Kwakfest 5-pack
Posted by virt on June 21st, 2004 filed in Music Releaseevery few weeks or so we #vgmix jerks, under the constraints of general midi, each write a song in an hour. no competition or voting, we just zip them up, listen together (hitting “play” on each one at the same time for synchronicity) and laugh and have a great time, far removed from the pissing contests that were often old tracker compos. these are the most recent ones i’ve written, i thought i’d highlight them because i really love them. you can play them on whatever midi hardware you have, i won’t mind. that’s the point of gmidi anyway!
choppastyle
herbal empire
a happy day in funtown
nyquil
marry me kae
i write them usually by doing one or two live keyboard takes per midi channel, including drums. sometimes quantized, sometimes not, depending on the feel desired. sometimes i play each track all the way through, and sometimes i do it the same way i do most other music, nearly finishing 8 or 16 bars at a time then moving on, and eventually coming back and gluing it all together with transitions and whatever polish i can slap on in the remaining time.
come to irc.vgmix.com #vgmix and hang out, because we never plan them in advance.. so you’ve got to be around when we build up Critical Kwak Mass and put on a Kwakfest. it’s great practice.
June 24th, 2004 at 4:56 pm
I still don’t know what “kwak” means. Somebody said it was a synonym for “quack”. Is that just a nonsense word?
June 25th, 2004 at 12:34 am
does it matter? :D
July 6th, 2004 at 8:32 pm
owned
July 7th, 2004 at 5:14 pm
interesting stuff :) its always cool to listen to your recent releases.. nice to talk to you! /carl
July 9th, 2004 at 2:45 am
god i just shit my pants
July 11th, 2004 at 1:46 am
This guy can slap together in an hour something that sounds better (in my mind’s ear anyway) better than a lot of the stuff coming out of EMI, Universal, Sony etc. At least I think so.
September 18th, 2004 at 8:31 pm
Nice MIDI’s Virt! I especially loved ‘choppastyle’. In ‘a happy day in funtown’ the
the guitar chords are way to Synchronous. You forgot to add the strum effect that occurs when chords are plucked.
September 19th, 2004 at 2:46 pm
yeah uh. let’s see you do realistic asynchronous guitar strumming in 53 minutes (not just offsetting each note by a preset or random amount)
oh, and with the whole rest of the song too.
October 11th, 2004 at 10:17 am
The happy day in fun town song is just so funny. Especially when it changes to something else at 0:30. I really like the ending, like it’s one of those old shoot out games (e.g. Outlaw) for the atari.
December 9th, 2004 at 11:08 pm
Hey, by any chance is choppastyle named for that ridulous picture of the hairdo that was featured at boingboing.net awhile ago?
December 23rd, 2004 at 9:31 am
sure is! best picture ever.