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overload yourself with books, plays, stories, friends, films, graphic novels, adventures, and non-chipmusic. (if the main influence for your chip music is chip music, your music is going to sound like a pile of derivative shit. explore different genres. 'radiohead' is hardly bottom of the barrel stuff, expand yourself on to new music. i mean, if you aren't taking the chance with other obscure niches of music, why would people want to listen to yours?)

vary your influences, always write, whether that's words, drawings, music - just keep working, and it's hard to get shitter.

Why not download a variety of different trials/versions of Ableton Live, Fruity Loops, Renoise, Piggy Tracker, FamiTracker, Milkytracker and the like?

Try them out and see what works for you. If you don't know what you're looking for, then it's anybodies guess. If you go away and come back saying, "I hate piano rolls" then, we can cross some of the list.

Fucking highly recommend 2xLSDJ. The majority of tracks using 2xLSDJ suck anal prolapse, and would be trickier to learn (at this stage) how to properly use filters and create a good soundscape. I imagine a sample based tracker will do the trick for you. I've had nothing but joy with Ableton Live.

Bandcamp offered a service that looked to grow into something flexible and viable for all users. It has failed dismally at that. Since I started using the site, I've found it nothing but troubling - from the inability to arrange albums other than 'by release date', the insistance of PayPal only, and the lack of user support.

Not only that, but the 'free downloads' function is a fucking joke. In order for me to download my own fucking album from the site, I need to buy tokens. Wtf. It's my album you cunts. Give me my fucking album, howsabout?

PS - Bandcamp is the best of a bad bunch. It goes downhill like Myspace, or like YouTube has started, it can fuck off.

Now that's just silly. If we didn't attempt to question everything, we wouldn't get anywhere. I think it's important to know where your music stands in context, and why you make it.

 
You're still entirely missing my point. Right, the drum machine is just an example. I could have said spoon. Or a stylophone. It's just an example of something that isn't the restrictions of 1xLSDJ. It's something that isn't keeping with original GameBoy and NES music.

That feeling will fade. Nah, I jest. It's a good place. Welcome. If you've any questions, make them smart and come back and add to this thread when you have good LSDJ tips of yer own.

I entirely empathise with L-Tron's thought. It's misleading in that, there's a certain implication by saying 'LSDJ' that it is one copy. If the person feels the need to omit the 'x2', it may also follow that there's deceptive intent. That, whether we like it or not, people are going to just blend x1 and x2 in their head. And not appreciate the difficulty of writing with x1.

It's like the One Channel and Two Channels compilations. Most tracks didn't interest me much as songs, but more for technical studies. It wasn't going on my iPod, but I would listen to it. LSDJx2 feels te same. It's a great for technical study, but the songs don't hold true to something, and that something that works in my head as follows.

The joy about writing with one copy of LSDJ for me is that I grew up with the GameBoy. It was my only form of portable music until I was 13, when I bought myself a portable tape player. You attach your ears to that aesthetic, and it's one of my influences. I make video-game style chip music. Many wish to push their music into other aesthetics, but it's the video-game style that interests me. I simply can't get my head around people who didn't grow up with the sounds and playing the games, wanting to take to it. I'm faced with the same limitations as the composers who wrote the music I grew up with. I feel like a composer. I don't feel like a musician. Now, I make music that's guitar, uke, synths, drum machines, and vocals all meshed up with LSDJ, and they make me feel like a musician. But they're very separate kinds of songs. Like Radiohead having an acoustic track on an album. At that point, purity goes out of the window.

Many scoff at 'composer', "pft, haha, you're not a 'composer' you're fucking about with a GameBoy" and yeah, maybe so. But you're still working within the confines that digital composers, many moons ago, were working with. You are on equal par. And after the first time you write something that sounds polished enough that it could actually be in a video-game, it's beautiful. It's like homebrew games, how you'd want to make a video-game, and you did in your head - but if you were able to make a comprehensive game on the GameBoy itself, can you imagine how popular that would be? (Neil Baldwin, I thank you in advance.) Seeing your characters move on screen for the first time, but then there being a bug where you can't pick up items, the same sort of problem solving, frustration and relief felt with writing music on the console. And I think everyone has that want to make a video-game. If you could pay £40 or $60 or whatever to have your thoughts translated into a playable video-game, you definitely would.

But it's that want to push the system in a way that your predecessors couldn't, and didn't have time to. The next point is when you write music that's better than some of the really good music on the console. That's just great, then. It's validating.

But when I'm adding other instruments, I'm not making the music because of the limitations of the hardware and software, I'm making the music for the audial aesthetic. I'm making an art instead of a chiptune. I'm being a 'musician', not a 'composer'.

So, in for a penny in for a pound, why use just x2 LSDJ? No-one else did. I feel the solo guitar instrument isn't valid. I'd compare it more to a full band, then adding another full band over the top. If you have six guitarists on stage, you either must be a member of Minus the Bear, or have a bloody good reason. Then you tell four of the guitarists that they can only use a very basic effects pedal, with very simple tone. And tell the two bassists that sometimes they may be a drummer and may need to occasionally shout "BRK",  "ASS" and "TITTIES". You really have to ask yourself what it's bringing to the table.