prairie goth

rob hubbard's soundtrack for mastertronic's 1985 commodore 64 video game, action biker. i paid five hundred thousand dollars for this dress. me and colin are looking so cool, our mouths open to the sky, stuffed to the gills, prawn cocktail dripping spilling over our lips and oozing down our necks. he looks so good in his leopard skin pants. i am so full of fuel.

patreon episodes: https://www.patreon.com/noranygard ;

i want to compose for you. contact me https://noranygard.com/ ;

new ambient from citizen scientist, plastic fern in a dodecahedron: https://citisci.bandcamp.com/album/plastic-fern-in-a-dodecahedron ;

i said "get people to vote against it" but should also say, and what is perhaps more key, is 'create dumb reasons to make people's votes not count.'

bandcamp united update: https://twitter.com/bandcampunited/status/1640828811687395328 ;

more info on their website: http://bandcampunited.org/ ;

campaign call: https://twitter.com/bandcampunited/status/1641951940086222848?cxt=HHwWgMDS8eGlscktAAAA ;

the best way to hear the music of action biker is probably this video, shoutout to legend derschmu for all the longplays: https://youtu.be/W5ZSF6A2HZ0 ;

my freaking rob hubbard playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7mlUTrcZAsP_w4Oc-o5J0zlI4K3vSVMc ;

me and colin going to prison. too cool for school.

stone oakvalley's authentic sid collection with 898,338 mp3 and flac recordings, here's their rob hubbard trax: https://www.6581-8580.com/socse/index.php?field=composers&sorting=year&view=asc&page=1&wildcard=off&add_fields=&query=rob+hubbard&term_counts=0 ;

searching their database for 1985 alone shows over 2700 games that have had their soundtracks recorded.

"a large amount of commodore hardware connected to servers which would reboot the machines, over and over, playing thousands of pieces of music in different configurations, and automatically cataloging and saving the resulting waveforms" ;

from internet archive blog: http://blog.archive.org/2015/01/13/mirroring-the-stone-oakvalley-music-collection/ ;

do i want to devote my life to this? absolutely not. but i do want to have a better understanding of the history of many of these computers, consoles, and arcade games. for something like the c64, i might pick one or two professional composers and slowly chip away at their gameography on a semi-regular basis, like maybe i'll talk about rob hubbard once a month for a while.

chris abbott, c64audio, and commodore 64 sid anthology, volume 1: https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/rob-hubbard/commodore-64-sid-anthology-volume-1.p/ ;

the cassette cost £1.99. adjusted for inflation, that's about $7.

you can ride your bike on a lake i guess. this game does not look fun at all. the youtuber beats it in fifteen minutes.

action biker exists to sell a product to kids: kp skips, a disgusting british snack. it's some kind of chip shaped sort of like the shell of a sand dollar. they're described as "crispy corn fries" but they taste like "prawn cocktail" and the plastic package describes it as "delightfully floaty, fizzibly melty."

nasty ad, small seizure warning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgImmps5YUo ;

the music is not good. rob hubbard goes on to make great music for the c64, but this, other than the catchiness, is pretty awful. ugh. trying to be chill about my negativity. it's helpful to try to pin down exactly what isn't working.

1985 in movies haha! back to the future, the goonies, the breakfast club.

there are three different tunes in action biker: gameplay, title, 11-second death.

title screen: simple bassline, noise snare on the backbeat, lead melody that's harmonized mostly with parallel thirds. c major, baby. you can turn the music off by pressing f7.

action biker has one sound effect: vroom vroom.

because of the sfx, the gameplay music is left with two available voices on the sid chip, so we're stuck with a lead melody on one voice, and the accompanying bassline and snare are played by the final voice.

the melody is weak, meandering, and painful. the harshness is due to the bright high range, the strong attack and sustain of the amplitude envelope, and the unnatural rigidity of the computer's "performance" as it's expressed through articulations like vibrato.

the gameplay tune is a little over three minutes with a half dozen separate sections, and some rely heavily on the transposition of short phrases — possibly a trick to save memory usage? it's strange to hear how long each of these separate sections lasts.

super mario bros was published in the same year, soundtracked by koji kondo's compositions which featured a small number of short sections that looped endlessly.

after the end of the action biker tune, the player is treated to fifteen seconds of listening to their engine rev before the music starts again.

you don't have to "be koji kondo" to make good music for games. but the spare, ineffectual and aimless melodies are made even more frustrating by the composition's insistence on its form: begin, move through various sections, end, wait, begin again.

linear time forced on a non-linear experience.

the gameplay music starts by suggesting a g major seven chord with b and d in the descending notes. sort of wants you to think it's in g major, or then maybe in c major with half-step intervals both within the scale of the key and outside of it, in kind of a "blue note" manner. the tonic feels like c by the end of the tune, but occasionally it feels like the tonic is g. to me, it doesn't feel bluesy or jazzy, it just feels nauseating.

