273 Reply by spacetownsavior

(4 replies, posted in Releases)

ONLY THE SMELLIEST OF SMELLS

everyone else: thanks! I'm toying with making this format the default for all new STS albums but ugh 138 and 128 bpm don't mix very well sad maybe just more mixtapes!

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274 Reply by spacetownsavior

(195 replies, posted in General Discussion)

for realz, it's awesome to see the wiz(wars) getting love here! dude totally deserves it and following his sound from game boy rock to welcome to thrash city has been wild!

GET HIM OUT THERE YAAAA

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275 Topic by spacetownsavior

(4 replies, posted in Releases)

Some old stuff, some new stuff. Getting hyped for an upcoming release!

AWWW YEAAAHHH

http://spacetownsavior.bandcamp.com/album/stratospheric

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276 Reply by spacetownsavior

(57 replies, posted in General Discussion)

I was reading that book but then my kindle decided to get crushed under something sad

I'm gonna get a hard copy of it soon!

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277 Reply by spacetownsavior

(57 replies, posted in General Discussion)

I changed the age brackets so that there's a little more resolution between 22-40 years old! I explained earlier in the thread why we made that age bracket like that, but again -- we're not calling you old, we just want to figure out whether you have been alive while these old video game systems were being sold. we will NOT make any other inferences based on age at all, which is why we thought that the age bracketing was fine the way it was.

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278 Reply by spacetownsavior

(57 replies, posted in General Discussion)

pixls wrote:

Since you're looking at alternatives to video games of what may inspire enjoyment of chip music you might want to look at what other kinds of music people listen to rather than asking what video games they play and how much they play them.

Xylo wrote:

Why is it about games so much if the paper is about chiptunes?

for any other paper I'd totally agree with you guys here, but the thing is that we're actually NOT looking for alternatives. I don't know if you read the post I made on the last page, but one of the ideas we're throwing around is that the people who enjoy chiptune are a certain "kind" of gamer. we already have a lot of material on the non-gaming reasons people enjoy chiptune, and this survey was created to target that population specifically. I personally have a very vested interest in chiptune NOT being a gaming-specific kind of music, so I'm definitely with you guys here. it's just that we needed to make sure that idea had a basis in reality!

pixls wrote:

Also if you insist upon keeping the video-game oriented questions a more appropriate question might be something along the lines of "when did you start playing video games" because while I have played pong it's not something that was relevant to my generation, and similarly while I am currently a gamer, I did not start playing video games until late compared with some others.

agreed! I think it's a little too late to change it but yeah, adding a question like that would've been helpful. however, the reason that it's structured as it is is because we want to know if you have heard the low-bit sound before, regardless of when you started playing games. that's less important (for our purposes) than if you've heard the sounds before!

pixls wrote:

Just an opinion but I think that the survey as is will give skewed results and you'll see the results how you want to see them. There is very little room for much reasoning beyond the realm of video game influences. perhaps doing a second round of surveys would be helpful looking at some things a bit deeper. I don't know if you'll find this helpful, but I just think looking at this requires looking away from video games for a bit, because while much chipmusic is made on video game systems, I would be hard pressed to reasonable compare modern chip music to video game music, or even video game sounds.

the thing with skewing our results is that the skew isn't going to affect the paper any. it might be a bad survey to look at for a complete demographic analysis, but something that I forgot to mention is that the paper is already pretty significantly finished, and we just needed this last part so that we could make sure the "kind" of gamer hypothesis wasn't something we just made up. not that what you're saying isn't helpful! it's just that that's not where the focus is at the moment.

again, the paper is a more anthropological, ethnographic kind of paper, so a lot of this is going to be based on my girlfriend's experiences being immersed in the culture. the survey isn't meant to be comprehensive because she's not going to be writing about the results as much as using the results to direct her writing.

I appreciate all the responses though! this is obviously something that a lot of people have strong feelings about and while my girlfriend's paper might not clear EVERYTHING up, it will hopefully add to the literature that will help us understand our culture as a whole! so thanks again everyone smile

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279 Reply by spacetownsavior

(57 replies, posted in General Discussion)

Edit: omg I'm so bad at this here's another double post

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280 Reply by spacetownsavior

(195 replies, posted in General Discussion)

edit: double post whoops sad

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281 Reply by spacetownsavior

(195 replies, posted in General Discussion)

since you smashed that mixer on stage obviously smile

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282 Reply by spacetownsavior

(57 replies, posted in General Discussion)

BR1GHT PR1MATE wrote:

LOL AT 25+

thats some thin demographics

again, we're not so much concerned with age. we're just assuming that if you're over 25 you've been alive to see/hear/play on most of the technology that chiptune is made on. we're not doing an exhaustive demographic study -- we're just trying to see if you were alive at the same time these old game consoles were being sold. the data doesn't really need any resolution higher than that, so we just never put it in, because even if we added more categories for stuff like 25-30, 30-40, 45+, we'd just lump them all together under the category "has been around for old video game systems" anyway!

