inversephase

Beatdown City Ultra Remix out now, Soundtrack tomorrow

Y'all!

I've been working on this soundtrack and Shawn&Co (collectively, NuChallenger) have been working on the game for over twelve years, and honestly it's huge to say this is finally done. You can already play the game, which came out yesterday. Even if you bought it when it was "Episode 1" on Steam, you get the Ultra Remix DLC for free, which effectively triples the content in the game. 

• Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/762180/Treachery_in_Beatdown_City 
• Switch: https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/treachery-in-beatdown-city-switch/ 
• XBOX: https://www.xbox.com/en-us/games/store/treachery-in-beatdown-city-ultra-remix/9pj7gtjfd28c 

Speaking of triple the content, the soundtrack is also nearly triple the size (over 30 tracks)! And I'm releasing it tomorrow, on Bandcamp Friday, when I'll get 100% of the revenue. This is Patreon though, so if you're in the $4 or higher tier I will send you a download code for the album. I prefer sending them on Discord (link your accounts!) because it gives me a chance to catch up, but if you'd like it some other way just let me know with a comment or message.

Also, if you're in a lower tier, I'll send you a download for one of the tracks on the OST, just let me know which one you like the most!

For now, I have some audio cleanup to do. So punch some helicopters for me and I'll see you soon.

♥ Inverse Phase

Clearing off my plate and tackling old projects

A fantastic thing is kinda, sorta, finally happening.

I mentioned in my last post that I finished up a game soundtrack with nocturnalplant! That should be releasing sometime this year, at least we hope so. There have been some bugs to work out. Some of the tracks and sound effects would fire in the wrong places. We found out completely by accident that we were able to lock the game up on the gameover screen by hitting a button the game wasn't listening for, stuff like that. Anyhow, we're getting through most of that with the coders of the game, we've seen the (awesome looking) cover art commission, and I'll share more when we're allowed to talk about it.

I also mentioned I had to write 12 more tracks for Beatdown City! That was quite a ride. I didn't get them done in time. Turns out there was a little more time, though, and I did get them done. I'm really proud of these tracks and this soundtrack in general - I was asked to do stuff like "chicano metal" and "kung-fu reggae dancehall" on a NES and I feel like I did a decent job. If you're a Patron at sneak preview tier or above, you can get a sample of what some of these tracks are like by hitting the appropriate channel on the Inverse Phase Discord. Don't forget that if you own the game now, the update to the game will be free and you'll get all the new content when it happens. I'm also working to get a soundtrack ready to coincide with the update.

Oh, and there's a new trailer BTW.

I'm not going to jinx myself and say "this is the year", but after I finish some basic work to supplement my income and make good on some promises, I plan to work on the Biteration I cartridge and get that out. For the love of all that is holy, it has taken so long to get this done, I now have a programmer (both the person kind and the cartridge kind), and the hardware to program. I need to sit down and put some spit and polish on the graphic assets and get them into the final product, buy some cartridge shells, put them in cases, make a slipcover and a manual, and get them out. If you're reading this and you were on the original print run, thank you so very much for your patience, I will make some extras if I can and they will go out to physical item tier patrons when they are complete, and album-level patrons will get a download of the tracks when I release it.

After that, I want to do a few things for Bloop Museum, and also resume work on CTM and the synthesizer.

If you're jonesing for more conversation, won't you join us over on Discord? Follow these instructions to get on.

Sorry, no pictures this time, other than the meme 😅

It's a busy holiday

Hi! Happy holidays, past present and future! 

Things are about to get a bit busy for me.... in my personal life I'm travelling for the holidays, but professionally I wanted to let y'all know things have been surprisingly filled with music! ⏱️💨

A few months ago, I finished an exciting secret game soundtrack project with nocturnalplant, and haven't been able to say much about it. Hopefully soon there will be news about a physical NES release of our work (in a game!) and I'll be able to talk about it a whole lot more. ☺

In more recent news, anyone remember Zophar's Domain? I won first place in the Freestyle Audio competition at Demosplash with a Sega Genesis track in the style of Shining Force, written for Zophar's Realm, which is a twitch livestream for the guy who started Zophar's Domain (it's a real person)!

The track is free on my bandcamp, so you can just grab it if you like. If you want it to show up permanently in your collection, just hit me up for a download code here or on Discord.

Last but not least, what does this all have to do with the image at the top, Beatdown City?

Well, first of all, have you played it yet? It's on Steam, Switch, and Itch, and it'll be in more stores soon. We're getting ready to release more content to the world, and a big update is coming. So, I have to wrap up twelve tracks this month and somehow survive the holiday. 😮‍💨

Wish me luck and thanks for all your support!

Sorry, I won't be doing MAGFest

I wish I could just say I'm worried about the omicron spike. If you decided not to go because of that, your concern is totally valid. I am worried about that, but it didn't ultimately make this decision for me.

This really tears me up inside. Some of you might know me as my other, sometimes stealth, identity of Mr. MAGFest. I did not start it, but immediately after the first event, it was announced there would not be any future MAGFest events. I bought it, took the reins, and ran the event, giving ten years of my life to it. I tried to instill direction, vision, etc. and make it something different and special that game and game music fans could enjoy. I spent countless nights sleeping under convention tables, eating ramen, dumping paycheck after paycheck from my job into an account MAGFest could use and living off tips. Don't get me wrong, I had a lot of others who believed in my vision and supported me, and it was an amazing time building that and working together.

Near the end of my time as the lead organizer and face of MAGFest, I had a few civil disagreements with the way the organization was headed, but I was also broken out in hives from the stress of running the event. I had to step back. I continued attending for the next ten years, helping out in whatever capacity I could each year. These past few years I helped with the demoparty there, which some of you were aware or even there for. 

As a part of my parting arrangement from organizing ten years ago, it was to be formalized that I would receive amenities roughly equivalent to some combination of guest and supporter. My badge would be taken care of, of course. They would hold back one of each new thing that went into the swag packs for supporters, which I would hold onto and archive (really, just watching over my baby and didn't have the money to collect 'em all as it were). I would be offered a spot to perform — not necessarily a prime-time slot or anything — every year or two. I'd get a room for the duration I wanted to be at MAGFest, which usually meant getting there the day before the event, and leaving the day after. 

I continued to go each year, continued to volunteer, and continued to ask if we could get that agreement in writing. Why? Well, there was often a problem with at least one of the amenities, and it would be great to fall back on a written agreement that stated exactly what was promised. Fortunately, I had good friends to take care of the mistakes made along the way. Unfortunately, no matter what part of the year I asked — many times each year — things just got put off. There was always something more important. One year, while getting sent on wild chases to get all my things, it got so bad that I spoke up at the feedback panel at the end of the event. 

Fast forward to last year, MAGFest had a huge turnover in their Board of Directors and management. I was a bit distanced from this as I watched friends fight other friends. That also tore me up a bit. When they came to what seemed to be an agreement — or at the very least, a conclusion — I wanted to be supportive and hopeful because I care so much about the event. Now that the old board and Paul B (former ED, who I had also spoken with) had stepped down, I met with two volunteer board members and the new executive director. We had some pretty heartfelt chats about the way things were going. I got a chance to talk about my concerns, including my arrangements. It seemed they wanted to have a chat amongst the office and board crew to figure things out. I waited.

Then, I got a call from my buddy Rob, who runs geekbeatradio. He wanted to book me for mainstage, and I was the first person on his list. I was extremely excited. The music department is run by both him and Emily (of 8static fame) and they have both been at my side during hard times this past decade. Of course I said yes. 

These two positive experiences renewed some of my hype in MAG. I went nuts on social media and started ramping up the cool stuff I would do. Even though MAG demoparty was on hold, I was going to produce some great panels, demoscene-relevant content, my show, help out with the MAGFest museum, and probably more. 

My worries about everything being in order started to show themselves again. I asked for advocacy. I was told it was a board of directors issue. I didn't hear anything. Eventually I received a hotel confirmation email with the wrong dates. I emailed and asked if it was an oversight. I know things get busy and slip through the cracks. But people had known that I planned to arrive early and leave late for months. Rob quickly replies, forwarding this email to the board and I waited seven days for a reply.

With my set and panels suffering while I stew, I'm waiting for an email back — even an acknowledgement — and I finally get a reply that says they understand there was an agreement but they cannot honor it, I am getting the same as other guests, and if I want crash space on other days, I should apply to volunteer. You're kidding, right? I always volunteer, both on and off the books.

I decide not to fly off the handle and go fix my shifts up in the staffing system so that I am set up as a volunteer with 39 hours for the event under their provided guidelines, and email back within a half a day. The staffing operations department is added to the chain by the director, and more silence.

This is the 11th hour for them. Since it took a week to get a reply to my previous email, my hopes were not high on this one, and another week would have actually put us in the middle of the event, so I started drafting my cancellation. I spent at least two hours trying to be calm and cordial and polite, thanking staffers who had helped me so as not to sound like I was just attacking everyone, and explaining how this isn't a "this year" problem, it's been a problem for the past ten years, and I'm just so very tired. 

My participation in the event is on hold until they work this out with me.

