65 Reply by arlen

(69 replies, posted in General Discussion)

Victory Road wrote:
chunter wrote:

I wish I could remember band names to put a finger on it for you. The negative first impression was a suburban white kid singing punk music that whines about childhood/adolescence, particularly, consider people who took that same aspect of early 90s alternative seriously. (For contrast, I thought grunge was whiny too.)

the used
hawthorne heights
my chemical romance
senses fail
emery
funeral for a friend
underoath
afi

just listing the usual suspects haha
i like most of those bands tbh

Woaaahhh. Wrong! All of these bands were when emo was well-established and hitting the mainstream. Early emo consisted more of bands like

Jawbreaker
Sunny Day Real Estate
American Football
Braid
The Promise Ring
Cap'n Jazz
Mineral

In the last couple years there's been a bit of a resurgence in the vain of early emo (coined "emo revival" from blogs like pitchfork) with bands like Empire! Empire! (i was a lonely estate), Modern Baseball, The World Is A Beautiful Place..., and others.

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66 Reply by arlen

(69 replies, posted in General Discussion)

breakphase wrote:
arlen wrote:

Bandcamp has become a great platform for selling music much like iTunes, but much more independent. Pretty sure with iTunes you have to get "approved" or something. I've never bothered with it. It's easier for small indie labels to use bandcamp to distribute merch, music, records, etc. You can do that all from bandcamp fairly easily now.

Yeah band camp is the future for sure. But when labels use it, it makes it seem like the necessity of having a label is going away. It seems like the only real reason to have one is for the connections they can give you -- like getting reviewed by pitchfork. But even mass promotion can be accomplished through the internet. 

Anyway this band is great.

Labels are good for getting physical stuff out there. Good luck pressing your own records, it costs a lot and if you're a label you can do bulk presses of a lot of stuff for cheaper (iirc. im not too up to speed on the whole record pressing stuff. my friend is in the process of pressing some band's record for his own little label)

You can do promotion yourself, but by being on a label it kind of gives you association to other bands and thus can kind of reach out to their fans. Plenty of people like facebook pages for labels and then those labels can promote you to people who may not know you. I don't think the era of the indie label is dead yet.

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67 Reply by arlen

(69 replies, posted in General Discussion)

breakphase wrote:
danimal cannon wrote:

Cool band! Never met them though. 

They got on pitchfork by being on a record label, music journalism is a gated community yo

They use the Pitchfork to keep out us rabble.

I didn't realize that real labels were using bandcamp. That's weird. I guess they help with promotion and making actual records though (record labels, that is).

Bandcamp has become a great platform for selling music much like iTunes, but much more independent. Pretty sure with iTunes you have to get "approved" or something. I've never bothered with it. It's easier for small indie labels to use bandcamp to distribute merch, music, records, etc. You can do that all from bandcamp fairly easily now.

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68 Reply by arlen

(69 replies, posted in General Discussion)

I think they're ok. When they announced they were putting out an LP I was excited, but when I found out it was just the old EP put together with another EP that kinda put me off. Their stuff reminds me a lot of early Anamanaguchi stuff, though to me it's a lot weaker melodically. I guess vocals can kinda make up for that? Eh... not really.

In the grand scheme of things, I think there are/were a lot better chip bands out there (*cough* *cough* The Depreciation Guild, Chromelodeon, Noisewaves, Revengineers, Glen Eyrie, etc... *cough*), but they certainly aren't the worst. It's cool they're on a label, too. Though I really don't like Run For Cover Records. I feel like that label puts out some of the blandest records sometimes, but that's a whole different argument.

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69 Reply by arlen

(27 replies, posted in General Discussion)

Feryl wrote:

So it's not limited to Famitracker? I've been using 2a03 samples for at least two years now...

Famicompo has never been limited to Famitracker, just limited to .nsf entries until this one. I recall a few past famicompo songs not even being possible with Famitracker (i.e. multiple expansion chips at once). Though I think you can pull that off with some sort of hack now.

