Genesis Bending Compilation

[Root5]

In this thread, gmanyo suggested we do another compilation of Genesis Bending (the first one can be found here). However, he suggested that someone else make the official thread, set the deadline, receive the emails, etc. so I've volunteered.

 

The Deadline:

 

I'm setting the as October 15th, 2013. This will give you a month and a half. Get started now!

 

As always, keep in touch if there's a problem with the deadline. For the Rogue Planets comp I set the deadline to around the time people's theses were due, and so I obviously gave an extension.

 

The Rules:

1. All sounds must be produced by sampling save bending. You can sample as intricately or as simply as you like. Sometimes a nice song just comes right out and you don't need to do very much to it. Other times you might want to manipulate and arrange the samples to create a song that sounds very little like the original source material. You could even venture into micro-sampling if you are so inclined. The point is, you cannot use any synths, or non-save bending samples.
2. You can use effects if you like. But you don't have to.
3. Submissions should be sent in wav, aif, or flac format.
4. Submissions should be unmastered. It's very hard to get an album to sound uniform if half the tracks are squashed. Turn the compressors off (unless you're using it to produce a specific desired effect).

Those are the only rules really.

 

How to Submit Tracks:

 

Submissions should be sent to cytoplantastic [at] gmail [dot] com. This is not a competition, and all submissions will make it onto the compilation. It is easier for me to keep track of submissions sent by email, than submissions sent by PM.

 

In your email, please include your artist name, and the name of your track. Also, please indicate which name is the artist name, and which is the track name, because it is not always obvious.

 

The End Result:

 

When all the tracks are in, I'll arrange them, sort out the mastering and album art somehow, and put the album up with the Christmas and Tribute albums. If you have any ideas about album art and mastering, post them in this thread.

 

How to Bend:

 

Salvatorin posted this tutorial in the previous thread:

 

 

mac tutorial:

download genesis plus

download some roms from coolroms or such

unzip the rom

go to genesis plus and open the rom file, the game will play.

go to the menu and find 'freeze state' do that and save it somewhere

now open a different game

once it's loaded, go to the menu and find 'defrost state'

now glitches ensue

some don't work, others reset the programs, some freeze the emulator, you just have to experiment

:)

 

Maybe someone could post a tutorial for PC users in this thread? Also, some users experience problems following this tutorial, so a discussion of what works and what doesn't would be helpful.

 

WATMM, LETS GET BENDING!

 

PS: The Rogue Planets comp and EP will come out soon, I swear.

[th555]

If I find the time I'll try to bend some stuff

[Root5]

Okay, so I encountered a problem using Genesis Plus. The "freeze" and "defrost" states were greyed out in the menu. I couldn't figure out how to enable those features, and I kind of suspect they just don't work on mountain lion, since this is a pretty old emulator.

 

So I started using a newer emulator called Kega Fusion. This one supported a number of different platforms, so I had to specify I was loading in Genesis ROMs. I kept trying to load in the save state from one game into another, with no luck. But after trying enough combinations, I finally got it to work. Some games seem to produce glitchier save states, and seem more receptive to glitching out on other save states.

 

So keep on trying people!

[Guest]

yes, Kega Plus works fine for me too.

[gmanyo]

Thanks for doing this Root. I think Kega is the one I use.

[Root5]

Also, for those of you who have a macbook and therefore not a real sound card, audio hijack is your friend.

[Guest]

question: do single-cycle wavetables count? the line between sampling & synthesis gets a bit blurry there.

[Root5]

Absolutely!

[gmanyo]

lol I would say that wavetable or granular synthesis using genesis bending as sample source would be questionable.

[Root5]

I understand the reluctance to include granular synthesis, as it can produce sounds that have little resemblance to bent save states. But I want to keep the rules simple (only sampling and effects/processing, nothing else), and I don't want to discourage any contributions (maybe some great tracks can be made by making wavetables from genesis recordings).

 

Maybe a happy medium would be, if you're going to include wavetable/granular synthesis in your track, try to include some elements that sound more recognizable as samples from bent save states.

[Guest]

tbh with the stuff i've got so far, i'm reluctant to edit it at all.

[Root5]

Same with me. I'm trying to work on compositional edits, rather than micro-edits.

[Root5]

Since no one's complained about the mastering on "Heading for Outer Space", I think I'll offer my services towards mastering this one.

 

I could also do some album/track art, but I'd welcome volunteers in that department. The artists who've volunteered on past releases have been phenomenal.

[Guest RadarJammer]

maybe we should collect screenshots of any good glitched up gaphics that results from the save bending to make a mash up for the art work>

[Root5]

I'm concerned that screenshots of the glitches would include too much visual data from these games. And I kind of want to present the music as independent from the games that the samples were derived from. So I think it might be best to have some art that is inspired by the glitches in some way. But I'm open to changing my mind on this if people start posting awesome glitchy screenshots.

 

Also, get bending people! The more tracks the merrier!

[Guest RadarJammer]

!!guide for how to get stems for each FM channel!!

 

check your emulator's sound drop down menu to see if it logs vgm or gym, which is the patch and sequence data stream

then instead of logging a wav you log the vgm or gym

 

if you have vgm then you need this winamp plugin

if you have gym then you need this winamp plugin

 

now you can play it back in winamp and if you go into the plugins properties you can mute the channels

 

and then use winamps render plugin to record each channel separately

 

i couldn't get channel muting to work with the winamp plugin that plays vgm files logged with kega so I use Gens32

if anyone can get it to work with vgm let us know

[Root5]

Thanks RadarJammer!

[Root5]

Phew. Just finished sorting through 2 gigs of samples. Got a number of tracks planned, some of which will be virtually unedited, others being greatly edited.

 

Are others having success?

[ganus]

Ooh, I wanted to be in the last one of these but was too late. done quite a bit of this just for fun & sampling purposes.

I'm in.

[Root5]

Great!

 

Submitted my first track. Got lots more in the works.

[Soloman Tump]

i would really like to have a go at this but not sure if i will have time. At a friends wedding this weekend but maybe get a chance next week.

 

Really enjoyed the first genesis comp and always wanted to give it a go.

[Root5]

Is the deadline too tight? I figured tracks based on bent save states wouldn't take too long to make.

[futureimage]

I thought it was tight, but then my track went from pretty much nothing to finished within a couple of days, it's almost ready to submit now :)

[Root5]

Awesome. I'm finding the samples really guide my music choices more-so than other samples.

[gmanyo]

How many people are doing well on this? I definitely want to participate but haven't had much time and have yet to start a track (all my time working for music has been for my electronic music composition lesson).