Now anyone can make Chiptunes!

From remix64:

Coming Spring 2009 Sony Creative Software will be releasing a loop
and sample library called, “8 Bit Weapon: A Chiptune Odyssey”. The
library covers Apple II, Commodore 64 (6581r4 & 8580), NES,
Gameboy, and the Atari 2600. Each system library has everything from
drums, bass and synth to special effects!Both ComputeHer and I have
demos built into the collection too. The sound library works with ACID,
Ableton Live, Cubase, Garage Band, Logic, Soundtrack, and more!

Thank you again for all your support!
PS-I didnt have any say on the cover artwork  :-(  

Submitted by naughtyboy

Letters VS Numbers episode 012: ”Science is Mischievous”

The beginning of a new year and we are still doing things the same way, with a late podcast. This one is entitled Letters VS Numbers episode 012: “Science is Mischievous”.
And it most certainly is! This week we talk about every manner of
things, including Street Fighter, caffeine naps, scientific research,
and even Christmas seeing how this podcast was recorded last month! It
has been a while and we hope this gives you a good LvN fix to kick off
the new year! 
Also, as stated in the show, check out this footage from Z. of Hipster, Please! of LvN live! youtube.com/watch?v=-BD3x-tP5go Make it go all youtube viral and all that good stuff!

Oh! Also should mention we have banners for you to help support the show here lettersvsnumbers.blogspot.com/2008/04/banners.html

Listener Emails
We
have a very special email this week from one awesome fan, and also one
sort of confusing spam email this week. We enjoyed one of them! Be sure
to send in any emails you have to lettersvsnumberspodcast AT gmail DOT com so we can read them on air!

Tracks Played this week.
MC Lars & YTCracker – We Have Arrived (featuring K.Flay and the Former Fat Boys) – dglp.digitalgangster.com/
Combat Dave VS Supoerpowerless – Wasting My Time – myspace.com/superpowerless; myspace.com/combatdave
The Grammar Club – Red Cyclone (Vocal Version) – thegrammarclub.com
Jay Tholen – The Whistle Blower – jaytholen.net
Antisoc – Lone Warrior – antisocialrap.com
team.rocket – You, Me, Thunderdome! – myspace.com/teamrocketband
arcadecoma – Mega Man Is My Hero – myspace.com/arcadecoma
Illithid – Rapewood – myspace.com/funkyfreshfro
Metamystiks Incorporated – Warriors (feat. Kal-L) – myspace.com/metamystiksinc
Retro Remix Revue – Super Mario 64 – Dire, Dire Docks – retroremixrevue.com

Websites mentioned this week.
3-Way Split album review – gamemusic4all.blogspot.com/2008/12/3-way-split-album-review.html
8 Bit Instrumental – 8bitinstrumental.com
Hipster, Please! – hipsterplease.com
Nerdapalooza – nerdapalooza.blogspot.com
Pterodactyl Squad – ptesquad.com
Rocket Propelled Radio – rocketpropelledgeeks.com/radio.php
RhymeTorrents dot org – rhymetorrents.org
Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix soundtrack – ocremix.org/
The Takeover – 247takeover.com/

Tracked in Time

From BigLionMusic.com:

For anyone who’s curious: Yes, I’m still using Impulse Tracker to
track “normal” songs (not just chiptunes) and yes, there’s new stuff
you can listen to. Here:
BRAINSTORM: TRACKED IN TIME

Some background, for anyone who is scratching their head: I’m in a demo group called Brainstorm along with a bunch of incredible musicians, programmers, and artists. We make cool demos and enter in demo party contests and talk about boobies and human-goat relations and alcoholic beverages.

A musicdisk is essentially an album or EP of music released for free
in the demo scene, often packaged as an executable file with a display
/ visualization program written specifically for the album. Tracked in
Time (TiT for short, obviously) is one such musicdisk, with a very
unique distinction.

