Jump to content

SHNABUBULA HATES CHIPTUNES...thank you time magazine


Sam Ascher-Weiss
 Share

Recommended Posts

I can see how she got the quote from the transcript excerpts Sam posted, but it's like she ignored the last half of his sentences. It's possible she was just taking rough notes and didn't get to write down his qualifying statements, leaving only the more sensational and vaguely negative stuff.

What ever happened to audio recording?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

How in the world does she get that quote from what your orignally said that you posted earlier in this thread? Is she intentionally trying to bash chirptunes?

She probably had it in her head to segway into a negative segment for the article. This is just sloppy journalism though - really, taking the comments of an artist like Shnabubula, who has a chiptune rendition in that very album, and then skewing it to a negative comment? Just doesn't make sense at all.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Reader's Digest version, also edited into the first post:

To summarize what happened for the first post, Sam's purported statement in the TIME article...

It's probably the most limiting form of music-making I can think of," he says. "You're making somewhat unpleasant music with outdated computers. You need a masochistic desire to have something difficult to do."

...was synthesized from this...

"mario 1 had great compositions but the actual textures are somewhat unpleasant in contrast to soundtracks that followed many of which are absolutely gorgeous just on a purely sonic level.. let alone as compositions. The intro to solstice is a good example"

and way later

"there are fringe elements of the community that take masochistic pleasure in doing things just because they are difficult, luckily though there are many methods available that are very intuitive and easy to use, all of us kind of bloop artists had tools that made things really easy and approachable, like famitracker developed by jsr, just a really excellent easy to use tool"

that's pretty much word for word what I actually said.. it's the only possible thing I can think of that she could be using in her mind to justify this.

...in order for the article's author to form her narrative, and the synthesized quote distorted Sam's genuine POV.

After banging his head though, Sam contacted the author, and eventually...

"You're making music with outdated computers. You need a masochistic desire to have something difficult to do.
Okay.. I'm happy now, it's still not something I actually said, but it's no longer a viewpoint that's significantly destructive to the image of chiptunes as a worthwhile pursuit

Seems like Sam's satisfied with the article revision, but everything's still here for posterity.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This kinda stuff has been known to happen a lot, just because the person doing the article really doesn't care so much about the content as so much as getting the story out... I feel bad that anyone has to experience it. I mean, how many times do you hear a story and it just felt wrong, or the whole story just wasn't there, or you knew someone in the story and knew the content was misleading, or the article left you with more questions than answers? CHURNIN OUT STORIES LIKE FACTORY BUTTA! :(

I'm glad she at least revised this a little. Talk about a freak out, misrepresenting you to a huge audience.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, the whole mangling of the quote was poor because Sam was discussing how, though some people go the difficult route, there are tools that make chiptune music creation easier and more accessible to musicians, specifically to the "Kind of Bloop" musicians. Thus, according to Suddath, making this chiptune game music style album was "laborious".

Basically, she had a narrative in mind and tweaking Sam's quote fit what direction she wanted to take the story in. I'm not mad, but I think a more effective (not to mention, accurate) framing of the article would have been discussing how accessible chiptune music is now, both in creating it and its acceptance as legitimate music given that we now have a generation of adults who grew up on older games.

[/shrug]

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I spoke to the woman on the phone, apparently she didn't like anything I actually said.. so she decided to completely fabricate quotes.

This is ridiculous. You don't change a quote because you don't like what the person said. Journalism isn't about reporting about things that you like or don't like and changing the words of your interviewees, it's about reporting the facts and the news in a truthful, unbiased fashion. This is why I hate modern journalism.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

theres a lot of inconsistencies in claire's article that really show how bad of a journalist she is as well as a fact checker. lets go through them.

first off, and right off the bat: japanese jazz musicians in bands such as t-square and yellow magic orchestra wrote music for video games. so her whole article goes right down the toilet with that.

secondly, megaran didnt 'land a contract' with capcom. he is simply endorsed by capcom, nothing more, nothing less. theres a big difference between 'landing a contract' with a company that doesnt even release music that way and being 'endorsed' by them. basically capcom has said to megaran that they acknowledge that he does what he does, and backs him, because regardless he'd do it and it'd look pretty damn stupid on capcom's part to not do that.

which brings us to andy's and sam's quotes. i dont know if andy was misrepresented in what he said, but its my understanding that she performed open-heart surgery on sam's quotes to bring them to life in the fictional world of chiptunes that exists in her mind. i would love to exist there, because if i did, im sure i would be a rich bitch at this point. people would see what i do as some sort of groundbreaking shit which i never thought or meant it to be, but apparently theres such a huge distinction in this woman's eyes that she doesnt consider chiptunes to possibly be as intricate as the kind of bloop project. its fair to say that shes never heard the tnmt soundtrack, or summer nights: recca, or anything like that. and thats fine. but dont downplay all chiptune because of that, which is what she did.

i do kind of feel bad for putting the boots to her as hard as i did, knowing that no doubt so many other people are going about doing the same, but she probably deserves it out of us if she is conducting 'journalism' the way she does. here's her response to the email i wrote her about it:

Hi Shawn,

I’m sorry that you feel this way. Sam contacted me and explained that what he described as “unpleasant music” was in fact one specific type of original video game music (Super Mario 1, I think), so I have changed that. It was a misunderstanding on my part and although that’s no excuse, it happens. I’m human and sometimes I make an error. I apologized to him and said he had every right to be upset about that. The rest of the quote is accurate. He definitely did say “You're making music with outdated computers. You need a masochistic desire to have something difficult to do.” He also said that the art form was one of the most limiting forms he could think of, although in a recent discussion with him he says he doesn’t think that, so I removed that out of courtesy. I don’t want to print something he doesn’t feel is true.

I’m sorry that you disagreed with the way I represented chiptune music. I’m not very well-versed in it but I find the genre fascinating and I wanted to be able to explain it to people who may not know it even exists. Frankly, I think it’s pretty cool. The limiting factor is a positive thing, I think. Jazz is very free and flowing, but chiptune requires deliberate moves and a lot of forethought. That’s not a bad thing, not even a little bit. If anything, makes it cooler. I heard some really great chiptune stuff poking around on the Internet. True, I don’t like everything I’ve heard....but then again, I don’t like all rock or pop or hip-hop either, so that doesn’t discredit it as viable music. But it does really bring video game images to mind. Even something like Kind of Bloop, which is so much more intricate and complicated than original NES music, makes me think of video games. I kept wishing they’d use the soundtrack on that Legend of Zelda Windwaker (sp?) game that came out a few years ago. It would have made it SO MUCH cooler.

Anyway. I apologized to Sam and have been working with him to fix the issue. I’m not going to completely remove the quote because he did say those things to me. But I removed the part that I had misunderstood, and for that I am sorry.

Claire

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
 Share

×
×
  • Create New...