The BliepBliep Exhibition

Did you know that Bleep in English is Bliep in Dutch and Piep in German [update: Piip in Finnish]? I learnt this at BliepBliep in Rotterdam that I mentioned before. It is an exhibition about computer sounds, and it seems most suitable for kids, who seemed to enjoy playing some old videogames. They had C64, Atari VCS, Sega Mastersystem, NES, Vectrex, and the other usual (European) suspects, and they were tucked away in cabinets with custom made controls for them. I would have preferred the original controls, since this made you miss the most obvious connection with the machine – the control interface.

They had a number of educational games aswell. One cabinet had a number of computers and peripherals, and you were supposed to connect sounds to the corresponding object. On another screen you could sample sounds and play it back while altering the bit rate and sample rate, to show what kind of quality the older systems work with (or, to teach future composers about bitcrushing?).The thing I liked the most was a sort of patch bay to show how people (usually women) operated computers five decades ago. It reminded me of why I was in Rotterdam in the first place, namely to patch analogue synthesizers.

There was also one installation where you could compose your own computer music. You could sequence predefined loops to make some kind of trance music. Most computer music might be arranged in loops, but I think this retro-style exhibition would gain more from relating to how the loops are made. The chip style way of composing (bit by bit, from scratch) seems more relevant than how to make music with long samples (“sound block around moving fever“).

But it became more clear that they wanted to relate to contemporary music in another cabinet, where you could listen to computer music. There was trance, breakcore, ambient, jumpen (Dutch for jumpstyle) and so on, with one song for each genre. Chiptune was represented by Nullsleep (with the track Chippon), which is a good choice. The genre 8bit was represented by Crystal Castles with the track Courtship Dating, which might not be an equally satisfying choice for everyone. Elsewhere, you could also listen to parts of Monty on the Run by Rob Hubbard and Cybernoid 2 by Jeroen Tel.

All in all – I think this exhibition gives an insight into the history of computers and consoles, and provides some fun for the gamers. It was competently put together in general, but it would have been even better if they connected this exhibition with the 10 year anniversary of micromusic.net, or the 10 year anniversary of C-men, or maybe most importantly the people around Rotterdam that use 8-bit hardware for music and visuals. Sometimes these kinds of exhibitions might perpetuate an image of old computers as old and unuseable rather than interesting media in themselves.

“The violation of law is actually larger than the Sun”

Earlier today an article was posted with news on the Timbaland data drama (Finnish, bad google translation). Tempest, the original composer of Acidjazzed Evening, has stopped being active in this battle, but GRG (who made the C64-cover that Timbaland supposedly sampled) is still fighting the fight, as previously reported. The first battle was lost, despite presenting extensive research with frequency analyses and apparently also proving the effort and skills involved in doing C64-music by playing 5 different SID-versions of Popcorn. In court! That might be the best thing to come out of this whole ordeal.

But now Kernel Records, representing GRG, has went to the US to sue Furtado, Universal, Timbaland, and more! Once again, courts will have to face yer typical judicial questions like “How can modern technology reproduce cycle-exact reproductions of a C64-song?”, “How relevant are frequency analyses considering the possibilities of post-production and the differences between single SID-chips and SID-players?”, or even “Is a SID-tune to be regarded as recorded music, sheet music, or live performances?”. Let’s hope that after the years that these legal discussions are bound to take, we can find some peace of mind in these matters!

Coincidence, Homage or Theft?

Over at CSDb there have been some new discoveries about sampling/covering C64-music. What would you call these?

Anggune – Seize The Moment (2009). Uses the same key and mostly the same notes as in Rob Hubbards track for International Karate. Watch youtube clips here and here. What makes it troublesome to me is that it could have been a coincidence (it is not the most elaborate piece of music?), but more importantly that Hubbard borrowed the theme from Ryuichi Sakamoto & David Sylvian (youtube). I’ve decided not to add this to the plagiarism page. Seems like Anggune is most similar to Sakamoto & Sylvian after all. :)

Abe Duque – Champagne Days, Cocaine Nights (2003). Extensively samples the C64-tune Knight Tyme by David Whittaker. Excerpt from Duque’s tune here. According to discogs credits are in the notes of the record. Hmm, well. Added to the plagiarism page, although I would more call it sampling than plagiarising.

Harmonic 313 – Cyclotron C64sid (2009?). This is apparently a new artist on the Warp roster, and he has made this mash-up that contains samples from video games. It is pretty difficult to spot the originals though – BMX Kidz and Gods probably, Arkanoid most definitely. But the point is maybe that this 1 minute song reaks of “sampling aesthetics”. It is meant to sound fragmented and eclectic, and the sources of the samples are either hard or irrelevant to spot (since it’s only snippets). The aura referenced is 80s videogames in general, not specific ones. In short, this is what I would call fair use.