#oneaday, Day 265: Skill Points

Take a minute, now, to take stock of yourself. Specifically, take stock of the skills you have. And don’t say that you don’t have any. Everybody has skills of some description, whether it’s the ability to make the perfect Angel Delight without the use of a measuring jug, the ability to excite women simply by looking at them, an understanding of the various wires, pipes and bendy things that make up a car engine or being able to do something awesome like play the piano.

It’s quite a strange experience to suddenly be conscious of your own skills. But there are times when it happens. It often doesn’t happen when you’re young or lacking in self-confidence. But at some point in your life, something flips a switch in your head and says, “Hey. You’re awesome. It’s okay to think that.” Not in an arrogant way, simply in the sense that you can picture a task in front of you—be it making said Angel Delight, exciting said women or… you get the idea—and feel confident that yes, you probably are going to be able to pull that off.

You know you’re at that stage when you casually mention something you’re doing to friends and they’re all “Oh wow! That’s so awesome!” and you’re all like “Yeah, whatever.” and then they’re all “No, SRSLY, that’s AWESOME!” and you’re like “Really?” and they’re all “Yeah!” and you get all proud of yourself and then a bit guilty that you’re feeling pride because it’s one of the Seven Deadly Sins after all and you don’t want to end up in a field shouting “WHAT’S IN THE FUCKIN’ BOX?!” and finding spoilers in the spoiler. (Yes, I know the Statute of Limitations was up on Se7en years ago.)

But it’s actually a pretty cool feeling. Particularly when you realise that rather than being someone quite a way down the “pecking order” of “talent”, whatever your skill might be, you’re actually pretty high up, and that people know that, realise that and respect you for it.

My skills that I’m most proud of? (Hi, Satan.) Music and writing. I’m sure there are ways I could improve both. I know for a fact I’m not as good a musician as many of my peers and friends, for example. But I’m satisfied with the skills I’ve got, I’m an awesome accompanist and my sight-reading skills are the stuff of legend. Amongst musicians. Who tell legends about sight-reading.

And my writing: if you’re reading this, take a look at the number at the top. 265 days. That’s how much I love my writing. 265 days of wanking on about bollocks, at least 500 words at a time. Some of it is bullshit. Some of it is profound. Some of it is non-descript. But I like all of it. I see some trusted friends, peers and colleagues being so very hard on themselves and their writing sometimes. And it actually makes me glad for once; while there are many things I would like to change and/or improve about myself, my writing is the one thing that I generally find myself feeling happy and satisfied with and, dare I say it, proud of.

So take a moment the next time you have a free second. Put down that celebrity gossip rag, that chocolate eclair or that tube of personal lubricant. Think about yourself. Think about what you’re good at. And take a moment to give yourself a pat on the back. Well done. You do a great job on that thing you’re really good at.

#oneaday, Day 226: Crossing the Musical Pond

Being in contact with people from all over the world is cool. You get to learn all sorts of interesting things about other people. Granted, the vast majority of people I know from “other” parts of the world are in the US and Canada. But despite the fact that many people believe the UK and US in particular to have a lot of similarities, one thing often comes up that reminds me that we are, in fact, different. And that’s music.

I was talking to a new friend the other night. She lives in the mountains in Georgia (that’s Georgia, US), a place where she says they didn’t even “discover” rock music until very recently. Up until then, it was country, country, country all the way. I found it strange to contemplate the idea that an area would just be completely without a style of music that I take for granted.

But then it occurred to me. This happens all over the place. She educated me a bit in the ways of country—a style of music she’d only grown to appreciate recently herself—and I realised that over here, barring occasional anomalies like Shania Twain’s brief incursion into the UK charts a few years back, we really don’t “do” country over here. At least, not in any sort of mainstream way. We have other things instead. And we have equivalents for different areas.

Okay, so rural English accordion-based folk music isn’t exactly the same as country. But it’s music from rural areas. The intent is the same, if not the execution. Similarly, urban music in the UK shares some stylistic features with urban music from the US, but comes out rather differently. (I don’t like either of them, which at least is something constant.)

