Today we gave our first workshop at SA Hackerspace (10BitWorks) to a pretty good turnout. It was largely over making music using FamiTracker and the NES audio capabilities in general. Though a few things could have gone better (I think the hands on bits could have used more structure), I think it went well. We seem to have turned a couple of people into Chiptune monsters, which is awesome!

Slides (in PDF Format) are available here for those that could not make it. Video was taken as well but it’s a large amount of video that may take a while to edit (and I am not yet sure how it turned out) so that may take some time to post.

In any event, we had a blast and, if there is enough interest, we definitely look forward to doing more! I suspect the next workshops will be more hands-on with the hardware. That was something we wanted to do initially but thought it best to be a bit more conservative since cost was a concern without knowing what people might think of the material. There is plenty of ways to go though and we would be glad to share our knowledge with anyone that is interested!

A big thanks to 10BitWorks for the opportunity! Also thanks to Mike P. who approached us initially and helped drive this to fruition!

P.S. Don’t forget about our Kickstarter project!

Though we have been spending quite some time in pursuits other than our next album, we have been making slow but steady progress on it. This weekend we spent some time adding some ideas to a few of the songs we are working on while also filming our Kickstarter video and preparing for our Chiptune Workshop next weekend.

While we are not quite yet ready to reveal too much about our next album, we can say chiptunes will remain a big part of it and that we will likely be able to start doing live shows at some point around the new sound. We will be taking things in a different direction while still preserving the things that made Chipsurf Pipeline so unique. As one hint we will say that open mic recording will be more prominent in this album (which is one of the reasons progress is perhaps a bit slower than it was with Chipsurf Pipeline). Either way, we think we have something very special and are really excited about it and can’t wait to share it with you (when it’s ready)!

Though it has been in the work for some time, we finally have confirmed a date for our first workshop at the 10BitWorks (the San Antonio Hackerspace). This workshop will cover making music with the NES using Famitracker. Should there be further interest, we hope to make a series of workshops centering around a variety of topics but we are going to see how things go.

Both John and I are quite excited! We already owe quite a bit to the 10Bit folks so many thanks to them for inviting us to do this, and for their help in making this a reality! Though the time has not been decided just yet, we do know the date will be April 21st. It is free and open to the general public so if you happen to be in the area around this time and like chiptunes, by all means, please come by! If interested, you can RSVP on Facebook here.

Today, John and I took some time away from writing songs for our next album to check out the dub-plate we had cut for our eventual pursuit of getting Chipsurf Pipeline on vinyl. The dub was cut at Aardvark Record Mastering who did a great job, were patient with us, and were super helpful as well! I had received the dub last week, much earlier than we thought, but had been waiting to spin it until today so John could check it out.

So how does it sound? Really good! Even John was impressed by it. We cut the same song (The Genesis Machine) on both sides – One side was cut like a 7″ single, and the other more like an LP. The single side, being a bit louder and running at 45RPM, had a good amount of clarity. The highs were not quite as defined as on the digital master it was cut from. How much of that is my setup and how much the medium is hard to say. Still, it sounded quite good. The bass was surprisingly punchy as well. The LP side, which spun at 33 1/3 RPM was surprisingly smooth. Smoother even that the 45RPM side, although it did lack further clarity on the highs and the bassbombs didn’t dig near as deep. The two sides were much closer in sonic quality than I thought they would be.

We are quite happy with it, all in all. Something magic about hearing music you created coming off a record. It was almost surreal. Big thanks to Aardvark Mastering, and Louis, for getting it out to us so soon! You can be we’ll be using them if we can get the funded to do a real record pressing. On that note, we will likely be putting the dub-plate up as a goodie to get for Kickstarter. We are not sure how to give it away, but I suspect since we only have one, it will go to the person who gave us the largest single contribution.

All that said, if you want to check it out, we recorded the festivities and threw it up on the YouTubes!

It took a few weeks and a minor mess-up on my part, but we’re now on Spotify! As a bonus, we are also on a number of other online stores as well, but we would really much prefer fans buy our music off Bandcamp as it offers the highest quality and takes the least cut off the top. That allows us to put more money towards neat things like vinyl releases, equipment (we’re going to need some for the live shows we want to do for the next album), t-shirts, etc. But, if you prefer using another music store, now you can! And, of course, now you can listen to us on Spotify as much as you want!

Big thanks to CDBaby for helping make Spotify happen. We went with CDBaby for their Indie friendly attitude towards album sales since we only had to pay for the service one time. Most other music distributors required yearly fees and that didn’t make much sense to us.

Anyways we hope you enjoy the new found options! And thanks, as always, for the support!