KVR Audio

Sendy · Post by **Sendy** » Sat Dec 27, 2014 9:45 pm

The latest labour of love in FAMItracker. 100% legit chiptune, would play on an expanded NES.

https://soundcloud.com/sendy/tempest-in ... um-preview

Not quite finished, but finished enough to show off as a preview. Working with such limited materials is simply doing wonders for my creativity. I haven't touched my DAW in weeks, and I've dabbled in styles and techniques I wouldn't normally.

In short, enforced limitations do wonders for creativity, and are great fun. I hope it shows in the music

Tricky-Loops · Post by **Tricky-Loops** » Sat Dec 27, 2014 9:51 pm

Sounds like Chiptune Punk!

Sendy · Post by **Sendy** » Sat Dec 27, 2014 10:10 pm

Thanks. Yeah, "punk" was on the tip of my tongue, but I didn't think of it.

There's a certain punk aesthetic to chiptunes a lot of the time. It's rough and ready. You're doing things you never thought possible with pulse waves.

Thanks for listening

TrekStar · Post by **TrekStar** » Sat Dec 27, 2014 10:52 pm

very tasteful put together

polyslax · Post by **polyslax** » Sun Dec 28, 2014 12:34 am

That's hilarious... got a right celtic vibe to it. It's cool to hear chiptrax done with utter sincerity rather than as a fad lofi piece. Nicely done!

sbj · Post by **sbj** » Sun Dec 28, 2014 6:04 pm

I don't normally get carried away by chiptunes but when the
musicality - like here - is shining through, there is nothing to
do but surrender.
And the fun is easy to hear in this piece.

Brilliant

Aleatoriac · Post by **Aleatoriac** » Sun Dec 28, 2014 6:41 pm

Yeah! I love the staccato sound that appears around 1:48 for a bit.

epiphaneia · Post by **epiphaneia** » Sun Dec 28, 2014 9:15 pm

That must be the most entertaining chip tune I´ve heard in ages, sort of chip-glitch-punk-ish

Finally something that doesn´t sound like a Donkey Kong theme rehash. Fine work!

nineofkings · Post by **nineofkings** » Mon Dec 29, 2014 3:18 pm

This is great! Love those distinctive arp-chords. I think I'm going to have to pick up trackers again; I had Famitracker a long time ago, but I've recently been getting into Sunvox.

Sendy · Post by **Sendy** » Mon Dec 29, 2014 3:38 pm

Thanks everyone for the kind words. I'm glad I'm not the only one who enjoyed it.

I will be using that staccato arp sound some more in the coda of the track. Actually I've used a variant of it on a few of these tunes as I quite like it myself.

Certainly, when it comes to chiptunes, I'm more interested in pushing forwards than looking back to the past, no matter how nostalgic some of those old tunes are, they (and the copycat songs) have been done to death. There's plenty of new, unexplored territory in these chips, and programs like FAMItracker and Plogue Chipsounds are helping me explore and discover them

I do love me some Stickerbrush Symphony, though.

recursive one · Post by **recursive one** » Mon Dec 29, 2014 4:36 pm

Take some chiptunes, some blues, some psytrance, some absynthe and some weed and here you go.

Usually chiptune stuff leaves me completely cold, but this one is excellent.

Sendy · Post by **Sendy** » Mon Dec 29, 2014 9:39 pm

Sweetles. Thanks

While I'm here I may as well fill this thread with some more chippy goodness. Still with FAMItracker here...

This one is my take on some kind of Russian folk tune, like you'd find in Tetris:

http://soundcloud.com/sendy/the-bitters ... nding-doom

And this one is some good old ambient d+b:

http://soundcloud.com/sendy/spooky-action-at-a-distance

These both have had some stuff added to them since I uploaded these files, but that'll have to wait for the album, which is coming out in Feburary hopefully. It'll be "pay what you like" including nothing, so there's really no excuse for not picking it up if you like it

recursive one · Post by **recursive one** » Tue Dec 30, 2014 7:38 am

These two are also fine, especially the ambient piece, but I still like the one on the OP the best.

Is "Bittersweet lament" really based on an existing Russian folk song or just inspired by? To me it sounds more like a tune from 70's Soviet movie.

Sendy · Post by **Sendy** » Tue Dec 30, 2014 12:31 pm

Well, I was going for a sort of pastiche of the Tetris music, just to see how it would come out, but it sort of morphed into it's own thing about halfway in

Sendy · Post by **Sendy** » Sat Jan 03, 2015 12:50 am

Just finished another one in Famitracker. This one is me trying to be jolly without being overly cheesy. So far my forays into major keys have been enlighening.

http://soundcloud.com/sendy/it-is-what- ... amitraxx0r

I couldn't resist adding a little sample at the end. Bonus points if you can tell me what cartoon it's from

The expansion I used in this module is the Famicom Disk System, which gives you just one extra channel which can play single cycle waveforms that you can draw. You can't make wavetable sweeps, unless you retrigger with a different instrument (each instrument can have it's own drawn wave), but I abused this to get weird sweeps and fine-grain PWM, which you can hear in the leads in some spots.

Tempest Inside (More chiptunes added)