Monday, January 9, 2017
[album] Hardcore LSDJ Party Jams to Fuck Off To by Muzak Efron
Another essential listening experience from December 2016 - here's some very creative LSDJ (ab)use by Muzak Efron aka Cooshinator, shifting back and forth between highly danceable and outright weird that defies genre boundaries. Reminds me a bit of that Duke Flex release that came out on CalmDownKidder earlier last year, though "Hardcore LSDJ Party Jams" is certainly more on the quirky side.
[album] #010010 by Pocketmaster
A slightly belated Happy New Year to you all! Just came back from my yearly recording session in the middle of nowhere, and looking forward to a successful year 2017 filled with great chiptune releases and stunning demos. But before we get started on that, let's clear the backlog, shall we?
One thing from the end of 2016 that you definately shouldn't miss is the new Pocketmaster release. Once again, the duo is here to rock the micromusic dancefloor with their signature gnarly sound. A++!
There's no embedable widget for this, so head over to the release page on Da! Heard It Records to stream, download, or order a CD.
Sunday, December 4, 2016
End-of-the-Year Hiatus and 2016 Retrospective
The end of the year is approaching with big footsteps, and that means Ancient Wonderworld is going into its traditional end-of-the-year hiatus as I'm spending the month of December working on a new Doppelplusungut trash punk album in a remote studio far out in the middle of nowhere.
Looking back, I think it's been a good year for Ancient Wonderworld. Haven't posted as much as in the previous years, yet I believe the blog has benefitted from a stronger focus on the core topics: Chiptune, 8/16-bit demoscene (with a special love for sizecoding productions), and the history of creative computing.
At times I have contemplated stopping with this project altogether because it seems like a lot of work for a limited impact. But then I noticed that the blog now has an average 250-300 views per day, a nearly tenfold increase from last year. That's not just a decent number for a little niche blog that does barely any outside promotion. It also means that there are appearantly quite a few people out there who do care about Ancient Wonderworld. So thanks and cheers to all you readers out there, you're the number one reason that keeps me going!
On a personal level, it's been a good and productive year for me as well. Aside from improving and extending HoustonTracker 2, I spent a lot of time advancing my 1-bit driver coding skills. For the first half of the year, I mostly dabbled in digital mixing, developing a new "multi-core" technique which allows for reasonably accurate rendering of a sizeable number of volume levels on the ZX Spectrum beeper and other 1-bit devices.
These experiments eventually cumulated in the zbmod engine, a 3-channel routine which can play back PCM samples of arbitrary length with a total of 21 volume levels, and qed68, which does the same with 4 channels/24 levels on the TI-92 Plus and compatible graphing calculators. In the process, I also disovered how to implement simple low- and hi-pass filters in 1-bit.
Later on, I turned my focus onto more traditional 1-bit techniques again, for a number of reasons. Digital 1-bit techniques are very powerful, but they consume a lot of RAM, and are extremely tedious to write. On top of that, they are surprisinly unflexible, since the technique ties up a several registers for jump calculation, and rules out the use of self-modifying code. All in all, it's a pretty lousy representation of the "digital minimalism" I'm striving for. So, back to the basics. One thing I did was to take Zilogat0r's classic Squeeker routine (which introspec kindly reverse-engineered earlier this year) and enhance it with drums and duty envelopes. The resulting Squeeker Plus engine is certainly my personal favourite from this year. I later mated the Squeeker technique with Shiru's Phaser method, creating the strikingly powerful, yet nearly unusable Phase Squeek engine.
I stuck with the Phaser technique for a while, gradually simplifying the algorithm in the process. This yielded some significant speed gains, which allowed me to implement several new tricks. These simplifications actually went so far that at one point, the phaser algorithm became interchangeable with the standard threshold technique (the one used in Tritone type engines). Somehow, this was quite a revelation to me! In my perception, 1-bit synthesis is now transitioning from mainly trying to emulate other synthesis types¹ (programmable sound chip synthesis, pulse code modulation) into becoming a type in its own right: Binary modulation synthesis, if you will.
As my engines were becoming pretty much impossible to support in the existing 1-bit trackers and XM converters, Shiru suggested the creation of a dedicated, customizable music markup language to facilitate music composition for these tools. I was more than happy to follow up on this, as it provided a nice opportunity to finally acquire some proper C++ coding skills. Dubbed MDAL (the Music Data Abstraction Language), the project has now progressed into a usable beta stage, although the standard is by no means finalized and there is a lot of work left to do. I'm intending to continue on this next year.
