Composer Spotlight on Andy Kelley

When I met him at a chiptune show in NYC earlier this year, Andy Kelley aka superjoe changed my perception of him as a person. For one thing, he’s shorter than I had imagined. Judging from photos of his angular head (think Conan O’Brien) I assumed he would be towering, but he turned out to be about 6’ by my estimation. At the show he also clarified his love of electronic music, favoring it over the acoustic tunes that came before. I asked Andy a few questions about his pet project SolidComposer, his experience in compos, and an Internet band he’s in called The Burning Awesome.

Andy commented on his earliest exposure to music, which happened to be of the acoustic variety. He said that, “My mom would always listen to country music while I played Legos. I hate country music. I didn't start liking music until much later.” His leaning away from non-synthetic sounds continued to the present day: On more than one occasion, he completely dismissed acoustic versions of electronic compositions. He affirmed this line of thought as my question brought it up, and he used OverClocked ReMix as an example. “I'm a sucker for synthesizers, what can I say? I'm disappointed that the OCR judges think there is too much electronic music, because I love it.”

This is also reflected in Andy’s approach to music production. Speaking of his common workflow methods, he said that “I usually start with some effect, trick, or sub-genre I want to try out, see how it goes, and then work from there. It's not a particularly effective method. I'd like to know a better way; maybe I should be planning on paper or something.” He uses FL Studio and works with two staples of that workstation: Sytrus and 3xOsc. Andy also incorporates the Vengence Essential Clubsounds sample packs as well as SampleFusion. He owns a guitar and occasionally uses a microphone. At one point he had a piano keyboard, but that fell away as he felt he had inadequate skill in that area.

With his gear in place, Andy made a number of entries for composition competitions. He first discovered compos via the OCReMix forums and found them compelling. “It's fun to get instant feedback. Also the Doubles’ Dash ones force you to quickly cooperate with someone you don't know, who you can only communicate through the Internet. It's super fun.” His interest in the mechanics of running a compo led him to develop a competitions arena at SolidComposer. He noted that, through ThaSauce’s existing format of using IRC to synchronize listening parties, “One Hour Compos don't scale to more than eight people; it gets unruly to manage. I saw a place where my l33t skillz could help make the competitions a better experience.”

SolidComposer embeds a chat room into the compo rounds themselves, and the listening parties are automated. Although he was mostly pleased in how the concept of his website worked out, he admitted that “Ironically ThaSauce currently scales better than SolidComposer after you pass the twenty-five entrant mark.” Over two years after its launch, Andy's site isn’t so much on the back burner as it’s almost off of the stove. He was visibly stunned when he realized how long SolidComposer has been running, and jokingly lamented that he should resume housekeeping on it.

Initially, the site's workbench system had been created as a way for him and his colleagues to work together as an Internet trio. Andy explained the pitfalls of making music as The Burning Awesome: “We ran into all kinds of problems with stepping on each other’s toes, trying to make sure we all had the same samples, trying to communicate effectively. I ended up creating a website to help our project along, and it worked great. I improved it a lot, generalized it, and made it into SolidComposer's workbench.” The Burning Awesome eventually put out a debut album, albeit one largely consisting of the same chord progression.

Despite the intentions of the workbench, the majority of activity on SolidComposer is through its compos. Andy reflected on this, and on the concept of collaboration: “I thought the site would help draw people into what I thought was a brilliant idea for working on projects. The benefit of working with other people is that when you run into composer's block, you have someone there to take the song in a totally different direction and give you all sorts of new ideas. The bad thing about working together is that you often disagree with what the other people do, or they don't understand that they shouldn't put seven Soundgoodizers on the master channel with the bass turned all the way up.”

Andy summarized his thoughts about competitions and group-composing by saying, “Yes, I think compo experience helped me quite a bit. Also vice versa: working on The Burning Awesome album together helped out in compos.” Andy’s attention has shifted away from the online arena as he moved to NYC and pursued his career at Indaba Music. To quote his response at the end of my questions: “Sorry, I’m a bit busy atm.”

