"Victory's Elegy" (Page 1 of 2)

It sounds exactly how you described it.

the composition itself is okay in and of itself - it works a castlevania-style classical/metal kind of a tune.  for the most part it sounds alright harmonically, but structure-wise i thought it needed more in terms of overall contrast.

the song kinda powers through as a giant ball of ongoing melody and rhythms without leaving a behind a really solid idea of what needs more attention, what was soft, which parts of the song are supposed to hit you in the face, where the song is taking a breather, etc.  the bitcrusher effect also has the side effect of muddling up the harmonic content, which made it harder to discern the bass and therefore the tonality of the tune at any given time.

... but i think the main point i want to convey is that the chiptune aesthetic requires more than simply taking a song and running it through a bitcrusher.  at the very least, i believe it requires making use of simple waveforms (pulsewaves, square waves, or triangle waves), so make sure you have that in your arsenal. 

alternatively, it involves making use of compositional techniques that are common in most chipmusic.  arpeggios are the first thing that come to mind, but it can also be about the interaction between melody/bass/percussion. for instance, when should all the parts be going together?  when should i isolate a particular aspect of the music?

i'm sure my definition above will get ripped apart and scrutinized for debate eventually but at least it's a good place to start.  anyway, give the above a try and feel free to post the result.

Last edited by bryface (Dec 21, 2011 7:58 am)

garageband really isn't good for creating chip music, but if that's what you're gonna use you'd be better off using the "digital mono" instrument rather than bitcrushing a normal instrument. because even if you bitcrush a piano to 8 bits, or what garageband calls 8 bits, that's just compressing one instrument, usually in chip music one instrument is just 1 bit, and when you try putting the bitcrusher down to 1 bit it just fucks up. really you'd be better off downloading a tracker of some kind and messing with that. the composition seems pretty solid, so i'd say work on getting something nice going soundwise. garage band just really isn't good.

Also I think bryface meant to link to this http://chipmusic.org/forums/topic/3988/ … hip-music/

Okay thank you everyone! Yeah GarageBand isn't very good for chiptune– however for Christmas/my Birthday (My birthday's on the 24th) I asked for a chiptune game cartridge here. So hopefully I get it then I can use LSDJ Like a pro.

You should revise the track without the bit crusher. Musically, it sounds pretty cool. But trying to make it chiptune just wasn't the best plan. I really want to hear it played without the effect.

What does chip music mean to you? Did you come to like chip music from listening to bitcrushed piano tracks? If so, then you're actually not really into chip music , you're just into synthesizing sounds. Chip music isn't an effect, it is a creative platform, and if you want to take advantage of it you need to make sure you know what you are getting into. People work hard with old computer and video game hardware to create and bitcrushing a piano riff... well that could practically be perceived as trolling! lol

If you like chip music, what exactly do you like? Songs you heard while playing the NES, Game Boy, Genesis, or some other system? Or do you just like the aural aesthetic of "primitive" sound waves (sin, square, saw, triangle). If you just want to create music with these "primitive" elements just grab some samples and go nuts, it doesn't have to be chip music, you don't half to create under that umbrella.

But, if instead you see and understand the beautiful potential and rewards of working with actual hardware relevant to chip music then pin-point what it is you're into and begin your own path to discovery.

Don't piss in a cup and call it beer. If you wanna make chip music, make chip music (figure out what that even is)