Fieldnotes #2: 8bc.org

8bitcollective (8bc.org) is a large hub for sharing user-made 8-bit tracks and has 31,415 members (as of 11/28/11)

site divided into three columns: login/comments, latest submissions, upload music with a navigation bar at top

registration is free and allows you to upload music and post on the forums

website in a struggle to support itself/pay for hosting - i almost had to do fieldnotes on other (and less universally-used) websites because 8bc was down all for a full week prior to 11/27

the forum has sections such as...

"new to 8bit?" which offers introductions as well as a thread on "how do u make 8bit music?" which is 5 pages long and was started in 2007. the thread gives instructions for downloading and installing LSDJ and a gameboy emulator for people to get started making 8bit music on their computers.

 "constructive criticism" for posting tracks and getting feedback from community members. interestingly, rather than posting tracks and asking people for comments, most of the threads in this forum are people offering feedback to other users. these threads get hundreds of posts. 

[organized by thread title / original poster / number of replies / number of views]

"gigs, venue, travel" which offers a sticky on how to put on a gig and is also a place where bands inquire about places to play (and then sleep) and forum members inquire about 8-bit culture across the globe (one user asked about 8-bit culture in the Philippines)

"upcoming shows" for show listings

"meet ups" to facilitate meetups

[organized by thread title / original poster / number of replies / number of views]

"releases" where people post when they release songs or collections of songs

the music page features 664 pages of submissions

this is where a lot of feedback happens. user roboctopus commented on this song, saying, "This was pretty cool. I dig the lead and that stereo kick. There's almost a church organ quality to the chords. I think the guitar could be more distinct in the mix though." like roboctopus' comment, most of the user feedback is incredibly positive and encouraging. people generally abide by the mantra of not saying anything if they don't have anything nice to say, which is refreshing for the internet. it's definitely not like youtube comments.

all the songs are available for download. 8bc is not really for monetizing final products, but more for sharing works-in-progress.

the first music submission was entered in 2005.

the fourth submission on the site was by anamanaguchi, and it was a cover of "you gave your love to me softly" by weezer.

anamanaguchi's musician page is one of the most popular on the site, garnering 500 views on all but 2 of their 34 submissions.

bit shifter is also a well known musician and an incredibly active forum member.

searching the music page for "cover" returns a tremendous number of results, which unfortunately aren't sortable by views or musician. covers range from "suzanne" by leonard cohen to the power rangers theme song.

pop songs are also very popular for covers. searching the covers for "katy perry" returns 11 songs, "lady gaga" returns 8, "beatles" returns 8.

Critical Review #7: wayne&wax

In a post called a "linkthink," Wayne Marshall writes about the emergence of reggaeton in the digital age. Based on a 4/4 kick pattern and a 3+3+2 polyrhythmic snare pattern, reggaeton can be easily made with simple computer music software, such as Fruityloops. Marshall was introduced to the genre while substitute teaching, (he even includes a sound snippet of himself rapping at kids to sit down and start their work) and he portrays the music as extremely resonant with the youth he instructed.

One of the keys to reggaeton for Marshall is the interchange of snare sound every 8 or 16 bars. He sees the "timbral change" as something intrinsically electronic and digital, something only accomplishable on computers. Producers acquire massive libraries of snare sounds from friends or from the internet, adding to the universal accessibility of the genre.

I especially liked Marshall's use of screenshots (taken in Fruityloops) to illustrate the music he was describing. It added to the universal feel and accessibility of the beat and samples he was talking about, and gave a visual representation of what it looks like to "draw up" a beat.

Discussion Questions:

Marshall suggests that "it would seem only a matter of time before unremarkable synth textures and one-finger melodies are replaced by the vibrant strains of salsa samples, indian flutes, and whatever else one wants to fit into its solid template." Has reggaeton become the "omnigenre" that Marshall predicted? What should we make of the "omnigenre" model, and how closely can one genre own a beat (think bhangra, jungle, Wilson Pickett)?

Critical Review: BBC 2 Jungle Documentary

The BBC2 documentary on jungle depicts the genre as London's answer to hip-hop and reggae. A mostly black genre, "jungle gets people moving by sampling the old songs that everyone loves and mixing them in with fast dance beats." Similar to hip-hop and reggae, jungle deals with DJs and MCs structuring a track. It takes influence from soul and reggae, appropriating black music while speeding it up and adding intense breakbeats. Jungle also follows the structure Les Back outlines, where "a cultural form developed in Jamaica is transported to Europe, re-made, and then, re-connected as a tradition, becomes re-cast in the present" (211). The idea of the bedroom producer persists, as the documentary takes us inside a bedroom studio. The bedroom producer helps enforce the point that jungle is a music for everyone, and that the people producing the music are exerting explicit control over its creative outcome.

In the second half of the documentary, we hear about General Levy finding chart success with a jungle single and being the first jungle act on Top of the Pops. This comes in stark opposition to the scenes before, where DJs discuss the value in having records (dub plates) that nobody else can play. The end of the documentary portrays jungle as something that will be immediately influential because of the waves it has stirred.