Composer Spotlight on Obtuse

Andrew Struve aka Obtuse has had a hand in musical communities for years, and has contributed his talents to quite a few projects. From his keyboard work to his live bass recordings, he has worked his skill and established himself as a standout performer. Obtuse has also seen himself delving into several styles of music through his releases including funk, trance and chip-infused tracks. He currently hosts the 8-Bit Power Hour on Arecibo Radio to showcase the various chip music of the world. I asked him a few questions about his past influences, as well as his current work and projects.  

Regarding his earliest exposure to music, Obtuse revealed that, “The earliest thing I can remember is having a Sony Walkman with a speaker and listening to my father's old Black Sabbath and REO Speedwagon cassettes. Black Sabbath probably had an influence on how I play a bass line. I loved playing Geezer Butler's bass lines.” He talked more specifically on his recent workflow: “Lately I use Reason and Famitracker – usually not together. If I’m stuck I just have to pick up my bass guitar and I come up with an idea. I usually start music with a bass line and some drums. I'd compare building a house with how I make music. I always start with the foundation and build up.”

He first learned about composition competitions in the fall of 2009, when an enthusiastic participant announced that one was about to start. From that point the concept of compos was compelling to him. As Obtuse explained: “I was drawn to them because there was a theme that gave me an idea of what to base my idea around. I also loved the time limit.” He later started his own short-lived orchestral compo, mainly the purpose of improving himself in that area of composition. Inspired by participating in the Doubles' Dash Compo, he also launched a one-time Super Smash Compo encouraging participants to team up for cooperative music making.

In competitions Obtuse is known for writing funk music both as a solo artist and in collaborations. A small running gag occurred when he implied that his grooves consistently prompt his co-writers to pen sexy lyrics. More recently he has put out a trance album and has also experimented with 8-bit tunes. He elaborated on these shifts in style regarding his output: “I love all types of music. I don't find much difference between genres. The notes are just played in a different way and the song is arranged differently. All genres are fun to play. As long as you can speak the language of music, no genre is off limits.”

At MAGFest 2012, Obtuse was part of an Arecibo Radio panel along with several other hosts. As he described the experience, “It was one of the first times where most of the Arecibo hosts were together in one place talking about what they love. I love doing my radio show on Arecibo Radio. I have to work to find new music for my listeners to check out. This forces me to keep up with what is happening with the chiptune scene. I love the feeling when someone tells me about great music. I like to pass that on.” He continues to host the 8-Bit Power Hour at areciboradio.com.

The Stunning Truth

This past week was home to a multitude of compos, bringing artists together and promoting growth for all those involved. The World Warrior Remix Royale reached the voting stage for round two of the Shoryuken Bracket, bringing out a trio of Street Fighter remixes. DusK rocked with an undertow of ambience; Main Finger paired double bass with heavy funk beats and scratches; and Sir_NutS stuck to his 80s electro vibe complete with accented piano chords. The end of the week promises to bring further fun when the Sonic Remix Competition begins, considering the many beloved compositions of the Sega franchise. 

Chipmusic.org held a number of competitions and showed a bit of innovation in a strict sense of the word. For the Chiptune Battle Challenge, Entrant A creates a tune that the Combatant B battles by playing off of that initial musical idea. The resulting track is then countered by Entrant A and so on, continued in brackets. This compo concept was innovated upon with the creation of the Weekend Battle Challenge, taking it further by incorporating themes for each battle, suggested by others and thrown into a hat. The organizer took pride in the fact that the Challenge uses an actual hat and actual strips of paper representing themes.

LLCompo: Battle 12 imbued the week’s “Dungeon” theme with the spirit of Easter this past Sunday by way of an ASCII bunny. As usual the listening party’s introduction was put up by Kay Faraday and narrated by WVI. The round was welcomed by its gang of regulars including Saif’s guitar noodling, PowerFail’s session of metal and WVI’s own lo-bit pop. As the pleasantries wrapped up, a technical snafu occurred causing one entry to appear twice: Jerkwater’s pulsing “MindDungeon” is perhaps one of those dance tracks that should be listened to more than once. 