In fact, about the only thing that is the same, as I allude to oh-so-subtly above, is the bland, manufactured pop crap. Some whiny twat with a stool and a spotlight bleating on about “oooh, girl” and probably pronouncing “you” as “joo” because that’s how cool and/or non-white people do it. It’s the same here as in the States.

These musical styles help people form a sense of identity. From the line-dancing country fans up in the mountains to the chavs blasting Dizzee Rascal at 0.5W out of their mobile phones (“blasting” probably wasn’t the right word there…) on a street corner, these pieces of music give people a feeling of “belonging”. They can attach themselves to it, identify themselves by it, bond with other people over it.

I don’t have a particular style of music that I call “my own”. As a musician, I’ve always been pretty fascinated by all styles of music. By exploring them, I’ve developed fairly eclectic tastes. I know what I like, and what I don’t like. I tend to feel more strongly about the things I don’t like than the things that I do like. And I don’t feel particularly pressured into feeling that I “should” or “shouldn’t” like a particular style of music just because of who it is. I’ve listened to Ke$ha’s album, for example, and enjoyed it. (I believe I described it as “what would happen if Kelly Clarkson were forcibly inserted into a NES”, which I think is a compliment in my world) I enjoyed the country that my friend introduced me to the other night (Lady Antebellum’s “Need You Now” is a lovely song, incidentally). I don’t find myself screaming over R&B and generic-sounding “urban” music because I’ve listened to it analytically and don’t find any appeal elements in there for me personally, though I’m sure it has its uses. In fact, I almost appreciate it in the whole “darkened club” situation, but then if you drink enough you can come to appreciate pretty much anything. Get low, low, low, low.

So in summary, then? Music is good. Listen to whatever the hell you like and damn what other people think of you if they find out.

#oneaday, Day 144: Another Multimedia Extravaganza

More pictures with sound for your delectation tonight. This time I thought I’d experiment with some black and white photos. I hadn’t originally intended to take the photos with a particular theme in mind, other than that I knew I wanted to try doing some black and white ones. When I loaded the pics onto my computer, though, it became apparent that I had managed to take pictures with almost no people in them whatsoever. This wasn’t intentional, but it provided a theme for the set anyway. I shouldn’t have told you that, you weren’t to know, were you? Let’s start again.

This is a set based on the theme of being alone.

Whew, got away with that, I think.

I can assure you that Southampton is just fine and has not suffered a 28 Days Later-style zombie apocalypse which emptied the streets. Some may say that’s a shame. But there are a few nice people here, so I don’t wish a zombie apocalypse on the whole place just yet. A few areas, perhaps.

The music for this particular slideshow is “Living with Determination” from Persona 3. It seemed a fittingly melancholy piece for the moody nature of the photos.

Overall, I’m pretty pleased with how these pictures came out, and with the overall effect of the slideshow as a whole. It was an interesting day to take photos, actually. You can probably see how the weather changed as my journey progressed – it started dull and cloudy, but the sun eventually came out. The clouds stuck around, though, making for some dramatic, stormy skies. Hence the many pictures of clouds!

I’m definitely going to do more of these, as they’re fun and reasonably easy to put together. Plus it’s yet another means of self-expression, which is always good.

I’ve always enjoyed photography over the years. I remember getting a bit bewildered by an old film-based SLR camera back home with my parents, and later getting my own point-and shoot cameras, taking bajillions of photos and often being complimented for my good composition. Obviously I’m no pro and haven’t had any proper training, so I’m sure there’s all sorts of things technically wrong with them that I can do better. But as I used to tell people who came in wanting to learn about iPhoto and Aperture – if you’re not being paid for the pictures you take, whether or not you like them is the only important thing.

So true – for so many things besides photography, too. Sums up the whole idea of #oneaday, in fact, not to mention the photography-based variant #365. People are doing these things for themselves as a means to express themselves, develop their own skills and perhaps show off just a little bit. When other people end up appreciating your work, it’s always a pleasant surprise. And if they don’t like it, it’s the old artist’s defense – “it wasn’t for them anyway”.

