193

(86 replies, posted in Bugs and Requests)

Auxcide wrote:

Who hurt you? This is all so wrong. I don't see anyone expecting as much from giving a preview of what they sound like then the 'pros'. They don't need to hype because they're known, other people need a chance to showcase their sound.

It's a misunderstanding of what "hype" is. Hype is something that other people feel, it's not something that you do. Promotion is what tells us why we should feel hyped. If you want to promote releases, that's fine, promote them all you want. But promotion means INTELLIGENTLY letting other people know that your release exists or will exist, and you have to go through the process of promoting material in order to get to the "hype" phase -- too many people are trying to skip past that process and just get to the hype part, and when you do that, other people that aren't interested in your material become even more disinterested; for them, it might as well be white noise to filter out, especially when it's the same group of people getting hyped.

Basically, hype is a feeling, and promotion is a process that is supposed to tell other people WHY they should be getting hyped. If you skip the process, no one knows why we should be excited, and we veer eerily close to the "circlejerk" category, which I like to avoid.

EDIT: HYPE IS A FEELING

this just sounds strangely prophetic

EDIT2: see post below me

194

(86 replies, posted in Bugs and Requests)

hype should come from you having already released stuff that people liked. no one needs a thread specifically for hype; announcing that you're doing something should, if you're good enough, automatically hype people up. this place has a weird entitlement complex where all new musicians feel like they deserve just as much hype as people who've been doing this for years.

my first full-length got exactly 1 reply, and that's how it should have been.

Feryl wrote:

After all, if you don't like your music, then why bother releasing it?

fixed

196

(52 replies, posted in General Discussion)

I just really like the song hmm

197

(52 replies, posted in General Discussion)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4oTMLJD0ck

turn speakers all the way up

wait 3 minutes

Stream is live!

this is tonight! tune in at 9pm PST to www.stream.tv/channel/noisechannel to see us!

ilkae wrote:

2) How emotionally/psychically "connected" to your output are you? Is it something you make, or is it *you* manifested? Do you love it like a mother loves a child, or do you file it away and forget about it, like a case of empties waiting to be recycled?

2.5) Does your attachment to/opinion of your stuff change over time? Say, the night you made it vs. two weeks later vs. two years later?

Some thoughts on this fr srs now:

(SCROLL DOWN TO LAST PARAGRAPH IF YOU DON'T NEED A PROOF FOR MY OPINION)

Honestly, I don't think we get to dictate this. Art is FUNDAMENTALLY a personal experience for both the artist and the audience; it's a sharing of SOMETHING that cannot be described through simple communication methods (i.e. small talk, etc.), and as a result, the artist has to turn to something beyond the scope of mere description. In short, an artist is someone who has a concept/idea that can't JUST be talked about. Impersonal art is kind of an oxymoron; impersonal art is simply CRAFT, which is way different than ART, in that craft simply requires skill, whereas art requires craft PLUS something personal to say. This is why we often talk about pop music as though it is impersonal -- we like to think that music so all-encompassing CAN'T be the work of an individual with an interesting idea, because it applies to everyone, and if it applies to everyone, then it's not personal (this is NOT true, and is a whole other discussion). Craft can BECOME art by being such an amazing display of skill that the craft and the craftsman are inseparable, in which the craft itself becomes the personal statement (this is how it used to work way back in the day).

But something that we often forget when we're discussing our relationship with our own art is that art is also a dialogue. That is; art (and music) does not exist in a vacuum, and it CANNOT exist without an audience. It doesn't matter if that audience is one person or a million people -- art without an audience is simply craft. What matters is that there remains a DIALOGUE at the end of it. This dialogue is important because it is pretty much how we define whether something is "art" or not. Think about it: how many art pieces have you seen and NOT made a judgment on? Even saying "this shit sucks" or "it's not worth discussing/it's not worth my time" is a judgment. I'd guess the answer is ZERO, because the dialogue defines the art.

(TYING THIS BACK TO THE ORIGINAL QUOTE NOW)

We don't get to dictate how personal our art is because doing that with your own art is NOT A DIALOGUE. It's a MONOLOGUE. And the only use of a monologue is to tell THE AUDIENCE what you're thinking at the time -- NO ONE uses monologues to tell themselves what they're thinking unless you're Charlie Kaufman. We can ramble on and on about what our music means to ourselves, but at the end of the day, the judgment lies with the audience -- the monologue only serves as a reference point to others. As artists, we're supposed to be CONVINCING the audience that our works mean something profound to ourselves that absolutely NEEDED to be shared, and then the audience can judge whether or not we fulfilled what we promised. But because we're artists, we have to do this THROUGH OUR ART.

This is why I don't like talking about my own work and what it "means to me" -- doing that essentially lets everyone else know that my work isn't good enough to do that on its own, and if I need to explain to people what my music means before they even listen to it, I've failed as an artist (to be frank, I don't think that my music really SAYS anything). This is also why I really dislike it when people put in backstories or overly-descriptive song titles in their music; too often, it's there to cover up for the fact that the music doesn't actually convey what the artist wants it to convey. Basically, it shouldn't be about how we feel when we listen to our own music (this is a monologue, it is meaningless in the end); it should be about how OTHERS feel IN COMPARISON to how we feel about our own music.

I guess this is just a really long-winded way of saying that I don't like talking about my music. (Then why did you even respond in this thread (GAWD you're thick))

EDIT: Essentially, this thread (to me) is a long list of monologues -- it's only interesting in comparison to what others think about your music (which is the point, I guess).

I decide to make a video game out of it.