I'm destroyed that I won't see a number of friends that I can only catch up with at MAGFest every year, and I was going to meet some other new folks who have interviewed me and show some friends around MAG who had never been before. MAGFest is also a very good opportunity for me to support my music career, and a paid performance would have helped a lot this holiday. 

So, if anybody reading this was planning on going to MAGFest to see me, I apologise. Let me know if you were, and let me make it up to you somehow. Also, let me know if you need me to fill in any other details. I am eager to clear up misunderstandings and make things right in 2022.

Happy new year, and sorry for the bummer news!

Inverse Phase repairs roof Air Conditioner

I know what you're thinking. Two Patreon posts in less than a week? Something must be horribly wrong!

Actually, something was wrong - two weeks ago (or something like that), my air conditioner started making this awful banging and rattling noise, and even though it was still running and keeping the house cool, it wasn't doing much for my sleep at night. I googled around and it looks like stuff just kind of gets loose over time, and you need to pad it more. I found a video of some guy replacing a rubber gasket and his rattle stopped, I decided I would try that.

So, off came the shroud, which kinda broke on its way off but is mostly salvageable, and I took a look. This is actually somewhat post-repair already. As it turns out, I didn't have a rattly pipe thing, but the uh, whatever dealy that gets cold (evaporator?) was rattling against the rest. 

A zoom of the affected area shows you that the thing has actually held up pretty well for being 35 years old, but jamming some flexible shipping foam in there did the trick. It's even quieter than before! I couldn't figure out why the foam had turned red though, until I looked at my finger.... oh bother.

That's it. Home repairs with Inverse Phase. Glad you're still here. 

Oh, and I heard back that all of my art is being sent off to the factory today, one step closer to the record!

See y'all on Discord - let's do a group watch thing sometime soon!

Coming Soon: Pretty Eight Machine on Vinyl

Hey! I've been dead to the world for a little bit (but alive?) ... I'm working on (more) music for various clients, and everything is a bit upside down. I'll check in again when some of this dust settles. For now I just wanted to let y'all know about something that's right around the corner: P8M LPs.

First, how it works: Basically, Bandcamp invited me to the cool kids club where I can press vinyl. I deliver masters for vinyl and artwork, and then they handle the entire order INCLUDING working with the vinyl plant, warehousing, and shipping the orders. The thing runs a bit like a kickstarter campaign where they make sure there's enough interest. The shortest run I can do is 250, so if I don't get that many sales, nobody gets charged and we just wash our hands and walk away. If I sell more than that or make enough money to press 250 even though I didn't sell 250, they round up and send me the extras.

The number one most-requested vinyl thing is (duh) Pretty Eight Machine. Also, record stores these days, whew! Many of them don't even want to carry CDs — even when I prove to them that P8M sells — so that gets frustrating. Anyway, I tweeted out about this and made a reddit thread. I wanted to make sure that I could even get 250 likes on a tweet, because if I can't do that, I certainly can't sell 250 records. Y'all came through! ☺

Okay, great. I created a campaign on bandcamp and filled everything out with excitement, since this might actually happen. I waited and waited, and got an email back where they said no, that's copyrighted material, even though my "about this campaign" dictates that the whole thing will be licensed like the CDs were.

I told them I didn't expect them to handle the licenses since I already do that anyway, and they reconsidered. We've chatted back and forth a whole lot, and I've purchased licensing up-front (funded with Patreon money, thank you Patrons!). 

Now we're almost at the point where I hit the "go live" button. When this does go live, I'm gonna need some serious help spreading the word! This will be the first official "bandcamp-pressed" vinyl that is an officially licensed tribute, so that's kinda cool. ☺

But wait! This is Patreon, and most of the people reading this (oh, hello again!) are probably my Patrons. Some special stuff in store for you:

Remember how I mentioned bandcamp sends me the extras? The (currently three) people on my physical items tier at the time the campaign succeeds will automatically get one of those extra LPs. So physical item tier folks, unless you want TWO albums to show up, don't order one. ♥

I have a bunch of people on my $4 and up tiers, y'all are entitled to download codes. I know P8M isn't a new album, but if you don't have P8M already, when the campaign succeeds, I'll send you one! Also, if you do have P8M, I could gift a P8M download to your friend, dad, grandma, weird uncle, or whatever. Or we could do something like giving you a download of another album you don't have. I guess my biggest point with this paragraph is that if you support the vinyl campaign and you're a $4+ patron, you don't need to buy the digital; just message me here or on discord and we'll work it out!

Also in the campaign: if you want a P8M shirt and don't have one, there will be an opportunity to get one with your vinyl. I like to choose a different color each run; we've already done black, dark heather, and "charcoal". Maybe deep midnight blue and deep deep purple this time? What do you think?

Last but not least, I want y'all to know I'm committed to responsible spending. All the proceeds from this campaign go into fixing stuff up in my house, my museum, and probably into hiring a 68000 programmer to finally finish off the Sega Genesis cartridge album. And maybe some pizza 😁🍕

Hope this all makes sense, and if it doesn't, you know what to do! 👇

Why don't you Rock Me, Famideus!?

Hey everyone! 

I did it! I did the thing! The new track is up and just in time for Bandcamp Friday, the thing where bandcamp waives all their fees and revenue shares for artists!

Codes will be delivered shortly; I haven't slept all night to make sure this track is just right, and if I'm being honest with myself I'm just going to fall face-flat on the keyboard while I'm sending them out, so I'm going to take a short snooze here and then I'll get them all out. 

I went and scheduled a tweet and facebook post announcing the track for a few hours from now, so please feel free to share those when they go live.

Good nightmorning!

April Fools......no wait

If like surprises and/or don't like spoilers, read this after you watch the video. Also, apologies to Jim in particular as I know he is much more of a stickler for high quality video and recordings, which this is most certainly not.

The story so far:

My trip to Germany was cancelled because of COVID-19. Even though Revision wasn't (it's tomorrow, by the way, livestream is here), I was looking forward to seeing my people, so I got kind of down and out about it. I was also trying to figure out ways to stay cheery with a good joke for April 1, but then apparently April Fools got cancelled as well. Then I had an idea.

I like finding happy mediums between things. Just like Pretty Eight Machine was aimed at being the middle ground between chiptunes and NIN, I found something that was perhaps a halfway point between a joke and an interesting experiment, and also a tribute to my scene at the same time.

Some background information that you might already know: Tracker files are piles of notes. The ways they differ from MIDI varies depending on the tracker, but the biggest thing that stands out is that tracker files will generally sound the same when replayed. So, while you can take a MIDI around from synth to synth and have it sound different because Yamaha and Kurzweil made two different recordings of a piano, your tracker file is going to sound the same on another machine. Another thing is that tracker files are often hard-limited in various ways, whether it be tempo restrictions, channel limitations, number of instruments, etc.

I want to talk specifically about MOD-type music files, which are a type of tracker files. These aren't really chiptunes by the "sound chip synthesizing it's own tunes" definition, but they share a lot in common with the tracker files I write in Famitracker or Deflemask for NES or Sega music. In fact, the "effect commands" where you would do something like pitch bend or fade a note out are the same commands you would use in a MOD (Protracker) or XM (FastTracker 2) file. The biggest difference is that MOD-type files will have a one-shot recording of the instruments used in the song included in the file.

As a direct result, samples often get ripped from MODs and used in other mods. Some of my first MOD music was me just loading up a song that I thought had cool sounding instruments, nuking the song, and using the instruments to write my own song. Sound-alikes at their finest (well, if I had any talent before I was a teenager is debatable...)!

But what if we went the other way? This isn't a new idea, but it's definitely the road less traveled. Friends like Virt have done some joke game covers of Bubble Bobble and Maniac Mansion, and then pros like Smooth McGroove have done other amazing stuff. 

What if instead of focusing on doing lip service for an entire song, I focused on making recordings of the instruments I heard in a song, and tried to make them reasonably close to the originals? Would I be able to make a tolerable "a capella" MOD? Could I shoot for "better than tolerable?" Where should I place the bar to consider it a success?

Another question that came to mind: Have I gone insane? I mean, the Inverse Phase project isn't about anything other than chiptunes, and I'm not particularly happy with the sound of my voice, so I intentionally don't use it in projects.

Really though, I've just been cooped up in the pandemic, and needed to get something silly out so I could get back to my serious work. 

I made a pretty obvious choice as to what to tribute -- oh, only one of those most famous tracker music productions ever -- but I hope you enjoy it none the less! If there's any question, every sound you hear in this video was just me in the back of the RV with a condenser mic. I'll probably drop a free download of the track on bandcamp soon.

Although I mention it in the video, I'm not sure this sort of thing needs a "how it's made", but I might be able to be convinced to do one. Likewise, if anyone wants to hear this done with another MOD, bring me your challenges! The next time I need a break, maybe I'll do another one. Hopefully this was a nice diversion in otherwise-considered rough quarantine times!

Comment challenge: Tell me which instrument you like the most, or where you first started laughing in the video.

Much Love!

IP

The Legend of Taku-San: Part QuaranTEEN

Quick ask: If you don't have time to read all of this message, please hit the three bulletpoints at the bottom!

What's it like for a musician to live in quarantine during the pandemic?

