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Chiptunes ...?


Krakozhia
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"Overusing common presets, relying heavily on prerecorded loops, or employing nothing but basic tones or "chiptunes" is discouraged."

How far does this go? What requirements does a chiptune have to meet for this website?

I believe that it means that you can't just have lsdj or famitracker, you have to have more than just that. Dunno though.

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"Overusing common presets, relying heavily on prerecorded loops, or employing nothing but basic tones or "chiptunes" is discouraged."

How far does this go? What requirements does a chiptune have to meet for this website?

Halc / Ben Briggs / ProtoDome = YES

Normal chiptune = NO

Normal chiptune combined with solo piano = N... wait, what? YES?

OCR has yet to really establish chiptune standards.

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It means you can't just make a chiptune mix with square waves and noise, that sort of thing. Even if you make an impeccably arranged mix that is pure chiptune it won't pass...which I personally think is weird since the skill of composition can't be hidden in production and is still immensely enjoyable. But if you use it in conjunction with other produced instruments then it's ok. Yknow like techno, not a big stretch of the imagination.

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It's ironic that the site is against chiptune production when chiptune production is just about the only type of production that is fairly consistent over time. Recording quality of organic instruments degrades the farther back you go, and even people who remix on OCR can make huge strides in recording quality over the course of a year or two. I'd point at myself as an example. z_z And Guifrog's recent mixpost is great but is lacking in a lot of sample/production areas.

Whereas Espergirl 2A03. Still sounds incredible. Stands the test of time.

Also how can you celebrate vgm as an art form while barring the format it is derived from?

This thread is now about OCR Standards. :-)

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in 70 years or so, when chiptunes are regarded as a medium on the same level as other relatively minimal forms such as a string quartet.... if OCR is still around then, they will accept chiptunes.

So given the current length of the queue you might as well submit one now ;)

Sweet, I'll get crackin'. Maybe I'll add some piano accompaniment. Would it be accepted if the NES parts weren't stereo though? Hmmmmmmm... would it get accepted if the piano wasn't the main part and the NES was? Man so many things to consider. Maybe I should add more channels; how many channels does it take to have good production values?

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Sweet, I'll get crackin'. Maybe I'll add some piano accompaniment. Would it be accepted if the NES parts weren't stereo though? Hmmmmmmm... would it get accepted if the piano wasn't the main part and the NES was? Man so many things to consider. Maybe I should add more channels; how many channels does it take to have good production values?

I heard about some soundtrack coming out that uses 20 NES channels or something like that, maybe that would suffice?....can't remember who wrote it. Some dude with a funny name. Google it

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I think chiptunes hold the same merit as piano arrangements. It will take some interpretation to translate a fully produced song into, say, a 5 channel NES song where only 3 tonal voices are available. You'll need to pick and choose, or figure out other solutions if you want something that harmonically resembles the original. The limited amount of channels I think is the defining point of chiptune covers, which is why stuff like running a 16-channel polyphonic MIDI through a converter to make an "8-bit remix" is frowned upon so much.

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OK, let's clear some things up here.

OCR has yet to really establish chiptune standards.

They've been well-established for years, and yea, they are treated like any other minimal ensemble. If you're going to intentionally limit yourself then we believe you need to make up for it proportionally with arrangement. We're not making an exception for chiptunes. GrayLightning made a compelling argument for this; paraphrased, he said "What if someone were to make a remix entirely using wind chimes? Would we make an exception because of the limitations the artist placed on himself? Or would we say that there is only one kind of very basic tone used, which severely limits the remix, and judge it accordingly?"

It's ironic that the site is against chiptune production when chiptune production is just about the only type of production that is fairly consistent over time.

We're not "against" chiptune production (see below). What does this have to do with consistency, and why would that be an argument in favor of us changing the standards? Gregorian chant hasn't changed in 700+ years, does that mean we should give Gregorian chant remixes special attention or make exceptions for them? It's a silly point.

Also how can you celebrate vgm as an art form while barring the format it is derived from?

That's like saying "How can you celebrate vgm as an art form while not allowing people to submit covers?" We're not claiming to be the be-all end-all of video game music remixing. This is Dave's site. He believes, and many of us agree, that doing fleshed out arrangements with NEW material, variation, and varied production is more meaningful as tribute/homage than simple covers, or downgrading the original instrumentation to a set of just a few chiptune tones. That doesn't mean we don't like or enjoy chiptunes, it just means that in the majority of cases, a pure chiptune mix is not in line with the goals of the site (much like straight covers, or tracks that use extensive direct sampling, etc.)

