It Ain't All Geetars and Mopy

[solarbird]

So I heard back from C0splay, and he doesn't have his notes anymore, but did remember the bands we talked about, so here's that combined with what I remember:

We started out talking about the prehistory of chiptunes. I talked about one of the two most important computers ever made: the Commodore 64, which took computers from those all-knowing superbrains of Colossus: The Forbin Project to "that thing you play games and do homework on" in 1981, and how it did for computer sound what the Amiga did later for graphics¹ in changing the way hackers thought about it. We talked about the demo scene of the mid- and late 80s and early 90s for a while after that, and how that led to things like the gameboy, and how that became a musical instrument.

Then MC-3P0 and C0splay talked a lot about the history of hiphop - of MC Hawking, of MC Frontalot, and how a lot of people had started coming in from liking hiphop and rap but also being geeks, and, "you rap what you know," and how that turned into the roots of nerdcore. And they talked about how the humour was important from the start, which reminded me of KOMPRESSOR, the German industrial/techno and later hiphop alt-identity of Drew from Toothpaste for Dinner and Married to the Sea.

We also talked a lot about the DIY aesthetic that connects most geek music (and, not incidentally, punk) and the Lo-Tech Resistance and the 8-bit Collective, the people who hang out in front of the convention centre at PAX jamming out music on Game Boys with custom mods and carts, and the rest.

We talked a little about some bands who are kind of premodern geekmusic or geekmusic outside any category - arguably a fair chunk of metal (seriously, lots of those people are serious geeks), Za Frûmi (orc opera - no lie, sung entirely in Black Speech), Devo (absolutely geeks), Jonathan Coulton (of course), The Laziest Men on Mars, I totally forgot Joe Sparks and Devil Doll, OMG! I just remembered I should've mentioned them, They Might Be Giants, and and and and...

And I'm spending more time on chiptunes and everything else than nerdcore, which isn't fair but I don't know the nerdcore history as well, and I didn't take enough notes. But we started talking a lot about specific bands and playing samples right about them, so here's some list action for you, complete with links:

Chiptunes:

• The Megas. "Mega Man Cover Music" doesn't begin to describe these people. They're writing the soundtrack to the SF themes underlying the games, which are deeply fucked up if you give them more than three seconds thought and as such are awesome.
• Fighter X
• she, who are unbelievably awesome and I don't know why "Coloris" doesn't start Norwescon dances every goddamn year. Welcome to the future.
• Circles, who used to be with CruncyCo and I think are now with 8-bit Collective.
• Unicorn Dream Attack, out of Minnesota. Go listen to "4l0n3." Now.
• Anamanaguchi, who have played PAX a couple of times - I've seen them live there and their sonic and visual attack is a force of goddamn nature.
• I Fight Dragons. The player's in the upper right hand corner of the page. Play with it or die.
• Nullsleep. Gods, nullsleep. You like hardcore raw sound? You like Nullsleep. I like their higher-BPM stuff in particular. Watch them in Tokyo at the Low-Bit Playground.
• Kids Get Hit By Buses, Seattle locals! Check 'em.

Nerdcore love:

• Death*Star, our guests and my co-panelists, who rawked the haus on Saturday night.
• Beefy, out in Richland!
• YT Cracker, actual gangsta hiphop in that he was in serious trouble as a kid for hacking into other peoples' computers.
• MC Lars's post-punk laptop rap, and the first nerdcore artist to chart, having done it in 2006 in Australia, with "Download This Song."
• MC Chris, who was also Hesh in Sealab 2021, and yes, that really is what he sounds like omg.
• MC Frontalot, who did not invent nerdcore, but did name it.
• Optimus Rhyme. The name alone earns a listen.
• Supercommuter, 8-bit hiphop! Also local.
• Billy the Fridge
• Infadread is another favourite of C0splay's, and they've got a couple of tracks online.
• Jesse Dangerously, nerdcore from Nova Scotia! Fuck yea mudkips!
• UltraKlystron, aka Karl Olson, from Kirkland.

Other forms:

• Kirby Krackle and their comic book pop rock.
• Paul and Storm, comedy nerdpop with songs about Frogger and nun fights.
• Crime and the Forces of Evil, elfmusic that is so not into you² and comes pre-loaded with RAEG.

