Episode 2: Chiptunes

Hi, and welcome to the Open Licensed Music Podcast, the show where we highlight music from artists who let you share their music.  I'm Ralph Wacksworth, and today's episode is featuring chiptunes.

Chiptune 02 - Spacechip (3:07)
Asbestos Factory (2:18)
Through Pixelated Clouds (8-bit airship remix) (0:49)
Pair Of Minutes Before Reboot (3:20)

That was Chiptune 02 - Spacechip by Chawrafa then Asbestos Factory by Jakim, both of them available from Jamendo and licensed under an Attribution Noncommercial Share-Alike license, followed by Through Pixelated Clouds (8-bit airship remix) by bart, which is available from OpenGameArt.org and is licensed under an Attribution license, and finishing up we had Pair Of Minutes Before Reboot by 2NRO8OT, which is available from Free Music Archive and is licensed under an Attribution Noncommercial Share-Alike license.

So, what is a chiptune?  Well, as you've probably guessed, it's pretty much a song that sounds like 80s-era video games.  Often times artists will use actual video game hardware to build and play their music.  The Nintendo Gameboy is a fairly popular platform for it.  Chiptunes can also be put together on a regular ol' computer.  One program I've seen used before is MilkyTracker, and although I haven't used it, the guy who was showing me made it look quite powerful and fun.  It's open source and runs on Linux, BSD, Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, and even AmigaOS.  You can get it from milkytracker.org.

A quick note about this episode - this was a difficult episode to put together, mainly because about half of the songs I wanted to include were under licenses that are incompatible with the others.  There's a lot more really awesome chiptune music out there than what I was able to include in this episode, and as a result, I'll probably end up doing another chiptune episode in the future with mostly songs that I couldn't include in this episode.

So, without further ado, here's some more music:

The Adventure Begins 8-bit Remix (1:28)
Poppies (2:22)
Sting Operation (2:40)
Epileptic (3:35)
Jump and Run (8-bit) (0:42)

That was The Adventure Begins 8-bit Remix by bart, which is available from OpenGameArt.org and licensed under an Attribution license, followed by Poppies by Rolemusic and Sting Operation by Anamanaguchi, both of which are available from Free Music Archive and are licensed under an Attribution Noncommercial Share-Alike license.  After that was Epileptic by Spintronic, which is available from Jamendo and is also licensed under an Attribution Noncommercial Share-Alike license, and finishing up was Jump and Run, also by bart, also available from OpenGameArt.org, and also licensed under an Attribution license.

Today's app-of-the-day is the GNU Image Manipulation Program.  The features of this unfortunately-named program rival commercial image processing programs with few exceptions.  It's very much comparable to a very popular needlessly-often-pirated photo processing program that many graphics shops use, though I've found if you've used said commercial program enough to develop muscle memory, you may have a little bit of a hard time adjusting to some of the quirky interface differences, though the same doesn't seem to be true for people learning it fresh.  It's very capable, and it's my tool of choice for making wallpapers for my computer.  It's availble for Linux, BSD, Solaris, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows.  I've even been able to successfully run it on my cell phone.  Download it today at gimp.org.

Now for a short noncommercial break from one of our non-sponsors, followed by more music.

ccMixter Rap (with Music) (1:54)
Dark 8bit Song (1:16)
chessboss (0:39)
Troubled Dreams (2:02)
NoNoNo (1:19)

That was ccMixter Rap (with Music) by Togora, available from ccMixter and licensed under an Attribution Noncommercial license.  I find it kind of funny that I have to attribute them for what is essentially a commercial, but hey, that's how it's licensed.  After that was Dark 8bit Song by sauer2, which is available from OpenGameArt.org and is licensed under the CC0 license, which in my opinion is a pretty awesome license.  After that was chessboss by Bert Fisk, Troubled Dreams by Rushjet1, and NoNoNo by Comptroller, all of which are available from Free Music Archive and are licensed under an Attribution Noncommercial Share-Alike license.

As you've probably noticed, a bunch of the music for this episode came from OpenGameArt.org.  They have not only music, but also graphics, 3D models, and sound effects. It pretty well puts "make a game" back on the "weekend projects" list for me, like it used to be back in the days when BASIC dialects were popular.  Between that and languages like Python and C#, you could easily build a complete game in a matter of a few hours of free time, and many of the licenses are incredibly permissive, giving you a wide range of compatible open-source software licenses under which you can publish your game.

Another neat site that the previously-mentioned license incompatibility kind of forced me to discover is Free Music Archive.  That's one I will be perusing in earnest in the upcoming weeks.  There is a ton of music on there, and somehow I don't think I'd ever heard about it until recently.

And just as a reminder, this podcast is not particularly endorsed by any of the non-sponsors I'm mentioning.  I just find them quite cool, support what they do, and would love to see them become a bit more popular.

So, now that promoting cool stuff is done, more music!