The most fun thing this year was probably the "discovery" of the fabled 5th sound channel on Gameboy. On April 1st, I posted this video on youtube:
Of course everybody thought it was fake. Until I posted the actual ROM. And the head scratching commenced... Sure, it's a trick, but a pretty convincing one. It's basically an application the good old "pulse interleaving" 1-bit method on the second pulse channel of the DMG. I intended this mainly as a friendly nudge to the Gameboy scene. The point is that in my opinion, the Gameboy music scene has been somewhat standing still in the last 10 years, resting on the success of LSDJ and Nanoloop. While these are without a doubt absolutely brilliant tools, they don't push the Gameboy to the limits by any means. I really want to see more experimentation with DMG sound in the future, however I don't want to do it myself, since I'm not an expert in Gameboy programming and I don't have the time to become one.
Last but not least, I also took some time to bring my decade-old web coding skills up to HTML5 standards, and tackle the long overdue rewrite of my website. While I think that CSS is as awful and frustrating to use as ever, I'm pretty proud of the new, minimalistic and responsive layout.
Coding certainly took precedence over writing music for me in 2016. As a consequence, I played only one show this year (to a wonderful audience at the Vintage Computing Festival Berlin). I did, however, hold several talks on 1-bit music and HoustonTracker 2, which is an activity I enjoy a lot and would like to continue in the future. So if you would invite me for a talk, presentation, or workshop, please get in touch, either by commenting below or dropping me a mail at utz at my home domain. Aside from the things mentioned, I also like to talk on the topic of early computer music history, if that's more your thing. Of course I'm still open for shows as well, and I hope to do more next year.
Anyway, thanks again for reading, and see you all back in 2017!
¹ With the exception of Pulse Frequency Modulation, which has been a 1-bit exclusive right from the start.
Looking back, I think it's been a good year for Ancient Wonderworld. Haven't posted as much as in the previous years, yet I believe the blog has benefitted from a stronger focus on the core topics: Chiptune, 8/16-bit demoscene (with a special love for sizecoding productions), and the history of creative computing.
At times I have contemplated stopping with this project altogether because it seems like a lot of work for a limited impact. But then I noticed that the blog now has an average 250-300 views per day, a nearly tenfold increase from last year. That's not just a decent number for a little niche blog that does barely any outside promotion. It also means that there are appearantly quite a few people out there who do care about Ancient Wonderworld. So thanks and cheers to all you readers out there, you're the number one reason that keeps me going!
On a personal level, it's been a good and productive year for me as well. Aside from improving and extending HoustonTracker 2, I spent a lot of time advancing my 1-bit driver coding skills. For the first half of the year, I mostly dabbled in digital mixing, developing a new "multi-core" technique which allows for reasonably accurate rendering of a sizeable number of volume levels on the ZX Spectrum beeper and other 1-bit devices.
Fluidcore, a 4-channel wavetable player for ZX Spectrum beeper
These experiments eventually cumulated in the zbmod engine, a 3-channel routine which can play back PCM samples of arbitrary length with a total of 21 volume levels, and qed68, which does the same with 4 channels/24 levels on the TI-92 Plus and compatible graphing calculators. In the process, I also disovered how to implement simple low- and hi-pass filters in 1-bit.
Later on, I turned my focus onto more traditional 1-bit techniques again, for a number of reasons. Digital 1-bit techniques are very powerful, but they consume a lot of RAM, and are extremely tedious to write. On top of that, they are surprisinly unflexible, since the technique ties up a several registers for jump calculation, and rules out the use of self-modifying code. All in all, it's a pretty lousy representation of the "digital minimalism" I'm striving for. So, back to the basics. One thing I did was to take Zilogat0r's classic Squeeker routine (which introspec kindly reverse-engineered earlier this year) and enhance it with drums and duty envelopes. The resulting Squeeker Plus engine is certainly my personal favourite from this year. I later mated the Squeeker technique with Shiru's Phaser method, creating the strikingly powerful, yet nearly unusable Phase Squeek engine.
I stuck with the Phaser technique for a while, gradually simplifying the algorithm in the process. This yielded some significant speed gains, which allowed me to implement several new tricks. These simplifications actually went so far that at one point, the phaser algorithm became interchangeable with the standard threshold technique (the one used in Tritone type engines). Somehow, this was quite a revelation to me! In my perception, 1-bit synthesis is now transitioning from mainly trying to emulate other synthesis types¹ (programmable sound chip synthesis, pulse code modulation) into becoming a type in its own right: Binary modulation synthesis, if you will.
As my engines were becoming pretty much impossible to support in the existing 1-bit trackers and XM converters, Shiru suggested the creation of a dedicated, customizable music markup language to facilitate music composition for these tools. I was more than happy to follow up on this, as it provided a nice opportunity to finally acquire some proper C++ coding skills. Dubbed MDAL (the Music Data Abstraction Language), the project has now progressed into a usable beta stage, although the standard is by no means finalized and there is a lot of work left to do. I'm intending to continue on this next year.
