Hey fellow musicians and listeners!

For my chiptune fans...

I have SIX chiptunes in the works currently. In fact, they were all in progress while I released the ones that were finished. I've decided to finally get them all done. All of them are inspired from the styles of real NES chiptunes, as if they could be dropped right into the 80's and early 90's right away. I've learned a lot about chiptune composition and arrangement through remixing 8-bit tunes and studying the techniques of 8-bit work.

ALL THE CHIPTUNES, LIKE THE ONES I'VE ALREADY RELEASED, ARE MADE WITHIN THE NES HARDWARE LIMITS - 1 Triangle Wave, 2 Square Waves, 1 Noise Channel, 1 DPCM channel. The songs never exceed those limits. I want to make them sound like they could really come straight out of a NES game.

Status on those chiptunes will be updated here.

I won't be releasing any until they're all done - they will all be released simultaneously on the same day! Stay tuned for that time!

1.) SpaceFarer [DONE!]- Shmup-style space action! Think Gradius.

2.) Chip Man [in progress] - Why, it's like level music for a Megaman robot master!

3.) Shined Blind [in progress] - Wacky and all-over-the-place! Fun stuff.

4.) In a Flash [in progress] - Stylish butt-kicking time!

5.) Sky Hawks [in progress] - Aerial fighter-style game music!

6.) Task Force 8 [in progress] - Side-scrolling Contra-style shooter action. This track is special because I'm pretending I have the VRC6 sound chip, and giving the track EXTRA CHANNELS and BASS!

Stay tuned folks....
Six chiptunes are going to drop soon, out of nowhere.

Feel free to leave some comments, and I will respond to any questions/comments etc.

Updated: 06/12/09 11:39 AM 3 comments | Log in to comment! | Share this!

So Milkman-Dan on his great Canadian Audio Tour checked into the Sutton Hotel in Toronto over the weekend, and although he was out when I dropped by, and everyone else had visited the day before, I met up with (NG Tank Award-Winning!) Maestro. We worked a bit on the collaboration track (and as you'll hear, had some difficulties with Dan's CUBASE!), did an interview, and ate Sobey's chicken with our bare hands. It was pretty tasty.

Without further ado, here's the interview!

http://www.symphonyofspecters.com/file s/audiosad/Interview2.mp3

P.S. If you really want to piss Maestro off... tell him his songs sound like Naruto.

Updated: 06/04/08 1:30 AM 7 comments | Log in to comment! | Share this!

[NOTE: THIS RANT HAS BEEN EDITED FROM ITS ORIGINAL FORM]

Okay, music composers of Newgrounds and others from around the world. Want me to lay the truth on you right away?

-You suck.-

That's right. You read that correctly. You suck, and chances are good that not only do you suck, but you probably suck a lot. You especially suck a lot more than you think you do.

But hey, don't feel bad - or at least, don't feel singled out. I suck too. Even every day I get better, I suck more. Every time I think I'm good, the facts hit me like a brick wall and it's clear that I still suck.

Sucking is an epidemic, but it's not new, nor is it obvious. But it has a cure.

I think a lot of people suck at composition but the person I most focus on in that department is myself. Every time I, or you, think you're good, someone younger or who has invested less time will kick the shit out of us and we won't understand how it happened. Every time we want to believe we've achieved something in our composition, we've gotten somewhere, face it - you and I probably still suck.
(There are a few guys on here who I think don't suck, but if you asked them, I'm sure they'd feel they do, even if only at times. There are people who think I don't suck, but I'd tell them they're wrong.)

Now - by telling you that you suck, I don't mean that you should go cry and cut your wrists. In fact I don't mean it as something to get you down AT ALL. What I'm saying is that with the internet, you're going to discover another truth:

-You are not special for being able to compose music.-

Ouch, right? Two painful truths in one blog entry. But allow me to explain.

If you want to start a band, be a film composer, be a studio musician or concert performer, you're probably doing something about it. People around you are noticing, and your friends and other people you know might even be impressed. Maybe even really impressed. If you want to GET somewhere, if you want to achieve a certain skill level in your craft, you have to start knowing and believing that you are not cool or amazing just for being able to put together a song here and there.