JHCompo on Tuesday guided everyone “Home at Last” for the night and eased them to relax. Clunkst worked the piano and chimes to a set of harmonies befitting the title “the land of perpetual excitement”. irrelevnt fell asleep for half of the compo, but managed to put the remaining 60 minutes to good use for an acoustic guitar and vocal entry. Kay Faraday went into “Korby’s House” punctuating familiar synth stabs with silence. After running into trouble uploading his track Clockwerk presented his six minute long foray into IDM leaning toward break beats. Finally SonicThHedgog entered as a distant last, and urged other entrants guess his source material.

Thursday’s OHC prompted contestants to look back upon the past with its “Reflection” theme. Fusion2004 started things off by reflecting on a chipified chord progression and asking listener to guess which one it is. A slew on entries followed, a great deal of which mentioned reflections and mirrors in the track title. One that differed from the pack was Starshine’s inexplicably titled “pepperoni” that goes from mellow electronica to flat-out rock in less than a minute. sci chose to reminisce on past compo experiences while Arcana noted that his previous submission was labeled “reflection.mp3”. At the end of the night Beat Match replicated the chords from a Deadmau5 song and produced dubstep with increasingly abrasive gain, ironically revealing “The Stunning Truth” just as everyone went deaf.

Composer Spotlight on Shael Riley

Shael Riley has made waves both as a solo artist and through his various collaborations over the years. From his 2005 debut album Toybox to the seismic Double Ice Backfire release Ultimate Songs from the Pit – not to mention a certain Castlevania arrangement by some guy named Diskmastah Smokabitch – Shael has worked his way into the consciousness of the video game music community and beyond. I asked him a few questions regarding compo, his musical background and the upcoming Grammar Club EP he’s a part of.

He admitted that he had trouble pinpointing the exact moment that music first came into his life. “My dad was in a rock band and my mom was into musical theatre and opera, so there was always music on in my house. It was probably that. Or maybe nursery rhymes.” Regarding his more recent methods of composing, Shael said that, “I used to use a lot of software synths and junk, mainly in Reason, so VSTs were never much of a thing for me. These days I usually just write chiptunes or do MIDI pre-tracking and let Ty Guenley handle the instrumentation. I haven't written full-fledged-DAW music in a couple of years, barring a few experiments with Reaper. I'm happier focusing on the essential elements of songwriting and letting Ty handle the production.”

Shael had first heard about compos in 2003 through Kwakfest, and participated in one sometime later. He expressed the virtues of composition competitions: “Compos can be a valuable exercise and they can be fun. They can give you some needed time-pressure to create something, when you want to create something but don't know what, and don't care if it isn't very refined.” He eventually started his own series of compos called Doubles’ Dash (DDC), in which participants team up in pairs to create songs with at least one team member providing vocals. After a couple of loosely organized rounds, it later returned as part of Compo: ThaSauce and has been run more or less consistently on a monthly basis. One particular round required both team members to sing for their submission, leading to an inspired duet between Shael and diotrans called “Radio Unts Tiss”.

He explained that his interest in DDC faded after the first year or two: “I'm not too big into compos at all these days. An OHC once in a while is fun, but that's all I'm up for. I feel like I'm pretty well self-directed right now, so I have my own projects to work on whenever I feel inspired to make music.” The responsibilities of organizing DDC were transferred over to Level 99, who continues to run it to the present day. Regarding Shael’s solo material, a collection of his compo entries can be found at a site that may or may not contain Russian spyware. One of those compositions, “Rarest of Elements” went on to become a Shael Riley and the Double Ice Backfire song on their debut album, released in 2011.

Another DDC track, “A Team by Myself” by Ty was reworked as Grammar Club song included on their 2010 EP MC Horse Rides Again. Shael is currently working on new Grammar Club release, out this year. He described his progress and the experience of collaborating with other artists for the EP. “This is our third time around, so everyone pretty much knows how to make a Grammar Club album now. The guest vocalists we're working with are pretty well experienced too.” He also noted that the tone and theme are closer to that of the Grammar Club debut Bremelanotide. Whether through compos or other collaborative efforts, Shael’s work leaves a lasting impression.