So anyway. I hope you enjoy (or enjoyed) the slideshow. There will be more to come in the future as soon as I get back out there with my camera and get all snap-happy.

#oneaday, Day 139: Multimedia Extravaganza

It is indeed a multimedia extravaganza for you today as I share with you both pictures and sound! I even share them both at the same time! That’s pretty exciting, isn’t it. Admit it. You’re a little excited right now at the prospect of pictures and sound at the same time. If you’re not, you’re either lying, or dead inside.

Err, anyway. Today was another one of those beautiful sunny days so, not having anything better to do and not having anyone to share it with, I decided to head out into the sunshine with my camera and take some pictures around the city. Turns out Southampton is actually not a bad-looking city in the sunshine. The city centre has an awful lot of green space, with about five parks all right next to each other. One of them was hosting some sort of arts festival today – there was live music, craft stalls and somewhere, apparently, workshops on things like drawing and making things.

I always find it interesting how wandering around with a camera makes you notice little things more. A flower with a bee on it, for example. If I didn’t have a camera in my hand, I wouldn’t have given that a second thought. But because “ooh, that makes a good photo”, it gets noticed. It’s also immensely annoying if you spot something that will make a good photo and you then miss the opportunity. I didn’t have this problem much today. I even managed to get the bee.

I present to you, then, a YouTube video of some pictures from around Southampton. They’re a fairly random selection, to be honest, and not necessarily particularly characteristic of the city itself. But they’re things that my eye was drawn to today and thus up came the camera, click click, boom. Wait, not “boom”. That’s something else. The music in the video is the theme from Final Fantasy VII, played by me. Oh yes indeedy.

Yes, as well as taking those pictures, I also recorded a few more pieces for your delectation. Four today, in fact. Here they are. As usual, iPhone users should tap on the titles to hear them, while everyone else can use the Flash player and be smug twats about it.

Alone from Persona 4

Living with Determination from Persona 3

Final Fantasy VII Theme

Eyes on Me from Final Fantasy VIII

That’s not quite my normal 500 words, I know. But I gave you multimedia. So I think you can let me off 80 words or so. Except by the time I’ve finished justifying my lack of words I’ll probably have hit 500 words anyway. So I may as well keep going. I hope you all had a pleasant day. I did, although it was rather quiet. Still, it’s nice to have quiet days sometimes, isn’t it? Means you don’t have to fill them with meaningless conversations and attempts to fill spaces that words should go in. Like this one that I’m filling right now. Oh yes. There’s 500 words. Time to go.

Hope you enjoy the slideshow and music. Let me know what you think in the comments.

#oneaday, Day 137: Flower Girl

I am almost falling asleep on my keyboard here, so I’ll keep this brief to prevent falling asleep with all the letters of the keyboard printed backwards across my face. I can barely keep my eyes open. I’m not sure why I’m so tired, though I have had people over this evening and I spent the first part of my day cleaning up in preparation for said visitors. We had a lovely evening, by the way, thanks for asking.

Earlier in the day I did get a moment to record one more piano piece. I posted it on Tumblr earlier but I’m not sure who got the chance to hear it. A few people did, I guess, and it even got a couple of reblogs. But I thought for those people who don’t “do” Tumblr, I’d post it here too.

The song in question is Aerith, or Aeris, or Flower Girl or whatever you want to call it. It’s the piece from Final Fantasy VII that makes everyone cry. There are two reasons for this – one, it’s a beautiful piece of music, and two, the most memorable point of the game in which this piece of music is heard is where Aerith/s dies. (Oh come ON! Surely everyone who is ever going to play Final Fantasy VII knows that by now.) This scene is widely regarded by many as one of the first times where computer games genuinely started to encourage emotional investment in their narratives – at least on consoles. Developers of adventure games on PC had been trying this for a long time already, but Final Fantasy VII was the first mainstream console game which people admitted crying to.

It’s a cliché and a bit of a joke these days, of course, but it was my brother telling me about the sheer emotion in the game that made me originally want to pick up Final Fantasy VII. I’d never touched an RPG prior to that point and had no idea what HP, MP and Limit Breaks were. My life was shortly to change forever.