What you should know and believe is that you are cool and amazing for composing COOL and AMAZING music. Especially in the commercial sphere where there are too many musicians vying for commercial success for you to simply be able to compose "nicely".

The more and more that I do this, the more I hear composers that are just like you, out there with hopes for perfection of their craft but without direction. Film composition - an elitist compositional career, right? Very little competition? You could NOT be more wrong. Modern technology has turned every little Jimmy with a piano keyboard into an orchestrator.

And speaking of the general public - I was talking to a guy last night who didn't know what a "key" was in a musical sense. You must realize that the general public is so musically unaware that almost no matter what you compose, if it has a tune and can be listened to on an iPod, then someone somewhere is going to be impressed with your stack of aural shit.

The next person we'll find is musically unaware is ourselves. Maybe you were one of those Mozarts, those Beethovens, who started Music early and continued with it baffling everyone in your grade 5 classes at school playing Grade 10 piano pieces. But chances are, especially if you're here on NG, that you weren't. Thus, our understanding of music - wait for it - sucks. (And I'm jealous of you young-starters.)

To be honest, even being an amazing performer with massive theory knowledge says nothing about your ability to compose - I personally know people whose theory and technical knowledge as well as their performance ability greatly outstrips my own, yet these people have never written a single song, and some can't even IMAGINE doing so. Moving on...

If we want to become truly good at composing music, it's not enough to just keep composing. Among many other things, the first step is to IGNORE praise that doesn't come from someone who is blatantly and obviously better than you.

Unless you're just doing music as a casual activity or hobby, I want you to ignore all those rave reviews your shitty new song is getting and pay attention to the critical ones, and the ones that come from composers who can and have already musically shit on you. Hell, I'm sorry to say but apart from replying to reviews that warranted replying, I've tried to ignore virtually every review on my pieces that hasn't come from someone like Winterwind, for example, who is obviously more skilled than me. If I release a song, then it's because I personally think it's good enough, so the reviews telling me it's good aren't going to do anything more than further that thought until it becomes delusion.

Okay, so maybe you shouldn't totally ignore it all. But if we pay too much attention to it, we're going to feed our egos until they're too fat to get out the front door in the morning.

Before I start getting even more ridiculously prescriptive, let's get back to the main topic.

All that you need to remember from this unnecessarily long rant is this:

Our ability to compose music is a common talent shared by many, and our skill in composition pales in comparison to many of those who share that talent. While your friends or your girlfriends may call us things like "Genius" (which is absolutely fucking ludicrous), and it might make us feel all good and cool and skilled as a composer, we still have MILES AND MILES AND MILES TO GO before we're actually legitimately good.

And there are many who are good. Very many.

Here's where the hopefulness kicks in, though - if we "Suck", we don't have to forever. But we're going to have to do something about it, and make a conscious effort.

Nowhere here in this rant do I mean to imply futility towards ANY of our musical goals - in fact, I encourage quite the opposite, no matter how little a chance we think we have of accomplishing those goals, they can be pursued and completed.

We've all fallen victim to this self-appreciation that often comes as a composer, it's called ego and everyone gets it. Ego isn't always the problem though, it's often the general music awareness.

If the worth of a thing can be established by comparing it against others, then it's no wonder we all continue to compose shit and think it doesn't suck. People tell you how good you are, yet they are comparing your music to their own horribly childish perceptions of it.

You DO NOT have an ego problem. You hear me? Well, most of you, anyway, don't have ego problems. The real problem, as stated above, stems from the average non-composing public who FEEDS our egos because they actually think our music is good. Opinions from the musically unaware, the sonically uneducated, are nothing more than impressions.

There is hope, of course - there are those in the professional realm who should be able to sit down and say "I finally don't suck." And for a great deal of them, they'd be right (there are those who have had commercial success but are musically worse than even a select few here on Newgrounds, who are the ones who should really be raking in that cash). But we're not them, not yet anyway.

So face it, Newgrounds Audio Portal composers - you probably all suck. And so do I. Welcome to the club. Let's do something about it, eh? We can't suck forever. I know we can't suck forever because we are going to actually do something about it, not just because our "parents tell me I'm going to be famous, and my girlfriend calls me a real genius and says I'm going to go far in music!"