This is a weird question to answer, because on one side of things — when you're at home, anyway — it's just like regular living. Full-time living in an RV, you're alone most of the time, and you work and entertain yourself inside a little box that sits in a parking space. Introvert life at it's finest!

Well, unless you're an extrovert like me. Taku-san is my home, and I love it so, but I like to get out. I had some events lined up this upcoming month of April. The first, Revision, the world's largest demoparty, was to be held over easter weekend in southern Germany. I was finally going to be able to go, thanks to a very generous ticket purchase, but as you can imagine, COVID-19 has shut that down. After Revision, I had an exhibit at VCF East, but that has also now been postponed. Lastly, there were some shows in the works, but — wait for it — pretty much everything is shut down there, too.

There's obvious socializing I miss out on, but the way this affects me specifically is that events are a great way for musicians like me to keep up appearances. I often make connections I wouldn't otherwise make at shows, I can share research and information at large gatherings, that sort of thing. Also, it affects outreach heavily. When I travel to a new area, there's a good chance I'll hit a pocket of people who haven't heard my work, and I'll sell a bunch of music that way. Not being able to sell CDs (people still buy music, hooray!) does put a sizable dent in the pocketbook.

All that said, this isn't supposed to be a post on how COVID-19 has affected me negatively. We're doing the right thing to slow the spread of COVID-19 by socially distancing and staying at home. As a pretty awesome showing of support, Bandcamp waived all revenue shares for musicians on Friday (20 Mar), meaning that after paypal/credit fees, 100% of the revenue went to the artist. Even though the site was hit with 15 times the usual traffic which caused some understandable slowness, and my mailing list message didn't make it out to most people until the event was over, I did pretty okay during this event, and it's helping a great deal. It funded a ramen shopping spree at the local asian market, that's for sure!

You know what else is helping me out a great deal? You. Over the past few years, I've been working to make sure I have a bit more stability during times of crisis, and it's working out. I've got food, a bed, a place to work, and a roof over my head. Also, I'm not sick or dead! Here's a shot of my work-from-home nook:

To boot, during the bandcamp blitz, I dropped a subtle hint about Patreon. A handful of folks signed up; thank you, and welcome! It's with the support of "viewers like you" that I'm able to maintain the other major part of my income here. Please spread the news to your friends ♥️

There are three big things I'm trying to do to make the most of being cooped up:

1. A closed office means significantly less distractions, directly translating to more work and commissions getting done. My 8910 interview transcription and some tunes are coming along; expect something very soon!

2. You know we have a Discord, right? If you go to your app settings here on Patreon and connect your account, you'll get an automatic invite. It's a great way to chat about chiptunes and nerdy stuff, and feel a form of community when you can't get out as much.

3. For a little bit more of a personal touch, I've decided to start livestreaming again. For now it's variety retro livestreaming, playing requests from the audience, that sort of thing. Soon there might be longplays and creative/music composing streams. Follow here! I love chatting with people while playing games. Here's the cute little livestream PC:

My supporter and long time friend James donated a motherboard/CPU combo, pal and patron Glowbush donated a picoPSU, and our supporting museum donated a solar panel.

Thanks for reading this update, and thanks to everyone who's supporting during the pandemic. I hope everyone is staying safe and sane out there!

The Maiden Voyage of Taku-San, Part 2

Last we left our hero, he was w̶r̶i̶t̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶a̶ ̶p̶o̶s̶t̶ ̶a̶b̶o̶u̶t̶ ̶M̶A̶G̶F̶e̶s̶t̶ driving towards Florida a̶t̶ ̶b̶r̶e̶a̶k̶n̶e̶c̶k̶ ̶s̶p̶e̶e̶d̶s̶ literally being passed by semis that carry tanks.

It was time to take off from hanging out with my pal Larry Oji aka Liontamer of OCR fame, so we grabbed a quick selfie in front of Taku-San and said goodbye a few times:

It seems nobody else in Georgia was around / still living there / available, so down 75 I went to Gainesville, to visit my pal Chris who I really hadn't seen since we tried to see if MAGFest 2 would be viable on a college campus. We got some fairly tasty pizza at a place that forgot about us a few times, but it gave us time to catch up on how he's living the dream of going to Japan all the time and I'm living the dream of driving my house to catch up with him:

Our time was short but fun! I got a quick tour of his home office, parked in a visitor spot, and plopped down into the bed afterwards, making a quick post.

I awoke to a surprise! My friend and fellow patron, Mike, messaged me all the way from Japan to let me know that Don, one of the founders of 8static, is now in Gainesville. We truly live in a tiny connected world. Don and I were able to grab a quick coffee and I showed him the synthesizer before he ran off to a meeting. He also gave me a fantastic book that I don't have an image of at the moment. I thrifted around in Gainesville a little bit and grabbed some tunes for the road, then decided it was time to head to Orlando. 

Reaching out to Orlando crew, it turned out my friends Doug and Michelle weren't quite as available as I thought, but no matter! I was able to catch up with my buddy Skitch, who met up with me for thrifting and pizza. Skitch and I talked about hanging out over the next few days, and then I got in touch with another friend, Eric, and parked near his place that night. 

After some food and catching up with Eric, Skitch freed up, so we met up again for more hijinks, including checking out his game collection. We talked about his schedule a little more, and I asked him what he was teaching. Music Production for Media! I asked if I could sit in on his class, and he mentioned I might not want to since it was an eight hour class on a Saturday. But then I asked him what the lesson was, and he said FMOD and Wwise. I mentioned I could show the class MODs and chiptune/demoscene stuff, effectively presenting the 30-year-old version of his lesson, and we agreed it would be pretty amusing.

There was a caveat: Full sail classes are kind of like cram school, and it was the last class of the term. Plus, it was already March so we were close to graduation. Everyone would be pretty checked out, Skitch warned. I decided to throw caution to the wind and do it anyway. We showed demos on the big screen, even though the video converter was upset with me...

How'd it go? Skitch was right, though I did get a few people to talk back to me in class. Only one student asked a question the entire time. Oh well! Perhaps the other students are at least more educated about the scene now, and it might become relevant to them in the future. This is the price I pay to try and spread the love - if you don't try, you don't know who you'll reach.

I like to reward interaction, so I flipped a card at the student who asked a question and offered a free download of a thing off my bandcamp. We then discussed Star Trek, 80's movies, and Japan for two hours along with Skitch and his lab assistant. It was a good end to the class. Skitch was kind enough to let me park in his driveway that night as well, but my time was running out and I didn't know what else to do in Orlando. It was time to head a little further south. 

Next stop was my friend Hex down in the West Palm Beach area. It had been way too long since I'd seen this guy, and he did this great piece of artwork of me even longer ago:

On my way to see Hex, I gave a call to the Steve, the guy that invented/engineered the AY-3-8910. I wanted to follow up on some of the things we talked about, not to mention actually meet the guy.

Steve mentioned he wasn't exactly close to Orlando, but I was welcome to stop by. I mentioned that any point in Florida was still closer than Maryland and that I'd be happy to drive. It turns out he was not terribly far from Hex, and one of the days he could meet up lined up with Hex's day off. Sweet!

Hex showed me around the WPB including a bar called Lost Weekend, where we kept running into people he knew. It was game night, so I played some games, tried a fairly tasty drink, and we caught up some. Meeting like-minded folks and catching some interesting live music was nice. 

Also, I had already been to a Publix, but I'd never had a "pub sub" which Hex told me was a must. We picked up some stuff from the store to enjoy while hanging out. Also, a delicious (and crazy) burrito was had from a nearby joint, which I'm not sure my body was entirely ready for.

Hex and I popped out a little on the early side in the morning to meet up with Steve, which was a blast. I'm not sure what I was expecting, to be honest. Steve is absolutely enamored by 3D.  We got to see Steve's office playground, where he was 3D printing Yodas, and we saw his movie collection with tons of 3D Blu-Ray. After some tasty coffee cake and sun tea, we got down to brass tacks.

I played a small variety of 8910 music for Steve, and we got some reactions. I showed him the synthesizer I was building (which everyone here has seen by now), one of the boards with an 8910 mounted on it. We read him an email from long-time 8910 enthusiast Yerzmyey. I'd say Steve was pretty moved by our love for the chip. I don't have a recording handy, but I recall him saying something like "You're all on another planet, I never intended for the chip to do anything like that!" We had a good laugh.

Steve said he had saved me a surprise, which turned out to be the first 5 years of BYTE Magazine! We also got a few other goodies, which I'll share in a future post because I want to do a sole history retrospective on all the things I've learned about the 8910. One of the cooler things though is something some of you have probably seen on social media...

This is the demonstration board for the AY-3-8910. Steve said the right-hand one was to demonstrate (in an era where computers would barely beep or make no sound at all) how easy it was to integrate sound into computers, and then the left-hand board was a retooling of that board to be a car alarm for his 1972 Challenger. These boards and other cool artifacts collected on the way will be on display in The Bloop Museum (blatant plug!) where I've been doing a lot of work lately.

As usual, some thrifting was had and I made Hex and his roomies watch the excellent Diggin' in the Carts (everyone's seen this, right?) and then it was back north for me.