The most fun thing this year was probably the "discovery" of the fabled 5th sound channel on Gameboy. On April 1st, I posted this video on youtube:
Of course everybody thought it was fake. Until I posted the actual ROM. And the head scratching commenced... Sure, it's a trick, but a pretty convincing one. It's basically an application the good old "pulse interleaving" 1-bit method on the second pulse channel of the DMG. I intended this mainly as a friendly nudge to the Gameboy scene. The point is that in my opinion, the Gameboy music scene has been somewhat standing still in the last 10 years, resting on the success of LSDJ and Nanoloop. While these are without a doubt absolutely brilliant tools, they don't push the Gameboy to the limits by any means. I really want to see more experimentation with DMG sound in the future, however I don't want to do it myself, since I'm not an expert in Gameboy programming and I don't have the time to become one.
Last but not least, I also took some time to bring my decade-old web coding skills up to HTML5 standards, and tackle the long overdue rewrite of my website. While I think that CSS is as awful and frustrating to use as ever, I'm pretty proud of the new, minimalistic and responsive layout.
Coding certainly took precedence over writing music for me in 2016. As a consequence, I played only one show this year (to a wonderful audience at the Vintage Computing Festival Berlin). I did, however, hold several talks on 1-bit music and HoustonTracker 2, which is an activity I enjoy a lot and would like to continue in the future. So if you would invite me for a talk, presentation, or workshop, please get in touch, either by commenting below or dropping me a mail at utz at my home domain. Aside from the things mentioned, I also like to talk on the topic of early computer music history, if that's more your thing. Of course I'm still open for shows as well, and I hope to do more next year.
Anyway, thanks again for reading, and see you all back in 2017!
¹ With the exception of Pulse Frequency Modulation, which has been a 1-bit exclusive right from the start.
Tuesday, November 29, 2016
[album] Third Laser by little-scale
Thrash44 Records has put out an album with previously unreleased Nanoloop 2.2 material from Australia's chip master little-scale. Float through space on those trademark lush pads being pitched against hypnotic, pulsating beats. This might just be my favourite little-scale release to date.
Monday, November 28, 2016
[album] OBOLE II by CYMBA
The folks from Cymba have been working really hard to create their own unique flavour of chipmusic that doesn't sound anything like chipmusic at all. Dark, evil, slightly acidic techno running off 4 Gameboy Advance. OBOLE II is one 12-inch vinyl that shouldn't be missing in your collection, if you ask me.
[demo] Electric Night by Dune and SMFX
Here's the winner of this year's Atari Falcon demo compo at Silly Venture. It could have benefitted from a more tight pacing in my opinion, but otherwise it's undoubtedly a top notch Falcon prod with great style. I especially dig the underwater scene.
download/discuss
download/discuss
[demo] Abeyance by Satori
Zden's latest audiovisual glitch assault in 256 bytes. Appearantly it ran at Compusphere, but wasn't ranked due to lack of competitors.
download/discuss
download/discuss
Saturday, November 26, 2016
AWW Link List Restored
Finally got around to restoring the "Ancient Wonderworld Recommends" link list (in the lower left sidebar), which was destroyed by an update of the Blogger software a couple of months ago.
I've mostly kept the list as it was for now, just removed a couple of dead links and added a select few new sites instead, like the sizecoding.org wiki, and the Pterodactyl Squad netlabel, which should have been on the list right from the start. I've also removed the World of Spectrum forums, because with the way the new management is treating some users there, I can no longer unreservedly recommend the site.
Anyway, what I wanted to say is this: I'm aware the current list is a mess, and a rather arbitray one on top of that. My plan is to split it up into different categories eventually (chiptune archives, forums, people, netlabels, blogs, etc) and, most importantly, to add more items. So, if you have any suggestions, feel free post them in the comments! Proposals should generally be 8/16-bit coding/chiptune/demoscene/computer history/lo-fi related, of course.
I've mostly kept the list as it was for now, just removed a couple of dead links and added a select few new sites instead, like the sizecoding.org wiki, and the Pterodactyl Squad netlabel, which should have been on the list right from the start. I've also removed the World of Spectrum forums, because with the way the new management is treating some users there, I can no longer unreservedly recommend the site.
Anyway, what I wanted to say is this: I'm aware the current list is a mess, and a rather arbitray one on top of that. My plan is to split it up into different categories eventually (chiptune archives, forums, people, netlabels, blogs, etc) and, most importantly, to add more items. So, if you have any suggestions, feel free post them in the comments! Proposals should generally be 8/16-bit coding/chiptune/demoscene/computer history/lo-fi related, of course.
Thursday, November 24, 2016
[album] NMLSTYL by Animal Style
Animal Style has released a new, blasting chip prog album. Features hard-rocking guitars, sweet Gameboy melodies, and excellent drumming from Rob Martino.
Tuesday, November 22, 2016
4mat on Chipmod History
Chiptune pioneer 4mat put up a great talk about the early days of Amiga chip mod tracking, with a focus on the techniques that came to define this format. A highly recommended watch.
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