blog.skitchstudio.com - Michael "Skitch" Schiciano

Wow, time goes by fast....

2010-12-17T12:35:00.000-05:00

I seriously need to bug myself into posting here more often, but no worries.

First off, I will be attending Magfest in January, along with a lot of folks from TGWTG.com. It's looking to be a real fun time, though I'm not really going to be running any panels. Regardless, if you bump into me, I'd be more than happy to chat about music, games, or whatever. :)

Furthermore, I've been busy with a lot of music, and I'll try to get some of the players for this site and Skitch Studio updated as soon as I can.

Lastly, I got an about.me page set up today. You can go to here to check it out. I'll be working on finding a picture I can use for the page, but it should be okay for now. :) If you have ideas about content that you'd like to see more of on here, feel free to comment.

"This Week In Games" - Check it out!

2010-07-26T02:08:00.000-04:00

I haven't posted this for the past few weeks, but I've been co-hosting a Video Game related podcast with my friend LordKat (Jason Pullara), via his site, and our newest episode has gotten posted over at TGWTG.com:

This Week in Games - Microsoft's Money

If you don't want to head over there, you can check the podcast recording here:

Enjoy it, and I'll try to get some more info and music posted soon!

Theme song for a new series from MasaKo X!

2010-07-11T01:17:00.001-04:00

Hey there folks, a new update for you all. MasaKo X, a great voice actor I met back at MAGFest, is starting up a new anime related series, and I got to write up a theme song for it! Check out the first episode of Anifile right here:

What's this? An update?! (and a cameo!)

2010-07-07T21:41:00.000-04:00

Yeah, sorry for being so, well, not around for the past few months. Work has been crazy busy for me, and I've been working on building up some of my connections around. :)

On a side note, I have a cameo in a review Phelous did, you should check it out here, if you haven't watched it already.

I'll try to get some more stuff posted over the next few days. Have a good one, everyone!

Skitch Studio 3.0 running, plus more!

2010-03-17T09:26:00.000-04:00

As I noted the other day, Skitch Studio has been revamped, featuring a new player and a more compact design. I have content on all the pages now, so it's more or less complete for the time being. In addition, over at TGWTG.com, the folks there have given me my own forum space, so feel free to direct questions and comments over to this board!

Thanks for your support, and I'll be posting up more updates soon. :)

Skitch Studio 3.0 Up (and almost fully set!)

2010-03-12T21:20:00.001-05:00

Thanks to some software updates and such, I'm working on getting my main website cleaned up. You can check it out over here if you haven't seen it before.

In addition, I gots me a snazzy little flash player there thanks to the Internet Music Player that'll help give me a streamlined way of showing off a lot of music one single player.

I'm sorry I haven't gotten much more for the updates for now, but I am creating a lot of music as of late, and should have more things to report on soon.

Thanks for you support, all!

Transmission Awesome, featuring Me as a guest!

2010-02-20T23:23:00.000-05:00

Enjoy the show, folks, and please be sure to give ThatGuyWithTheGlasses some love in return. :D

Direct link over here.

Skitch's Q&A #2

2010-01-31T20:54:00.000-05:00

Check out my group over at TGWTG!

Skitch Q&A #1

2010-01-19T15:20:00.004-05:00

Just a quick little Q&A Video I shot today to answer some questions that have built up over at the Forums at TGWTG.com, on my Youtube account, and otherwise. :) Not too many for this first video, but feel free to ask more questions, and I could even make this a daily thing if there's enough demand! And apologies to Lunaboy, I should've also noted that I'm not much of a lyrics person, so even if I was writing a more pop/rock song, Lyrics are something that I probably wouldn't be involved in writing myself...yet. :) If you want to ask questions, either comment below, check out the YouTube version, or visit my group at TGWTG.

UPDATE - No Famicom Fridays for today...

2010-01-08T09:28:00.000-05:00

...but I'm working on ideas for the next few episodes. Basically I'll be doing a few episodes of Famicom Fridays talking about some of the games I picked up last weekend at MAGFest, specifically ones that have specialized soundchips and otherwise. These are games that feature different music than what we would've found on the US NES, and I feel that it'd be fun to share these games with you all.

I'll make a video talking about these games briefly either after I get home from work tonight (at 1AM..), or during Saturday. I'll also talk a little bit about MAGFest in general, and answering some questions that I wasn't able to answer during the Q&A's that were held with the TGWTG crew.

