We just finished our latest song off our forthcoming album, Chipsurf Pipeline. This is my favorite, at least so far, and one of the reasons is that it uses the 2A03, SID, and OPL3 chip-synths (the real deal - emulation is for pansies . I was trying to add in the GameBoy too but it just didn't fit the sound quite write (we wrote it before I had my GameBoy rig). Anyways hope you guys like it! It's not 100% chiptune but rather a collision of chiptune and surf:
i would have listened but you lost me with the 'emulation is for pansies' schtick, sorry
Well, it was a joke - hence the smiley, but whether or not you listen to the song is purely up to you. No need to apologize.
Using the real hardware for this album is something we're fairly proud about because it takes a good deal of time an effort, from recording to mastering. Though subjective, we try to balance showcasing the mediums as they were intended over making it sound pleasing.
So, for instance, we record each channel off the NES individually and add panning and EQ where needed as well as various other effects (reverb, EQ, compression on the drums sometimes, etc.). We don't generally use post delay or chorus effects as those can be done on the NES and we prefer to accentuate that. Delay on the NES sounds different than slapping a ping-pong delay in post, for example.
Where we had to take some license was in volume and EQ, though it's mostly for mixing as opposed to using volume to dramatic effects - we try to use the coarse volume settings on the NES for that.
If you use emulation, go for it, but the sound *IS* different. If it's the sound you want, problem solved. It's not the sound we wanted. We wanted as much of the character of our various chip-synths as we could have without it being audibly distracting. Really for us even though most people that listen to the music probably won't be able to tell the difference as to whether or was recorded on the real thing, it's a labor of love and I think has helped us think a bit more creatively for the album.
Not all our songs or albums will be so historical. Our next album will probably start making use of more modern effects on top of the NES and will be alongside modern synths. But it's rather far off.
so would you say that the song has strong fakebit vibe to it?
so would you say that the song has strong fakebit vibe to it?
According to Wikipedia:
"Fakebit refers to a style of electronic music that differs from real 8-bit (music) in being made with the technical resources of sound emulation...instead of real low bit computers and gaming consoles."
So, based upon that definition, no. We, often painstakingly, record all sounds from the real hardware. The only time we bend this rule is when we channels from some of the extra sound-chips (such as the VRC6 and FDS), though they are still painstakingly recorded off a real NES (via the PowerPak, but it is still emulation).
If you want to know details about how we record things and why, you can find some explanation here. To date, the only released song that uses an extra sound-chip is Tsunami Gaiden, which uses the extra channels of the VRC6. A few of our other songs in the works use the VRC6 or FDS, although I would imagine we will start using the GameBoy for future songs instead (particularly where we find the need to use the FDS channel).
Of course, if you know of a place to get some VRC6 chips without removing them from existing carts (such as my Akumajō Densetsu import), I would be all over that.
you're typing way too much, i cant read all that dude. are you saying that you use emulators or what? you're confusing the shit outta me. i only use trippy h
words
painstakingly?
It is not actually that hard at all to record from a console. Infact compared to acoustic instruments, it's pretty easy.
It's only marginally more time consuming than using a vst.
Why do you care if it's recorded from hardware when you're mixing it with other instruments? At that point being able to tell if hardware is playing is near impossible. I'd even say that just putting an eq on something makes it fakebit, not that I care.
As for the song it's decent, not my cup of tea, but it's of quality.
its hard for people who are doing it for no other reason then to be all k00lguy 'yeah real hardware!' i guess.
its part of making other people feel like they're so unique because they thought they were the first person ever to fart on a circuit bent speak and spell. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
its hard for people who are doing it for no other reason then to be all k00lguy 'yeah real hardware!' i guess.
its part of making other people feel like they're so unique because they thought they were the first person ever to fart on a circuit bent speak and spell. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Lol
M00dawg, maybe you should give some thought into wether you need real hardware. You made another thread about filtering the noise from a Gameboy's output, while if you used emulation there wouldn't be any noise.
There is a noticeable difference in those sounds guys haha. I have some emulator recordings on my laptop of some of my Gameboy tracks and they sound mad different on the real Gameboy.