That's most of what I remember. If I left anybody out, I apologise! Please go listen and enjoy.

---

1. Which is to say: before the Amiga, people hadn't been focusing on number of colours but number of pixels in order to get realistic images; it was a print-like approach. Increase the resolution enough and you only need three colours, maybe four. The Amiga inverted this and gave you now-low-grade-but-then-astounding photorealism at 320x400 at 4096 colours; it changed how people thought about graphics in a fundamental way. Similarly, the C64 before it had gone from one simple voice that you'd try to change very very often to get sound to three voices with some complexity. The Amiga continued this, of course, but the C64 laid the groundwork.
   
2. Except when it is. Also, MC-3P0 actually did plug me on the panel, so I have a right.

Comments

[batyatoon]

Nerdcore woo! Jesse D is my homey from back when we used to hang out on the brunchma.com board. He's fourteen flavors of awesome.

I also think highly of Schaffer the Darklord -- have you encountered any of his stuff?

[solarbird]

I had not! Thank you!

8-bit rivalries

[rfunk.livejournal.com]

Dubbing the C64 as one of the two most important computers ever made because it had 3-voice sound brings out a bit of the old rivalries I was a part of back in the early 80s. That's because I had an Atari computer, and they had 4-voice sound (with various options for distortion), even back in 1979. :-)

Of course, The Atari, Commodore, and Apple communities were all important and had a lot of overlap. Lots of fun stuff was built on those little 6502 chips.

Come to think of it, Atari and Commodore kinda swapped people in the transition from the 8-bit era to the 16-bit era; as I recall, the Amiga was designed by former Atari guys, while the Atari ST was designed by former Commodore guys.

Re: 8-bit rivalries

[solarbird]

True, and I thought of the Atari with its distortion options - but the C64 actually let you edit the waveform in its entirety, and while I saw some neat stuff on the Atari machines of the era, the C64 demo scene music was freaking crazy. And lasted longer.

Re: 8-bit rivalries

[solarbird]

Also, and what the Atari got right, was the 256 colour palette, and what Apple got right was an expansion chassis worthy of the name and a better disk i/o system. Really, they all got parts of it right. Even the CoCo, even with all its freakiness, also had its 6509 and hardware multiply and a few other slick tricks. You opened that thing up to get a proper video signal out rather than the built-in RF bullshit and it could surprise you.

Re: 8-bit rivalries

[solarbird]

Oh, and! The reason the C64 was important was because of the "so not Colossus" thing combined with its extreme affordability, not specifically the voices. It was cheap enough that it could be pervasive in the way the Atari 400/800/130 weren't. It got microcomputers into the popular mind at home to the same degree that the IBM PC got microcomputers into business, forming a two-pronged 1981 ATTAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK!

[sistawendy.livejournal.com]

As a musician, what could be geekier than accordion? They Might Be Giants, baby.

[banjoplayinnerd.livejournal.com]

Word.

[solarbird]

Sure; hence their mention in paragraph five. I didn't link because they're already very, very, very well known.

[banjoplayinnerd.livejournal.com]

Great screaming FSM, I feel so left out because (1) I was selling TRS-80s back in the day, so that's what I knew; and (2) the fact that I was selling TRS-80s back in the day means that I've pretty much aged out of the target group for a lot of this stuff. (I like some of what I hear, but I will readily admit it wasn't written with me in mind.)

But the TRS-80 wasn't completely left out; there was an addon board you could get called Orchestra-80 that was a four-voice synthesizer. I don't know of anyone who ever did anything significant with it, though, in part because it was a $100 (I think) addon to an already expensive system.

I seem to also remember that there was a program that would do polyphonic sound by rotating rapidly between four different, very very short tones, but I may be mixing that up with a similar program for the early versions of the original IBM PC.

[solarbird]

Sure, Orchestra-80 was awesome! But also quite rare, in the greater scheme of things, and sadly a bit too early to have influence later. I'd also point out the original Dancing Demon and the music capabilities it had, if you want to talk TRS-80 days. But that's all history and while interesting not the main point of the panel. It's now that there's a real scene and such that's most interesting from a pure music standpoint. It's fertile creative ground and fun! ^_^

[banjoplayinnerd.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I was thinking of Dancing Demon too, although I think it was monophonic and included "percussion" (clicks and taps).