I don't mean this rant to be negative, despite the ridiculous negativity that permeates it. :D We do and always will, have space to improve. So work on it and make ourselves amazing as composers. This is the best thing - it's NEVER too late to become amazing. Dedicate ourselves to being better through whatever we can, and we will most definitely reach a point where problems with our work are hard to find, or rather, no one really cares to try and find them because they enjoy the music so much.

When I say "you suck" or "I suck," it's not really a personal thing. Even if you are very good, the problem is that there are so many people out there who are just as good as you. If the same quality of product was available in 50 different brands at your grocery store, would it really matter which one you chose?

So go be amazing, just know that we're probably not there yet and we probably won't be for a long time. Not the end of the world, and hey, anytime we're feeling down we can let our egos have just a LITTLE snack from people you know who hear your music. And once we stop sucking, well, we can still be improving even from there. And at least we'll probably be getting paid. :D

---NickPerrin

Updated: 06/01/08 3:20 PM 18 comments | Log in to comment! | Share this!

(If you want to skip to my music discussed in this post, check it out at the Haunted Era MySpace)

When I first heard the song "The Presence is Ominous" on the album "Quintessence" by Borknagar, an obscure metal band hailing from Norway, I think that was the turning point. That was the moment when I first heard what music could be. I must have listened to that song, and subsequently that album nonstop for the rest of the week. I never knew music could even have such effects on people. I literally got a physical high off that song the first few times.

I had been listening to junk, just like "everyone else" my whole life. More importantly, music was only an afterthought to "everything else". I had been de-sensitizing my critical ear by continually listening to stuff from simplistic game soundtracks and the same few artists over and over. Without this numbing of musical openness, that first transcendental metal song never would have hit home so hard. Today, music has transformed from an afterthought into a career choice.

Needless to say, after whetting my appetite with that album, I moved on to explore more of their albums and more of the insanely vast genre that is Metal. Over time I developed a very discerning taste for the genre. Somehow, I ended up composing my own metal. In the past even before that, I had attempted composing in the same style as those game soundtracks I used to listen to, with horrendous results, but after all this good metal I felt like I had a real musical grounding now, so I decided to put together a serious "project."

Drawing on every influence of my very favourite metal bands(and there are few that I really enjoy), I created "Haunted Era." I don't play guitar, bass, drums, piano or all the symphonic instruments I wanted to use, so I programmed all of the music via my PC, Logic Audio and a whole bunch of plug-ins. I knew nothing about audio production but the music just had to come out! Despite all my hard efforts and literally hours worth of music, I had not produced a final album. Just songs, bits of songs, and ideas. What WAS done was good, though.

So, this can officially be called my first real musical endeavour - now, I'm doing mainly symphonic stuff and tinkering with audio production techniques. In the coming months, perhaps even year if it takes that long, I intend to finally complete this album, taking into account the original vision I had of a brand of metal that is all at once intimate, powerful, ambitious, dark, and complex. Hopefully with new hardware and software, newfound audio production knowledge, and improved compositional skill, I can revive this project and make it what it was always meant to be. A lot of interest was expressed in the music from very many angles, so there is no question that albums could indeed be sold.

For those into very melodic, musical metal, or those just interested/curious, you can check out a few tracks from back in the day at the Haunted Era MySpace.

I sign into that Myspace account every once in a while to check on this, but it is mostly to preserve the music I made years ago. I hope to update it again soon, with remastered, reworked versions of the tracks and finally put together a full, cohesive album.

Guys, let me know what you think! Oh, and the only problem I ever had with this "band" was the name, people didn't seem to like it. Any suggestions??

EDIT: Holy shit. Just did a google search of "Haunted Era" and found this, which I've NEVER seen before today, notice how it says "17 year old" and I'm 19 now :
http://www.sonicfrontiers.net/forum/vi ewtopic.php?t=273&highlight=&sid=bf9f5 16622a758f0a43711cf6af77eda

I deserve a label-contract, eh? Well, why don't I try to do that this year?

Updated: 03/19/08 5:33 AM 0 comments | Log in to comment! | Share this!