The piece of music itself, though; it’s always held a peculiarly personal meaning to me, and I can’t pin down why that is. I think it possibly may be something to with the fact that the older Final Fantasy games allowed you to rename your characters, so in my game, it wasn’t “Aerith” dying, it was someone I knew. This made it all the more traumatic.

When I play the piece nowadays, I don’t necessarily think of someone dying. But I do always find myself thinking of someone. I always feel that the character of the piece represents gentle, total, unconditional love and/or affection towards someone. So inevitably while playing it I find myself thinking of someone special to me in some way. The exact person who comes to mind has changed many times over the years, but the reason for my thinking of them hasn’t. They are important.

iPhone users, click here to hear the track. Everyone else, use the Flash player below.

#oneaday, Day 136: Massive Pianist

Some more music for you today as it’s awfully late and I feel like I’ve been busy all day today, even though the only thing I achieved in the daytime was to buy two shirts which actually look good on me. Oh, and record these two pieces, of course.

A bit of background on these pieces for those who aren’t familiar with them. Final Fantasy has been a big part of my life for many years – at least since Final Fantasy VII came out. I believe I’ve talked about the fond memories I have associated with this game in the past – the long, hot summer days, the thirty-six hour playing stint which culminated with my friend Woody and I suffering strange hallucinations of items that didn’t exist in the game – but the thing that’s stuck with me longer than the game itself is its music. FFVII was the first time I really noticed game music as a positive thing and, just to make this even more clichéd, it was One Winged Angel which impressed me the most.

After playing FFVII to death, I tracked down the previous games in the series, which I’d never experienced before, not really knowing what an RPG was before that point. I discovered that they, too, had great music, and not only that, there were piano arrangements available.

After a considerable amount of time searching, I managed to track down some dodgy scans of the piano scores for IV, V and VI. Later, I acquired genuine copies of the VII, VIII and IX books. The arrangements of the pieces are gorgeous – proper piano arrangements in a variety of styles rather than simple transcriptions. I’ve been playing them ever since and everyone seems to think that they’re very “me”.

Persona is a bit different. I came to Persona with the third game in the series a year or two back thanks to the Squadron of Shame. We even did a podcast about it. What struck nearly all of us about that series was its peculiarly quirky and enormously Japanese soundtrack. I was very interested to discover earlier this year that both Persona 3 and Persona 4 have piano scores available too. Unfortunately, they’re not nearly as well-arranged as the Final Fantasy scores, but they certainly sound good enough – for some pieces at least. The J-hip-hop tracks don’t sound particularly good on a piano, so there is no way I am ever playing any of them in public.

Much like Final Fantasy, the Persona games hold a very fond place in my heart. Rather than having memories attached to them, though, I found the stories of both games to be very emotionally resonant. I identified a great deal with many of the characters, as Persona deals a lot with friendships, personal identity and figuring out who you are, both in yourself and in relation to other people. While I can’t point a fake gun at my head and summon a mythical beast to do my bidding, I do at least understand what some of the characters have been through, and empathise with others. It’s rare that a game is written well enough for that to happen, so both games hold a special place in my heart.

Without further ado, then, here’s two more pieces for your delectation. Just like last time, iPhone users can click on the titles to hear the tracks.

*pauses* I wish I’d remembered to upload these tracks before I started writing this. *drums fingers* Tra la la la la…

Aha! They’re done. Here. *Enjoy* the *sauce*. And yes, I know there’s a couple of bum notes. I was in a hurry. 🙂

The Oath from Final Fantasy VIII

Heaven from Persona 4

#oneaday, Day 134: Busy Days

Hello everyone! Apologies for the late hour. It’s been a genuinely busy day today, despite it being a Bank Holiday (or Memorial Day if you want to be all American about it).

My day started with waking up several times, snoozing my alarm and then waking up again. The last snooze inexplicably went on a lot longer than the other ones so I had a minor panic when I woke up the last time, because I actually needed to get up today.