Sadly, tempsoundsolutions trolled up this post and marred what is actually my current favorite song off our album so I'm going to stop feeding the troll at this point and refrain from posting anything further and go about my day. Bums me out as this is the first post that was anything but amazingly helpful and considerate. Clearly tempsoundsolutions is set on being the opposite.
If you want to know my opinions about real versus emulated, feel free to PM me or we can start a new thread in another topic.
its hard for people who are doing it for no other reason then to be all k00lguy 'yeah real hardware!' i guess.
its part of making other people feel like they're so unique because they thought they were the first person ever to fart on a circuit bent speak and spell. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
^This^. However I did enjoy the song a bunch and will purchase the album when I get some spare dollah dollah
trolled? marred your own favorite song? cmon. you didnt even get to discussing the actual song without reading out the specs for it. so was it even really about the song, or is it about you going out of your way to show the technical side of it, and wishin to get props for it? because if its the latter, then you're really not going to do yourself any favors in chiptune at all, and nobody is going to be quick to pat you on the back unless you are doing some shit that is more innovative then what xik was doing in 2004-2005, or if you wanna go further back, the kind of stuff that goto80 was doing when everybody was still kids. and no, this is not trolling. this is being as real as i can be with a stranger after walking you down a path of realizing why this kind of stuff is worse then the whole fakebit vs truebit debate and why if you want people to give your music a fair chance, then its best for you to distance yourself from your shocking reality that you're using some real hardware.
it gives no clemency to your music to talk about the technical side of it without even mentioning any aspects of the song itself. i was simply acting like any regular person with elementary knowledge in chiptune would respond to everything you said. i have to applaud you for not getting angry, but at the same time, i was trying to make you see that we really have no concern with the hardware vs the song itself. for example, if i wanted to write a tracker for the **************** (not gonna say this because i dont want to give anybody any ideas, see?), and decided that i was going to forge a path with something, i would not make it a big deal, i would not even mention i was using a ***********. i wouldnt even let people see that i was using it when i performed live, because i would want to keep the mystique of what i was doing seperate from the sound. understand where im coming from? with chip music, its really in your favor to keep some of your tricks under wraps. but you let the whole thing outta the bag and gave nobody a reason to even need to comment. 'what are these chips youre using? how are you doing this?'. this sort of thing.
if you want to have discussion about real vs emulated, theres other threads in which to do that. you didnt really need to do that when you're making a first post about a song, where you pretty much turned me off, and im sure you turned most other people off who read it the same way as i did. then you follow it up with saying you were joking? cmon guy. your delivery is what made me have no desire to listen. and i think its a very valid critique without even getting to the music, because all of us here are so fucking tired of that whole debate that it actually makes some of us angry to even see people talking about it, like it was a thing. if i turned other people off to your song with my response, then thats surely my bad, and you have my apologies, but i like to think that for the most part whenever this invariably comes up and somebody posts in this demeanor, i would have to say users who read this type of thread make a collective groan and go about their business, not paying any attention to it.
if you think you were trolled, you inadvertedly trolled yourself in your first post. i am sure you did not mean to do it, however your delivery had my first impression that you were somebody pulling our collective leg. if i had a dime for every time ive seen 'trubit 4evr' or some other disparaging remark thats put out there for people who arent 100% purist 8bit composer to read and say 'why do i even bother when theres people in this genre with this mentality', i would be able to buy a copy of nanoloop. we've all seen it so many times that its just a slap in the face now to a lot of people. but ill give you your way here. tell us honestly and succinctly, what makes your music good, better, or best because you use real hardware. from whatever the response you wrote me initially, i gathered that it seems to me like you're basically invalidating any point to using actual hardware to begin with and not realizing it. so tell us, and without requiring us to listen to the song, and without talking about castlevania 3 or soundchips or any shit like that, in laymens terms: what makes your music worth listening to? is it the hardware? or is that the joke? because if its real hardware, and that is your claim as to why its worth hearing, then by this logic the only chiptune thats worth listening to is chiptune that was written using either a gameboy or a nes. tell me WHY. tell me WHAT about the music invokes inspiration in you, the person who wrote the song.
