselves to a broader audience. don't get me wrong, i love chipmusic, and i love it for a whole lot of different reasons, but when i go to listen to music (generally), i don't care how it's made. i happen to have an aesthetic preference for music that incorporates chip-like sounds, and a technical appreciation for how chipmusic is created, but my enjoyment of music and my technical appreciation exist entirely separately. if you make a very technically impressive song, but the song sucks, the song just sucks -- i don't care if it's chipmusic or not. i've never (or extremely rarely) seen an artist outside of this scene predicate their entire musical existence on the kinds of instruments or process they use in creating their music. look at artists like venetian snares or autechre or any of the early IDM guys. their music is super super process intensive, but they don't make a fuss of it.
as far as keeping the scene itself alive, there are a bunch of things to do. i'm definitely guilty of falling out of touch with a lot of friends and subcommunities in the scene over the years. there are so many little things you can do to help the scene grow though. hang out in irc more. post on the forums more. do that project you've been wanting to do for a super long time. get involved in botb (seriously, if you haven't heard of it!). meetup in real life, organize events. keeping the scene itself alive really depends on the individuals in the scene -- scene growth doesn't really just "happen", it takes a concerted effort on behalf of those already a part of it.
okay sorry about my rambling, i'm on a long bus ride so i've got nothing better to do.
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Jophish wrote:
chipmusic will categorically never see mainstream success. mainstream music consumers will never have the stomach for the sound of chipmusic in the first place, let alone the image. i think when it comes to mainstream acceptance, the music itself is just as important as image and brand. ariana grande? cool, hip, neat -- oh, and her music is okay. 4mat? coda? c-jeff? not gonna fly. even chipmusicians with more outspoken personalities will have a hard time getting mainstream popularity. i think people generally think of chipmusic as a weird, geeky subculture, and are taken aback when someone who makes chipmusic takes themselves too seriously, or is too committed to the technicalities of it. look at anamanaguchi -- they've kind of become an exercise in self-parody since they've become more popular: ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc3JWo2iiGc ). people think of chipmusic as kind of a joke, so if you want to become popular, either brand yourself as a joke, or don't predicate yourself and your music on the fact that it's chipmusic.
on that note, one of my personal biggest gripes with chipmusic is how so many people present themselves as if their music being "chipmusic" proper is the coolest(!) and sickest(!) thing ever, and pigeonhole themselves into being accepted/listened to by the tiniest subculture imaginable, before they ever had a chance to present themselves to a broader audience. don't get me wrong, i love chipmusic, and i love it for a whole lot of different reasons, but when i go to listen to music (generally), i don't care how it's made. i happen to have an aesthetic preference for music that incorporates chip-like sounds, and a technical appreciation for how chipmusic is created, but my enjoyment of music and my technical appreciation exist entirely separately. if you make a very technically impressive song, but the song sucks, the song just sucks -- i don't care if it's chipmusic or not. i've never (or extremely rarely) seen an artist outside of this scene predicate their entire musical existence on the kinds of instruments or process they use in creating their music. look at artists like venetian snares or autechre or any of the early IDM guys. their music is super super process intensive, but they don't make a fuss of it.
as far as keeping the scene itself alive, there are a bunch of things to do. i'm definitely guilty of falling out of touch with a lot of friends and subcommunities in the scene over the years. there are so many little things you can do to help the scene grow though. hang out in irc more. post on the forums more. do that project you've been wanting to do for a super long time. get involved in botb (seriously, if you haven't heard of it!). meetup in real life, organize events. keeping the scene itself alive really depends on the individuals in the scene -- scene growth doesn't really just "happen", it takes a concerted effort on behalf of those already a part of it.
okay sorry about my rambling, i'm on a long bus ride so i've got nothing better to do.
This was probably the most reasonable answer yet! And I couldn't agree more.
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San Francisco
It has been a long time since I logged into the forums and I just now read through all of this.
I can only speak for myself and my observation of other musicians that I have met during my years of deeper chip involvement.
For me, I got into chiptune because it was exciting, new, and challenging way to experiment in electronic music. The community was fairly new and growing when I jumped in and for a while it seemed to attract a lot of people with similar interests and personalities into one space. Not only was the hardware limited but so was the information available. This left things feeling like a new frontier. It was a great.
At some point my feelings changed. I think the culture shifted as the genre gained more notoriety, as information/techniques were more documented, and as hardware/software became more available and simplified things. There was also a big serge of people from the gaming world. It brought in a lot of new people who were interested in the genre for different reasons that I felt didn't contribute much to the craft. I began having a harder time finding new things to explore as information on new techniques slowed. During this time I think myself and a lot of others like me started looking at new avenues in pursuit of new exciting exploration.
I believe some one said earlier that everyone got into modular and I think that isn't untrue. I definitely did, and last time i talked to nullsleep, trash 80, and X|K they had too. The eurorack platform operates with a lot of the same principles and limitations as chiptune hardware. For me the chiptune exploration never really stopped. Rather it evolved into different experiments with different platforms and sets of limitation. I think it might be the same for a lot of the old chipscene peeps.
Personally I am not too interested in going back to the old days and more interested in where things are going now. I think chiptune will never be as crazy as it used to be but will always have a home in small groups. I think that’s cool and I am not to worried about it.