(this is actually happening)

202

(10 replies, posted in Releases)

so yeah it's kind of easy to figure out that all we do down here in San Diego is dance

updated with streaming info! TOMORROW YEEEEEEE

204

(79 replies, posted in General Discussion)

I don't mean to be that jaded jerk here, but pop stars using basic waveforms in their songs is definitely NOT co-opting chiptune. I'm pretty sure the producers in question don't even really have any clue what "chiptune" is; the sounds sound cool and so they're going to use it. Definition arguments aside (let's REALLY not get into this guys), I don't think chiptune as a form is co-optable, and chiptune as an aesthetic is such a slippery slope that anyone using basic waveforms could be called "chiptune."

I think the connection to the use of dubstep in music is questionable. Dubstep is foremost a form, secondly an aesthetic. That's why you can have stuff like Burial coexisting in the same genre space as Skrillex; the aesthetics are completely different, but the form is the same. I don't think that's the case with chiptune -- in fact, it could be argued that the form is so connected to the aesthetic that an artist can't make a song with chiptune in it; they have to make a CHIPTUNE SONG. And yes, there's a difference.

If anything, the use of these basic waveforms in pop music is less CHIPTUNE BECOMING MAINSTREAM and more producers running out of ideas for weird-ass sounds to put in their pop music. We had the funk-ass instrumentals with Timbaland, and we had the hyper-produced euro-pop with David Guetta (and like every K-Pop song in existence (it's so good omg)), and now producers are getting back to their roots, except we had about 10-20 years of context to cover for the fact that yes, these producers didn't even put any fundamentals in their waveform, shut up, it's music. Everyone's already singing about the end of the world and the collapse of civilization -- we might as well collapse the resolutions of waveforms with it.

205

(18 replies, posted in General Discussion)

The hardware/software distinction is fast becoming a moot point. Like it's only worth splitting hairs over if the hardware is an analog synth, and even then, you could consider the method of wiring/electrical signal as the "software" of the synth. Depending on how stoned you are, you can take "hardware" and "software" to mean anything these days, so the first thing in this discussion that should happen is a discussion on what we all define hardware and software to be.

I like to think of hardware as kind of creating medium for a particular task to be completed in, and software as an interface between the medium and the operator. So (definitions of "interface" notwithstanding), in the case of an analog synth, the hardware creates the medium of electrical signals for sound to be parsed from, and the software is the keys, knobs, etc. This isn't a rigid definition, nor is it it all-inclusive...it's just something that works for me in most cases. I don't need it to be rigorous, really.

But what it does is allow the discussion to stop being a simple hardware/software dichotomy and start being a discussion on the interactions between the hardware and software, and then on the interactions between the operator and the tool. Ultimately all any of this is doing is allowing us to take an internal thought or idea and externalize it...the value in really expensive tools is the ease in which it allows us to externalize something, which is one way to think about operator/tool interactions. At the same time, a tool designed in an unusual way allows us to conceive of entirely new interactions that we haven't really thought of before, which is another kind of interaction.

Most software tools fall in the first camp -- that of easing an externalization. If you think about it, that's kind of the point; software is supposed to "understand" the hardware really well so it can interpret a user's actions and translate them to something comprehensible. So stuff like Ableton and LSDJ -- that stuff eases the externalization of our ideas because it makes the actual creation of sound easy enough for us to comfortably do. Hardware, on the other hand, is often concerned with the second camp -- creating novel interactions that compel us to think about the software differently. This is also kind of intuitive -- changes in medium obviously create way different sounds; a string instrument is going to create a completely different sound than an electrical signal, etc.

The REALLY interesting stuff, however, happens when the hardware and software become pretty intertwined, such as what happened with LSDJ/Nanoloop and the Gameboy (see, I managed to bring it back to chiptune). I honestly can't imagine seriously composing an LSDJ song in an emulator because it just makes SENSE to use LSDJ on a Gameboy (this is just me, obviously other people do things differently, it's just a talking point). At the same time, what happens if LSDJ gets mouse control? To me, it loses its compelling feature (one of the only interfaces between Gameboy sound chip and user) when it starts becoming less exclusive...that's my theory on why LSDJ is kind of the de-facto DMG tool.

So I guess in the end I'm not sure where I'm going with this >_<

EDIT: I'm really sorry if this post kills this thread because it's way too long sad

EDIT2: Man, long essays about nothing is what a digital arts minor gets you...all the digital arts MAJORS are out actually, like, making shit

(shitty flyer yay!)

SAN DIEGO IS NOT READY FOR THIS MUCH CHIPTUNE

Once again, people with Gameboys attack the Soda Bar like it kicked their collective dog!

Featuring:

Balloons - http://vimeo.com/44827534
Awesome Force - http://soundcloud.com/awesomeforce
Mike Bleeds - http://bleeds.bandcamp.com
Space Town Savior - http://spacetownsavior.bandcamp.com

This will be LIVESTREAMED on noisechannel.org! And the link is right here: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/noisechannel

9pm, 21+, $5 cover. Let's do this (LDT).

Facebook event: http://www.facebook.com/events/443609002350467/

Well like, that place should honestly be the rest of the internet.

Frostbyte wrote:

Exactly. I honestly think its total garbage to expect a forum to be on topic 100% of the time. I don't get why it's so bad to have discussion on a forum. Who cares what the pace is?

Ok, here's the thing. When a forum is off topic I actually stop reading it because it's really uninteresting to watch people be inane. The problem is, I would really like to spend more time here, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who would really rather have interesting conversations instead of image vomits and stuff. It might be a little pedantic but that's just the way it works for me.

That's ultimately the reason I would like this place to be less like it is now. It's not TERRIBLE, and again, I can't really tell anyone to act how I want them to--all I'm saying is that for me, inanity does not hold my attention very well, and I'm not the only person who thinks that.