Episode 47: 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.

Skyball (3:17)
BossaNova (1:17)
Chairborne Boogie [IT (48K)] (3:22)
Asymmetrical Mode; ON (1:54)
Itty Bitty 8 Bit (3:13)
Spiff Tune - And so it Begins (2:53)
Dstort (3:31)
Colored Pixels (3:34)

That was Skyball by DJ Bouche, BossaNova by 8-BITchin'tendo, Chairborne Boogie [IT (48K)] by ipidev, and Asymmetrical Mode; ON by Claudia Andrea Hermosilla, all four of which are available from SoundCloud and are licensed under an Attribution license.  After that was Itty Bitty 8 Bit by Kevin MacLeod, which is available from incompetech.com and is licensed under an Attribution license.  Then we had Spiff Tune - And so it Begins by Spiff Tune, which used to be available from SoundCloud but has since been removed and was licensed under an Attribution license as of February 1, 2013.  Next up was Dstort by ChrisLody, and finishing up was Colored Pixels by 8-BITchin'tendo, which are both available from SoundCloud and are licensed under an Attribution license.

This week's another Attribution week, so feel free to reuse this music.  Or, for that matter, the parts where I'm talking if you somehow found a good use for it.  The Attribution license is a wonderful thing.

On that note, since this podcast is all audio, I should mention a few resources for Attribution-licensed visual media:

- First, the photo sharing website Flickr.  If you use their Advanced Search function, you can limit your searches to only those which are licensed as Attribution or possibly Attribution Share-Alike.  They have some excellent photos on there as well as lots of stuff you can use as pieces of things.

- DeviantArt is also very good.  They don't provide a nice Creative Commons search feature like Flickr, but they do offer Creative Commons licensing choices for works uploaded to their system and there are a few groups dedicated to building collections of CC-licensed works.  One such group is Creative-Commons which also has instructions for how to use a search engine to find Creative Commons works on DeviantArt under particular search terms.  Bit of a hack, but there is some very nice artwork on DeviantArt which doesn't quite fit on Flickr, though not as much is under pure Attribution licenses.

- OpenGameArt is another one.  I've mentioned them before and I'll mention them again.  They have 3D models, tile sets, sprite sheets, music, textures, sound effects, and much of it under very permissive licenses.  With the resources on OpenGameArt, you could truly build a game without having to create any of the artwork from scratch.

And, with that, it's high time we get back to music.

Darker Waves (1:55)
Deathmatch Psycho (2:37)
Usual Day (3:01)
JRPG_fields_loop (2:01)
Some Dealings With The Office Of Magic (3:24)
Pure NES (1:03)
Strawberry Tea (1:45)
Yerzmyey - Ai (4:21)
Vectorverse Tier 2 (4:14)
Blow into the cartridge! (0:20)

That was Darker Waves by Zander Noriega, which is available from OpenGameArt.  After that was Deathmatch Psycho by Andrey Avkhimovich, which is available from Jamendo.  Then we had Usual Day [NSF (Classical)][FCM10] by ipidev, which is available from SoundCloud.  Next up was JRPG_fields_loop from the JRPG Collection by Yubatake, which is available from OpenGameArt.  After that was Some Dealings With The Office Of Magic by elmusho, Pure NES by Sam Shideler, Strawberry Tea by Tenlki, Yerzmyey - Ai by YERZMYEY, Vectorverse Tier 2 by Nicholas Shooter, and finishing up was Blow into the cartridge! by Nicholas Shooter, all six of which are available from SoundCloud.  All ten songs in this set are licensed under an Attribution license.

Today's app-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 nonsponsors, followed by more music.

Librivox
Wrong Kind Of Tea (1:59)
Mean Streets (3:00)
Kamaria's OP (1:38)
JRPG_town_loop (2:14)
Yerzmyey - Proof of concept (2:36)
Khone - Sirius (1:31)

That was Wrong Kind Of Tea by elmusho, Mean Streets by Firage, and Kamaria's OP by Patashu, all three of which are available from SoundCloud.  After that was JRPG_town_loop from the JRPG Collection by Yubatake, which is available from OpenGameArt.  Then we had Yerzmyey - Proof of concept by YERZMYEY, and finishing up was Khone - Sirius by Khone, both of which are available from SoundCloud.  All six songs in this set are licensed under an Attribution license.

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.  Listen to open licensed music, donate to the artists behind it, go to concerts, and buy music from artists whose record labels don't see you as their enemies.  Support artists where your support actually counts.

This episode was made using Gentoo Linux, Xubuntu Linux, Audacity, Audacious for organizing playlists, and Leafpad for notes, and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 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 instrumental acoustic music.  See 'ya!

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