Apparently Florida's Turnpike is just the right lane of this road, so I headed next to the Tampa area where several friends reside. Jeff aka Grimmtooth, one of my patrons here, offered a parking space to set up camp, which I happily accepted. Jeff regaled me with tales of Amiga BBS'ing and FidoNet, which was truly awesome. I'll let him recant in the comments if he so chooses.

While in the area, I was also able to catch up with my friend Mary, who I actually met at Nerdapalooza. That was Orlando in 2011, how time flies... Mary showed me numerous  amazing birds, we went thrifting for weird stuff, and caught up on life stuff. I hadn't seen her in awhile either, so it was nice to catch up.

On my way out of Tampa, I was able to catch up with Adrienne, another friend I hadn't seen in quite some time. We used to hang out all the time at anime and gaming conventions, with a heavy focus on retro, movies, and Metal Gear. It was a short visit, but I wanted to show off the RV and catch up for a little bit - we did, and it was great.

Next up, a trip around the panhandle to visit a fan of mine whose work I've also been following! Christina does some fantastic graphic and mixed-media art and has mentioned a variety of cool places to go, plus I needed a place to park for a little bit and clean house. She graciously offered a spot, and we got to hang out! A nearby sign was very apropos:

Fun adventures included meeting her awesome kid, and then we all did food at a tasty local pizza place, went to an excellent game shop, and saw some of the local scenery. We also got to muse about music, I got some cleaning time in, and we watched a bunch of sci-fi. Oh, and as a pizza enthusiast who had never tried Hungry Howie's, we also remedied that. Last but not least, I got to meet one of the most chill kitties ever:

Seriously, how cool and cute is this cat?

Before I knew it, it had been nearly a week. I had cleaned a layer of RV stuff, which was good. Between acquisitions from Steve, thrifting, and stuff left over from my move into the RV, the clutter was starting to take over. Also, check out this foggy night picture I have no idea where to put:

Getting what was an attempt at an early start, I began to head west again, this time to Pensacola to visit my buddy Glenn, another chiptune scener. Two 8static friends in one state! We didn't have long to visit, but we got some Indian food nearby, and roamed around a bit before Glenn had to get to bed for a busy next day. I found a Walmart that was out of the way to park at later that night, and the manager said to park away from the building and everything would be fine. 

Early in the morning I got a knock on the door from an irritable police officer, so it turns out even after confirming my location with the store I was not in a good spot to park. There was no reasoning with the guy; I told him I was just passing through and needed to rest my head, and I checked with the store and everything, but he wouldn't have it, so I left. 

I expected to have a little more time to get in touch with another one of my friends in Louisiana. If there was any time to do it, now was the time. I drove further west, texting to see if she was around and wanted to grab a bite. I had no idea where I would park that night, so I looked up some places to park nearby. It was pretty barren, but I located a free campground and figured I'd give a shot. 

When I heard back, I got my second surprise of the day. I screwed up and had completely forgotten she moved, and that she was behind me in Florida. So, where was the next place I could realistically stop? I decided to just drive straight to Texas.

Let's be clear: Interstate 10 isn't terribly exciting. There are probably a handful of interesting places to stop, but for someone just plowing through, you're gonna get a whole lot of the above pic. If you glance off to the side of the road, you'll see swampland, water, and trees growing out of the water:

Eventually, I went over some pretty cool bridges, including this one, the Israel LaFleur:

...and then I was in Texas.

There was one place I didn't know if I was going to hit on the way in or out of Texas, and it ended up being a good thing I stopped there on the way in. My buddy Maximo is in Houston, and not only was that right along I-10, it was pretty much the last large place I'd hit before my ultimate destination, Austin. I had been driving all day, and I was ready for a break. 

Fortunately, Maximo was available and recommended a neat late-night spot with a smorgasbord of asian food options. We got a pile of food, ate it, caught up, and then headed back to his place. I was able to snag a much-appreciated shower, and he and Holly (they're adorable, btw) tried some snacks with me, showed me their cool pad, and I even got to help them set up a soundboard for livestreaming.

Before I knew it, it was like 4 or 5 am, and I needed to crash. I just parked on the street and slept in the house at the apartment complex this time, since I would head out the next day. When I woke up, I briefly considered going to the Houston Space Center, but I didn't really have $30 of disposable income to throw at a visit. Next time.

Excitement built as I finally approached my "final" destination. I had been meaning to get to Austin all these years and finally, I was only hours away. It was a nice day, and I decided I would take the scenic-but-direct route rather than taking more I-10. Along the route, I saw Texas' answer to Wawa and Sheetz: Buc-ee's. I had been seeing these along the Interstate but most of the time it was an inconvenient stop; either I had just gotten gas, or just didn't have any reason to stop. Well, I decided after lunch (at Whataburger of course!) that I would just get a little bit of gas, just enough to get me to the next Buc-ee's, where I almost ran out of gas riding my fuel light to get there. 

What a sight. There are write-ups dedicated to the cult that follows this place, and I can see why. You can't even see everything in one picture: There were three fuel pavilions, and that's for a place that specifically forbids semi trucks. Thankfully, RVs and regular trucks were OK. The inside is probably twice the size of the largest Sheetz or Wawa I've ever been in, with several food stations (BBQ, roasted nuts, sandwiches, etc), a gift shop, a candy department, and drink coolers that line half the store. 

It kinda felt like I was in Sam & Max Hit the Road.

Speaking of hit the road, that's what I did, and I finally made it to Austin. I came in around rush hour, at the end of SXSW, and was expecting the worst. I was greeted by lots of great scenery and rolling hills, and actually not very many cars on my route.

I had a number of people to visit in Austin. Who was on the list? Who would be first?

Stay tuned for part 3...!

Happy 2020, and the MAGFest demoparty

Hi there!

This is a short update to let you know three things: 

- Happy New Year! You're awesome. This has been a pretty life-changing year for me, and you've helped to make that possible.

- A few longer updates are in the works. Taku-san part two, and my transcription of the interview with the AY-3-8910 inventor are my two priorities right now in that regard.

- If you plan to be at MAGFest in DC, please stop by Magnolia 3, we are haphazardly running a demoparty there, and I'll have all sorts of weird beverages!

Much love, and I'll update again soon!

The Maiden Voyage of Taku-san, Part 1

The snow and ice was getting a bit annoying in Baltimore, and I realised a trip south would probably alleviate any need to run heat. The previous RV trip I wrote about was my "test trip" to see what it was like being in the RV for a month, away from home, but near friends. While I didn't expect it to be bad, I found that exploring was pretty great. It was better than expected to get out and reconnect with everyone who was available.

My original goal was to go to Austin, though, and you know what, I hadn't been to Orlando since Nerdapalooza in 2011, when I introduced Brandon Hood, the Chiptunes=WIN guy to Erin aka ChipMOM, his now-wife. I had been at the museum for a month and gotten some inventory, cleaning, etc done, so I began to plan my trip south.

I really didn't get much time in Charlottesville for my previous trip, so I decided that would be my first stop. Parking with my friends Andy and Alicia, I got some much-needed catch up time with a few friends. Thifting hijinks with my friend Jen, tracking down another of our mutual friends named Jen, grabbing food with various folks including my friends Greg and (yet another) Jen from VGM jazz act The Hard Modes (who are playing a show on the 18th, if you're in or near Charlottesville). I got to catch up with my old buddy Roope who is livestreaming now (you can check him out here), and I also got to catch up with Gopal, a music buddy of mine that had a pile of sound chips for me, and I had some game hardware for him.

It's always interesting to see how places you've lived change over time, and Charlottesville has certainly grown. There was also a stop at one of my favorite Goodwill locations (may it rest in peace, I just saw it was shut down when passing it a month ago). I found a 99 cent subwoofer for my truck, and someone perked up when I mentioned it ran on 12 Volts. They were going solar in an airstream, and off-grid. We exchanged notes. One of my first meetings with full-timers. Neat!

Post-C'ville, I was headed down to NC. I decided to take a scenic route and swing by Lynchburg on the way down, helping my friend Ashley learn to track and hopefully make more authentic chiptunes as a result. It was just a quick stop for tutorial and not much else, so we caught up a bit and I got back on the road.

Soon, I arrived in Winston-Salem at my friend Tony's place. If you've been to MAGFest, he's one of the crew that brings arcade cabinets to MAGFest, especially Japanese "candy cabs". He's also a big fan of Naomi and obscure games and media, and he knows all the local thrifting stops, of which several were made! Since I rarely get to see him outside of MAGFest, I planted myself in his driveway for a few days. We got some great eats while I was there, including a place called "Mr. Barbecue and Miss Fried Chicken", some decent local pizza, and Tony's favorite Mexican joint. Also, I redeemed some free movie tickets (from coke points, no less) and we went and saw Alita: Battle Angel, which I thought was terrific! Oh, and speaking of watching things, I finally began to catch up on The Expanse, which I had been meaning to do.