In the late 80s and early 90s, tracking software exploded onto the scene following the release of Ultimate Soundtracker on the Commodore Amiga
computer in 1987. There was an official disk of instrument / percussion
samples distributed alongside it, called ST-01. We have taken that pack
of samples, and nothing else, and written a collection of brand new
songs.

This production is many years in the making — if you’re unfamiliar
with musicdisks or demos, you’ll want to click on the “Info” button to
get a scrolling text file while you listen to the songs. It will
explain more about the disk and, at times, the “keyboard” will be
“handed over” to each participant, myself included, to say a little
something.

My tracks are “Keep Shreddin’, Little Man” (4 channel) and
“Nightfall over the City” (multichannel), but do yourself a favor and
listen to everything; there’s a TON of great music in there. Enjoy!

The Tindeck is DOWN

Tindeck, a popular MP3 hosting website used by many members of the community, has recently announced that they were be out of commission for the remainder of the month due to bandwidth issues:

Tindeck is down until next month. – 15/Jan/2009 02:17

We got fucked hard by people uploading copyrighted material (primarily
Britney Spears and Akon; can’t say we’re terribly surprised) and
hotlinking those files on MySpace profiles and through various
streaming sites. The amount of bandwidth we used is shocking and more
expensive than we can afford at this time, so until our metrics reset
Tindeck will be kept offline to avoid running the bill up even further.

Tindeck has never been a profit-generating service (in actual fact we
pay a lot of money out of our own pockets each month to keep this place
going) so the abuse of what we provide here is really disheartening,
particularly given the amount of debt it’s driven us into :(The files already uploaded are all safe and sound, and we’ll be back to
normal operation next month with a few new features and a redesign that
will make things a hell of a lot easier to manage. 

Check out some of Tepid’s originals!

From his on OCReMix:

hey, I’ve been doing original electro music for a while and thought I
might share some of it with you. Most of it is in progress, so bear
with me while I continue to work on it. My influences are artists such
as datA/Dimension/JUSTICE/Masashi Hamauzu…

You can find my music on myspace, so please ADD ME 🙂

and here’s a little something I wrote today called Trix Pt. Duex. This is because a sampled some synth chords from a Japanese fusion band called Trix.

Enjoy,

Phil

The Retro Remixer: C64 Scene Spotlight

Hello, and welcome to the start of a series of articles I will be writing about the C64 Scene.  Now, I know there are a couple of sites out there that are very important in the scene, and I will definitely do my best to cover them all, so just bear with me as we go along on this literary journey together.  And please, don’t mind me too much, as this is going to be a transition period for me into a more writing-focused role.

So welcome to the new year!  And what a new year it is already.  To
start off the new year right, it’s only fair that I bring you up to
speed on new releases this month thus far from Remix.Kwed.Org, as it is
a fantastic C64 remixing site, with enough tracks to keep you busy for
a very long time.  If you haven’t already, I suggest downloading, via
bittorrent, the entire library of RKO remixes.  You can find those
right here at this link right here.

So here are this months current remixes, in no particular order:

Glider Rider, by Mongo Erectus
Auf Wiedersehen Monty, by mindtraP
DNA Warrior Highscore (80s Remix), by Metal
Scumball (dirty rough and brutal), by Peachmaker
Rabbit (happy & sad), by Slaygon
Chimera Subtune 2 (Vanguard Ahoy Mix), by Boz
Dream n Trance (Good Love), by Emre Bulsat
Last Ninja theme (Orchestral), by Pancho21
Comic Bakery, by Sperling
Strike Force (noise progress mix), by Emre Bulsat
First Time (Orchestra Mix), by Setrodox

So much in such a little amount of time, and the year has only just
begun.  There will be many releases this year, so keep your sights
firmly set on RKO for more excellent music.