the "minor" section feels like the tonic is e or possibly g. there's so much transposition of this small phrase that the key feels unmoored, afloat. it's kind of suggesting e minor or its relative major, g, but then more accidentals are used as the section continues. i feel like you could just as well read it as still being in "c major with accidentals" as well as the rest of the tune.

it's just weird to have this video game music be so determined to refuse to find its center tonally.

the most egregious usage of phrase transposition happens during the bridges or transitions into and out of this "minor" section, each of which lasts about 15 seconds and consists of a short phrase that rises in pitch each time it's repeated.

the first transitional section plays a phrase, raises it an octave, then drops the octave but transposes up a half step, plays it an octave up again. this repeats seven or eight times, depending on how you want to count the final repeat. it feels like a failed gesture towards classical or baroque music, and instead sounds like a demonic carnival.

sort of a ( iii - vi - viiᵒ - I ) chord progression at the end if you're reading it in c major.

the compositions and sound design in action biker feel rushed, tossed off, and poorly thought out. i don't think information is available regarding where precisely this soundtrack falls within rob hubbard's early career, but it's a terrible start as a listener.

i wouldn't have found all of these 80s magazine reviews without the legendary lemon64 website, where you can find the links to the scans: https://www.lemon64.com/game/action-biker ;

c&vg issue 47 (sep 85) p34: "action biker maintains mastertronic's tradition of excellent budget-priced software. at £1.99, you would be nuts to miss it."

commodore horizons issue 20 (aug 85), p16, "ace music" ;

commodore user issue 23 (aug 85), p35, "love the prawn cocktail ones" ;

home computing weekly #118 (25 jun 85), p10, "funky tune, reasonably jolly [...] music is the best piece yet from mastertronic [...] high addictive qualities" ;

this whole thing feels like a scam.

"lurking since second reality ;)" https://scenestream.net/demovibes/song/10493/ ;

action biker aka sarah nyberg pergament "named her one-woman project action biker after the classic c64-game."

her myspace: https://web.archive.org/web/20080709083337/http://www.myspace.com/actionbiker ;

her bandcamp: https://actionbiker.bandcamp.com/music ;

also: https://wiaiwya.bandcamp.com/album/hesperian-puisto ;

action biker, "hesperian puisto": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tkNd6YFSlI ;

while we're at it,

paul slocum pre tree wave: https://instinctorecords.bandcamp.com/album/sleuth-science ;

tree wave has another release i didn't know about, virtual 10 inch (2009): http://treewave.com/mp3s.shtml ;

cynthcart whammy bar.

clumsy colin killed the leopard with his bare hands. and i sewed him into the pants

the sid chip nom nom xp rawr. 6k. 64k. let me play around with your elektron sidstation for a night or two. did you know that the commodore 64 is "cool" and that i "love" it? that guy made ensoniq chips too. huh… chips……

https://www.patreon.com/noranygard

the absolute inability to ever fully know anything. I recently learned that the earth is more than 6000 years old and stuff. sorry to be "vulnerable" but i just want to be honest and admit my mistakes :/

we just got agriculture like 12,000 years ago. this doesn't make any sense i'm FREAKING OUT. earth is so old and meanwhile i can barely figure out what happened in the 80s. lost media. deep vapor. the demoscene, the pirates, the "german spreading service"

audio technology, pop music, sound design, culture… what's interesting to me? people, baby. people are what's interesting to me. is keygen music "dead"? is chiptune "over"? is video game music more pop music than pop music?

i'm gonna do a few episodes on this crap. i want to take the time to follow rabbit holes, and learn how to pronounce mos technology.

i first touched the c64 when i was 16 or 17. this guy named paul slocum invented software called the cynthcart that somehow made its way into my psycho teen brain. i bought it and i bought a c64 on ebay in the late 2000s. paul's amazing band with a bad name is called "tree wave" and their ep is called cabana. i still think it's sick as hell, check out the song called "sleep" it has this crazy my bloody valentine type vibe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jP0CAb0redQ

oh amazing check out these pictures i just found of tree wave. can't believe i'm just seeing these for the first time: https://www.musicforlisteners.com/treewave.htm

(maybe i found the band on myspace back in the day..?)

here's paul slocum's cynthcart pdf: https://www.qotile.net/files/cynthcart2.0.pdf

i wanted to play the c64 alongside the ensoniq esq-1 in my band but alas i was too dumb to get it figured out at the time. here's an example of the mssiah software, it shows how much range the sid chip has as far as its synthesizer capabilities go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiPE5WY5PPM

impossible mission, c64 speech, stay awhile stay forever: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1_fDwX1VVY

im playing elden ring. im playing impossible mission. im playing the combination elden ring impossible mission.