The Long Year

This past Monday marked the one-year anniversary of My Compo Life. What began as a journal of my activity in music competitions went on to become a general wrap up of the compo communities. Also dealing with a milestone was OLRmageddon LVII, with its “over 18” theme: participants could remix music from games that were released eighteen years ago or more. Brunzolaitis became the default winner of that round and recorded a monologue in an Austrian accent about Super Metroid. Dwelling of Duels seemed to bring in a smaller-than-usual turnout, as suggested in Paragon’s comment: “Gonna be a small month.” DoD’s theme that month invited entrants to arrange music from the Kunio franchise of games; titles such as River City Ransom, Nintendo World Cup and Downtown Smash Dodgeball could be covered. SDCompo reached its 64th round with six entries, one of which was disqualified for using sounds not included in the provided sample pack. Perhaps most significant in compo news, OCRE won the cookie compo on IRC by creating circular “Catch-Me-If-You-Can” gingerbread cookies. 

LLCompo: Battle 6 dealt with the impending disaster of a “Volcanoes” theme. The night’s introduction came from Kay Faraday narrated by WVI, who greeted the Luelinks community and damned it one swoop. Smooth Suck made use of a deepened voice pointing out the existence of a volcano under glass before getting into some funk. Delphinus’s melancholy piano set the mood for a series of eruptions and a bit of hip hop. MKC reasoned that the volcano is a final boss and thus set his chip music to the appropriate tension level. Ananth Ram sent the listening party to the next level with his pounding filter house, declaring “Angels are born from Volcanos”. Saif sent along his signature metal stylings, this time with lyrics about a sacrificial offering to the lava chasm. sonicmax’s track consists of a soft growl and tinkling on the ivories thereby solving the equation “Piano + DSP = ?” 

Maxximum called General Pepper, who alert Fox McCloud on the dangers of the volcano planet. Run DMZ peered at “Vesuvius” with the aid of trip hop material that led to a brick wall of compression. Raj Flow let the horns roar and spit his rhymes to extinguish the magma. Bipolarbear hired Microsoft Sam to read a soliloquy regarding the night’s theme, backed with irregular rhythms. Chase Irwin woke up late for the compo, but nevertheless cooked up a song and some guitar strumming. PowerFail’s entry begins with a guttural “I AM POMPEII” and chants verses over a distorted rock backing. Jerkwater used a heavy dose of low end to symbolize the volcanic eruption via disco. Rounding out the entries was incorporator who worked his drum machine while LD bared his soul with voice and acoustic guitar. 

JHCompo on Tuesday was under siege from aliens who ordered Earth to “Evacuate the Planet”.  Following my reading of the theme, dusthillguy put one up of his own as a result of 200000000 hours in MS Paint. skyndileg chronicled the “Fall of the Empire” with a wide swatch of synths and dramatic voice acting. will90 wondered “What the hell we're going to do” in the midst of bouncy brass, strings and rolling timpani. Shadix started with a bang and cooled off until shreddage resumed. Beigh’s usual composition confused even him, and perhaps this was fitting considering the chaos of leaving the globe. SonicThHedgog grinded his axe to his namesake, noodling a Sonic the Hedgehog tune with a dramatic pause halfway through. irrelevnt made his plea to have the Earth spared and murmured a stirring set of lines to that effect with bass guitar. Finally mu marveled at the “two suns” and pushed his electro to the limits, then took a breather with a downtempo electronic piece. 

Thursday’s OHC began its theme with a response: "No, in fact, you can't", and the participants were free to interpret the "Stand Your Ground" theme however they wished. Brandon Strader pulled two entries out of his hat for the night: as Oinkness he uploaded a vocal narration, and as BrandonS he recorded his own parody of the song “Honolulu Baby” based on the Duosis version. Afterward dusthillguy sampled my voice once more for his tribute to Deven Gallo. Roseweave created an intro narration from scratch, ending with the cry of a thousand nightmares. Fusion2004 rode on tupleted bass with sprinkles of Billy Mays to make his blue notes white. Garian revealed his lack of imagination and unfurled a monologue over a serviceable beat. Hapi-San Again stood his ground against a wall of Nyan Cat doo-wop for a "brief interlude". Acuity took the opportunity to test out some electronics and glitch, thus excusing the listening party for it. Forty-Two's arpeggio meshed with the pads and sweeps making up the soundscape. CJthemusicdude settled on a waltz ping-ponging between its various harmonic elements. Trancient melded solo piano into a trip hop number and urged the audience to "Bring It".  