Next, some video ideas I'm planning on doing include ones talking about music composition/songwriting in general...kind of in the same vein as Famicom Fridays, but focused moreso on just general music theory/composition. In addition, I'm planning on doing at least one video talking about the DSiWare game I did music for (Hot and Cold), and how I did some of the tracks for that game. There should be some time in the near future for all of this to be done. :)

Lastly, I'm making a small request out to you all. For Famicom Fridays, I'm looking for two things if possible. One is someone who can act as a Pixel Artist to help create a new logo/title screen for the show, while keeping with the idea of making it look like a Famicom/NES title screen. The other is a request for loans on particular Famicom titles that have unique soundchip/music in them for me to talk about in future episodes. These titles include the Famicom Disk System version of Gyruss and Dracula II/Castlevania II, as well as cart versions of Madara and Gimmick!

I'm not asking for permanent donations of these games, and I really don't want to ask people for money to help me get these games...but if anyone out there either has these titles, or knows someone who might have it, it'd mean a lot to me if someone could help out in getting my hands on these games to at least play/talk about them.

At any rate folks, if you are interested in helping out either with the pixel work or game hunting, please contact me when you can. :)

Famicom Fridays #5 - Lee is Still 8-bit!

2010-01-01T02:58:00.006-05:00

Happy New Year everyone! This is less of a tutorial video, and more of a demonstration of a new song I did for Lee from Still Gaming. Enjoy, and have a great weekend! I'll try to make some updates while at MAGFest. :)

Also, you can listen to the full track over to the right, under the player "Arrangements for Clients." :)

Youtube Version

Famicom Fridays #4: Holiday Special

2009-12-25T10:43:00.004-05:00

There's not much holiday themed action here, but I decided to finally make an episode based on requests. Hopefully you all are having a happy holiday season, folks! :)

Here's a direct link to the Youtube version.

Updates, and a video featuring music by me!

2009-12-23T04:47:00.001-05:00

Sorry I didn't get this update posted on Monday, but just to confirm, the game I did music for (Hot and Cold) DID get released on Monday on DSiWare. :) I'll get some music posted from the game in the players on the right so you all can listen, but if any of you can actually buy the title yourselves, it'd mean a lot to me. The main producer behind the game really went out of his way to get me to work on his title, and was extremely persistent on making sure the game got out. :)

I'm planning on doing some sort of video talking about the music from the game, but if there are any topics related to that you all want me to go into, feel free to suggest them in the comments below.

Now! On to other matters. Another week, another fun video featuring some music by me! Over at TGWTG.com, one of the newest videos is a review of the infamous "Star Wars Holiday Special," which features a little music bit towards the end with music supplied by me. Thanks goes out to everyone at TGWTG.com. :)

I'm on track to getting the next episode of Famicom Fridays done for Christmas Day. At any rate, Happy Holidays everyone, and I'll have more updates later!

Some Bad News...and Good News!

2009-12-17T19:47:00.001-05:00

Hey all. I know this seems a little iffy for me to be making such an announcement so close to Friday, but I won't be posting an episode of Famicom Fridays this week - been busy working on a LOT of music this week, and hopefully I'll get some of it posted up over the weekend. :) In addition, I got some plans for next Friday, and something especially special planned for January 1st's installment of Famicom Fridays (just in time for MAGFest! :D).

As always, please feel free to give me info on what you'd like to see me talk about in these episodes, as I want to make Famicom Fridays as fun/interesting for you to watch as it is for me to make 'em. :)

Thanks in advance for your patience, all, and I'll see about making a small video update of some sort for tomorrow.

Oh! One additional bit of news. According to some people that I've worked with over at Majesco, there will be a DSiWare Release of a game I did music for! :) The game, Hot 'n Cold, supposedly will be released on the 21st...though I'm not 100% sure if it's confirmed or not...here's hoping, and if you can get the game, please do so to help support the folks on the dev team that allowed me to contribute over an hour of original music to the title! :)

A new member entering the household, gaming wise...

2009-12-15T23:11:00.001-05:00

...thanks to a incredible deal I stumbled across while talking with friends, I'll soon have an authentic Japanese 8-bit system in the house! :)

Specifically, the Sharp Twin Famicom, which will make it significantly easier for me to play and hear games from the Japanese Famicom (and Famicom Disk System) side of things in their true element!