My point was that the TRS-80, my computer of choice for years, didn't have the built-in capabilities of some of the other computers of the day, and therefore was an insignificant part of the early-day music scene (the progenitor of today's chiptune scene). Sad but true.

[solarbird]

If you showed up with a TRS-80 emulator running on a laptop and some music software, particularly if the laptop was detailed out with old TRS-80 logo work, I think I could comfortably assure you that you would rawk the haus with your awesome oldsk00l.

I totally want to do this now. Probably not quite enough to actually do the work needed, but I want to.

[kallisti.livejournal.com]

A few things to mention...first of all, it's MC Hawking, not Halking...:-)

The Atari was a major player in the semi-professional field, since the ST had built in MIDI ports, and so many small and home studios used them as part of their keyboard rigs.

Apple also had some pro stuff, the main one being the Alpha Syntari synth that was a pair of cards you would plug in to an Apple ][+, and would give you part of what a Fairlight would give you, at a fraction of the cost.

ttyl

[solarbird]

Typo corrected, thanks.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Gawd, I love what little I've heard of Unicorn Dream Attack. Sadly, I will never, ever be able to decipher enough of their Myspace home page to figure out how to listen to more.

[quen-elf.livejournal.com]

The Flash player should be above 'upcoming shows' on top right. Load the page, wait ages, see if it appears. If it doesn't, hit reload and repeat. (I had success after about 4 tries.) Make sure you don't have any other MySpace windows open, too.

By the way I didn't like that tune. :)

Referring to original post: I liked 'Fighter X', 'she' is also very good... shouldn't 'infradread' be in another section, or is that even the wrong link, it's rap not chiptunes (and it's meh)... 'i fight dragons' has nice production but basically just guitar music really...

I think the Amiga (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAnDUGfK7QM) was a pretty serious sound revolution, even more than a graphical one. The graphics were great and did include some impressive concepts (although not sure the 'you can have really nice full colour, but only for stills because the system can't do anything else' mode was that good) but the sound was incredible in a fully-rounded kind of way because they ditched synthesis and went for (then) large sampled audio.

PCs of the time often had MIDI which was expensive and basically sounded awful except for classical piano music (because the voices weren't well standardised). With an Amiga, you could program real and/or interesting sounds into it, so there was a lot of dance music, which obviously makes it lots better in my eyes. :)

Not to diss C64, it obviously had a very impressive sound chip too, and is still used/emulated today, which Amiga isn't really - but I feel Amiga repeated that revolution and took it to another level which other systems took ages to reach. PC had the weak-arse SoundBlaster... and a small but intense following (mainly demoscene) around the Gravis Ultrasound, which was not only awesome but also RED! and was basically about 8 Amigas stuck together. (Or 3.5 Amigas but in 44kHz, if you preferred.)

Good times. And I quite like chiptunes today, but, I dunno, it's not the same if you aren't also reading a badly written scrolltext by some danish guy as a 3d cube spins round... :)

[solarbird]

By the way I didn't like [4l0n3]. :)
you

yes, you

need help

^_^

eta: also yes infradread should've been in nerdcore, I moved it

[uniquecrash5.livejournal.com]

MySpace has been around for ages now, and is still apparently used. So why is the layout still so completely loathsome? It boggles the mind...

[westrider.livejournal.com]

We talked a little about some bands who are kind of premodern geekmusic or geekmusic outside any category - arguably a fair chunk of metal (seriously, lots of those people are serious geeks)...

Seriously. I'm a total metalhead, and it still blows my mind how much of this incredibly heavy stuff comes out so nerdy once you actually read the lyrics. My vote for the top slot goes to Summoning, an Austrian Black Metal band who've built their entire career on songs about Middle Earth, including a couple in the Black Tongue of Mordor, but there are so many others. White/Rob Zombie, Iron Maiden, Blind Guardian, Metallica, so many others.

[l33tminion]

Also worth mentioning, if you like remixes of videogame music:
OverClocked Remix
DJ Cutman
Metroid Metal