to give you a little bit of background about myself, i have written, recorded, and produced over 225 eps/lps/singles worth of material since 1997, a good majority of that is stuff thats 8bit in nature. if someone were to ask me this same somewhat loaded but valid question, my answer quite simply would be 'because fuck you'. i feel i have written enough material and put enough of it out there for a long enough time that i no longer need to work toward a new release, or a new sound or anything. i created what i wanted for myself, others appreciated it. so the music fully speaks for itself, without me needing to say a word. that is what i worked towards. for you or anybody else it can be different, and that is of course a good thing.
is there anything you can say about what you do to describe the mood without going into hardware, or a powerpak or how meticulously you worked on your song or expansions and actually, yknow, describe the music a little bit instead of talking about it like it's a program? nobody cares about this sort of stuff these days. its the summer, people want music, people dont want to be described to. they want a visceral experience out of chiptune music. just about everything that can be done in chiptune has been done in some way, shape or form.. i know because ive done heard and seen and did more than enough, and i still want more. people dont know or think to even consider hardware vs software or anything because we dont know who you are. and if we dont know you when you come in here, terms ablazin like we're supposed to, when we dont know you from adam, then maybe you shouldnt be surprised that you didnt make the impact that you expected. i was with you up until sid, opl2, 2a03...sounded cool. but then you had to go full nerd on it and make it not about the music and make it about the gimmick of it.
you used all these different english words to mechanically describe your art, but you did nothing to even mention stuff that is actually important to a listener, like influence for the song, mood, what its going to be used for, what you've done in the past. this sort of thing. give people a chance to listen to your music without talking over their heads or expecting them to care about spec. people dont care anymore, really. hell, the people who actually are at the forefront of innovating within chiptune dont even want to talk about it, because they want nothing inbetween the listener and the music. if you create something worthwhile, the last thing you want to do is make the listener feel like what you are making is 'too smart' for them, and thats how your posts read. so i had to take you down that path. i dont consider that trolling, because you didnt even understand what i was trying to get at. i hope that you can understand where i am coming from. the reason i am even taking the time to write this is so that maybe you can understand why i was prompt with you, or bothered with an initial response in the first place.
There is a noticeable difference in those sounds guys haha. I have some emulator recordings on my laptop of some of my Gameboy tracks and they sound mad different on the real Gameboy.
Yeah i have to admit Gameboy sound emulation isn't very good, at least last time I checked, but m00dawg mixes it with tons of other stuff. Like I said you probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference with all the other stuff playing. Also that's just the Gameboy, all the other emulators for various systems sound dead on. Unless you're listening to a single system and you're not trying to pinpoint the noise the emulators don't emulate (which most people don't seem to want, what with all the pro sound mods) it doesn't matter.
Last edited by Rouwe (Jul 1, 2011 4:58 pm)
Yeah i have to admit Gameboy sound emulation isn't very good, at least last time I checked, but m00dawg mixes it with tons of other stuff. Like I said you probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference with all the other stuff playing. Also that's just the Gameboy, all the other emulators for various systems sound dead on. Unless you're listening to a single system and you're not trying to pinpoint the noise the emulators don't emulate (which most people don't seem to want, what with all the pro sound mods) it doesn't matter.
Actually I've run into differences with FamiTracker. Check it out. Not every song is that different, however, and that may even be fixed in the newest version (that was done with 0.3.5). I'm not really spending the extra effort to record off the real hardware for cool points - just personal satisfaction more than anything.
You're right, though, few (if any) would notice the difference if I used emulation for this album, but, I dunno it's sort of like people who listen to vinyl. They put a lot of work into the art of listening when most people can just download file, play file. I think it's more the journey.
Oh and as far as buying the album, we would appreciate it! It is not required, however - the MP3s will be available for free. Speaking of vinyl, though, we want to do a limited run for the special edition version of the album if we can get enough money to fund it (it's not exactly cheap for a small band like us). We will also offer high quality versions of the songs off BandCamp that will be non-free. It's really more to support us if you feel the need - honestly the MP3s sound pretty close to the high quality versions (not surprising really given our lo-fi sound from the chips and guitars).