65

(62 replies, posted in General Discussion)

On a Bemani game. Or pretty much any J-core release/compilation that isn't on Tano-C.

66

(114 replies, posted in General Discussion)

I think there's a lot of potential for streaming to lower the borders between artist and audience and encourage more conversation between the two groups, but it won't replace concerts or physical workshops, both of which would be better done physically or through recordings; it's much easier to get consistent quality on a recording when you're not worrying about streaming it (kills FPS, audio quality).

For concerts, unless there's some killer VJ stuff going on, the visual aspect generally isn't necessary. Put a few condenser mics around for atmosphere and make it an audio-only stream going off the mixer or bootleg it and upload it later. Another issue with concert recordings the chip community suffers from a lot is that the live elements of shows (i.e. what's separating it from listening to the record in your house) are primarily visual or not unique enough to make the act of watching a stream/recording worth the effort. Larger shows like Blipfest lend themselves more to recordings since they're good for discovering new artists, but the same appeal could be had through a radio show, or just poking around here. (Arecibo's chip shows have been doing that pretty well for me.)

Workshops could definitely be streamed, though many of them don't have much of a need for direct audience interaction. It'd also be difficult to read and answer every question you receive while presenting a power-point to a bunch of other people. Much of that could be alleviated through recording the workshop and having its presenter answer questions via a forum, much like this one. Smaller scale ones done from homes have more potential to work as the person doing them would have a much easier time answering questions and interacting with multiple people.

I think that for people looking to do streaming chiptune stuff, good examples to look at would be day9 and Shinsei Kamattechan (the latter of which is more applicable since they're musicians). day9's streams are, essentially, Q&A sessions between him and his audience. Kamattechan does largely the same thing, though the antics and unique personality of their lead singer/guitarist/songwriter Noko tend to draw in more people and keep them interested in the stream. This style of streaming could easily work for chiptune musicians as well, though it'd require interesting content to back it up. If little-scale was sitting on a stream talking about rad hardware stuff, I'd watch that. If you're just sitting at a desk streaming music and not saying anything, no one's going to watch. You have to have the personality to back it up, and for a lot of people it's hard to get that sort of personality without something like a concert to amplify it. I've done decent stage shows before since I work well in that setting, but I can't stream because my personality isn't interesting enough to make it work in a casual setting without someone else to talk at. It's sort of like how good Let's Players tend to be in duos (Retsupurae, Chip & Ironicus). Having multiple people in a stream helps a lot.

Basically, there's a niche for concert streams, but for archiving quality it'd be better to bootleg the mixer than anything, since the audience loses out on too much of the live atmosphere for it to work on a stream (at least for me). Workshops can be streamed but that won't matter much for ones outside of a dude presenting in his room; forums are much better mediums for discussing specific technical stuff than streams, especially for archival. Stream replies generally aren't logged or are hard to discern in a stream while looking in a series of forum posts is much easier for most people. Q&A streams have the most potential, but holding people's attention would require having a good personality or interesting subject matter to discuss.

EDIT: Also, NicoNico is a solid streaming service. Glad it just got opened up to the west. I have no idea how to actually use it but I'd be surprised if there isn't some way to configure XSplit for Nico streaming.

67

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

A friend of mine hooked me up with this pretty sweet collection of drum machine samples. It's called "The Machine," and it's got almost every big drum machine on it, from the big Roland machines to splashy Kawai kits and some older, more esoteric samples. (There's an early Pearl drum machine on there that really shows its age.) I've been having a lot of fun with the Kawai stuff lately.

A-E
F-O
P-R (mostly Roland samples)
S-Z

68

(186 replies, posted in General Discussion)

https://soundcloud.com/jay-hitcher

A lot of crappy old stuff with a steady progression into decency.

69

(64 replies, posted in General Discussion)

They don't really use chip hardware, but group_inou use a bunch of lower-end Genesis-esque FM synths, compressed drum samples, and pulse wave melodies and backing. A lot of their structure is pretty chippy too. Their older stuff is more breakbeat; they primarily use 4/4s nowadays (sort of like most mainstream hip-hop).

A few cool tracks:
9, THERAPY, COMING OUT (my personal favorite)

little-scale wrote:

Is there interest in another round???

In terms of loading your own samples - this could still be done on the USB version, and as such I would like to create a sample loading app that allows users to load their own samples via USB

Rad, I hope that comes to fruition.

I'm definitely interested in another round; hopefully enough other people here feel likewise that it's possible.

Super excited to hear an update on this project. Here's hoping some of us who didn't get to join in on the first round of preorders get another chance soon!

Do still you have any plans to make a software + midi interface (no cart) version, like you mentioned in the original FAQ? GenMDM seems rad as heck as it is, but the ability to load up my own samples onto a flashcart running the GenMDM software would push it over the top. If it helps cut down on production time and cost, I think that it'd help people on both ends.