Big Lion Music » Chiptunes

Thriller (Side-by-side Comparison)

virt — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 08:48:45 +0000

I played this in memory of Michael Jackson, who is my all-time #1 musical inspiration, at Magfest 8.

What you are hearing is Michael Jackson’s original Thriller in one ear, and my own NES chiptune cover of Thriller in the other, with a tiny bit of bleed-through. The mash-up effect is a little jarring at first, but hopefully you will be amused by it when you hear things lining up. When I made the cover years ago, it never occurred to me to try this; I just did A/B comparisons a measure at a time, and got the details as close as possible by ear. This was the first time I’d ever heard the entire thing played in sync, and I just sat there for a while staring into space, thinking hard about lots of serious things.. before hitting play again and doing the “zombie hands” dance the whole way through.

Lorem Chipsum

virt — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 08:17:53 +0000

As performed at Magfest 8, in January 2010. This isn’t the original song just run through chip synths, it’s almost entirely rewritten to account for how sloppy my playing was on the full production. Chip instruments are much less forgiving and stick out terribly if they’re just a little bit off, so I just selected everything and hit delete. Since I had improvised the guitar and bass while recording, they never existed as notation and I had to transcribe them and re-play on keys. The synths used are VOPM, Yamaha TX81Z, and Plogue Chipsounds.

Micro Media Broth

virt — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 03:45:30 +0000

This is the first new NES chiptune from me in quite a while — this won first place in the Oldschool Music competition at Blockparty 2009. If you’re a fan of my chiptunes, you probably want to hear this. Additionally, and this is kind of a big deal, the IT version contains… all of my FX3 samples. I’m giving them away to the community. You’re free to use them in anything. Enjoy!

Turbonugget

Jake — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 17:58:23 +0000

This is Nugget’s Theme. For anyone who doesn’t already know, Nugget is my adorable puppy (there’s a link to a picture on my About page). This song is for and about him — his own simpler, more upbeat counterpart to “Staring at My Spaceship”. The mini-melodies during the silent pauses are the “fanfares” our Roomba vacuum plays when it starts and finishes cleaning, respectively. The Roomba is Nugget’s best friend, they were raised together.

Sorcerors Battle

Jake — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 17:52:32 +0000

This is one of the three new songs I debuted at MAGFest 7 – An FM journey into an epic past where metallic wizards do battle on high windy cliffs with guitars and lightning. Dedicated to Wizwars, who couldn’t be at Magfest, and who was deeply missed in an otherwise incredible chiptune concert.

Staring at my Spaceship DX EDITION