Why? I hear you ask. Well, today was my first performance in public for ages. What? I hear you ask. For those of you who don’t know, I’ve been playing the piano for quite a long time now. Since the age of five, in fact. Which makes it… a long time that I’ve been playing. I haven’t performed in public for quite a while, though, and my friend Sam assures me that he’d never heard me play in public before. I’m convinced otherwise, but he’s very insistent on this matter. I know he certainly didn’t see the last piano performance I did at university, which was a duet performance with one of the strangest people I’ve ever had the curious fortune to encounter in my life that was followed with one of the most memorable and terrifyingly inappropriate pub conversations I’ve ever experienced. Those who know who I’m talking about also know what the conversation was about. Those who don’t… well, I feel it would be improper for me to discuss it here. Unless you really want to know, in which case leave me a comment and I’ll tell you there.

So today was my first performance in public for ages. We’ve established that.

What did you play? I hear you ask. Demanding, aren’t we? Perhaps you should stop asking so many questions and let me get on with my story because it’s entirely possible I might have been about to tell you what I played. In fact, I’m half-tempted to just not tell you now.

Except that would make this blog entry run rather short and not allow me to include the lovely media that I’m about to. So I’ll tell you.

A few years back, I discovered the Final Fantasy Piano Collections and managed to acquire most of them. Some of them I have the actual books of. The older ones I managed to track down some scans from the Internet. More recently, I managed to locate some piano scores for the music from Persona 3 and Persona 4. These respective series have some of my favourite music of all time, so I figured a public performance would be a good opportunity to spread the love and let other people know what they’re all about. So that’s what I did.

The event itself was part of Southampton’s “Keys to the City” event, celebrating local arts and the piano in particular. Today’s performance took place in the city’s art gallery, tucked away on one side of the Civic Centre near the library. I got the impression not many people know about it. But there’s a lovely Steinway piano there which has clearly been crying out to be used for some time, so my friend and ex-colleague Stephen McCleery of Retrograde Recordings helped to organise an event to give it a bit of attention.

Here’s three of the pieces I performed. I’ll be recording the others over the next few days, so there’s a few posts ready to go if I’m short of inspiration!

If you’re reading this on an iPhone, don’t get pissy about the Flash audio players not working. I’ve been good enough to supply direct links to the files. Just click on the title. I’m good to you people. Not every blog would do that, you know.

Anyway… enjoy. More to come over the next few days.

Main Theme from Persona 4

Prologue from Final Fantasy

Velvet Room from Persona 3

#oneaday, Day 50: Old Men Rant At The Hit Parade

Caution: YouTube frenzy ahead.

There’s a lot of shit music around at the moment. One only has to look at this week’s top 40 to see most of it. Let’s explore it, shall we? Call it a cultural exchange.

Before I go any further, I would like to add that I don’t hate black people, despite whatever you might interpret from my song choices which follow. I just hate shit music. And a lot of it happens to be by black artists. I can’t think of any awards ceremony I would like to attend less than the MOBO’s. Not that I particularly want to go to any awards ceremonies, ever. But I digress. Let’s dig into the sewers of the UK music scene, shall we?

Hanging in there at number 40, we have Sidney Samson’s Riverside. A song that starts in an atonal, idiotic place and then goes nowhere fast.

This is one of those songs that thinks that having a single hook of about four bars long is enough to build an entire song around. And to be fair, the philistines of the world don’t appear to know any better, as this song has been lurking around the charts for quite some time. But it has no depth to it. There’s no development. At all. The whole song is that irritating twangy synth line and some twat saying “Riverside, motherfucker” over the top of it. What does that even mean? Don’t answer that, because I really don’t give a shit.

Next up, number 30 sees Florence and the Machine performing You Got The Love.

Now, I have a lot of time for Florence, in that she can actually sing, has a distinctive voice and has a band with actual instruments in it. But this song? Ugh. It was already the most overplayed song in the world before she covered it, and with her and her machine being one of the most overplayed bands in the UK at the moment, you get an irritating song which is never more than five minutes away from when you turn the radio on.

One space below that, we have Iyaz and Replay, the first of many whiney black men in the charts today.