Play (Intro) (1:49)
Twinkle (3:47)
Spell (2:16)
80sDancePopClarinet (0:59)
Procrastination Polka (0:47)

That was Play (Intro) by 2NRO8OT, Twinkle by Lo-Bat, and Spell by Rolemusic, all of which are available from Free Music Archive and are licensed under an Attribution Noncommercial Share-Alike license.  After that, we had 80sDancePopClarinet by nickleus, which is available from ccMixter and is licensed under an Attribution license. That one was mainly added because it reminds me of happy times zoning squares as Light Residential and engineering power and water systems.  Finally, the goofy little
song that capped off that set was Procrastination Polka by Dragan Espenschied, which is available from Free Music Archive and is licensed under an Attribution Noncommercial license.  That one just makes me smile, and with playing it last, hopefully it will become obnoxiously lodged in your head.

So, that's all for today.  Remember - piracy of commercial music only proves your dependence on that model and justifies further censorship and restriction.  So don't pirate it - replace it with something better.

This episode was made using Xubuntu Linux, Gentoo Linux, Audacity, and gedit for notes, and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share-Alike license.  Feel free to give it to your friends, or if you didn't like it, your enemies.  Links to the songs in this podcast are available on the website.  Listen in next time for some cartoon music!  See 'ya!

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Episode 1: Electronic

Hi, and welcome to the Open Licensed Music Podcast.  I'm Ralph Wacksworth, and today's episode is highlighting electronic music.

Magic In The Pyramids (artist's new site is available here, though licensing may be different) (3:47)
Ghostrider (Take Control Mix) (5:02)
Crystal Warriors (5:50)

That was Magic In The Pyramids by Android Automatic, followed by Ghostrider (Take Control Mix) by Electric Zoom, and finishing up, we had Crystal Warriors by Pretonika.  All of these are or were available from Jamendo and are licensed under an Attribution Noncommercial Share-Alike license, though Magic In The Pyramids has since been removed from Jamendo.

As you've probably noticed, I've got a bit of a goofy voice and accent, so I'm going to try and keep the segments of me talking fairly short from here forward.  But I do want to let you know a little about the motivation behind this podcast, so here we go:

I was introduced to open-licensed music by an open source program called iRate Radio, which is still around but has been kind of dormant for quite a while now.  They have music from both Magnatune and Jamendo, as well as many others, in a very easy-to-use and convenient format.  When the project finally ran out of music it thought I would like, I switched to commercial music for a while.  But somewhere around 2010-2011, I finally decided I was sick of funding the continual barrage of lawsuits and free communications-threatening legislation coming from or being supported by certain organizations in the music industry.  I generally listened to a lot of indie music anyway, but when I started my outright boycott of certain large labels and their subsidiaries, the difficulty of finding good new indie music led to me to seek out other options.  There's a lot of good stuff out there, but few places to find it that guarantee the record label is small.  And so I rediscovered open-licensed music.

This podcast started due to the realization that many of my friends and family either did not know about or did not have the motivation to seek out open-licensed music.  This podcast largely consists of some of the best music I listen to on a daily basis.  Each episode will highlight one particular category of music.  You'll also probably notice that many of the songs from each episode will come primarily from one site.  This episode, all of the music is from Jamendo.  There are many sites that distribute
open licensed music, but in certain cases some sites will tend to have a lot of really good music in a particular category.  Jamendo has a ton of electronic music, ccMixter has a lot of really cool vocal music and unusual instruments, Free Music Archive and OpenGameArt.org are both really good for chiptunes, and Magnatune is great for world music.  I'll try to mix it up a bit once in a while, but I don't want to have the source take precedence over the music.  And if there's one thing you can count on being consistent it's that episodes will not be posted with any regularity.

So, without further ado, let's continue on with a bit more music.

beginning (dedicated to buzz part 1) (4:57)
Johaness Gilther - Better World (5:49)
joy with us (3:13)

That was beginning (dedicated to buzz part 1) by _voice, then we had Johaness Gilther - Better World by 2Inventions, and finally joy with us by Sekula Wieslaw.  Once again, all of these are available from Jamendo and are licensed under an Attribution Noncommercial Share-Alike license.

Today's program-of-the-day is Audacity.  Audacity is a fairly full-featured open-source audio editing and effects program.  It's what I used to record my voice and edit this podcast together.  One of the features I like about it most is its noise cancelling functionality, which I've been able to successfully use to remove noise even in situations where the noise was about as loud as the signal, and even when commercial solutions have fallen flat.  It's cross-platform as well, so whether you're running Linux, Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, or I think BSD, you can still use it.  Download it today at audacity.sourceforge.net.

Now for a short noncommercial break from one of our non-sponsors.

Librivox
Wookey Hole (4:10)
Jonathan Araldi - Air For Trance (Original Mix) (8:38)
Lost In The Streets (artist's new site is available here, though licensing may be different) (3:28)

That was Wookey Hole by Farfetched, then we had Jonathan Araldi - Air For Trance (Original Mix) by Jonathan Araldi, and finally Lost In The Streets by Android Automatic.  All of them are or were available from Jamendo and are licensed under an Attribution Noncommercial Share-Alike license, though Lost In The Streets has since been removed from Jamendo.

So, that's all for today.  Remember - piracy of commercial music only proves your dependence on that model and justifies further censorship and restriction.  So don't pirate it - replace it with something better.

This episode was made using Xubuntu Linux, Gentoo Linux, Audacity, and gedit for notes, and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share-Alike license.  Feel free to give it to your friends, or if you didn't like it, your enemies.  Links to the songs in this podcast are available on the website.  Listen in next time for some chiptunes!  See 'ya!

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