April Fools......no wait (Patreon)

If like surprises and/or don't like spoilers, read this after you watch the video. Also, apologies to Jim in particular as I know he is much more of a stickler for high quality video and recordings, which this is most certainly not.

The story so far:

My trip to Germany was cancelled because of COVID-19. Even though Revision wasn't (it's tomorrow, by the way, livestream is here), I was looking forward to seeing my people, so I got kind of down and out about it. I was also trying to figure out ways to stay cheery with a good joke for April 1, but then apparently April Fools got cancelled as well. Then I had an idea.

I like finding happy mediums between things. Just like Pretty Eight Machine was aimed at being the middle ground between chiptunes and NIN, I found something that was perhaps a halfway point between a joke and an interesting experiment, and also a tribute to my scene at the same time.

Some background information that you might already know: Tracker files are piles of notes. The ways they differ from MIDI varies depending on the tracker, but the biggest thing that stands out is that tracker files will generally sound the same when replayed. So, while you can take a MIDI around from synth to synth and have it sound different because Yamaha and Kurzweil made two different recordings of a piano, your tracker file is going to sound the same on another machine. Another thing is that tracker files are often hard-limited in various ways, whether it be tempo restrictions, channel limitations, number of instruments, etc.

I want to talk specifically about MOD-type music files, which are a type of tracker files. These aren't really chiptunes by the "sound chip synthesizing it's own tunes" definition, but they share a lot in common with the tracker files I write in Famitracker or Deflemask for NES or Sega music. In fact, the "effect commands" where you would do something like pitch bend or fade a note out are the same commands you would use in a MOD (Protracker) or XM (FastTracker 2) file. The biggest difference is that MOD-type files will have a one-shot recording of the instruments used in the song included in the file.

As a direct result, samples often get ripped from MODs and used in other mods. Some of my first MOD music was me just loading up a song that I thought had cool sounding instruments, nuking the song, and using the instruments to write my own song. Sound-alikes at their finest (well, if I had any talent before I was a teenager is debatable...)!

But what if we went the other way? This isn't a new idea, but it's definitely the road less traveled. Friends like Virt have done some joke game covers of Bubble Bobble and Maniac Mansion, and then pros like Smooth McGroove have done other amazing stuff. 

What if instead of focusing on doing lip service for an entire song, I focused on making recordings of the instruments I heard in a song, and tried to make them reasonably close to the originals? Would I be able to make a tolerable "a capella" MOD? Could I shoot for "better than tolerable?" Where should I place the bar to consider it a success?

Another question that came to mind: Have I gone insane? I mean, the Inverse Phase project isn't about anything other than chiptunes, and I'm not particularly happy with the sound of my voice, so I intentionally don't use it in projects.

Really though, I've just been cooped up in the pandemic, and needed to get something silly out so I could get back to my serious work. 

I made a pretty obvious choice as to what to tribute -- oh, only one of those most famous tracker music productions ever -- but I hope you enjoy it none the less! If there's any question, every sound you hear in this video was just me in the back of the RV with a condenser mic. I'll probably drop a free download of the track on bandcamp soon.

Although I mention it in the video, I'm not sure this sort of thing needs a "how it's made", but I might be able to be convinced to do one. Likewise, if anyone wants to hear this done with another MOD, bring me your challenges! The next time I need a break, maybe I'll do another one. Hopefully this was a nice diversion in otherwise-considered rough quarantine times!

Comment challenge: Tell me which instrument you like the most, or where you first started laughing in the video.

Much Love!

IP