Monday!!

8-bit music refers to a style of electronic music totally inspired by the sounds that can be created by old computer consoles. Some may listen and simply think that they are listening to the soundtrack from a video game, and the musicians themselves claim that they create this music out of a common love for classic video games, but I must stress the following sounds are far from something that simple. Because it takes more than just these small plastic devices to produce a surprisingly intense sound. It takes a relentless search for new ways to add, subtract, link, merge, synthesize, tweak, alter, and adjust, to overcome the limitations of these simple machines.

The artists below all only use the Game Boy system and some other machines to distort the sound being produced. Other than that, this is as basic as it comes... besides 1-bit music... but you can only imagine what that sounds like. That alone is a post in itself...

Bit Shifter- "March of the Nucleotides"

Bit Shifter- "Hexadecimal Genome"

Random- "Beautiful Brutality"


Random- "Grey Love"

Nullsleep- "On Target"


Nullsleep- "Ballistic Picnic"

8-bit, or low-bit, music is high energy, sporadic, and primarily produced and composed on low bit computers by grown up nerds and video game enthusiasts alike. Artists take advantage of these perfected palm sized systems commonly known as the Nintendo Game Boy. Other consoles used include the Commodore 64, Game Boy, Atari 2600, and the Nintendo Entertainment System aka NES. Musicians boot up an "LSDJ" cartridge which gets you access to the program which turns the system into a synthesizer and a sequencer and using only simple tones allows the user to do some pretty crazy things. Which brings us to the reason for this music. 8-bit music isn't about using the Game Boy or any other Nintendo system (actually Nintendo seems to have distanced itself from this music scene), but using the hardware inside these systems to create this music. Because of this the genre can be appreciated in literally every state or nation anywhere in the world that has come across a computer or some form of computer technology in the last three decades which makes it a truly international music form. Specifically, its blowing up in Japan, Sweden, Spain, France, Greece, Russia, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Canada, and of course the USA.

Thats all for today. More tomorrow.