babestyles
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CT

This is nowhere near finished but it's something I've been doing as a hobby for the past week and a half. Chip is an area of electronic music I've never dabbled in but I've always enjoyed the sounds of older games so this is a first crack at trying to faux score something.

https://psychicboyandhisghostpal.bandcamp.com/album/1st

or

https://soundcloud.com/psychicboyandhisghostpal

EDIT:

Just to note: I'm not looking for validation and a pat on the back. I'm looking for any sort of criticism. What's good? What's bad? What should be improved? I'd love a grasp on an overall community opinion seeing as you all generally know a good amount about the genre.

Last edited by babestyles (Jan 27, 2016 3:55 am)

ecce homo
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This is a pretty cool track. I'm not super into the snare as it sounds a bit harsh to me. I think that people on this board are not super interested in sample heavy stuff or perhaps faux in general. What did you make this in?

aaroneow
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Montana

I liked it. I think you should very your beat a little more, and add something else to your leads. Looping is fine, but it was just a tiny bit repetitive I thought. Toward the ending it got better.

babestyles
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CT
aaroneow wrote:

I liked it. I think you should very your beat a little more, and add something else to your leads. Looping is fine, but it was just a tiny bit repetitive I thought. Toward the ending it got better.

Yeah the habit of repetition comes from other genres I'm in to influencing how I make this. Usually I like to keep things longer to jam on for a bit but I've been starting to realize it's not always the best idea for stuff like this. As I've been doing more I've been cutting back on looping the same parts too much.

ecce homo wrote:

This is a pretty cool track. I'm not super into the snare as it sounds a bit harsh to me. I think that people on this board are not super interested in sample heavy stuff or perhaps faux in general. What did you make this in?

Hm. Interesting comment on the snare. I've always been into harder snare hits as opposed to subtlety out of preference. There's a lot of percussive chip elements I'm not a big fan of so I went with a simple kick/snare and focused more on composition of melodies. It's been noted, though.

I use FL Studio as a daw with a couple plugins, famisynth and magical 8-bit. I tried to familiarize myself with other chip programs but I've been working with the daws I'm comfortable with for so long that I chose familiarity over authenticity.

bleakprospects
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I listened to the first song, skimmed through the rest. It's good. On tones: I like all the leads, they're very soft and slidy. Your choice of bass tones is a bit harsh, and the bass is all a bit too loud. I think the bass just needs to be rounder and spread a bit more.  I like that you use chords instead of arps. Drums are typical 8-bit, nothing to like or hate about them honestly.

On composition: good all round, coherent. The songs are not too loopy.

But the songs all sound quite similar. That probably has a lot to do with the instrumentation, but the tempo and style is also quite similar. Basically: loud, centered bass doing 8ths on octaves, a thing going up and down scales on the left and right, and then a slidy melody. Not bad, just needs a bit of variation.