Luckily for many of you who are reading this right now, there’s a bit of information that I am very happy to pass along to you.  Tonight, on SLAY Radio, will be the Remixer of the Year 2008 Awards Show.  So be sure to go there, and check that out.  It’s on at 20:00 CET, which is 2:00pm EST (I had to look it up, CET is Central European Time which is UTC + 1, EST is Eastern Standard Time, which is UTC – 5, I did the math, go me!)  Anyway, check that out, it’s sure to be excellent!

That’s it for now, but I plan on making this article at least a monthly feature, if not a bi-weekly feature as time permits me.  In the meantime, check out the many sites in the scene, all of which I will list right now.

http://remix.kwed.org
http://www.remix64.com/
http://www.c64audio.com/
http://www.hvsc.c64.org/

Also, here’s a small special feature for those who don’t know this already; OverClocked Remix has a section for C64 remixes.  Now while there’s only a handful available, the point is that it’s there for your enjoyment, so please, go right ahead and grab those!

http://www.ocremix.org/system/c64/

Two new original tracks from virt

At MAGFest, I finally figured out why virt’s music site wasn’t being updated anymore: He has a new one (and it has a news feed, thank goodness). So when I got home I added it to my Super Seekrit Netvibes Universe* that I use for covering the community, and it didn’t take long to deliver. virt has already uploaded 2 new songs for download.

*I’m gonna be releasing a PROPER ThaSauce Netvibes Universe sometime soon for public use…feel free to use mine until then, but know a newer, BETTER one will be out shortly, and linked somewhere on the main page.

Sorcerors Battle

Posted by Jake on January 10th, 2009 filed in Chiptunes, Music Release

This is one of the three new songs I debuted at MAGFest 7 –
An FM journey into an epic past where metallic wizards do battle on
high windy cliffs with guitars and lightning. Dedicated to Wizwars, who
couldn’t be at Magfest, and who was deeply missed in an otherwise
incredible chiptune concert.

Download file:

 

Turbonugget

Posted by Jake on January 10th, 2009 filed in Chiptunes, Music Release

This is Nugget’s Theme. For anyone who doesn’t already know,
Nugget is my adorable puppy (there’s a link to a picture on my About
page). This song is for and about him — his own simpler, more upbeat
counterpart to “Staring at My Spaceship”. The mini-melodies during the
silent pauses are the “fanfares” our Roomba vacuum plays when it starts
and finishes cleaning, respectively. The Roomba is Nugget’s best
friend, they were raised together.

Download file:

New Anime Remix Site Design and a New Remix by Xaleph!

http://img504.imageshack.us/img504/2522/ei1a3qlx5dp3fw0.jpg

What I said over there:

WE’LL
DO IT LIVE! We did a LOT of testing with this new version of the site,
to iron out all the big bugs, but there’s likely a few left just from
carrying this new design over. If you find anything wrong or if you’d
like to give feedback on the design, let Xaleph know [because that’s
not my job :D]. Well I think it’s great, the black and brownish greens
were getting depressing. All those headers everyone
worked on are now gone but I hope anyone didn’t work TOO hard on those.
Perhaps we’ll enlist everyone’s help on making new site headers this
time too! AAAAAAAAnyway, welcome to the new site.

There’s also a new remix by Xaleph and some woman I’ve never heard of, so check that out too!

Post MAGFest Depression / New Staff Blog

So MAGfest has come and gone, and we’re all very sad :((( I had a really amazing time this year, and I’m sure everyone else who went will agree. I’m gonna make a PROPER MAGFest reflections post sometime later this week (or early next week, depending on how stuff works out), but for now I just wanted to post about the new and exciting stuff they’re already planning for NEXT YEAR’S MAGFest!

From the MAGFest Staff Blog:

This is the new (as of Jan 2009) Magfest staff blog where we’ll be
posting up news and info, and bouncing ideas off of you guys. I’m Dom,
the new Music Coordinator of Magfest. Expect the same insane music from
years past but more of it and even more badass.