I find something profoundly irritating about this style of music. Perhaps it’s the fact that one song in this style is virtually indistinguishable from another. Perhaps it’s the gratuitous mentioning of iPods in the lyrics (I have a weird thing where I think that mentioning brand names or things/people that actually exist is somehow obnoxious. Don’t ask me to explain why, because I can’t.) Perhaps it’s just the fact it’s a shit song. Who knows?

Moving up the charts, we have Jay-Z ruining a perfectly good Alicia Keys song at number 28.

Alicia Keys can actually sing, so why she needs a douche like Jay-Z babbling his nonsense over the top of it is anyone’s guess. To her credit, the infinitely superior version of the song, with no rapping and just Alicia singing, is currently at number 6, proving it is indeed possible to polish a turd.

At 26, we have the Helping Haiti record.

I have nothing against charity records. But I fucking hate this song. And every charity song there has been in the last few years has been of this ilk – slow, boring, dirge-like and filled with “celebrities” trying to outdo each other vocally. Ignore this drivel and just donate directly to the charities if you feel that strongly about it.

At 22, we have another whining black man, this time accompanied by a shouting black man and Sean Paul, who sadly isn’t dead. It’s Jay Sean, Sean Paul and Lil Jon with Do You Remember.

This is just awful. And on a side note, compare Jay Sean’s singing with Iyaz’s. I defy you to tell them apart. The only thing which sets this record apart is Lil Jon’s incoherent shouting and Sean Paul’s incoherent burbling. At least it isn’t a full-on Sean Paul record. I thought we had got rid of him for good. Sadly, he’s still about, but at least it’s only in a “Ft.” role.

I, of course, couldn’t let Glee slide. They’re at number 20.

Golden rule: Leave Journey alone. Golden rule number two: If you must cover Journey, don’t turn it into a wet fart of a song. This song breaks both of those rules.

This next song is unforgivable purely for the fact it uses the Flintstone-based chat-up line. It’s Young Money with Bed Rock, at number 18. I am sure you can guess the line which is used.

In other news… it’s some rappers “singing” about fucking. In their video they wear lots of gold. Stereotype much?

At number 12, Gramophonedzie do their best to destroy everyone’s favourite memories of Jessica Rabbit.

This song brings back unpleasant memories of Audio Bullys [sic] molesting Nancy Sinatra’s Bang Bang a year or two back. So, to make it all better, here’s a far superior version.

Mmm… Jessica Rabbit. Err, where was I?

Oh, right. Number 5. Does this one, by any chance, sound familiar?

That’s right. The most overplayed song in the world by the most overplayed band in the UK now has the most overrated babbling twat spouting chavvy nonsense over the top of it. I don’t think anything else needs to be said.

Just time to stop off at number 3, and Jason Derulo’s In My Head, whiney black man number 3.

Pro tip for Mr Derulo: Singing your own name at the start of a song wasn’t cool when Craig David did it. It still isn’t now. Plus, your song is shit and sounds like every other whiney black man out there. Shut up.

And finally – I’ve saved the best for last – it’s the current UK number 1, the appallingly spelled Tinie Tempah and Pass Out.

I’m going to say nothing about this song… but I am going to share the lyrics with you after the jump (if you’re on the front page, click this post’s title or the “Read More” link below to read the full thing in all its… err… “glory”), and you can make your own mind up. Bear in mind this is the current number 1 in the charts. Once you’ve listened to it and read the lyrics you might understand why I mourn the UK music scene’s sorry state. So without further ado, I leave you with Tinie Tempah. The twat.

Continue reading “#oneaday, Day 50: Old Men Rant At The Hit Parade” →

One A Day, Day 44: Music Without Embarrassment

I love Spotify, yet still don’t understand how it can possibly work. The record labels seem to be perfectly happy to keep working with it, though – there’s a ton of stuff available on it now, from the mainstream to the super-obscure. There’s even some movie soundtracks on there – after a throwaway comment regarding the Beauty and the Beast soundtrack the other day, I checked to see if it was on there, and it was. Score. Assuming you like Disney soundtracks.

