Most Recent

• Prince Caspian Is My Homeboy
• Pop At The Pumps
• Overclocked Oji Q&A
• Classic Cocktail Bar
• How To Moonwalk
• Ten Things To Do With Afternoon Asphalt
• Good Bleepin Tunes
• Dolph Lundgren ‘fo President
• Thanos Is God
• Cheese Is In The Air

Browse by Subject

• Comics
• Culture
• Film & TV
• Food and Drink
• Geek
• Music
• Quickies
• Random Goodness
• Toys & Games
• Uncategorized
• Video Games

Meta

• Login
• Entries RSS
• Comments RSS
• WordPress.org

   

Good Bleepin Tunes

Posted by Nostalgiaholic | on March 24, 2008

I know I’ve already espoused my love of those soldering gun-wielding geniuses over at 8bitpeoples.com in one of my recent “Quickies”, but I decided to upgrade this retro musing to a full-blown post.

I’ve been tripping the light fantastic to some very chirpy tunes lately. Some people call the style of music that I’m busting out to “8-Bit”, “Blipcore”, “Nintendocore”, or “Chiptune”. Basically it’s a style of electronic music that came from, or has been inspired-by video games. So no matter what it’s labeled as, you know it’s gonna be fun, and totally nostalgic.

Musical artists from all over the world congregate and swap self-made mp3s on websites dedicated to this lovably nerdy genre. Some of the content is original compositions created using 8-bit technology, like the aforementioned 8bitpeoples.com collective. Others use existing video game soundtracks and remix them using any kind of technology they want. Layers of electronic sound, Bootsie-esque funky bass beats, garage band riffing, or even full orchestral arrangements aren’t out of the question. The only rule when it comes to this style of music seems to be that the original game tune cannot be lost amongst all the new bells ‘n whistles. An essential part of the listening experience is to transport you right back into the comfy embrace of your family’s worn basement couch and first moment you heard that tune.

We’ve come a long way baby ! Can you believe it’s been 23 years since our ears first perked up to the infectiously hummable Super Mario Bros. theme ? You may not have played the game for eons, but you still remember the tune. Even now it’s bouncing around inside your brain isn’t it ?

Of course before Mario, came Space Invaders for the Atari, with it’s rhythmic, heart-attack-inducing bleeps that increased in speed as the creepy little aliens got closer to you. It wasn’t music per se, but it did compel you to mash that freakin fire button as fast as you could. They’re all around me !!! FIRE FIRE !!!

After Mario came the heroic fantasy scores from The Legend of Zelda and the “How did they do that with 8-Bits?” masterpiece from Final Fantasy. Both featured sweeping multi-blip harmonies that really got the axe-swinging Nordic blood pumping. Kind of like listening to the score to the Lord of The Rings movies if they were tapped out on a xylophone, or sang by Steven Hawking.

The plentiful sequels to Final Fantasy continued to expand the concepts and technology behind game music. The music for Final Fantasy 3 (six in Japan) was created in a succession of chorales and arias like some magnificent synthetic symphony, becoming one of the first truly immersive video game “soundtracks”. As long as I live, I’ll never forget the music that accompanied FF3’s psychotic antagonist Kefka every time he sauntered onto my TV screen… He was made of pixels, and only an inch tall, but when that evil calliope tune hit, and grew into a cacophony of chaos, I knew he was truly the Antichrist… and I was afraid.

And what about the pulsing techno-trance of the Megaman series ? The blue bomber raved through something like eight games without missing a single Oakenfold-esque beat, and I was right beside him, glow sticks in hand. Megaman 2 had especially inspiring music, featuring the now internet-famous remix of the Metalman stage seen here (watch your volume, the bass gets a little funny).

Nowadays video game soundtracks are big business. Multi-million dollar audio franchises like Half-Life, Gears Of War and Halo employ entire symphonies on the scale of major motion pictures. Soundtracks are now sold independently of the game itself, leading one to wonder when the collected Adventures of Lolo double CD set is gonna be released.

Anyway, the old-fashioned 8-Bit stuff sounds better right ? I guess you can judge for yourself :

8bitpeoples.com - One more time ! I compulsively link to this site because it is essential to the re-vitalization of vintage video game music. All the content is original, and in most cases the technology used to produce the music is cannibalized pieces of NES and SNES technology itself.

Overclocked ReMix - The grand Vatican of video game music provides the tools, teachings, and raw materials to compose your own remixes of classic 8-bit tunes. The enormous international community of composers is constantly creating more music on a daily basis in every audio style you can imagine. They’ve remixed any game you can name, old or new, go ahead and play stump the musician.

SLAY Radio - Wanna go waaaaaaaay back in time ? Before NES came the Commodore 64, and the boys ‘n gals @ SLAY Radio remember it well. Vintage Blipcore remixes and more are pumped out of Sweden (what is it about that part of the world that breeds such amazing internet radio ?), and filtered straight into your frontal Nostalgia lobe.

A Brief Timeline of Video Game Music - For anyone looking to study the history of chiptunes.

So there you go, that should slake any vintage music enthusiasts’ thirst for pixelized groovage. I’m loving DJ Disco Dan and DJ Jimmy Da Leaf on Overclocked ReMix right now, they’re just so freakin dancable !

I’ll let you get back to your listening pleasure-session, but before I go… He’s a clip from the Video Games Live orchestra performing a series of tunes from Classic Video Games . Enjoy !

Much love…

Bookmark: Del.icio.usSpurlFurlSimpyBlinkDigg
RSS feed for comments on this post

Wax Nostalgic?

Name

Mail (will not be published)

Website

Shwag

Tags