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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