No trip to that area is truly complete without a stop to Lost Ark Videogames in Greensboro, so Tony and I made a stop up there where I picked up a game to play on Valentine's Day:

It was eventually time to leave Tony's, and I headed west to my Mom's place next. This stop wasn't going to be quite as long, but I did want to make some time to organize things in my RV a bit, as there was still very little room from when I moved in. We got things sorted, and I mailed some stuff back to the museum, as well as a few things to other people that I had been meaning to get to them. I also did a little bit of tech support, got some opinions/advice on getting solar on top of my rig, and got my propane refilled and fridge serviced. My fridge actually got cold! Further south I went. 

On the previous trip, I met up with my friend Phil, who I originally met online through music and pydance, and he went on to administer servers at Google. We didn't have much time the previous visit, so I stopped in Lenoir this time, and he introduced me to JD's Smokehouse, his favorite BBQ place, which ended up being really good! I thoroughly stuffed myself, we rolled around and saw the town, and thrifted a tiny bit. I didn't find a whole lot, but it was fine. That evening I was introduced to Race for the Galaxy, a fun space colonization tabletop game, and then I headed out in the morning. Overall a good time.

Also on my previous trip to NC, I pondered ending up in Asheville for a bite with Clint, also known as LGR. He and I are mutual fans; obviously I'm into weird retro computer things, eating, and thrifting, and so is he, and of course his videos are great. He's also into chiptunes and liked my work, so we talked and I told him I'd let him know when I was in his hood. That moment was quickly approaching, and we arranged to get more BBQ at a spot with a good rep. I headed straight there, and while waiting in line, Clint and I got talking about modems and old telecom gear. The guy next to us in line, in overalls and casuals, pokes his head into the conversation and says he used to do tons of telecommunications stuff back in the day. Just goes to show you never know who you'll meet or what people are into! Very cool.

While eating with Clint, I figured I'd pop him the big question. No, I wasn't going to ask him out. Well, I was, but I wanted to go out........thrifting. He returns my curiosity with, "The real question is, do you want to go to South Carolina?" Perhaps seeing my confused face he realised I had forgotten geographically where I was. "It's only 20 minutes away", he added. 

Before I knew it, I was in Clint's car, and we went to a place that supposedly had boundless amounts of laserdiscs. And wow, did they have a few! Sadly, the store owner had changed his mind and they weren't for sale when we got there, but I did find a new-old-stock, unopened, digital readout (?!) 8-track player for a car. It was just too weird, so I had to buy it. We also made a few more stops at other shops, where Clint found an Atari calculator and a Unisonic game, and I found some more games and weird stuff. No hangout with me is complete without a strange beverage, so we finished off the visit with a Passionfruit Lychee Cider something or other that I had picked up while hanging out with Tony. Great times!

Continuing down an extremely foggy road, I went down to Sylva NC, which is apparently working on world record for the largest microbrewery per capita. Well, okay, it shouldn't be that hard, considering there are only maybe 2000 people there and I think they're only one microbrewery short. Plus, there is one currently being built. Anyway, what's up in Sylva? One of my coworkers from the computer store I mentioned from the previous post now lives there, and I hadn't seen him in basically 20 years. It was great to catch up with him! There are some cool spots in Sylva to eat and drink, and although my visit with him was pretty short, we got some good catching up in. I also got to perpetrate some demoscene things on him, as he had been around for the era, he just didn't know how deep the rabbit-hole went.

My next stop? Down to South Carolina to visit with two of my fans, one of them doing some far-out art and the other a livestreamer. Option one was to go all the way back up the interstate and then back down another, but I decided to take the scenic route through the national park/forest. Great choice! I did have to climb some hills in the RV, sometimes at a very grueling pace and probably pissing off a handful of vehicles behind me, but it wasn't so bad as there were pull-over lanes for trucks. 

I was also rewarded with some pretty amazing views. Apparently, you can see NC, SC, and TN all in this shot:

Visiting with fans is like visiting with friends for me. My artist friend had not seen Orville, so we made that happen lickety split. Also, I accidentally got her addicted to BANG. Whoops!

A quick visit with Linty on my way out, and I was headed south to the Atlanta area. Atlanta is home to a few friends of mine. This trip I was able to get a hold of Larry Oji, aka Liontamer of OCR fame, and my buddy Ethan Lee, also known as flibitijibibo, who ports games to Mac and Linux, and developed FNA.

Larry has an awesome wife and an adorable daughter, who instantly identified a hodgepodge pita pocket sandwich thing I made as a "Toomey". We hung out and did some much-needed catching up. While they were at work, I hung out with Ethan, and he showed me his development area and some of his cool oldskool dev tools.

Also, I made a trip down to World of Coke. If you haven't been, it's basically a Coca-Cola and Coke-product museum. The whole thing was pretty neat, but at the end of the tour, there's a "Taste it!" room where you can try over 100 different coke flavors, half of which are from other countries and not just random freestyle flavors. 

This, my friends, is my vice. I had to try every single one. I got 20 minutes worth of video of me trying an ounce of each. Then I made 20 minutes worth of restroom visits getting my hydration levels back to normal.

Larry is also a huge sci-fi nut, and we talked about how I had been getting folks into Orville and The Expanse. He strongly recommended I check out Star Trek Discovery, with a note to stick with it until the end of the first season. He mentioned he watches Star Trek with his daughter, and she calls it "Fancy Star Trek", which I thought was hilarious. Then I watched Discovery; she was right!

It was time to head south again. 

TO BE CONTINUED... (if you're just joining us, part two is here)

Hey, I've been experimenting with and asking around about the length of posts people would prefer. Do you think this is a good or bad length? Do you like the amount of pictures in these posts? Is the content any good? I really appreciate your support here on Patreon and I want to make posts you like. Posts do require a lot of effort, so if you can give me less than a minute of your time for some feedback -- even if it's just to hammer on the like button -- I would appreciate it. I have no way to see who has read the post, otherwise!

Life update: I'm still alive!

(pic: Imagic - Microsurgeon)

Yo! Sorry I've been off the map.

This has been quite the adventure! How to get everyone up to date....

First, my move. I thought I was going to be able to move all of my things in a month or two. This was probably one of the dumbest things I've ever said, and even though I had a lot of help -- which I needed desperately -- I ended up doing a sizable portion of the move on my own. The RV was my glorified pickup truck / moving van, and I put somewhere on the order of 1500 miles on my RV just moving things. Total moving time was four to five months, not counting the time it took to get things boxed, find and purchase the RV, etc. Total number of pallets for my stuff to be shrunk to so far has been 22, although about 3-4 pallets worth of stuff isn't actually on a pallet, and probably should be. I just want to try to throw more (useless) things out if I can.

That puts us at the end of November. After Thanksgiving, I said my goodbyes to my former roommates and worked at the museum for a week, trying to clean up and wrap up anything left hanging, and then went south for a little bit on a test run for the RV.

First stop? Richmond, actually! I visited some friends there and watched some Westworld, which honestly I had not seen yet and starting in the middle was maybe a bad idea. I'll have to watch more later. Visiting with ChipWin personality Adam Seats, we decided to destroy his old desk by flipping it and throwing a hatchet at it before building a new desk. I'm not sure if I rolled a 1 or a 20 on this throw:

After heading south some more, I was able to meet up with one of my old coworkers at a computer store I worked at long ago, he's now writing for opensource.com. Maybe give his articles a look, one of which will be an interview with me and free/open source software tools and music in the near future.

While there, I met up with Josh Malone, a retro enthusiast friend of mine, who happened to be in the area. Turns out he was also converting a van to an RV but stopped midway, so he mentioned I could pick up a solar panel if I ever drove past him. Anyway, we opened up an Amiga he just got to figure out what all was inside. The most amusing find was this:

After that, I caught up with Robert, who writes books. A quick bite to eat at the mall meant also being able to meet up with my nearby patron, Erik! Robert had to take off, so we dispersed and Erik proceeded to fill my mind with foolish idea— er, TV, that is. Numerous TV shows, Anime and burgers were had, and we picked up some RV antifreeze for my fresh water tanks because we heard it might freeze. 

The next day, it was time to head somewhere I hadn't been in some time. My late high school / college stomping grounds. Considering the winter storm warning, things were pretty tame, just a little bit cold. I had a space heater on loan from my friend and patron Greg (thanks for the loaner!) so I was fine as long as I had an outlet where-ever I went. I made a stop with a family friend and high school math teacher who (permanently) loaned me my original harddisk to run Linux full-time, and he donated some very cool gear for the Bloop Museum. I also hung out with some friends from school further south, and then decided to see who I could catch up in Wilmington, where I once worked at a mom-and-pop computer shop.

I was able to meet up with not one, not two, but three former coworkers, and two of them I hadn't seen in like fifteen years or more. Time is weird! I also got to have some nice chats with families of friends and coworkers who have stayed in the area, and even met up with my chip scene buddy Tim White who you might know from D&D Sluggers for some pizza:

Here we are in our pixelated shirt glory. One of these days, we're even gonna collab on something!

It was getting late in December; time to round out the trip with some family time. Visiting my mom and siblings was a little bit haphazard, but it was good to catch up. Conveniently, a certain Mikal kHill lived (kinda) nearby, and we tend to only meet up at events, so we took the opportunity to get some chill downtime for more than 5 minutes and [also] eat pizza. Look at how surprisingly normal we appear to be!