The best thing about Spotify, though, is it gives you the opportunity to “try out” music you wouldn’t think of walking into a shop and buying. Actually, I’ve been known on a number of past occasions to walk into a shop and buy an embarrassing album simply because I either found one of the songs repeatedly played on the radio just a little bit too catchy, or I quite fancied the singer, or both. I haven’t done that for a while, now. In fact, I can’t remember what the last CD I bought was. It was certainly a long time ago now – if I’m buying music these days, I’ll tend to buy it from iTunes or Amazon.

Anyway, two irritatingly catchy things that have been stuck in my head thanks to the stagnant playlist on Radio 1 are Ke$ha (who needs a slap for doing the “dollar sign as S” thing) and Owl City (who I thought was actually a guy called Al City, and was notable for being a recent UK number one that actually had something approaching a decent tune). Now, neither of these artists are ones I particularly felt the need to rush out and buy the albums for, but the songs they’d released were just the right side of the “catchy/annoying” spectrum to warrant a bit of further investigation.

Ke$ha produces from her mouth not only the most American American accent I’ve ever heard, but also sounds remarkably like what would happen if you took Kelly Clarkson and forcibly inserted her into a NES. From her recent single (the obnoxiously misspelled “TiK ToK”) I had assumed that all of her stuff would be along the lines of the interminable stream of crap R&B that seems to flood the charts these days, but her album Animal was a pleasant surprise, including a number of different styles of music, many of which feature appealingly lo-fi backings that sound like they were produced by a synth that had never heard the term “wave-table synthesis” before. The tunes are catchy and the lyrics are vapid bubblegum fluff (one song is called “Party at a Rich Dude’s House” and is, as you might expect, about a party at a rich dude’s house, where Ke$ha proudly informs us that she was sick in his cupboard) but the thing I actually liked about the album is that it doesn’t take itself too seriously. So much crap R&B (which there are definite leanings towards) ends up trying to sound “dark” or “gritty” but just ends up sounding like an emasculated twat whining about ooh baby girl, I’ma take joo out, oooh, yeah, mmmmm-hmmmm. Ke$ha sings actual words, doesn’t do that stupid Mariah Carey warble and, more to the point, doesn’t stick to the boring R&B sound. I’m not even sure why I keep comparing her to that, as she’s clearly a pop artist.

Anyway, enough of that embarrassment. (She was fun to drive home to, thanks to the Spotify mobile app on the iPhone. I should shut up, as I’m only making things worse for myself, here.)

Owl City – if you haven’t heard of them, you might recognise the song “Fireflies” which hit the UK charts a few weeks ago and proved so popular for a short period that it was even heard on Radio 2 at the same time as it was on Radio 1. It’s a pleasant little song about fireflies (all right, I don’t know the lyrics and don’t really care enough to go and look them up) with a catchy tune and a vocalist with a distinctive voice. The album is much the same – electronic backings, gentle, slightly whiny American voice over the top. It, like Ke$ha, isn’t something I’m clamouring to purchase for keeps, but it was a pleasant enough listen for a little while.

So there’s Half Hearted Music Review Of The Day. If you have a copy of Spotify, why not try out something you don’t expect to like? You might just be surprised.

On a side note, I have three invites to Spotify available, so if you want one, write me a poem including the word “turgid” in the comments and the best three win an invite. No purchase necessary.

POKEY my SID

Forget Sega vs Nintendo, it’s time for the battle of the old sound chips.

As I commented on the recently-released 8-Bit Computer Retrospectacular Squadcast (which I really do recommend you go and listen to – it’s our best yet), I was an Atari boy growing up, largely because that’s the system we had at home – there was none of this “own every system” malarkey that goes on now, partly because the systems were a lot more expensive in relative terms than today’s consoles, and partly because pretty much the same stuff came out on all of them anyway.

The bitterest battles that we Atari people fought were against the might of the Commodore 64, a machine of roughly equivalent power and capabilities to the Atari 8-bit series of computers. Both had very similar specifications, so it was common for owners of the two systems to try and outdo each other whenever possible. This constant effort of oneupmanship often took the form of trying to outdo each others’ graphics as seen here in this equivalent screenshot from Alternate Reality: The Dungeon on Atari (first) and Commodore (second).

