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 DOT.AY AKA ALEX YABSLEY is a Brisbane musician who makes chiptunes, 8-bit songs with the distinctively bleepy Nintendo sound that comes from composing on a Game Boy. JODY MACGREGOR wasted his youth playing Bomberman instead.
JODY MACGREGOR: What’s your live show like?
ALEX YABSLEY: I’ve got two Game Boys going into a mixer and then I go between, almost DJing, between the two of them, so I’ll have a bunch of tracks sequenced in each one and choose between. I have parameters I can change around during a live show, plus I’ve got a bunch of other toys and things I bring into it here and there. I use a DS sometimes and I’ve got a Guitar Hero controller from the Wii that I use.
JM: Have you tricked out or modified those Game Boys?
AY: I’ve done modifications on some of the Game Boys so you can get a better sound output and simple stuff like that, but by no means am I very good at the hardware mod stuff.
JM: Are the limitations of making music with something that only has four channels part of the appeal?
AY: It’s funny you mention it. It’s pretty much the catchphrase of the whole chiptune scene when asked what they like about it, that’s what they say and I’d have to agree. There was one guy that put it really well in saying that with computers and software having endless options means you end up doing nothing, because you just play around with these endless options.
JM: Are you planning anything special for Pocket Music?
AY: I’m definitely bringing a DDR mat that I’ll possibly get some crowd interaction with. I kind of organised the gig so I could see a lot of my friends from Sydney and stuff play and because I wanted to go to a chiptune show in Brisbane and nobody else would organise one basically.
JM: Did you get into chiptunes via games or via electronic music?
AY: I definitely played Sega and stuff as a kid – interestingly not so much Nintendo until the Nintendo 64 – but I had a Game Boy and still have the one I used to have when I was a kid. I definitely came more from a musical point of view. I was wanting to make a kind of experimental music that was accessible in some way, so I actually started out making very average glitch-type music. When I stumbled across the 8-bit stuff it made sense to me. It’s all the same aesthetics as a lot of glitch music, yet it’s got this weird cutesy factor that everybody can get in some way.
JM: Especially if they grew up playing games in the ’80s or ’90s.
AY: That’s exactly right. And there’s definitely a fun element in all of it that really stands out. A lot of the time when I’m making the music and performing it feels a bit too much like playing and mucking around.
JM: Do you play games on your Game Boy much?
AY: Generally when I’m on the train I’ll write songs on the Game Boy, but I don’t often play games on it. I find that I have just as much fun and feel more productive if I’m writing songs.
DOT.AY will be playing with fellow 8-bit musicians Collapsicon, 10K Free Men and Emergency! Emergency! at the Pocket Music Festival, Saturday Nov 15 at Tongue & Groove in West End. He helps run a blog for Australia’s chiptune scene at www.gameboyaustralia.com
1. Written by 10k, on 08-11-2008 13:34
You're the awesomez.
Can't wait.  |
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