Immediately after, I got a picture of a nice view from a family cabin:

With time running short before MAGFest, I headed north with a quick stop to visit my dad, uncle, cousins, and grandmother on the way. we had a great visit that included my grandmother getting a ride to Taco Bell (her choice!) in the passenger seat! I also procured a new boot drive for my workstation, which has since been (almost) revived, and is in my office at the museum. 

I also received a Christmas gift in discovering that Hangouts is not shutting down, which seems to be common misinformation spread. I rely on it heavily, so I was very glad to hear that.

Arriving back home, I had a pretty incredible time helping the MAGFest Demoparty, where I got to meet up with scene friends, old and new. Present and helping were Argasek, Borys, and Fei, from [the former] Riverwash and also Maugli from Function. Honestly, I would say for a first year event, it was very successful. The future of the demoparty at MAGFest is uncertain, so please be politely vocal if you went and enjoyed it or would like to go to it in the future so they know to make it a regular thing. Here's our crew shot with Polish Cultural Institute New York Programming Coordinator Izabela and 2019 MAGFest Guest/Programming crew Tom and Steph:

One of my favorite things about MAGFest these days is the concentration of nerds and music, where I enjoyed watching a reunion show of chip+rock+accordion+prog friends, Chromelodeon. Here's a shot from their show:

Another thing I thoroughly enjoy at MAGFest is being able to do a snack exchange with my friends from all over the country and even the world. We had a massive tasting where we were able to make it through perhaps 50 of the 80 drinks I brought. 

Some of the drinks filtered to friends and patrons, and it appears there's an information leak on the Internet....

Anyway, let me be blatant and clear about this: Running into my friends and supporters -- even while looking as dead as this -- is what keeps me going. A huge thanks to everyone here for being my patron and helping me to stay connected with my scene is in order. I'm getting more inspired and more excited as I travel to new and exciting places (this post is the shortest of my three trips, even) and share my music with others. You are directly helping me do that.

Speaking of things you're helping me with, some crazy things are coming down the pike: If you haven't been following on social media, I finally met the creator of the AY-3-8910 in person, retrieved some historic hardware from him, and now that my desktop is working again, I've been able to recover the interview with him so I can continue transcribing it. I also met up with David of Plogue and obtained a veritable pile of sound chips that I can add to the synthesizer. I'm nearing the end of my composing work for Beatdown City, which means a bunch of new game music. I'm gonna do my best to catch everyone up on all the things that are going on as soon as I can.

If you made it through all of this post, throw it a like and pretend you planted a flag at the top of the mountain!

Meet the new tour vehicle

Hey friends, let's catch up! Progress is being made over here in not-very-sunny hurricane land as I move all of my belongings around. Stuff I intend to let Bloop Museum use comes out of storage or out of the house and goes to a warehouse. Paper documents I have kept for awhile will get scanned and tossed. Personal belongings? Some will probably get sold or given away, and the rest will come with me on the endless roadtrip and tour known as life in that vehicle you see up there.

What will I do in this mobile lab? Well, this isn't Breaking Bad so I won't be  doing that... my hope is to continue my work on the synthesizer, and other songs for clients. Write music on the road! Get inspired by nature (well, perhaps not all forms of nature)! But scenery, at least! And last but not least, visit people, play shows, and promote.

Plus I plan to get a livestreaming rig inside of here somehow, so I can game and compose from the road and everyone can enjoy that. This thing fits in a parking space, so I should hopefully be able to do anything from just about anywhere, as long as I have power and water (some of which I can carry with me). I might also, given the opportunity, play some shows from the RV itself? Will have to investigate.

I want to thank everyone here for sticking with me and supporting me through all of this. Without your support and my ability to count on a steady income from music, I would not be able to plan out the fantastic voyage that this is sure to be. Just in case you didn't see, there is a form available to get a visit from me and signal interest for a show in your area and such. Let's make it happen! ❤

Hoping to share a cool piece of news with you all once it becomes public =]

A weird tour beckons...

(image source: Uncle Grandpa / Cartoon Network)

Hey everyone! Things have been...... interesting...... and my living situation is about to change. My projects, aren't, though, so that's good!

It's Friday and everyone wants to go home (or maybe you're doing it right now!) so I'll get right to it - recently I was asked to move out of my place, and sometime by the end of the month, I hope to be completely out. This has thrown my life into a temporary state of disarray.

It's no secret that I've been trying to help start the Bloop Museum (and if you're supporting that, a big update is coming soon over there). I've accumulated a lot of hardware, software, devkits and more over the span of my life. A lot of that has been used in music projects like Pretty Eight Machine and Chiplust. This stuff is currently in a storage unit. Slowly (for the last 8 years), I've been working on getting a lot of that stuff into an organized state so I can set up and display these machines, people will be able to learn about them, play games on them or just have a fun experience checking them out. 

So now, my goal for this month is to pallet wrap almost everything I own, and move it to a warehouse. Conveniently, the warehouse is connected to a museum that I am working with, and almost all of those logistics are worked out, for the most part.

This leaves a new fun thing to figure out - where am I going to live? One of the reasons I've been able to live in the place where I'm at now is that it was so cheap, and let's be honest, if I'm planning to stay a musician, I need to keep it that way.

Fortunately, as long as my stuff is safely stored, That's not much of an issue. I'm pretty easy-going, I've been to a lot of events, and I have at least a few places to couchsurf. There's not a whole lot tying me down in the Baltimore area. 

So then I thought: Why not take my music on the road? I've been daydreaming about touring for awhile, and talked to a few other musicians that would go with me or at least play when I come to their town. 

The problem? No vehicle. The solution? Well, if the header image wasn't enough of a hint, I'm gonna solve two problems at once. I plan to move into a small motor home, or as the late great Chris Farley/Matt Foley once said, "in a van down by the river". This will be a potentially long adventure with the intention of finding a place that fits my lifestyle and eventually sett(l)ing down in a new spot. In fact, shout-outs to Turrican composer Chris Huelsbeck who is already doing this and offered some advice!

So yeah! This is actually happening. I already have a few leads on RVs, and there is an active fundraiser. Before I link you that, I want you to know that your support here will directly translate to living expenses so I can continue to write music. Stuff like insurance (on both home+gear), gas money, food, etc. Synthesizer and CTM development will progress in the RV, and of course the goal of completing that is to work on my next album. Music commissions will continue once I'm settled. 

Please do not increase your pledge (unless you were thinking about it anyway). I never want to put anyone else in a bad situation just because I need money, that's not why this Patreon is here. And that's not what I am asking with this post! 

What I really really want (other than a zig-a-zig-ah, clearly) are two things:

1. Please help me spread the word about the fundraiser! Some of you are already doing this thank you!), and it is already past the 60% mark. Ways to share are:

Retweet this tweet: https://twitter.com/inversephase/status/1022592638887907328 

Share this post on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/inversephase/posts/10156651073537360 

Or, if you have some other social media or just know someone that wouldn't mind if you sent them the link, the direct link is: https://www.gofundme.com/help-mr-magfest-find-a-home 

2. If you want me to visit you, play a show near you, whatever, and you're in North America, please fill out this form. Feel free to share that form to your friends, if you think they would be interested!

I'd love to know if you want updates on living in the RV; I was thinking about starting a small series of "nerd in an RV" videos that would encompass my music, games, and how to make that all work on the road.

Thanks for being here with me on this adventure, and of course, if anyone has any questions, I'd love to hear them - comment below! 

Coming to a synth near me: Namco N163

Once upon a time, there was a Famicom cartridge. I ordered it from Australia because it was cheaper than Japan (figure that one out...) and I asked the shipper if he would send some Tim Tams along with it. Weeks later, I got a nice treat and it came with a nice treat.

But I wasn't just ordering a game, I was ordering the ability to make Namco sound using my synth. The N163 is an interesting chip that is, in a way, the manifestation of sound from Pac-Man, Galaga, Bosconian, or Tower of Druaga. In older Namco arcade machines, there was a pile of logic that grabbed bits and bytes from memory to form waveforms, mix multiple waveforms together, and then the machine pushed all of that out as raw audio through a resistor network. 

By the way, do you want to see an old Japanese lady talking about her waveforms like it's a family photo album? It's one of the cutest things I have ever seen:

I have no idea if that embed is gonna work, here's a direct link.

Back to cartridge land. I want to control that Namco chip and (perhaps the top image is a spoiler but) if you recall, I need something that will fit in a socket that looks like this:

Suffice to say I'm not capable of making a tiny chip fit in there. In comes ImATrackMan with a KiCAD object for the Namco chip and Charles with some cleanup work, and we've got a board that kinda looks like an alien space ship. Et voila:

So now, I drop some pins on the opposite side of this board and I will hopefully be able to do some oldschool Namco audio, Ozawa-style!

Getting some sound out of this chip will be interesting as I haven't really worked with it much at all, but once I do, you'll be the first to hear. =]

Let me know if there's anything you'd like to see next!

Incoming Synth Adapter Boards

Things have been a little quiet lately, but thanks to some friends, I'm now holding a lot of adapters to use with the synth!