MandraSigma pitched a sample to create a chord progression, and then slammed down on it with accompaniment and hints of theremin. sci similar achieved a staccato effect with its sample and included an 808 drum machine. DDRKirby(ISQ) elected to chill for his compo session and delivered his usual dense composition in a slow tempo. Misael.K provided inspiring words for his entry featuring strings, guitar and rock percussion. A-zu-ra fired up his chips and found "The Will to Persist" among the lo-bit harmonies. Bren defied his claim of not being a Bren song by sending along distant chugs that support searing leads and ear-catching chords. OMGitslewis made his first entry and held his ground from those more experienced. Torzelan fitted his motivating quotes into a cartridge for 8-bit action. Arcana went through his orchestral collection and called the troops to maintain the "Steel Lines". In a burst of speed IXI made his best shot as a newcomer to the compo with frantic dance music. Destroid rocked the drum machines and boasted of a longtime commitment to techno beats. At the end of the round Hapi-San checked his watch whilst tilting to a laid-back tune, followed by munchi who waded in and out of low-pass filters.

Composer Spotlight on DDRKirby(ISQ)

To call Timothy Wong aka DDRKirby(ISQ) a star in the compo community would be an understatement. His reputation for creating vast, dense musical tracks in 60 minutes precedes him. Fellow compo participants lament even being played after him in listening parties, as the euphoria of hearing his entry often extends past the end of his song and onto the next. It comes as no surprise that one of his tracks was played during a ThaSauce panel at MAGFest X, as any tune of his is a shining example of what could be accomplished during a One Hour Compo (OHC). His latest “Monthlies” compilation can be found at his Bandcamp page. I asked him a few questions regarding his musical output, his influences and what he has in store for the future.

Timothy spoke of his early exposure to music and how it impacted his current work. “As I was growing up I was being classically trained in piano, but most of the music I listened to was chiptunes from video games. From there I later branched out into Dance Dance Revolution (DDR) songs and OverClocked ReMix.” He noted that he considers the DDR games and OC ReMix to be within the realm of video game music, and that he began listening to trance and other “non VG stuff” afterward. Timothy explained how all of this influenced his output: “When I first started producing I actually wasn't doing chiptuney stuff at all... It was more ‘old school OCR’ techno-like, and I was trying my hand at making trance stuff as well. Somewhere along the line, chiptune sounds started creeping into my songs, and nowadays they're there full-force.”

One question that occasionally pops up during compo deals with Timothy’s unusual artist name. He explained the origin of DDRKirby(ISQ): “DDR and Kirby were two things I liked a lot at the time so they just came together. Later I decided it wasn't guaranteed to be unique so I added ISQ, which stands for Io Squad. It’s a crossover universe of sorts that my brother created and that only really exists between us. You can just think of it as an arbitrary clan tag or something. It's solely for uniqueness.” Sometimes he uploads a second entry for a compo round as “DDRKirby(ISO)”, which serves as a similar looking duplicate name.

He recalled when he first began participating in composition competitions: “I knew that compos existed but never got around to actually trying them until eventually I just decided it might be neat to try, and good practice. Since then, I've found that they're a blast, and have improved my production skills to an amazing degree. Somehow the one hour time limit of OHC is perfect, and manages to spur me on to create great things. I also like how it really streamlines your process and manages to really get you into the flow of things.” Beyond OHC, he has also joined remixing compos. “I participated in a few rounds of FLMC (Fruity Loops Music Competition), where you're only allowed to use the default samples and plugins that come bundled with FL Studio. I managed to win twice, with Mega Man 3 and Link to the Past remixes that really show you the power of 3xOsc, among other things.”

Listeners often marvel at the intricate nature of Timothy’s work, especially considering the limited timeframe imposed by compos like OHC. He elaborated that, “In terms of arrangement style, not instrumentation, I'd say that I tend to work a lot with layering. Perhaps due to FL Studio I tend to have a pattern and loop based workflow. So there's actually a lot of repetition in my arrangement; even in my melody lines, it'll usually be something like two measures of something, then the same two measures with some differences. I'm not one to focus on primary foreground melodic elements – rather, I consider textures, soundscapes, and complex layering to be more important to me. This also tends to help me do well in OHC because I get to reuse a lot of elements, whereas I know there are other people who spend a lot more time because they don't use as much repetition.”