Atari fans were quick to point out that clever programmers were able to get 256 colours on screen at any one time while the Commodore often seemed to have a more limited colour palette. But then Commodore would strike back with something like this shot, the title screen from Draconus (again, Atari first, C64 second):

Facepalm. “Hey, where’s all your colours now, Mr Atari?”

Graphics were all very well and good, but some of the bitterest battles were fought on the aural front, with both systems having a great sound chip far ahead of anything else at the time – Atari being armed with POKEY, Commodore with SID.

Okay, I may be exaggerating when I say “bitter battles” but it’s clear that there was some rivalry here. Some compositions sound clearly better on Atari while others are clearly superior on the C64. And it’s the SID chip’s sound which has endured in today’s chiptunes. There’s still POKEY players and archives out there, sure, but nothing on the scale of, say, the High Voltage SID collection, an exhaustive library of pretty much every piece of SID chip music, both retro and contemporary, you would ever want.

So, let’s take a look at a few examples. That is why you’ve read this far, right? To hear some funky old chiptunes? All right. Here we go.

Zybex – Adam Gilmore

Atari version:

C64 version:

Two versions of a cool song that you’ll be familiar with if you’ve read my past entries on game music. Adam Gilmore worked on a lot of music tracks for both the Atari and the C64 (including the theme for Draconus, pictured above) and was clearly very familiar with how to get the best out of both of them. It’s difficult to say which one is the best out of these two – or even if there is a “best” one. The Atari version, to me, has a cleaner sound, while the C64 version has some more interesting synth effects.

Warhawk – Rob Hubbard

Atari version:

C64 version:

Rob Hubbard was one of the undisputed masters of the 8-bit sound chips, with games featuring his music frequently marketed due to that fact – even if said music only appeared on the title screen, as was the case with most games, including Warhawk here. In many cases, the demands that pushing the sound chip hard enough to produce complex music put on the processor meant that having in-game music was often impractical.

I’ve gotta hand it to the C64’s SID chip here, the Warhawk theme sounds hugely better on it – partly because it seems that Hubbard actually wrote a more complex piece of music for it. Listen through, though, and you’ll hear the kind of effects that you’d expect to hear on a standalone synth – vibrato, tremolo, chorus, echo – it’s impressive stuff.

M.U.L.E – Roy Glover

Atari version:

C64 version:

A much older and simpler piece of music than the kinds of things Rob Hubbard dreamt up, the M.U.L.E. theme is still a catchy little piece. For my money, I prefer the POKEY version of this one as the sound envelopes that are used, particularly on the melody line, just give the whole thing a bit more “fullness” than the C64 version which sounds a bit “dry”.

Action Biker – Rob Hubbard

Atari version:

C64 version:

Oh dear. It’s clear where Mr Hubbard’s loyalties lie now, isn’t it? The pathetic, short loop used in the Atari version of Action Biker becomes an actual piece of music on the C64. Thanks. Thanks a lot.

Digital music

Bonanza Digi (Atari):

Digi Freaks Digi (C64):

What many people didn’t realise (even now, in some cases, and definitely not in the early days) was that both of these sound chips were more than capable of reproducing and sequencing sampled sounds, leading to much more realistic-sounding pieces. Of course, the sound quality is nothing to write home about, but there’s something gloriously 80s about the sound of “noisetracker” pieces such as these – a phenomenon which continued with the 16-bit machines, particularly with the C64’s 16-bit successor, the Amiga, whose sound chip was so far ahead of Atari’s equivalent effort for the ST (which in many cases sounded inferior to POKEY) it was ridiculous.

So there you have it. A few selected examples from the Atari and C64’s sound chip back catalogues. Back in the day, I was genetically predisposed to hate everything Commodore but on reflection, there are many examples of its superiority in music production. There’s certainly got to be a reason that the sound of the SID chip has endured as long as it has and remains popular to this day, while POKEY remains relatively obscure. I’ll always have a soft spot for those Atari sounds, though.

If you’re interested in making chiptunes, this plug-in for VST- and AU-based DAWs provides a good way to get started for low-cost, while fans of the old NES sound should check this (free!) one out.