Discussion questions: Is there anything wrong with General Levy finding mainstream success? This is a conflict we've been dealing with all semester. Is it possible to release authentic music through mainstream channels? To use the mainstream in a way that doesn't contradict the message of originality and artistry? Does music that has a strong tie to place have a harder time utilizing the mainstream? An easier time?

Interview Excerpt: Zach Robinson

Zach Robinson is a fan of 8-bit music. He also makes music under the moniker D/A/D

Tristan Rodman: How would you categorize your relationship, as a listener and a fan, to 8-bit culture as a whole?
ZR: I mean, so, okay. There's a couple ways to look at it. In terms of like, 8-bit music, I've been listening to it for a while. How do I put this... Listening to 8-bit music recreationally with bands like Bit Shifter and Anamanaguchi and those guys, for a while... but when you really wanna trace it back, I've been listening to 8-bit music since 1994, when I was playing, like, videogames, and GameBoy, and all that stuff. Our generation has an incredible connection to this music, and that's why everyone who's making it and listening to it is mostly is in, like, a ten year radius of the early nineties. 'Cause that's where those sounds are coming from. I'm a fan of it, I think 8-bit music and videogame music as a whole is an incredibly diverse and powerful genre and it's just as intricate as pop music or classical music--it's great melodies, great progressions, intense technical ability is required to create it, it's a good subgenre.

TR: What role do you feel the internet has played in the proliferation, the sharing, of this music?
ZR: It's played everything. I would say everything. If 8bitpeoples is responsible for a community, 8BitCommunity is responsible for a community, Nullsleep, BitShifter, Anamanaguchi, every big--Starscream is on there I think--every big 8-bit artist went through 8bitpeoples at some point... That's how I heard that stuff first, and I know thats how most people heard it, it's that--it's the internet--and the people that use the internet the most, and the people that I feel use it to its fullest and would go 8bitpeoples are the ones that would appreciate that music the most. They're nerdier, really tech savvy, love videogames, love nostalgia. It works really perfectly. Everything really works for 8-bit music in that sense, but at the same time, there's a glass ceiling, and Anamanaguchi scored Scott Pilgrim--you imagine, "Woah, that's huge, that's a huge deal, they scored a Scott Pilgrim videogame--and seven years ago Pete [guitarist for Anamanaguchi] was making Power Supply in his basement, and now this specific music, you wonder, "How big can it get?" and then you realize, wait, this is like, videogame music. People are gonna have a really hard time with this, this couldn't be on the radio. I feel bad in that sense, but I think they [Anamanaguchi] rise to the challenge.

TR: How does one go about turning a GameBoy or an SNES into a musical instrument?
ZR: Technically, it's hacking. You know, Pete [of Anamanaguchi] hacks the Super Nintendo, he hacks the sound card and burns it onto cartridges. There's a lot of old school sequencers--you know Nintendo thought of this, regardless of 8-bit music being kinda popular in the past seven or eight years, Nintendo has been way on top of this since the beginning. LSDJ on GameBoy was a sequencer, Mario Paint was a big sequencer when you were younger. These are music machines. And it goes back to these Japanese composers just writing music on four-track machines, they only have a sine, a triangle, a noise and a square wave. And they're writing on these soundchips, it goes back to that--they just had nothing, and they created some of the most iconic melodies in music. If it makes noise, if it makes rhythm, you can make it into an instrument. I think that 8-bit music is part admiration, part nostalgia, and then it's mostly, like, innovation. And that's why I think people like it.

Critical Review #6: "Fear of (and Fascination with) a Black Planet"

David Hayes argues that white rap fans in Scottsville, a suburb of Toronto, have a skewed (and potentially ignorant) interpretation of race relations because of their involvement in and incorporation of hip-hop culture. He sets up Scottsville as racially homogenous, a mostly white area with a nebulous cultural definition. The kids Hayes interviews appropriate hip-hop styles and attend hip-hop concerts. He uses his subjects' failure to acknowledge other hip-hop scenes as a way to argue that they are wholly unaware of the meaning of hip-hop. The Scottsville youth focus mostly on gangsta rap, though "they embrace the street narratives of gangsta rap without interrogating those claims through sources of information" (71). The youth view themselves as post-racist, and as a result, eliminate the systematic racism that hip-hop rose in opposition to. They romanticize "locales prominent in many rap texts because these spaces are characterized by traits their town lacks" (72).


Discussion Questions:
How important is it that Hayes' interviewees are Canadian? It seems to me that Hayes is assumptive of a continuity between American and Canadian culture in relation to hip-hop, is that the case? Can hip-hop be understood as North American? Or is it an intrinsically American form?

The rap fans in Scottsville set up a clear dichotomy between East and West coast rap, leaving other American hip-hop hubs out of the equation. Is it fair for Hayes to set up this opposition between Biggie/Tupic and other rappers like Chingy, Ludacris, and Nelly when his subjects little mention of them at all? Can Nelly really be viewed as a member of the "wider field of hip-hop" (69)?