Sweet, I'll get crackin'. Maybe I'll add some piano accompaniment. Would it be accepted if the NES parts weren't stereo though? Hmmmmmmm... would it get accepted if the piano wasn't the main part and the NES was? Man so many things to consider. Maybe I should add more channels; how many channels does it take to have good production values?

As with the rest of our standards, these things are highly subjective and we don't quantify them. Everything has to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Even things like the famous "50% rule" (at least 50% of the remix should have an overt connection to the source material) is just something a few judges do, NOT something codified into the standards.

I think chiptunes hold the same merit as piano arrangements. It will take some interpretation to translate a fully produced song into, say, a 5 channel NES song where only 3 tonal voices are available.

Sure, but by that same reasoning it takes some interpretation to take an NES track and arrange it for guitar, bass and drums for a simple cover.

Lastly I encourage EVERYONE to read the decision thread for Espergirl 2a03 which pretty much defined/clarified our standards:

http://ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=4024&highlight=espergirl

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Gregorian chant hasn't changed in 700+ years, does that mean we should give Gregorian chant remixes special attention or make exceptions for them? It's a silly point.

The methods for recording Gregorian chant onto audible media and the quality of those recordings has changed in the last 700 years. Are you saying that if someone made a Gregorian chant or a "choir" remix that it wouldn't be accepted? :cry:

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The methods for recording Gregorian chant onto audible media and the quality of those recordings has changed in the last 700 years. Are you saying that if someone made a Gregorian chant or a "choir" remix that it wouldn't be accepted? :cry:

I think you need to learn to read, son.

Gregorian chant remixes special attention or make exceptions for them?

Zirc never said anything about outright rejecting Gregorian chant, he's saying chiptunes are to be held to the same production standard as everything else (no special treatment). That's why Halc and Protodome get mixes passed easily, because they add modern flair to it. They're chiptune styled, not chiptunes.

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The methods for recording Gregorian chant onto audible media and the quality of those recordings has changed in the last 700 years. Are you saying that if someone made a Gregorian chant or a "choir" remix that it wouldn't be accepted? :cry:

I'm saying that when people pick a genre or production style, we're not in the business of making exceptions based on self-imposed limitations. Like if you decided to do a solo voice remix (literally, just one voice, no layering) that is legitimate music, but we're not going to go easy on that because you limited yourself intentionally. Or if you decided to do a solo kazoo remix, or whatever else.

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If you're going to intentionally limit yourself then we believe you need to make up for it proportionally with arrangement.

I'd say that Shnabubula's song had really good composition, and a lot of judges agreed.

The arrangement here is, as always, astounding. Shna would've had a lot of fans if he was born 10 years earlier and pioneered the whole NES-composition thing. The arrangement is almost enough to override the terrible sound quality.
As per usual, this is a marvelous arrangement. It's intricate, HIGHLY creative, and unique. Simply put, it's the Shnabubula style we all know - though I don't mean to demean it, as every mix I hear is interesting in a different way. The melodic and harmonic variations are just great, as is the technical work and the percussive stuff.
Either way, I'm keeping this and piping it into my ears every waking moment of the rest of my life, because it rox my sox.
The arrangement was simply great [...] Nothing but wonderful variations on a theme that I don't even like. This stupid bitch actually makes me like Terra's theme, can you believe it?
So this is a great arrangement

So either the amount of arrangement/composition must be disproportional to the "lack of production values" mentioned in that thread, or being a chiptune automatically makes the scales too tipped to bring it back up. Either way, what you're saying doesn't have an example to stand on yet.

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Yeah, I did personally think that the arrangement for the track was enough to pass the bar. That was my own opinion. But as I said, this mix is where the standards got clarified, with Dave making it clear in the last post that this wasn't enough. An example of a mostly chip mix passing would be Dueling Consoles.

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Yeah, I did personally think that the arrangement for the track was enough to pass the bar. That was my own opinion. But as I said, this mix is where the standards got clarified, with Dave making it clear in the last post that this wasn't enough. An example of a mostly chip mix passing would be Dueling Consoles.

Right. So don't post things like

If you're going to intentionally limit yourself then we believe you need to make up for it proportionally with arrangement[...]That doesn't mean we don't like or enjoy chiptunes, it just means that in the majority of cases, a pure chiptune mix is not in line with the goals of the site

as the rule so far is that pure chiptunes don't get accepted. It's not a majority of cases, so far, it's all cases.

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