Timothy went into further detail about his common workflow methods: “Starting a song off is always the hardest part, but once I have the beginnings of a neat song, things tend to flow really well. I hardly ever start by composing a chorus first; I always just go from beginning to end. I try to basically have more-or-less final arrangement and instrumentation before moving on to the next section. Really, most of my practice nowadays is in the OHC setting, so my workflow has become pretty heavily streamlined to that sort of style.” As far as his choice of weaponry, he stated that, “My most used instrument has got to be the 3xOsc, which I love to death.” He recommended the VST for its versatility in the manipulation of its oscillator shapes. “It can do everything, from massive supersaw basses, to sub-basses, and triangle whistle sounds.”

He mentioned his signature ‘KirbySquare’ made using 3xOsc, one that has inspired other entrants to emulate this sound during compos. Timothy described KirbySquare himself as “a square wave plus a triangle wave one octave lower, and was originally inspired by RocketSniper in FLMC.” His approach to chip sounds has changed as he progressed in music production. “Recently I've been using custom pulse and triangle waveforms ripped directly from Famitracker and LSDJ, which has been working super well. Before I had those waveforms, I used to use a combination of TS404 for great pulse leads, magical8bitplug for pulse pads, and tb_triforce for triangle wave stuff.” Aside from 8-bit, he incorporates elements from a wide variety of sources. “I have Alchemy’s Planet Earth sound bank that I use a lot for pads and soundscapes, and I also use Ugo’s Motion for evolving sounds. For drums I have this one MPC library that zircon recommended, but more often than that I'll just slice up drum loops, of which I have two different collections.” 

Timothy recently put up his body of work on Bandcamp, which was a lengthy process. He noted that he re-rendered a lot of his work in WAV format to meet the site’s upload requirements. “There were a bunch of issues with stuff that didn't render right or didn't render the same as the original track, so I had to fix all of that. And then some of the songs were just so old (back to the days of FL 3.56) that they basically didn't work now, so I just caved and generated the WAVs from the mp3s directly.” Due to Timothy’s large back catalog, the work was split into "Monthlies" album releases, each with its own cover art. “For a while I was just working on all of these 16x16 pixel art graphics to put for each month. I ended up having to make over 50 of them.” Aside from the monthlies, he intends to release a new original album on Bandcamp.

A DDRKirby(ISQ) track was played as part of a ThaSauce panel at MAGFest X. When he had heard about this, he said, “I thought that was just really cool and awesome. At the risk of sounding egotistical, I do admit I'm well-aware that I've developed quite the reputation amongst the OHC community, and really appreciate the fact that people recognize my music.” People have also shown interest in seeing Timothy possibly perform at Jamspace. He clarified that, “My music just isn't very performance based. Keep in mind that I just sequence everything by mouse, so the limit of my ‘live’ ability would pretty much be me hitting the play button for something I've already composed.” He joked that, “If you want me to go all the way out to MAGFest just to hit a play button, something tells me that's not very efficient!” Timothy however hastened to add: “I can play other stuff live, like piano, flute, and maybe I could mess around with my LoopMuse program, but that's not really anything like the chiptune music that you guys know me for, so that kind of defeats the purpose.”

Timothy has several plans for his work, and for branching out. “I feel like I'm still relatively unknown in the larger VGMesque community, but perhaps that might change in the foreseeable future.” Regarding upcoming releases, he revealed that, “I've got a handful of unfinished WIPs, including one that's being made using two instances of LSDJ. I'm also trying to make a compilation of music for social dancing, since I'm big on social dance.” He submitted a Touhou Project arrangement to ReMix: ThaSauce and OC ReMix, marking the first time he has submitted to OCR in seven years. Besides music, he has delved into game development, CG art, and "insane crazy Japanese Tetris" among other things. His various interests can be viewed via his “Site o’ Stuff” containing an impressively tall navigation bar. Perhaps fittingly, considering all the dance floors his songs could rock, glowsticking is one of his pastimes.