Plus, the particular model I'm getting has built in turbo controllers! Hopefully it all works, and I'll be able to put forth an update when the product arrives!

HUGE thanks go to JewWario for advising me around this acquisition. :) Now I'm fully able to play all the retro Japanese Nintendo games I could want!

I have a Famicom Title (Akumajou Densetsu), but I don't have any Famicom Disk System titles to test the console with when it gets here...any recommendations, or anyone willing to offer a disk for me to test with? Thanks for any and all help! :)

Famicom Fridays #3 - Linkara is Atop the 8th Bit

2009-12-11T15:07:00.002-05:00

New episode of Famicom Fridays!

Youtube Version Here

Pixels as Big as Cats, featuring new 8-bit Intro and Outro music...

2009-12-08T20:09:00.002-05:00

...by me! Dena's an awesome person, so it was great to put together some more music for her in this case. Enjoy!

SpoonyOne's Strike Commando Review, Featuring new intro music!

2009-12-07T16:55:00.002-05:00

Noah Antwiler/Spoony One's new review, featuring my version of his intro music. It was premiered during the TGWTG Donation Drive on Dec. 5th (my birthday!), which was a great show all around.

Oh! BTW: You should Donate at TGWTG.com, and vote for SpoonyOne as Funniest Person to Follow!

Famicom Fridays #2 - Blue Bomber (Pre) Birthday Bonanza!

2009-12-04T14:04:00.006-05:00

My birthday is tomorrow...so to celebrate, here's a video of me talking about my first chiptune piece that I wrote way back in 2004 (The video is new...it's just the song that was made in 2004. :P). Enjoy, folks, and have a great weekend!

YouTube Version Link

Thanks to the TGWTG Wiki Team!

2009-12-03T19:30:00.001-05:00

I'm working on my article for tomorrow's Famicom Fridays...but for a moment I wanted to give a quick thanks to Chris Ferraiolo and the rest of the TGWTG Wiki team for helping me get a page set up on their Wikia site.

You can check out my page (which will continue to grow in the future! :) ) right here.

Tomorrow's article will be a fun one both for me to write, and for you to read/listen to.

Piano is secured, sir!

2009-12-02T19:04:00.001-05:00

The Yamaha upright is installed and good to go! Chances are that I'll have to get it tuned in the next few weeks, but otherwise I can't wait to record some music off of it! :)

I have a voice! Well, Google Voice, that is...

2009-11-30T15:05:00.000-05:00

That's right, I'm all Google Voiced up and ready to go. If you want to leave an SMS or Voicemail to me directly (which is an idea that my friend LordKat uses!), feel free to do so at:

+1 (530) MSKITCH

In other news, the Piano is planned on being delivered on Wednesday, so I'll have some pictures or something on that day, and I'll also be underway with creating a new installment of Famicom Fridays.

MAGFesta Added to "Original Works For Clients"

2009-11-29T15:01:00.000-05:00

That song I might have done for Sean Fausz the other day? You might be able to listen to it on its own over in the music player section now. :)

Enjoy, and feel free to leave feedback on it, or any other track I have featured on the site!

MAGFest time! (In a month, that is)

2009-11-28T12:38:00.000-05:00

MAGFest is rapidly approaching, and it's looking to be an awesome time. Sean Fausz, a friend of mine and contributor at ThatGuyWithTheGlasses is going to be there, and even made a video showing off many folks who'll be attending as well. It's worth a watch!

Oh, and I might've written the background music for it...just maybe. ;)

Enjoy!

The NEW Famicom Fridays #1 - Chiptunes That You Might Don't Know...

2009-11-26T15:59:00.007-05:00

(Click Image for Anthem)

Hello one and all, and welcome to the first installment of the revival of Famicom Fridays (and I'm aware that it's actually Thursday...consider this a special Thanksgiving gift...or me being impatient, whichever sounds better), where I’ll try to explain the various tricks and techniques I use to create the retro-tastic sounds that’re better known as 8-bit/chiptune music!

...I’m somewhat embarrassed about using that retrotastic pun, but now’s not the time for embarrassment, it’s time for some music!

For today’s entry, I’m going to be talking about some of the techniques I used to create an 8-bit arrangement of the current theme song to everyone’s favorite internet show about games that aren’t too well known - Games That You Might Don’t Know, But Are Still Pretty Damn Sweet!

For those of you who haven’t seen this show before, be sure to scope it out here...well, after you read this blog, of course!