I think I’m
speaking for everyone in saying that Magfest 7 ROCKED and was the best
one so far. We had 3 nights of concerts, jamspace, a chiptunes rave,
tons of impromptu and scheduled bands, insane gaming, insane LAN, and
all around good time. Plus we had excellent game industry presence,
awesome panels. We had 1350+ attendees, almost 30% up from last year.
This year we had the most game music bands ever.

I am starting
up this Magfest staff blog to give everyone on Magfest staff the
opportunity to communicate what our plans and ideas for next year are,
and to let you guys give us feedback and suggestions. Keep in mind, any
of the stuff you see on this blog can change in an instant – Magfest is
incredibly flexible and we’ll change stuff up until the day before if
we feel like it’ll work better.

Here’s a laundry list of our biggest things that we’re looking at for next year:

JAMSPACE:
The biggest changes relate to scheduled events in Jamspace: Next year
Jamspace will return to be ONLY 24/7 unscheduled jamming. There will be
no concerts of any kind in there, just freeform jamming as it was meant
to be. Having scheduled events in there was a hack to get around not
having the support to put them in other rooms and limiting the amount
of jam times. Next year we’re going to have more space for the other
events.

NEW CHIPTUNES RAVE: If you weren’t in Jamspace on Friday
or Saturday night, you missed almost a dozen fantastic chiptunes
artists (including the unbelievable Renard + Virt headline) rock the
hell out of a packed-to-capacity, insane, glowstick-wielding,
breakdancing crowd. It turns out that Magfest DOES like raves
after all. Next year, we’re not only bringing this back, but we’re
moving it into the main concert hall and doing a full-on non-stop
hardcore chiptunes+dj rave – for real. Think same energy as this year
but bigger and more badass. I need you all to pimp this out that next
year’s rave is NOT to be missed.

OPEN MIC CONCERT: One the cool
side-effects of Jamspace was that it gets people together and, once in
a while, spawns bands like Metroid Metal. The Open Mic concert is a
chance for those going the extra step to prepare stuff to be able to
show it off at Magfest. To this effect the Open mic concerts will
probably be moving somewhere that’s not jamspace and getting a bit more
official-ized, maybe even moving to the main concert hall during the
day. They will still be open for any group that wants to sign up. We’re
going to work on some details that also don’t step on bands which need
practice time.

STAFFING: Our staff is brilliant and hardworking,
but we need more! If you’re even remotely interested in helping out,
this is the year we’re going to need you the most because Magfest is
going to explode. Magfest 8 is the year we’ve been waiting for. We’re
looking for talented people to step up and take charge of areas they
are passionate about.

MEDIA OPS: We started up a new department
at Magfest headed by Kroze and Xerol called Media Ops. Media Ops is
currently gathering up over 100 hours of DV video, multitrack audio,
pictures, sites, blogs, and anything for use in future promotion. This
is also and archive for guys like PBC, X-Strike, ScrewAttack, and
anyone else who wants stuff. The idea is that you send us a terabyte
drive, or send e.g. $150 and we’ll buy one for you. We’ll load it up
full of uncompressed DV video clips of interesting things with good
audio, then ship the hard drive back to you for consumption.

On
that note as well, I’ve started up a Wiki page for any news sites or
threads or videos we find from here on out. Thanks to ANYONE who posted
something about Magfest:
http://baltimorebarcams.com/dom/index.php?title=Magfest7Coverage

PROMOTION:
I will also say that our future promotion plans are bigger in scope
than anything we’ve ever done before. I will need everyone’s help on
this getting things posted to sites. Expect really really big things
for next year’s marketing Blitz, which will probably kick in around
August to September.

Magfest is the anti-convention and we
intend to keep it that way – nothing to us is more important than
keeping that grassroots user-driven feel that makes Magfest so unique
amongst all other gaming and music events. HELP US ON OUR ROAD TOWARDS
INEVITABLE WORLD DOMINATION.

-Dom