# Green Is Today; Blue, Tomorrow: On glitches and broken artefacts



## bdcharles (Apr 15, 2016)

At the edges of things, that's where the interesting stuff happens. I'm listening to Japanese chiptune today. The wonderful thing about that genre of music is that nothing quite hangs together for the duration of a song; beats speed up randomly to the syncopated sounds of digital failure and you can just imagine some Kyoto teenager tearing his hair out as his carefully crafted composition spins off the plate. 

But in among that there are moments where it converges with an awesome serenity. Like the titles in their cracked English that invoke some alternate present, it's perfectly "other", a lover viewed as a flickering hologram; My Little Beautiful, Prays, Constract Contrast, Silent Of Light, Senkyou, Little Kinds, Telecastic Echoes. Sonically, you might get a pulsing backrhythm that simultaneously sounds like the loading noise of old 1980s computers, and a blue binaural sea on Epsilon Eridani IV. Emotionally you might feel its heartbreaking simplicity.

It is inspirational. My writing tries to draw from it. I have characters named after the spambots that fill up my junk mail folder. When I make a typo in written dialogue, it stays where it lands.


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## Bishop (Apr 15, 2016)




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## bdcharles (Apr 15, 2016)

Bishop said:


>



Don't talk to me, _Cage_. I still haven't forgiven you for the Wicker Man, _Cage_.


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## PrinzeCharming (Apr 16, 2016)

Wait, either it's 1 AM or you're writing in a language I haven't learned yet. Let me break this down. 



bdcharles said:


> At the edges of things, that's where the interesting stuff happens.



 Ambiguous, yet I can get a sense of what you're trying to say. 



bdcharles said:


> I'm listening to Japanese chiptune today.



Ah, yes, It's like the music of pixelated gaming. I absolutely enjoy it. 



bdcharles said:


> The wonderful thing about that genre of music is that nothing quite hangs together for the duration of a song



Yes, it's free flowing. You can just jump into the sounds whenever you want. 



bdcharles said:


> ;beats speed up randomly to the syncopated sounds of digital failure and you can just imagine some Kyoto teenager tearing his hair out as his carefully crafted composition spins off the plate.



Interesting way of putting it. I agree with you. 



bdcharles said:


> But in among that there are moments where it converges with an awesome serenity.



Yes, that's a perfect word to describe it. Serenity. There's something unique about it. 



bdcharles said:


> Like the titles in their cracked English that invoke some alternate present, it's perfectly "other", a lover viewed as a flickering hologram;



I like how you say, "cracked English." I get what you're saying. 



bdcharles said:


> My Little Beautiful, Prays, Constract Contrast, Silent Of Light, Senkyou, Little Kinds, Telecastic Echoes.



Should I search YouTube for these? 



bdcharles said:


> Sonically, you might get a pulsing backrhythm that simultaneously sounds like the loading noise of old 1980s computers, and a blue binaural sea on Epsilon Eridani IV.



Haha, I am in such a weird gaming mood right now thinking about it. 



bdcharles said:


> Emotionally you might feel its heartbreaking simplicity.



I love how you express this feeling. 



bdcharles said:


> It is inspirational. My writing tries to draw from it.



I am intrigued to see your writing directly inspired from this genre of Japanese music. 



bdcharles said:


> I have characters named after the spambots that fill up my junk mail folder. When I make a typo in written dialogue, it stays where it lands.



Okay, this threw me off. What do the spambots have to do with the music?


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## Sleepwriter (Apr 16, 2016)

never heard of Japanese chiptune.  And now that I've listened to some of it...it brings back some good memories, and at the same time I'm like what the heck is this? I feel like I've eaten some bad mushrooms and landed in some kind of quasi-digitized world.


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## J Anfinson (Apr 16, 2016)

Anything that inspires can't be a bad thing, I suppose. I'm kind of with Cage on this one, though. Huh?


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## bazz cargo (Apr 17, 2016)

Bugger. I have some old Tracker stuff from way back in my Atari days. I can't get my PC to recognise the floppy discs. Probably corrupted to hell and back.


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## PrinzeCharming (Apr 17, 2016)

bazz cargo said:


> Bugger. I have some old Tracker stuff from way back in my Atari days.



That's exactly what I felt after reading the OP. In the beginning of Todd Carey's Nintendo, you can get a small taste of the chiptune from the video games. 

[video=youtube;FW2uG-WnGB4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FW2uG-WnGB4[/video]



bazz cargo said:


> I can't get my _*PC *_to recognise the floppy discs.



What if *I* didn't want to recognize them? :welcoming:




bazz cargo said:


> Probably corrupted to hell and back.



Something corrupted in 2016? No way! On the topic of chiptune, I would raise my children on chiptune. It might promote creativity and productivity. 


*
Q.* Would you raise your children listening to chiptune before introducing them to video games?


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## bdcharles (Apr 17, 2016)

PrinzeCharming said:


> Wait, either it's 1 AM or you're writing in a language I haven't learned yet.


Hehe. It's entirely possible that it's both...



PrinzeCharming said:


> Ah, yes, It's like the music of pixelated gaming.
> I am in such a weird gaming mood right now thinking about it.
> I love how you express this feeling.
> I am intrigued to see your writing directly inspired from this genre of Japanese music.


Thanks! It's hard to explain. I suppose this original post is a little example of it, in that the words are not so much representative of the way I speak or write ordinarily, but more indicative of the stuff that goes on in (and spouts out of) my head when I listen to that kind of music. In those cases, I go with the first viable image that comes into my mind to describe something - for example, the blue binaural sea, the point being that there is alot of room for error and crap and I'm interested in what gets thrown up when one - you, me, whoever - allows that sort of irrigidity into one's creations. I love the notion of fashioning something from junk.

Why did I write it? Because the bleeping bleeps made me. 



PrinzeCharming said:


> Should I search YouTube for these?



Maybe, but I found them on Sound Cloud after searching for Japanese Electronica. I suppose the style is more glitch pop but there's definitely some 8-bit errors making beautiful music there.




PrinzeCharming said:


> What do the spambots have to do with the music?



Goods point. As I say aboove, I am interested in making stuff - writing, music, art, useful things for the home and whatnot - out of cast off crap. The reason? I think there is aesthetic value there. It may not always come out right, but sometimes it might, and to me at any rate, it is an interesting exercise.



Sleepwriter said:


> never heard of Japanese chiptune.  And now that I've listened to some of it...it brings back some good memories, and at the same time I'm like what the heck is this? I feel like I've eaten some bad mushrooms and landed in some kind of quasi-digitized world.



Good, good. 



J Anfinson said:


> Anything that inspires can't be a bad thing, I suppose. I'm kind of with Cage on this one, though. Huh?



Cage is dead to me - I stepped away from the proverbial bike - but as per my response above, sometimes I like writing straight off the back of an influence, with a minimum of editorial afterthought, and see what gets dumped out. It's just a method I play about with sometimes.


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