october 1982 commodore 64 datasheet: http://archive.6502.org/datasheets/mos_6581_sid.pdf

"Two A/D converters are provided for inter-facing SID with potentiometers. These can be used for 'paddles' in a game environment or as front panel controls in a music synthesizer, SID can process external audio signals, allowing multiple SID chips to be daisychained or mixed in complex polyphonic systems."

podcast interview with mark barton, the programmer behind sam the software automatic mouth: https://archive.org/details/Mark-Barton-Software-Automatic-Mouth/Mark+Barton+320.mp3

email interview by a student at the vienna university of technology with robert yannes of mos technology, commodore 64, ensoniq: https://web.archive.org/web/20070222065716/http://stud1.tuwien.ac.at/~e9426444/yannes.html

some key quotes from that interview:

"I thought the sound chips on the market (including those in the Atari computers) were primitive and obviously had been designed by people who knew nothing about music."

"When I designed the SID chip, I was attempting to create a single-chip synthesizer voice which hopefully would find it's way into polyphonic/polytimbral synthesizers."

"The SID chip was my first attempt at a phase-accumulating oscillator, which is the heart of all wavetable synthesis systems."

"the Oscillator is a 24-bit phase-accumulating design of which the lower 16-bits are programmable for pitch control"

sound interface device.

some computer i hate! this computer? i love you.

this is an extremely important, exciting, and hopeful development. successful unionization within bandcamp will be a huge victory, and the repercussions will have positive impacts on your life and mine

im dumb support me: https://www.patreon.com/noranygard

you can also hear the full episode at this secret soundcloud link: https://soundcloud.com/noranygard/147-bandcamp-is-unionizing/s-xdLkiDHhRtq?si=429b6e6e8f9f4989987e9761f299231e&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

here's the links for bandcamp united:

https://www.bandcampunited.org/

https://twitter.com/bandcampunited

https://www.instagram.com/bandcampunited/

here's their petition, "demand a fair and timely union election for bandcamp united": https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/fair-election-bandcamp-united

the national labor relation board (nlrb) on the unionization process, conducting elections, etc.: https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/what-we-do/conduct-elections

bandcamp is joining epic games by ethan diamond, march 2022: https://blog.bandcamp.com/2022/03/02/bandcamp-is-joining-epic/

epic games: founded 1991, unreal 1998, unreal tournament 1999, unreal engine, gears of war 2006, fortnite 2017

fortnite video game maker epic games to pay more than half a billion dollars over ftc allegations of privacy violations and unwanted charges, dec 2022: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2022/12/fortnite-video-game-maker-epic-games-pay-more-half-billion-dollars-over-ftc-allegations

benn jordan on why spotify will ultimately fail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDfNRWsMRsU

rolling stone: bandcamp workers form union: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/bandcamp-union-1234695308/

"we are aware that some bandcamp employees are seeking to organize a union and are reviewing the petition to understand their concerns"

citations needed episode 177 popular anti-union talking points and how to combat them: https://citationsneeded.medium.com/episode-177-popular-anti-union-talking-points-and-how-to-combat-them-863e9e727cc2

glassdoor: https://www.glassdoor.com/Interview/Bandcamp-Interview-Questions-E1307633.htm

https://twitter.com/dancliff26/status/1636407318110781440

i'm sure i'll make mistakes with regards to how i'm "talking" about this "stuff" so hit me up and let me know

one love <3

think like the cat.

she's got Great ears. she takes in the whole world with those big beautiful satellite dishes.

https://www.patreon.com/noranygard

she knows me by my smell my voice this little cat looks me in the eyes

she knows me by my complete physical embodiment i sing to her Blueberry i bring out the guitar i play music from the phone

the complete physical embodiment of the sound and the singer

the Complete Physical Embodiment with the extension of the non-human tool

the erasure of the physical embodiment

displaced

recorded music is not music

a technological intermediary providing the "experience of music"

GOTTA THINK LIKE A CAT

"thinking about music"

"thinking" / "music"

i don't think like this all the time! that would be stupid

julian casablancas?

i could fix him i love you you ragamuffin

baking gaylor sleeping like garbage i'm stupid

i want to be stupid forever and ever

for the record, i have NO idea if julian ever had a "drinking problem"

respect, and god bless

🫐🤪

https://noranygard.com/

take a ride on my spiritual motorsickle

down the pg3.0 super hi way

https://www.patreon.com/noranygard

i'm back baby i cannot be killed

super duper highway prairie goth three point ohhhhh

marty anderson is from fremont and his bands dilute and okay are absolute all-timers for me

can't believe i forgot he's from fremont

i'm an idiot 👍

one two thr ee four five six seven checkin the mic talk into the mic

i'm back

i cannot be killed

deep shame: second guessing: i'm embarrassed by everything i do

stop avoiding it: i want to be doing this i want to defeat these demons

legowelt (danny wolfers king of the synthesizer and drum machine samples)

