8-Bit Revolution

Joshua Davis mixes blips on his Nintendo Gameboy
By Ella Mei Yon Biggadike

Joshua Davis, aka Bit Shifter, makes music on his Game Boy .

Remember those revolutionary portable gaming systems that let you bring Mario on the road? Kind of like the great great grandfather of your DSi or PSP? Just when it seemed the Nintendo Gameboy was settled into retirement, experimenting musicians like Joshua Davis taught it a new trick: CHIPTUNE .

Chiptune, chip music, or 8-bit music is created from the sound chips in early video game systems. That buzzy, metallic, electronic sound that, when strung together in different tones, became the soundtrack to Mario’s quest for the princess. It was the sound that seeped upstairs from late 80’s basements equipped with that chunky grey Nintendo box and those sandwich shaped game cartridges. It was the beepy Tetris tune that drove your parents crazy on long car trips.

Video Interview

Not anymore. Using modern homebrew software Joshua turned his Gameboys into synthesizers, playing the 8-bit sound chips as a traditional musician would play notes. The challenge and the beauty in making chiptune is that the older sound chips, unlike modern sound cards, only produce a finite number of tones and combination of tones.  That’s like trying to play the piano without a C note or G chord. You can’t make every sound that you imagine, which forces the composer to get creative. Joshua thrives on working within those limitations.  He has described this as “a symbiotic process between me and the hardware .”

As a child, Joshua played piano which he admits he “never really practiced.”  He also picked up guitar for a number of years.  But neither instrument sparked the passion in Joshua that chiptune did.  He first encountered the musical movement through a website featuring Nanoloop –– the cartridge developed by Oliver Wittchow that can physically make your Gameboy play music. Intrigued by the possibilities of remixing those favorite 80’s videogame tunes, Bit Shifter ordered one. And was hooked. The more he played, the more he discovered others doing the same, playing and revolutionizing the way that music is played on Gameboys.

Little Sound DJ, another homebrew software company created by Johan Kotlintski is one of Bit Shifter’s preferred tools. It turns your Gameboy, according to their website, into a “full-fledged music workstation.” It is complete with a sequencer for simple and complex composition; samples including 59 phonems for programmable speech and recorded drum kits; four channels of 4-bit sound chips; and synchronization capabilities (yes, that’s two Gameboys playing music together in beautiful chiptune harmony.)

When you get a handful of these synthesizer-Gameboys outfitted with Nanoloop and Little Sound DJ and synched to each other you can mix music the way DJs do. When you get an 8-bit DJ like Bit Shifter, you can throw a party. Birth: the Blip Festival, a 3 day Woodstock-like music festival where chiptune lovers come to see who is shifting the coolest bits and how.  It’s the brainchild of a community called 8bitPeoples, which Bit Shifter helps to run as co-administrator.

8BitPeoples, founded in 1999 by chiptune artists Jeremiah Johnson aka Nullsleep and Mike Hanlon aka Tangible, began as a community obsessed with old school video games and spreading the 8-bit love. Now, it includes free chiptune music downloads, free disc art, a listing of chiptune live shows, the Blip Festival, an online shop, and even a research and development team that’s expanding the possibilities of what 8-bit can do.

At Blip Festival 2008, Bit Shifter hunches over an arsenal of Gameboys. By manipulating the directional, A, and B buttons the way a DJ would manipulate records on turntables, he starts with a low fast beat. Heavily graphic images are changing frenetically on a projector screen behind him. When a heavier beat comes in the crowd starts jumping. Then Bit Shifter picks up a Gameboy in each hand and extends his arms to the sky like he’s offering up the world for one long note. When the note breaks back into beats the already screaming crowd goes crazy, jumping and head banging in utter ecstasy.  Joshua grows with the crowd, gettting more powerful as the crowd gets louder.  You can tell he’s consumed in the rhythm and chaos of the sonic bits clashing together on stage; it’s an amazing sight.

To date, Bit Shifter has performed live over 100 times internationally delivering an energetic performance that is at once nostalgic and surprising. You are definitely reminded of the old video game low-fi sound, but you never would expect that those sounds could also be so musically sophisticated. The music is fun, yes, but it is serious music too. It’s not the gimmick that it could be mistaken for and Bit Shifter understands the viewpoint. He says “while there is a truthful argument that the sound is very primitive and brash and very basic sounding, there is also the argument that that can be kind of interesting.” It’s more than interesting, it’s revolutionary.

