I Still Hate the Grammies

That's how it should be spelled, by the way.

I have hated this award show since Jethro Tull won "Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance" in '88. Even at 10 I knew this was bullshit.

I rarely watch any of it anymore. Last night, I was at my parents' house and it was on. And I caught myself saying "they better give it to fucking Kelly Clarkson. Come on, Kelly Clarkson...."

What a shitty state the music industry is in.

Eight (8) is Enough

How many bits do you need? 8 bits.

As you all may know, there are many nerds out there who have been continuing to make music on the Nintendo Entertainment System even though this console hase been discontinued and is often deemed "obsolete." Many are drawn to this genre of music strictly because of nostalgia and subcultural capital. I'll admit, those factors played a part in my initial curiousity, but they certainly are not at all instrumental in developing the pure obsession for Nintendo music that has overcome me. Call me a snob, but for me, part of the allure of the NES stuff is the trickery and simplicity of it all. At any given time, you are only actually hearing 3 simultaneous notes. And then drums. And even on the drums, most of the time you're only hearing one drum sound at a time, and if the programmer was tricky, 2... or if they're real tricky and willing to sacrifice some melodic content, three! The bottom line is, the NES only has 5 sound channels, 3 can be programmed for melodic content, 1 can play samples and one can manipulate white noise. They're all doubly monophonic: neither polyphonic nor stereophonic. The gameboy has only monophonic 4 channels, but they're stereo, which is useful.

I guess my point is, it's the minimalism of it all that I really love. When it comes down to it, I've really learned a lot about music in general from poring over all these NES/gameboy tracks. The old cliche "less is more" is so fucking on point.

EXAMPLE:
Download this program called VirtuNSF and then go here and download all the nsf's (Nintendo Sound Files) you want, but make sure you get Metroid. Open it in VirtuaNSF and listen to the second track (when Samus fades in at the beginning of the game). One of the sweet features of this program is that you can control the volume of the different channels. Go to the "Setting" menu and select "Volume balance." The bottom 6 channels are some weird channels that some game maufacturer started adding to the games themselves late in the NES life (like 199X) and I've never actually seen them used. IGNORE THEM. Play with the 1st three (Rect 1, Rect 2 and Triangle) and listen to how little and shitty each channel sounds on its own. Then turn 'em up again and be amazed at the thickness! (Click here to read a very interesting Wikipedia article about the man who scored Metroid, Hirokazu "Hip" Tanaka.)

NSF's are my fave. Each one has all the tracks from the game and some of the good ones even have all the sound fx! I have a nsf player on my PocketPC and I hook the bitch up to my FM transmitter and bump that shit in my car. Fuck the Young Jeezy single, Brinstar's burning up!