Who are you?
Why am I reading this?
Hi! I’m ko0x (like moon… or co-ox, both pronunciations are right)
Born in 1984 and in the ‚current year minus 2002-4‘ of my chiptune journey, can’t say when exactly with 100% certainty.
Back in the days when we still had insects and phones without touchscreens, I found out about chiptunes and quickly came to the conclusion that I want to do a lot with those in the future.
I had a „this is it“ moment pretty fast, when I noticed that everything I need to make them on my own, was there. They had a straight path forward. Every next step visible and reachable. For someone like me, that was pure gold. I played around with ‚music creation software‘ like ‚Dance ejay‘, ‚magix music maker‘ and even some midi tools earlier, but this had massive upsides none of the others had:
– The „chiptune creation software“ was easy to understand and use.
– All songs that blew me away, practically had the blueprint built in and showed me how they did it (*I guess I’ll get into that since you might not know what tracked music / chiptune music is)
– There was also a limitation involved that helped me get out of „being stuck because I have all options in the universe“…(I swear there’s a German word for that…Entscheidungslähmung? The blank page effect? Analysis Paralysis?)
– It was easy to make them sound cool.
It was just overall a good choice. I found my niche.
** Chiptune files aka modules and tracked music files are not like your standard MP3. MP3 is playback only, but for example, you can’t see what notes the person on the guitar is playing. With tracked music and chiptunes, you can simply open the files and edit them. The song itself is „open“. If you don’t like the melody, you can change it. And you can learn what everybody else did…
Where was I? …yes…Who am I?
Someone once said „People don’t want to know who you are and what you do; they’re interested in why you do it,“ so I don’t really think it’s that interesting to give you my timeline of songs & releases, crews & groups I joined and competitions I entered. I just want to give an idea of what chiptunes, keygen music or tracked music are and why I fell in love with them. Which I did already, so I’m not sure I wrote that in the right order.
BUT if you have any interest in music or want to try out making music, this might be a cool starting point for you too. Because as I preached earlier: it’s really rewarding. It’s quick and you can get cool results without sitting down to learn theory or the intricacies of complicated modern audio creation software first. You don’t even have to make 8Bit music, old trance and techno were often made in trackers too. Way before expensive complicated software was even a thing. So if you want oldschool sound, it can be easier than fiddling in Ableton, FL Studio or Logic.
And also, it would make me happy if I could be your starting point. If you learn about this from me and maybe even could use me as a resource for your first steps.
(** Disclaimer: about that though, the ‚DIY-I’ll teach you‘ content comes a little bit later. It’s planned, I wrote scripts, but right now, I try to get this website up and running. But join my Discord and tell me! If there’s interest, I will hurry)
So, yeah, I’m ko0x. I make happy 8Bit-ish chippop/chiptunes aka tracked modules since 2004-ish and it would mean a lot to me if you check out some of my music. Maybe grab my album on Bandcamp, if it gave you some feelings or made you hungry to try it out yourself. That would show me that the last 20 years were a bit worth it <3
What a confusing section, but hey, that is kind of on point and describes me pretty well too!
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