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Victoria, BC, Canada

A collection of melodic, guitar-embellished chiptunes with a conceptual narrative running throughout in the form of short interludes. Spent a good eight or so months working on this one, much obliged if you have a listen smile

Here's a track from it, posted to chipmusic!

Here's the full album!

Enjoy smile

~Josiah

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Matthew Joseph Payne

What? no replies? really?

I'm not even done listening to it yet, but it's awesome. Very melodic and the music really feels like it's telling the story. This would be amazing with a video.

My only criticism: your human characters in the voice-over are hard to tell apart. You need to develop at least one of them farther, give them an accent, record them separately or get someone else to do one or something. smile

Seriously though y'all, download this.

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Ottawa, ON

Thoroughly impressed by this, Josiah.  You've got the chip / guitar mix nailed. 
Well done, man.

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Austin, TX

Really really good album, the story is hilarious and the music is fantastic.

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Victoria, BC, Canada

Thanks all! I am glad to be getting positive comments on the story interludes as well, that was a more experimental decision and one I wasn't so sure of. Glad to hear it worked out well. smile Although also regarding that -- kinecturtle: the voices of the two humans were done by my brother and myself, which is probably why they sound similar. He did the "movie preview guy" intro and newscaster outro as well. Unfortunately I'm a little limited in terms of voice actors I know, though during the making of this album I did get ahold of a couple very talented folks who did some of the lines in the beginning of Commercial District, so if I ever attempt this sort of thing again there will probably be a lot more variation. smile Thanks so much for the feedback!

~Josiah

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Los Angeles, CA

This album is excellent. Nothing but love for Mr Josiah Tobin.

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Victoria, BC, Canada

Thanks Wizwars! big_smile heart

~Josiah

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I liked this quite a bit, and I especially like the fact that you made the story segments separate tracks; Gives me the choice to just listen to the music. Great work on this.

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Neo Jersey

this one kind of came out of nowhere to me. i had never really heard of your stuff until recently. definitely going to be keeping an eye out for more stuff from you in the future cuz this is really good! i always like when artists can mix guitars in well with chip sounds. what do you use to record the guitars out of curioisity? i'm looking to do some experimenting in the near future.

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Victoria, BC, Canada

Thanks, fluidvolt and HPizzle. smile
HPizzle, my recording input chain looked a little like this:

LTD FX-260SM guitar (with the exception of Wanted, on which I used a Godin Freeway EMG which I later sold shortly before buying the LTD) > Fender Frontman 65R amp > MXL 990 condenser microphone (again with the exception of wanted -- used a Shure SM58 on that one) > E-MU 1616m Cardbus recording interface > Cardbus to Expresscard adapter (extremely touchy) > laptop running Cool Edit Pro. On most of the songs the microphone was up against the cloth but somewhat off-center; this made the tone a little sloppier than I'd like but I didn't want to re-do everything at that point. You might notice the guitar tone is much tighter on System Check 1 and Commercial District; those are the only two songs where I actually spent some decent time getting a good solid mic placement going on. smile

Hope that helps, and let me know if I can tell you anything else!

~Josiah

Last edited by Bit_Rat (Mar 27, 2011 5:47 am)

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Chepachet, Rhode Island

Wow this really surprised me.  I'd see your posts as well as this thread every once in a while and always meant to check the album out, but never did (for one bad reason or another) until just now.  I love it.  I didn't think I'd enjoy the narration at all, but It was definitely entertaining and I wasn't facepalming like I thought I would be while listening to them.  The more robotic and distorted ones like "armed to the teeth" were great.  Definitely grabbing the rest of your stuff.  I'm curious/excited to listen to the 15 themed album.  Keep it up!

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Victoria, BC, Canada

8-Bit-Rex, thanks! I'm really glad you enjoyed the narration as well -- I think lots of people might be scared when they hear an album touted as having voice-over work, as I suppose it can be done very poorly/embarrassingly... Tried to make the segments here extremely listenable though, I'm glad it paid off. smile

~Josiah

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Hi Bit Rat! Not really my style(guitar+ chip stuff), but still, sick sick work! I can see it took you months to make this. I also thought that the narration/story idea was fucking hilarious, great idea. You did a nice job on voice acting.

Conclusively, great work, Bit Rat! I enjoyed it

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Victoria, BC, Canada

Cheers, Holy Konni! Thanks so much for taking the time to listen smile

~Josiah

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Florida

Listened at work today. Rad, and the voice acting was good enough for me. I hope there's a 3rd installment... haha.

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Victoria, BC, Canada

Thanks Jay! smile 3rd one, maybe... but if there is it'd probably be a ways a way, I want to try some other things with this project first.

~Josiah