Photo Shoot

Stephanie White and crew get Philthy on debut smash.

Talented ensemble band grooves to the voice of its own White light.
By Christian Ghigliotty

Some people wear their emotions on their sleeve.

Stephanie White wears hers on her foot.

On a sun kissed afternoon in Brooklyn, Stephanie and drummer Robbie LaFalce saunter up the sidewalk playfully exchanging words. From afar the two look like an odd coupling. Stephanie seems guarded, with her arms wrapped against her stomach almost as if she is hugging herself. With tawny, free falling locks, dusky brown eyes and a freckled complexion one might expect Stephanie to be a model or actress instead of a top twenty-one female vocalist selection on American Idol. Robbie with his hands in his pockets is much more relaxed. A stubble beard threads a wide eyed, boyish face underneath a low sitting cap. He looks like your brother’s geeky best friend from high school, and not the former drummer of the ska band the Miasmics.

When the clomps of Stephanie’s heels cease against the sidewalk it becomes apparent. Just above the arch of her left foot floats a treble clef staff , the veins under her creamy skin pointing up to the tattoo as if in awe. As she swings her ankle out to further display her branding, her black high heel looks the shape of an ‘F’ note.

Video Interview

Despite preconceived notions of the pair, within moments of Robbie strumming his guitar strings to Stephanie’s smoky croon on the steps of a brownstone it’s clear the two feed off each, displaying a musical verve that excites.

New York has a Philharmonic Orchestra . Say hello to New Jersey’s Philth Harmonic.

“So Alex (Ozolins) has played French horn in several orchestras, and he came to the conclusion that New Jersey doesn’t have a Philharmonic, and decided that we needed one, and since we like to enhance stereotypes, you know the dirty Jerz, we came up with Philth Harmonic.”

The unlikely duo are the founding members of Stephanie White and the New Jersey Philth Harmonic, a fusion group from Essex, New Jersey. Along with members Aleks “Mos” Ozolins, Eric “Yaz L” Lindberg and Nick LaFalce, Pat Smith, Cameron MacManus, Joe Schmidt, James Lawrence, Erik S. Donough, and Tom Spears, the group finds creative ways to combine rock, jazz and reggae with head nodding pop tunes.

The band’s debut album Knee Deep InSanity is a ten track melange (three of which, interestingly enough, were recorded acoustically in an old forge) of French horn, saxophone, drums, bass, guitars, keyboards, with White’s mellifluous voice flirting voraciously with them all. Thematically the album paints with broad stokes, touching on ideas of unrequited love and loss. While Stephanie doesn’t try to hide the fact that she was one of the top forty-two selected on American Idol , it isn’t something that she advertises freely. Taking her Hollywood experience and co-writing with Robbie on would become the second track on the album, aptly titled Tough Enough. “When I came home everyone was apologetic about my return (from American Idol) and questioning what I would do next. I told them I would make my own music and play for whoever would listen…I can handle the pressures of the industry, I’m tough enough.”

While listening to the album the level of musicianship is clearly at a high level, each band member bringing individual flair to the table when called upon (listen for the awesome tenor and alto sax components in Bogged Down and Tough Enough) and no one style or instrument hogs the spotlight, which often times can be difficult for fusion artists. Back on the steps of the brownstone, Robbie’s background vocals hum underneath as Stephanie’s voice rises to a crescendo. Inside the brownstone as the two perform their song Teardrops, the third song from their debut album, the haunting lyrics of the fairy-tale sans happy ending come to the forefront as Stephanie spins her tale

“Then one dark day it came/ my prince masked by his shame/ ’cause he knew he couldn’t stay/ but he rescued me anyway.”

The band dropped Knee Deep InSanity in 2007 and have been touring mostly since its debut. The band is now hard at work on its sophomore follow up, and will be charting the album’s progress on a video blog which can be found on its YouTube channel. The new single, King of Wishful Thinking can be heard on

the band’s homepage.

Philth Harmonic Photo Shoot