The yellow board allows me to use the Namco N163 (and any other chip that is QFP48) in a DIP48 socket.

The red board allows me to use a YM2608 (OPNA) in a DIP48 socket.

The black board allows me to use any narrow DIP (SN76489, YM2413, etc) in a regular DIP socket.

I got a lot of help on this one, so I'd like to thank:

• Random eBay Guy - N163 source
• Ford - OPNA source
• ImATrackMan - Board design
• Charles - Board cleanup
• David - Board order

Another thing - my most recent shows, BSidesCharm and VCF East, went pretty great! I'll try to write an update for everyone soon. For now, please don't miss me at ATparty (spelled @party) 2018, where I'll be partying with US demosceners and watching demos!

...and hopefully soon you'll see these boards put to work!

Prince of Persia BBC Micro OST now online

I finally got over the anxiety bump and got all this audio together. Originally I wanted to "soundtrackify" it more, include a remix, etc. 

Lots going on over here at the (proverbial) ranch though, namely my main workstation being out of commission at the moment. So, I need to focus on what's important; replacing parts in a PC and getting it to work. Plus I have some upcoming appearances at VCF East and ATparty. I want to make sure my presentations are comprehensive and engaging!

Anyway, Jordan Mechner released classic Prince of Persia with the stipulation that anything derived from his release be noncommercial and not charged for, so pop over to my bandcamp and collect yourself a FREE copy of the Prince of Persia audio!

CTM, now for the Pi.

Your parents help you hook it up.

My performance/show laptop, bloodstorm, took a turn for the worse about two weeks ago, when the charging circuit started on fire. Fortunately the laptop itself is (mostly) okay, but it will only charge while off, and only run from battery while on. So, after a solid 8 years of service, I decided with a heavy heart that it was time to retire bloodstorm and start working on The Next Solution to shows.

Rather than an OG Raspberry Pi, I've ended up with this cute little Orange Pi One (a whole $19; I think they're even cheaper now) from cnlohr. Originally we dangled it off the back of his head and ran a Vive from it, so certainly that means it should be good enough for music, right?

Well, the results are already spoiled above. After dropping a copy of Armbian on microSD (slooooooooow) and installing all the dependencies (a little bit faster), I ran my compiler script to set up the synthesizer board drivers. CTM runs out of the box at anywhere from 70~100fps on the Pi, unmodified. To give you an idea, that's only about 1/3 the speed of my development laptop, but also, my development laptop is an i7.

Anyway, I've got a lot more exploration and experimentation to do, but I'm pretty happy with things so far, at least as a starting point. From here I think I might learn a little bit of OpenGL. The tracker isn't going to be 3D or anything, but I can take advantage of the GPU to accelerate screen drawing some. If anyone has advice on using OpenGL to speed up 2D, I'm all ears; I'll probably be using PyOpenGL. I also need to make sure that the synthesizer boards actually work when connected to the Pi.

I'll keep you posted!

Tracking livestream in ~1hr - lern 2 chiptune

Patrons/Friends, 

If anyone's interested in joining in on a tracking livestream, I'm gonna go over the basics of tracking and maybe we can write something together. I've done this before and I'll do it again, but I wanted to let you know in case you can join in!

The link is http://twitch.tv/inversephase and we're starting at 9pm EDT (New York time). That's 1am UTC (sorry europe) and 10am JST.

Hope to see you there!

Coming to Williamsburg (VA) this weekend

Hey folks, I know a lot of you are somewhere other than Virginia, but I'll be in "the burg" this weekend if anyone is into sci-fi/fantasy/nerd cons! With me will be Adam Seats, who writes for Chiptunes=WIN, as a "moderator" (but really we'll just be shooting the shit back and forth). Planned are a Chiptune 101/Q&A, a Demoscene retrospective/screening/Q&A, and a chiptune dance party where I frantically try to figure out what people will dance to! I'll also have some merch, including (but not limited to) vinyl.

The event website: http://ravencon.com/ 

Hey, while I'm here, does anyone want a chiplust shirt? I have a few left in various sizes. Just send me a message or comment with your size if you do. 

Which sound chip goes on the synth next?

Hey folks, I'm going to have some new synth boards soon, so get excited with me now, and get ready to vote with your phones (or whatever)!

Some background info quick:

There are two revisions of the board. The first revision (technically "Revision --") was originally designed with the POKEY in mind as a first-chip, and has a 40-pin socket. I figured that would be enough for most chips, and okay sure it is, but then when Charles was in the mood to update the design to Revision B, I decided there were a few chips that are 48-pin that would be fun to control (the Konami SCC and VRC6 come to mind, also the Namco N163 used in some Famicom cartridges) so we extended it a bit and fixed some things.

Anyway, I already have an SCC on a board, and I will soon have three more 48-pin boards, which I intend to populate with a VRC6, an N163, and lastly shoutouts to ImATrackMan who drafted a custom adapter to make the OPNA (YM2608) work on my boards. 

So after all that mess what am I asking exactly?

I've found an old original-revision board (40pin max) and I can put one of four different chips on it, I'll build more in the future but I don't have the money or the parts at the moment, so I need to prioritize. I figure you all should have a crack at influencing what goes on the board.

A quick recap of what I already have on a board...

• 6581 SID
• Atari 2600 TIA
• Atari 800 POKEY
• Yamaha YM2149
• Konami SCC

And a quick description of what I have to put on this board and what challenges I'd face:

RCA CDP1869: If you recognise the names RCA Cosmac ELF or RCA Studio II, you'd be on the right track, but actually this chip appears in the related but even more obscure COMX, Telmac TMC-600 and Pecom 64. Anyway, the chip is kind of like a TIA; it can do both sound and video things, and it's only got two channels, one each of tone and whitenoise. It has more frequency precision than a TIA, though, so it's possible that it could be good for music, and the whitenoise....in emulation at least...? sounds more tonal than noisy. Drivers would probably be easy to write.

Another SID revision: I have an 8580 SID graciously donated by chip scene buddy Amplitude Problem, and I miiiight have an incoming replacement SID-alternative (ARMSID; similar to SwinSID I guess?). Drivers already exist for SID, other revisions of SID will simply sound different when handed the same instructions.

MOS TED: Yet another TIA-like chip, this is one of Bil Herd's babies and did video+sound in the Commodore Plus/4. It's a bit more capable, but whether it's anything to phone home about sound-wise is to be debated. Here's a newish game released for the Commodore Plus/4. Impressive for the machine! But I already have a lot of sounds like these, so maybe it's not quite so interesting. The kicker is that I would probably be able to show Bil at VCF East... [edit: I'm dumb and didn't actually visually inspect my TED before putting this on the list; it's DIP48 so it will go on one of the *other* boards, new poll coming soon]

Lastly, a chip that probably needs no introduction, I have a YM2612 I pulled from a dead-as-a-doornail Sega. That means the chip might be dead too, and the drivers for this would be harder to write than any of the other chips. Anyway, I intend to support this down the road if I don't do it now, but I could maybe be convinced to implement support earlier rather than later....hmmm..............

So there we have it, which one would you most like to see on the board?

Prince of Persia, now for the BBC Micro

Friends, Patrons, Countrymen...

If you're a fan of the fluidly-animated platforming classic Prince of Persia, give that link a click and read some nostalgic words by Kieran and Simon. Kieran (who is supporting here! greetings and shoutouts!) has really been throwing his all into this over the past year, and Simon helped out quite a bit, especially with me and getting audio onto the "beeb".

As a gaming and electronic entertainment historian, there's another interesting thing going on in the back of my head. The "Oregon Trail generation" of the US will recognise the Apple II (Prince of Persia's original platform) rather instantly and perhaps intimately, as our school computers. Yet in the UK there's an interesting parallel; their school computer is the BBC Micro (and later the cost-cut Acorn Electron). Both machines are driven by a 6502, have some interesting (and some wildly different) video modes, and contain similar amounts of RAM.

One huge difference, though, is that where the Apple II has no sound hardware other than a beeper that you have to control yourself (unless you have a soundcard, but those were uncommon), the BBC Micro is capable (if you can call it that) in the sound department: It has an SN76489, like the Sega Master System. There are a few minor differences though, for example the whitenoise is handled differently. You'd think "ok so it sounds a bit different, no big deal" but this is actually important to pay attention to because this chip doesn't have any bass, and there's a cool trick you can do with the whitenoise to get some bass notes. So, Simon and I had a few "fun" adventures into converting the audio because of that.

Much like my work with the Bad Apple video on BBC Micro (also done with Bitshifters), I really tried to make a sound chip shine even if it wasn't the best chip of its era. I'm pretty sure nobody will listen to my Prince of Persia work and say "I've never heard THAT come out of a Beeb", but I think our goal with this was more to produce something that was the best thing we could produce that still looked like it would've been released in that era. In an attempt to stay true to the original, I asked Jordan which soundtrack version he'd consider definitive and he actually got back to me (hello, senpai!) with the PC/DOS version, so I modeled almost everything I did after that version. 

Anyway, in my opinion, this is a huge success! Why not give it a try tonight? If you don't have a BBC Micro (I have one, but not a BBC Master, which is required), just hit the "Emulate" button to try the game out in a browser with Matt Godbolt's (seriously, he's supporting here too, what is this, my worlds are colliding) excellent jsBeeb. And feel free to report bugs to us on github!