i need to practice talking into a mic at least once a week; i need to fight my fears

the grief still hits me, outta the blue, all the time

hit me so hard today

destined to live the dream for all my peeps who never made it

songwriting will always be the most important thing to me

i need to remember that

shapes the way i think about what it means to be a person who exists and has thoughts

connects me to myself

music

memory

devalued in our society but such a core component to the human spirit

writing

playing piano

recording music

building instruments

the infinite reflection when the mirror faces the mirror

the "post-internet"

the simple songs that you can make into your own

shout out to taylor whose song is where i took this episode title from

"no retreat no surrender"

sad time kid has a backup plan all day dangerous I'll marry anyone goth machines swim in the moon heat vomit cookies in a rocking chair know yourself max out your clip boa rd st air case l in t smokeless g low show you r polar win gs c ass et te muscles li vi ng in crescent ci t y it's explosive barking dogs in the delorean the hips I'll never have you did way more work on the night furnace my cranium likes to say hi modernity out to scorch the sky sunset awash co nsc io us tox in ruin ferric jumpsuit ash en t all gr a s s brut al c la pping illuminate the snow somebody stole my laundry detergent it's o kay o live o p en mo uth in my fr i end's car long hair is use ful fond of the fond of the beat of the beat of the beat the beat the beat fond of the beat I'm playing fond of the beat God the beat I'm fond of the God I'm fond God to the beat of Im fond of fond to mouth G o d be fond to the beat of the beat the beat I'm playing my friend's God I'm the beat of the be at of th e b eat I 'm fo nd o f t h e b e a t God f o nd o f the be a t t h e b ea t of th e f o n d of t h e b e a t I' m f o n d o f t h e be a t i'm u s e the t h e b e at im p l a y ing f o nd of the b ea t fo nd of t he be a t im f o nd god of i m f o n d of th ee beat im f o n d o f t h e b e a t g o d imfond ofthebeatof thebeatfondofthebe atofthebeatofthebeatimplaying godimfondofhtebeatimplaying godimfondthebeatimplaying godofthebeati'mplaying godthebeat im playing g od impl a y ing g o d g o d god g o d g o d g o d i' m p la y in g g o d i'm p lay ing god max out you rc lip i'll ma rry any one i'm play ing god

hyped to elope and forget that I exist each day an internal planet will be born bless the portal again tonight wolves in the vapor cave spaceside minnesota zora's in the doorways all lied superfortress how much venus nausea if you value cuddle me digital dad your zoomer sunburn farewell to the floating rhizome I celebrate the baby in the hiss of malice power I'm the twelth type to poison your pacifist but yeah I'm high why does my brain do this reach out of the century yeah that's cool with us feels soft real thrill healthcare hallucination every night I fall asleep to die from the dream wishing you were holding me toads roar to the touch we'll get our opportunity digital sandbag your incandescence I cried ten thousand years boycotted total planetside busted econ thinking face lust upon my final day

this is a preview of Gus's radio show called A Musical Journey

it's a conversation about time compression, artistic processes, and ghosts

here's the link to his ep with me: https://www.mixcloud.com/radioaccess/a-musical-journey-ep-65-nora-nygard/

my new album is out 11/4 (tomorrow!!)

bandcamp: https://noranygard.bandcamp.com/album/the-ghosts-beneath-our-feet

streaming: https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/noranygard/the-ghosts-beneath-our-feet

breathing is a laundromat catch me in each organ bullet crying by candlelight the devil's passionate design walk past the flamethrower staring at shameful tears milk flake teletype burdens my trachea fully aware flipped lake supervise rural lawn shake out to the beach early deconstruct I remember when high light chains translate the matrix blowholes in my mind my cathedrals all weigh down oversized fork sticks out of the shoebox your death in the drawer metronome dog time and arugula blood alarm cyber libel laser play the best stardust beneath me it's nice to wait it out in the sun magic elixir pale I want your wide angle claymation love escapes me I travel to your kiss I abandon it every day is hell

enjoy the yelling! the mythical ocean steel shelving traveling to space with text files encounters this pink iron parallel to the marble shop the mouse of days in the metro organic into my hormones my bad habits and I the pavement root beer bulldozer paste a mistake broken heart broken desert scan plants fade moisturize my face vacant erase what do I have to do to snuggle up she still likes to party a b ig lo ng co at w it h p o c ke ts eve r yw her e f ill e d w it h c o ld ro ck s posting lions I wasted my life in my hometown I wanna get air car things and parts and I don't know puppy mar ri age o r bit ing logos I've got that slap back go in g o n I'll always bubble up the sky phlegm here is your ticket to the cat stay up touch books god thank god video tape of a pigeon