The theme song was written by Julien Diaz (AKA: The Sad Panda), and it’s quite an energetic work. So let’s take a quick listen to what my 8-bit rendition sounds like:

As you can see, there’s quite a bit going on in this version of the song, too! Since this the first installment of the new Famicom Fridays, I figure it’s only appropriate to touch over some basics about how I make this music in the first place.

First and foremost, I primarily use Reason/Record to create my chiptune music. Personally, I’d love to be able to delve into circuit bending or actually coding out the music authentically...but I’m not as savvy in those areas, so Reason works well as a backup. Thanks to modern developments, there are a LOT of ways of getting great sounding retro synth tones to either create ‘authentic’ sounding chiptune music...or simply to add some retro flavor to other styles. I’ll try to touch on some of these options in future installments, but for now, I’ll explain what I use.

The sounds I used in this song came from the “NES Wave Pack” put out by The Chip Collection. You can get it for 20 bucks, and it’s pretty good for the price, though some of the sounds are a bit on the noisy side, and some tweaking is needed to make them really expressive. Still, for a low cost option, it’s not bad at all! :)

Anyways! So when it came to doing this arrangement, the first key step was transcribing the song. I simply did this by listening to Julien’s original repeatedly, while picking out the key melodic and harmonic elements on my keyboard. Once I figured out enough of the song, I was able to create a rough transcription using my NES tones to make sure I got the tempo, melody, and progression worked out accurately enough.

Original Version!

Sounds okay, but notice how...lifeless it sounds? There’s hardly any flow and connectivity to the melody, the drum samples sound a bit flat and dull, and there isn’t really any harmonic language being used. Looks like we’ll need to do a little tweaking here before we get to the final product!

In regards to the melody, we could just leave it as it is, and it’d be accurate in terms of pitch...but we can make it sound much more expressive and lively using some extra tweaks. Namely, making the melody slide into and away from the main notes (via pitch bend), an adding that magical vibration of the note we like to call vibrato (via the mod wheel). Here’s a picture of how some of that looks.

(Click Image to hear sample!)

As you can hear, the melody in this case has a little more life to it, but there's still a little extra work we can do. One trick I like to do is to create an echo effect, which is fairly easy to do. I simply make a copy of the melody line after I'm done writing it, offset the copy forward by some short interval (in this case, an 1/8th note), and make the copied melody softer. The end result is a fairly nice echo effect that adds some wonderful density to the previously dry sounding line:

(Another clickable picture to hear another sample!)

Now we're talking! Let's move on to those drums. Just to give you an idea of how the drum samples that I used sounded on their own, simply click here. Notice how it sounds extremely empty, especially when soloed on its own, and how dark sounding it seems to be right now? We can fix that with some layering!

What I ended up doing was layering other drum samples (all of which were from the same sample collection I linked to earlier!), as well as using simple white noise (manipulated, of course!) to help give those samples some more impact, clarity, thickness. Let's take a glance at what that looks like...

(I don't think I need to explain what you can do here. :D)

The last topic I want to hit on for this segment deals with the 'chord' sounds that I came up with to deal with the lack of harmony in the song. I only used it during the chorus of the song, not only to keep the song from getting too busy, but also to help reinforce the structure of the song. Now, these chords are done using the same sound sources as everything else in the song, and furthermore, the tracks are monophonic (which means only one note can be played at a time on each track).

So how did I create something that sounded like sustained chords, with multiple notes being played at once?

Take a look at this picture, and click on it to check the sample of what it sounds like:

Can you figure it out? It may look like a mess of notes that shouldn't be able to make any sort of sound, but upon closer inspection...

...you can see that I simply have notes moving up and down around the appropriate notes of the harmony, but extremely quickly. This creates the illusion of a sustained chord, using just a monophonic sound.

This is, in fact, in line with a common technique that was used predominantly by Western game composers during the 80's, especially on platforms like the Commodore 64. I'll pull out some examples of this down the line, especially if I get some sort of encouragement/recommendations to do so. ;)

With those three techniques examined, this concludes this first (of hopefully many!) installment of Famicom Fridays. Please feel free to leave comments about what you thought of this entry, and what you might want to read/see/hear more about in future installments. Also, if there is a particular 8-bit track that is featured on my blog that you want me to break down and explain in a future Famicom Friday, don't hesitate to ask.

Have a great weekend folks! This has been Skitch, and I'll be sure to see you again next Friday!