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70 Reply by arlen

(44 replies, posted in General Discussion)

if theres someone out there who deserves some good exposure, it's IAYD. glad to see him gaining traction.

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71 Topic by arlen

(27 replies, posted in General Discussion)

Haven't seen anything posted on this, so I figured I'd start a thread. Looks like some people are rebooting famicompo. Starting Dec 1st to the 31st you can submit as many songs as you want to 3 different catergories (Original, Cover, or Freestyle). A select few will be pressed onto an NES cartridge and sold, but this is limited to 2a03-only submissions.

The freestyle category seems interesting. The only rule seems to be to incorporate the 2a03 into whatever you want and submit an mp3.

More info:
http://bitpuritans.eu/compo/

I've always loved Famicompo so this is pretty exciting to me! If I get the time I may even try to submit a song or two. What about you guys? Any thoughts?

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72 Reply by arlen

(14 replies, posted in General Discussion)

I still have some really really old Alex Mauer .xm modules from a vaporware game he made a soundtrack for.

I have a lot of old zabutom stuff too. Mostly from OHCs and the like.

I got a leak of Cheap Dinosaurs' self titled from Dino around 2009, too. I don't know if it ever got pressed to vinyl like Dino had mentioned he was planning back then, but I was very happy to listen to it. The mix sounds a lot different on mine to the one that's up on bandcamp.

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73 Reply by arlen

(58 replies, posted in Releases)

an0va wrote:

Still among my top 10 favorite chiptune albums ever.

Same here! Cool to see the ROM posted. I'll have to see it for myself.

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74 Reply by arlen

(53 replies, posted in Releases)

Wasn't some zelda dubstep remix comp one of bandcamp's top selling releases?

Selling covers is risky unless you're like a bar band. I doubt Nintendo would bat an eye, but who knows.

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75 Reply by arlen

(53 replies, posted in Releases)

I would at least expect the .gif or something. I don't know how hard that would be to code into an NES rom i guess.

A fair price? I don't know. I know the cost of making a cart isn't very cheap and takes plenty of labor, but all of the cart releases I know of were entire albums not a single song. Vegavox series, Bitpuritans' 2a03 puritans, Teletime, and Freezedream had an excellent genesis/md release.

Not sure what the majority of those were originally priced, but Bitpuritans still sell 2a03 Puritans for $35. That seems more than fair for a huge compilation.

I guess this is a tricky case and I feel like it's just a ploy to grab money from the "geeky" crowd.

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76 Reply by arlen

(53 replies, posted in Releases)

Why would anyone pay $45 for 1 song and a still image on a game cart?

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77 Reply by arlen

(56 replies, posted in General Discussion)

http://www53.zippyshare.com/v/87171773/file.html

as far as i remember, this was my first LSDJ track and technically my first chiptune. I can't playback a lot of my older Renoise stuff because I don't have  those VSTs anymore. Some of those were chip-like. This is like May 2008 or so. I think that's when I first got LSDJ. good ooooooooooooooooooold velo.

http://www34.zippyshare.com/v/22505064/file.html

this was my first real milkytracker song. this is probably fall 2009. i was still used to using LSDJ so I made every pattern 16 length, which made this track take forever to put together. i was going by arlen by this time.

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78 Reply by arlen

(39 replies, posted in Software & Plug-ins)

Don't think anyone's mentioned this but there's also a YM2151 emulator/music suite for iPad. I don't have an iPad so I don't know how easy it is to use, but some sick shit has been played off it. YM2151 was used in a lot of arcade music and I believe the Sharp X68000?

Not exactly sure what dump mode is. Probably just song data played back, but there is a sequencer for the app.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/iym2151 … 75529?mt=8

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79 Reply by arlen

(54 replies, posted in General Discussion)

Ew chipmusic is a fandom now? I don't want to be associated with that tumblr culture bullshit.

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80 Reply by arlen

(10 replies, posted in Releases)

smile chipflip releases are always my favorites. the layouts are always so creative and unique. always glad to see more.

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