Recently I’ve been haunted by the cute, funky bleeps and clanks of 8-bit music. Especially pecan medley by an artist named yuppster, which includes a short but stirring tribute to the seminal eighties hit Take On Me, which is notable for its use of rotoscoping.
Feeling inspired, I tried to find out how to make music like this, but it seems that there is no easy way - you have to plug Game boy carts into your brain-stem or compile some somethings. I even tried installing the CPC6128 emulator on the Mac and loading up an old music program, figuring I could use… I don’t know, some Audio program… to record to MP3. but the interface was taking too long and my initial squirt of enthusiasm was soon smothered in the labyrinth of procedure.
It all got me to thinking about the lo-fi music I grew up hearing on my Amstrad CPC 464 and how evocative negative space can be, like the black backgrounds in those old games. Since Wipeout hit the Playstation about ten years ago, all the blank space in video games seems to have been taken up all kinds of stuff, adverts, flashing things, rendered landscapes etc. Sometimes this is how I feel walking through London - it’s like a hundred He-Man adverts a minute, all screaming for my attention. I defy you, He-Man! I am Skeletor!
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