so chill out guys we're not calling you old sheesh

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283 Reply by spacetownsavior

(57 replies, posted in General Discussion)

a couple caveats:

we're not looking for incredibly hard/comprehensive data, so the survey was designed to get people to answer it rather than designing it toward encompassing everything.

the reason it's skewed toward younger ages is because that's the population we're interested in! she's trying to explore that weird cultural area of people into chiptune that are too young to have really been influenced by lo-bit sounds. if the reason so many people are into chiptune is because they're nostalgic for the sound aesthetic, then the ages of chiptune enthusiasts should keep getting older and older, but younger people are still getting into it!

the video game questions are in there to kind of evaluate the "gamerness" of the people taking the survey. there's a hypothesis that she (and I) are throwing around that deals with the "kind" of gamer that enjoys chiptune to a point where they would make the music, and we're trying to see whether that hypothesis holds at all. we're thinking that the stereotype of a person who enjoys chiptune would be both a. over 20 (so that they have some basis for what low-bit music entails) and b. has played old games and has nostalgia for them. obviously this hypothesis won't be 100% accurate, and I'm personally hoping that it's actually false because the alternative is MUCH more interesting big_smile

the paper she's writing isn't a thesis or a scientific paper exactly, despite my use of the word hypothesis -- she's leaning more toward the anthropological study route in that she's immersed in the culture, rather than taking an outsider's perspective. the problem is that we personally don't know any young chiptune fans here in San Diego, so we decided to put together a survey to make sure that those hypotheses above at least have SOME basis in reality and we're not just making it up smile

and don't worry -- she's already very aware of the issues surrounding articles on chiptune written by people who aren't really into the culture. there will be no "mario at a rave" mentioned here, I promise.

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284 Reply by spacetownsavior

(57 replies, posted in General Discussion)

done! I was kind of in a rush when I made the survey hmm

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285 Topic by spacetownsavior

(57 replies, posted in General Discussion)

you can help her by taking this really quick, 8 question survey on chiptune! we'd really appreciate it!

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/WNGX8DQ

and for reference: she's in a creative non-fiction class and she decided to do her piece on chipmusic! big_smile

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286 Reply by spacetownsavior

(195 replies, posted in General Discussion)

snesei wrote:

Fighter X vs Electric Children (Battle of the Bits sesh)

yikes

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287 Reply by spacetownsavior

(33 replies, posted in General Discussion)

god this is so good! I'm a fan of the half-second you see the Ziggurat game on there.

it's very refreshing to see that some people are still capable of taking a subject and not trying to be snarky right off the bat!

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288 Reply by spacetownsavior

(34 replies, posted in General Discussion)

for this to be a meaningful conversation we kind of all have to agree on what "retro" means. to be honest I think this is less a conversation about chiptune and more a conversation about retro, because that's what everyone seems to be debating (judging by the fact that the word retro has quotation marks around it about 75 percent of the time it's used in the thread).

are we supposed to deem something retro based on artist intent? or are we talking purely aesthetically? because that's important -- I don't think my music is trying to be retro at all, but if you judge it aesthetically it's definitely a retro sound. I guess it IS retro-futurist but I don't go around calling my music that because that's pretentious as fuck hmm

it's probably some mix of the two (it always is), where the artist's intent has to be judged based on how he/she delivers the art. if the artist says that his/her music isn't retro but they don't do a very good job of convincing us aesthetically, then I'd say it's safe to call them retro. at the same time, if the artist is aesthetically modern, but he/she keeps calling themselves retro, I will disagree even if they're using old video game systems. music (and all art) is really a dialog between the artist and the audience, where the artist is trying to convince the audience of some reality being true or at least conceivable. if there's a dissonance between artist intent and audience reception, the art fails. the retro tag is really just an easy way for us to talk about art that references old stuff as a significant part of the artist's intent.

if you compare anamanaguchi to starscream (it's an easy example) I feel like the distinction becomes clearer. aesthetically, anamanaguchi is really retro (NES as the rock star, use of pixel art in a lot of their visuals, compositions that take advantage of the NES' sound) and I doubt that the artists involved will claim otherwise. starscream, on the other hand, is a band I would not call retro because aesthetically they aren't (videogame sounds fit neatly into drums + guitar without being overwhelming, use of HELVETICA and lack of pixel art in visual design, etc.) and they don't claim to be either. if you didn't know better you wouldn't even think that videogames were involved based on their sound because it's trying to be all post-rock and the videogame sounds are really just a means to an aesthetic end.

so the question stops being "is ALL of chipmusic retro" and starts becoming "is [artist] retro?" which is a more meaningful question to me. it's hard for me to conceive of a situation in which an entire medium is retro, i.e. danimal's post above, because if that were true then EVERY SINGLE ARTIST involved in that medium would have to both 1. have an intent that we could safely call retro and 2. succeed at convincing us that they are aesthetically retro. so I guess chillwave is retro smile

sorry for the essay sad

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