Also, if there's enough demand, I'll put a render of the soundtrack up on Bandcamp. Leave me a comment if you think I should!

Status update and another CTM video

This is it! I worked on my FX code and...!

Nope.

Well, even though the FX have improved, it's not perfect yet. Turns out this kind of thing takes quite a bit of fine tuning. I forgot to change the version number too? Drat. Oh well, whatever! =]

The video definitely shows off some cool stuff CTM can do, though; if you watched the last video you got a look at what I've called "quickmap" where I can quickly assign a tracker instrument to a specific number when being sent to a board. This will soon be made more flexible to, for example, change instrument number when sent to a new/different board. 

Why am I babbling about this? Back in the day, a fair number of MODs used one of two common ways to do modulation on an instrument, and I want to take a look at them: 

Option one is to store a single "pad" -- a big loop of the instrument going from one extreme to the other -- in a single MOD instrument and then use the "sample offset" feature of the MOD tracker to jump to specific points in the sample. Since CTM won't be replaying samples, I've re-appropriated the sample offset as a pulsewidth modulation like you heard in the AHX video. I have plans to extend it in the future, since that's not the only popular use of the command. Oh, and since nobody guessed in the comments, that's one of the features that seems to be working best. Ha!

Option two -- and might I add, the more relevant one to this video -- was to have a bunch of short, one-shot, looped, similarly tuned instruments and just change the instrument being played. So, say, have instruments 1-7 and pick whichever one suits the modulation amount desired. This is the method that's most useful with my quickmap; I can map any of the modulation instruments to increasingly powerful or thick sounding instruments and get a not-bad approximation of the way the MOD sounds.

Soon (!) I plan to do some weird stuff to attempt to automagically come up with waveforms, but I think my next goals with the tracker are going to be:

• Ignore the tracker and complete some paying work
• Implement "envelopes" (in quotes because...uh, I'll explain later)
• Fix the FX handler

Speaking of paying work, I've got some! I'm working on some tracks for this incoming crazy top-down sportsball type thing. It has a wacky-hijinks rule-rewriting dynamic where the players can do it ingame or they can even let folks watching on twitch mess with the rules for them. 

And lastly, I'm featured in another game that will be out (we hope) by around easter... A hint: I transcribed a bunch of audio from PC to SN76489.

Lastly, hey! Are you going to be at PAX East? Because if you are, I'm playing a set in the Jamspace room on Friday around 6. I would love to see you there. I hope to have some new tunes ready for everyone's ear-holes, and I'll probably have the synthesizer with me if you wanna check it out.

That concludes this mess of an update, talk to you all soon!

The AHX update you haven't been waiting for

Just a quickie today as I'm working on some commissions for clients...

I got an FX handler into CTM, and not only that, but CTM now loads AHX tunes! I couldn't wait to try it out on one of my favorites, Jazzcat's Electric City. Before you watch the video above, here's what it looks like in its native environment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJBRuYTBvVY

...and here's a link to the demo -- the Appendix demo "Electricity" -- where it was used: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrnbMfbroAg

Anyway, my FX handler is pretty buggy, and that will be painfully obvious when you watch my video... but progress is progress, and I've gotta take the good with the bad. Also, the way in which it bugs out is at least mildly interesting, so it was worth making a video!

Guessing game time: Can anyone point out one of the NEW features in CTM that is working (mostly) right? 

CTM 0.1.0 - what does this button do?

I've made a lot of screenshots and videos that don't show off the UI work I've been doing recently. I like an organized tracker. Here you can see a new embiggened font for the song number, the ability to change the song without having to know shift-ctrl-alt-left+right, a row highlighter, a bigger order editor, a moved logo, and some other things, like TONS OF BUTTONS. It all works, too!

How do I do these version number things? There are three dots because it's major, minor, bugfix. I bumped the minor version number to 0.1.0 not because it would seem logical to go from 0.0.9, but because versions before minor version 1 do not have an FX handler that does anything (okay okay it *still* barely does anything). Point is, that is my next goal. If the FX handler starts working, we go to 0.2, but not until then. I've made dozens of changes and am nearing 3000 lines of code in CTM, it's starting to get a bit crazy!

Anyway, I have a favor to ask! Since I can now load MOD, XM, and MON, I'd like to know your favorite tracker songs in these formats, if you have any! I'll try and use them as a test case for CTM and make a video once they sound good (or even if they sound bad, if you like)!

Thirsty for some NIN on the synthesizer?

Well, this probably isn't what you were expecting, but here's a pretty solid result: I loaded in Something You Didn't Ever Have in and decided hey, why not replay it on the SID? Turns out it works pretty well!

This video is actually a few days old, and I pushed it out on social media earlier, but I thought everyone would want to get a peek. 

Never missing out on an opportunity to criticise my own work, right now the bugs here are:

• The default instrument volume was 8 (now taken from instrument)
• No sound effects supported yet (working on that now)

While working on all of that, I accidentally implemented real gui buttons instead of little arrows and +/- stuff, updated some fonts, cleaned up some code and fixed some speed issues, and really everything looks just a little bit more usable. Screenshots coming soon!

CTM 0.0.6 - a better result, and why

Shoutouts to Phoenix and Mem O'Ree! What we have here is CTM, my tracker, playing the first song out of the incredible PC demo 8088 MPH. The original song is called Sleeping Waste and is a damn fine piece of MOD music written in 1994. The version you hear here is arranged by Phoenix who also wrote a pretty great demo called Abort Retry Fail back in the day....in QuickBasic.

So what's new with CTM? Well, the bigguns are that it supports XM, which is basically my favorite tracker format in the whole wide world, and as a cooldown from writing XM support I also implemented MON support which is MONOTONE's native format. Why MON? A few reasons really; MON is for the PC Speaker and lesser sound configurations for the PC, and I thought the songs would translate nicely to the synth. Turns out I was right - that song sounds pretty good, no?

Other updates to CTM involve a few cleanups; somewhere along the way CTM started slowing down and I need to look into it, but it made me realise I hadn't implemented all of my font shortcuts that I intended to, so I dropped some of those in, and things are still chugging along smoothly. I also implemented import support for basically every type of specifically-MOD that I know about (that is, not MOD-derivatives like S3M -- which I can detect, at least -- or IT, but programs that did hacks to save 14-channel MODs and the like). I prepared the instrument handler to handle samples and even multisamples (a la FT2) because it was easier than ignoring the data, and I intend to do cool stuff with it later. And last but not least I added mousewheel support in the pattern area and fixed a little bug where I could accidentally click on the channel reassignment boxes when they weren't active.

In hardware land, I've had help from fellow chiptune scene guy ImATrackMan on designing a package converter for my YM2608 (OPNA) so that I can use it with my synthesizer, and I've designed two of them myself so I can adapt Namco N163 and Narrow DIP like the YM2413 and SN76489. This will contribute to the cool array of sounds the tracker and synthesizer will be able to create, and even do research (more on that later)!

Things are shaping up! I really can't do this without you all supporting me, and I want you to know I appreciate it. We can actually hear real music coming from the tracker+synth now! Thank you!

Please share this post!

CTM 0.0.3 Sneak Preview

Hey Patrons! Almost immediately after getting MOD files to import, I made the last post in a fit of excitement... well, I should've waited an hour or so, because I realised that I was very close to actually playing back the data as well. No matter! Now you too can witness the buggy playback of an old favorite - Space Debris by Captain.

This video was unlisted because I didn't feel like it's ready for the general youtube public, but I decided to make it public because honestly it's pretty good for not-even-alpha, and I want more people to support the project. I'll have something much better sounding during March, I'm sure!

Thanks for watching and supporting!

CTM 0.0.1 can import MOD files (poorly)

Pic: My tracker (below), MilkyTracker by TiTAN (above). Same song and position in both for comparison purposes.

With load/save implemented in my tracker, I couldn't resist; I added an import feature for MOD files. After all, it's a lot easier to test an effect system in a tracker with piles of tracker files written by various individuals! Anyway, back in the early 90s I ran a BBS that had over a gig of MODs online, so this isn't a problem. =]

The MOD import filter can detect many kinds of MOD files and handle them correctly. No other formats yet (XM and S3M will be next) but as you can see from the image I am able to import an "8CHN" FastTracker 1.x module. I've been writing a little bit of file magic into the tracker so that even if the file extension is incorrect, CTM should be able to detect the kind of file you threw at it.

So, if your imagination isn't quite bubbling yet, let me tell you why this is cool: Almost every song I wrote before I decided to take on music as a career was a MOD, XM, or S3M. I will be able to import my old tunes and do chiptune versions, as well as do weird/fun things like attempting to replay the Second Reality music on a SID (what's that? it's been done, you say?)!

Anyhow, other updates in the tracker have been little bug fixes here and there; I've been extending the song and instrument system to support all of the things I'd like the tracker to do, starting with supporting all of the features of the tracker files I want to pull in. There were also a few updates to my board code as I had broken it somehow, and crashy GUI code. All of that is more stable now.