LAME.

When I started doing 8-Bit Daily, it was because I liked two songs and they didn't seem to be getting much attention. 2PLAYER's "The Side Scrolling Suite for the Saxophone in A# Pelog" and PCUT's "Coin Collection". That was all I had built up from the get-go, and I figured I could easily find one more track every day. Why I started myself out with such a rigorous schedule is beyond me, but somehow I made it work! For basically nine months, I featured a track plucked from somewhere in the chiptune community that I thought deserved some recognition. Somewhere around 260 tracks are on this website today!

But I didn't really have an endgame planned out when I started this thing. In January I went back to college and the load has been pretty interesting so far. Five days a week I've got homework for Physics, and I use pretty much all of my 8BD time doing it. Weekends are for my Calculus homework, again, done during what used to be 8BD time. Whatever I have left over is spent on music of my own and a flash animation thingy I'm making to go with it (I'll share it with you guys when it's done).

Probably my biggest disappointment is in not being able to finish my 365 project, the DVD that I was planning on burning of one full year of chiptunes, released soon after this website was a year old. As it stands, I'm about 100 songs shy of that (a little over 3 months). I've got ideas for releasing what I do have in some form, but with the crazy amount of copyright and licensing and intellectual property disputes in the chiptune community I don't even know if I could do that without getting a bunch of flak. So who knows.

Point is, I can't do 8BD updates very frequently these days, and I thought y'all should know. You've probably figured it out by now, though.

I had a lot of fun getting to know various people: &rew, Ethan, Kris Keyser, Mathgrant, Shanti, Brian, and a lot of artists who commented on the site or sent me emails with new songs (friggin' Animalstyle and 8-Bit Weapon sent me emails! so cool!!) or fans who followed me on twitter and facebook. They were the number one reason this site made it for as long as it did. Picking the songs every day is a chore, but connecting with members of the chiptune thing or introducing people to chiptunes made it really fun. Anyway...

See you guys this summer! ;)

Curt

Sievert - Black Hole Cannon

Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaang~~!

This song is intense! It might scare you into turning the volume down like I did because the kick is so raw. It sounds like it's going to punch out your subwoofer! Anyway, go ahead and download this whole release, it's definitely worth your while. Sievert's a great artist, I enjoyed following his musical rapport between the anonymous Dr. Szliszka on 8bc.org, but it would seem that saga has ended and Space Captain Sievert is the victor!



Sievert's website

The Forum Post (leave a comment!)

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DEER - It Must Have Been My Happy Robot Dog!

Something about this track sounds like it would be played during a grandiose demo, something about its chord progression early on. If I knew theory I'd tell you particularly what was going on, but hey, I don't! Anyway, here's another late-night 8BD post for you owls/vampires out there. I realized that I have no time in the middle of the day like I used to (I'm back in school), and so it looks like I'll have to just squeeze 8BD picks in whenever I can, lest this site fade forever into obscurity!



DEER's website

The 8BC page (leave a comment!)

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Cathode Rays - Evil Cartridge

I just found out about this guy today, it looks like most of his music was uploaded in the recent period of time during which I've had little opportunity to feature 8bc.org tracks. You guys might not all realize it, but in the span of a few days I can find myself 200+ tracks behind the latest upload, making staying "up to date" an incredible task. In recent months, I've been hitting the "mark all read" button just to get through some of the stack and back up to current music.

Ya see, if you have a collection of 1,000 tracks that are for all intents and purposes completely random in terms of who made them and how "good" (defined by my subjective taste which determines whether a song is placed on this site or not) they are, and you eliminate 800 of them, you are left with 200 tracks that are of practically identical distribution in terms of the quality of the songs. So I have no problem eliminating a couple hundred tracks from ever being considered for this site. Thing is, I'd be a few thousand tracks deep by now if I weren't clearing them out once in a while.

But what ends up happening here in the REAL WORLD, where I'm not just eliminating completely randomized samples of songs but possibly the entire existence of some artists or truly outstanding songs greater than any 8BD pick hence is that people like Cathode Rays get completely overlooked.

There is a solution to this, however! You can email me a link to your music! This blasts your music from some generic RSS entry that has a somewhat troublingly high chance of never being heard up to a track that I will not only listen to, but pay attention to! I am human, and listening to a lot (a LOT) of tracks can get to be a bit much. It is refreshing to get linked directly to music! It makes it interesting.

Sorry for the thesis! I just want you to know that it's cool if you email me with songs.

Catthode Rays works at Harmonix, the company that first made Guitar Hero, then was somehow made to compete against Guitar Hero 3 with Rock Band (there's more to that story if you want to read for a little while, but it's kind of funny/crazy). I think that is about the raddest job of anyone I've ever talked to. I don't really know what a person would have to do for a living to have a cooler job in my book, though! Work for NASA? Be a professional Building Exploder? I just don't know!



Cathode Rays' website

The 8BC page (leave a comment!)

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Animalstyle - Superrr Forrrrm

Off of the latest Pause release - Animalstyle's "Teletime" - is this purely NES song. You might notice on the release's page that alongside the option to download MP3 or FLAC versions of the tracks there is an option to buy an NES cartridge or download an NES ROM! Similar to Alex Mauer's Vegavox II, you can get all these tracks on an NES cartridge that will play on your old system (given it still works)! If you are unfortunate enough to not have an NES of your own, or if you'd rather not buy the cartridge version (but let's be real, I'm just talking to the people without an NES here), you can get the ROM which, by utilizing state-of-the-art technologies, allows you to experience many sensations similar to what you would on the original Nintendo! Oh how lucky you are to live in such a day and age!



Animalstyle's website

The Pause page (leave a comment!)

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ORBiT-8* - Stickerbrush Symphony

This track is a cover of a song from Donkey Kong Country 2! If, like me, you aren't familiar with the original, check it out! There's some very interesting noises in that original; it really shows what can be accomplished with the SNES's powerful soundchip. In relation to the original, though, this cover has some rad, buzzy bass going on which I like a lot, and faithfully reproduces the sedate mood of the song. Good night-time music, which seems applicable since it's almost 11PM here, haha. Latest post ever! (Just wait a few minutes and this record will be broken, though!)



ORBiT-8*'s website

The 8BC page (leave a comment!)

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Lamb - Setting Sun

The original is an .xm, meaning it's not EXACTLY chiptune, but .xm files are typically made with trackers, and are the most direct descendents of the music formats used on old computers like the Atari ST, Amiga, Commodore, CPC etc. which are the foundation of the demo/chiptune scene.

Anyway, this track, like all the others that I have listened to by Lamb, is just gorgeous. Very rich chords, the cleanest instruments you can imagine, and solid but not overbearing percussion, with some great breaks in there just to keep you guessing. I highly recommend checking out the other tracks uploaded by this user.



Lamb's website

The 8BC page (leave a comment!)

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