A musical trend has growing exponentially throughout Europe and that is the Chiptune. This musical movement reuses old videogames hardware like Nintendo’s GameBoy, NES, Atari ST, Amiga and the Commodore 64 to turn them into a tool capable of creating a new sound, a modern tempo and an innovative musical style. This is a new way of interpreting music performed by a great many artists who show their skills in turning these “limited” machines designed for leisure in the 80’s into surprising musical instruments and graphical tools.
Jumping on this is the new wave of people creating electronic orchestra's using old technologies to create a cohesive whole. I have been experimenting on this by using some of the technology in my cupboard. I did this by using a 5 way splitter, a Nintendo DS and the game Electroplankton, the PSP with the game Beaterator and a variety of free music app on the ipad. I then used a phono cable to connect all this to external speakers and my laptop which contained Audacity, a free to use recording software. I have embedded the result below. Now I don't pretend to be the next Mike Oldfield or Jean Michel Jarre but the fun of doing this as a class to produce a final piece of electronic music is too exciting. I have a group in my class who don't all get on- what better way to promote teamwork and harmony then by producing... well, harmonies. I'll let you know how it goes!
