Reformat the Planet [a chiptune documentary]

[OverCoat]

http://www.pitchfork.tv/week/reformat-the-planet/chapter-01

This documentary will be available for a little less than a week so watch it now before it is not :3

This movie is very interesting if you want to know about chiptunes and the whole chip scene in New York, though this video does not completely represent chiptunes, in my opinion. More people need to understand that it goes way deeper than this, there's people who have been making chiptunes on the Atari ST/Amiga/PC/whatever for almost 20 years now, before the advent of LSDJ, hardware mods, midiNES, or anything like that, though it outlines the whole fascination with circuit bending, hardware mods, bleeps and bloops, and the similarities with the punk scene from the 70s/80s, so it's a good start for those who haven't considered listening to chip music or anything like that before.

[Sinewav]

Very nifty movie. Any idea what they're going to do with it once they take it down? It would be cool to purchase this on DVD and make all my nerdy musician friends watch. Makes me wish there was more of a demoscene going on in Cincinnati.

Semi-off topic, I've always wanted to get into chiptune composing (particularly Gameboy and C64), but whenever I google it, I get bombarded with options and I can't seem to find a noob friendly starting point (i.e., I'm a competent musician, but I know very little about music technology outside of how to use Reason 3.0 and how MIDI's work.) Any suggestions?

[OverCoat]

For Gameboy you'll def. need a... well, a gameboy, plus a flash cart to put LSDJ on. I'll help you with the "figuring out how to use a tracker" part somewhat but I don't know enough of LSDJ's interface since I've only used it once or twice.

For .sid making there's GoatTracker if you can find it, or you can make music on an actual C64, which has a lot more options.

The DVD will be available for this documentary, I believe. It's just a promo thing that pitchfork is doing.

http://2playerproductions.com/video/rftp/ is the site. It's getting played on screens, actually! But I don't know if a DVD will be available. Probably will - NOT releasing a DVD of your movie nowadays would be illogical

[Sinewav]

So I just got done watching it and looked at the website... apparently this is an official selection for SXSW Film Festival. For anyone who doesn't know what that means, it's kind of a big deal as far as indie films go.

And like OverCoat said, it seems like their marketing strategy is to post it for free for a week to get the word out, then try and sell hard copies to people who liked it. Kinda like what Joss Whedon did with Dr. Horrible. Highly experimental, but hopefully it works out for them. It's worked out really well for musical artists like Machinae Supremacy, so maybe films will get a similar result.

OverCoat: Thanks for the offer man. I might actually take you up on it eventually. For now, however, I'm dead broke, so getting my hands on a Gameboy, LSDJ, and/or a C64 is out of my non-existent budget. I'll check out that GoatTracker thing though. Is it relatively easy to pick up/user-friendly? I'm far from a computer geek, but I've spent enough time online to not computer dumb either.

And how much do Gameboys, LSDJ, and a C64 run for anyway? I wouldn't mind putting the money into them once I actually get my hands on some cash, but the documentary said that Gameboys are getting harder and harder to find... and I imagine C64s are a similar case.

[OverCoat]

I'll check out that GoatTracker thing though. Is it relatively easy to pick up/user-friendly?

heavens, no. You have to teach yourself what a pulse table is, what a wavetable is... and how to cut off sections of them. Took me a while to wrap my head around this. On top of that the interface is shit, though it's the best you're going to get for .sid on windows, and unfortunately is probably better than most C64 options. I talked to Jeroen Tel (WAVE) about how he managed to make music on the C64, and he told me he just coded the song from scratch. Probably C64 BASIC or something.

iirc zabutom and hoffmann(randall) use or have used goattracker [you'll see them in the HVSC]

You can PROBABLY find a used gameboy fairly inexpensive, like 10 bucks at the most, I hope. I'm not sure of the cost of the flash cart and LSDJ though. Also, C64s, depending on how complete they are, can be anywhere from $20 to $100. C64s are totally worth it, and there's some kickass games available for it as well as any music apps you may find.

Also, lookie here

[Sinewav]

So basically, to the best of your knowledge, there IS no easy way to program .sid music... except maybe a SID Station which is waaaaay out of my budget.

I think I'll start with the Gameboy stuff and work my way up then. Good find by the way. There's some awesome stuff on that site.

[Monobrow]

that's the spirit :J

[Battousai]

I burned the movie to CD. Great film with a good variety of artists being represented, although (as SoCk puppet mentioned) this is limited mostly to those with LSDJ and midiNES etc.

Try to spot the virt! He's in there a few times.

[FiremanJoe]

Cool video... wish there was something about scenes outside America, though.

[OverCoat]

I burned the movie to CD. Great film with a good variety of artists being represented, although (as SoCk puppet mentioned) this is limited mostly to those with LSDJ and midiNES etc.

Try to spot the virt! He's in there a few times.

I saw him in chapter 9 :3 during the Hally concert I think