http://www.nintendude-music.com

Remember the NES? That chunky little grey box which gave us Duck Hunt, Super Mario Brothers and Zelda in their full 8 bit glory? Well chip music artist Peter Bevitori Or Nintendude if you will, is making great little electronic tunes just like you used to get from the NES. As part of our Electronic Special we got in touch with Nintendude to get the run down on how its done.

HOLV: How are things?

ND: Things are great. A lot of cool things are happening with my music, and I'm having a ton of fun with it. Plus I've been playing a lot of Wii, it's probably the greatest invention man has created so far... maybe a tie with the NES. It's hard to compare...

HOLV: Can you explain just how you manage to make music from an NES?

ND: Well, when I first started I was using basic tracking software, and was actually ripping sounds from the NES console, splicing them, eventually being able to manipulate them in any way I wanted to. But it's really time consuming, and it doesn't sound quite authentic enough. It's close, but not close enough. Then I heard about a fellow musician who created a program specifically for making your own NES music. It has all the same limits that the NES did, and uses the same tones that nearly all NES games used. It's pretty much as close as you can get to making real NES music. I guess the real key to making authentic NES music, is knowing how it was done then, and limiting yourself to following those same rules that composers had to follow. I'll try not to get TOO nerdy and technical, but you only get five channels for instruments. Two square waves, a triangle wave, a noise channel, and your DPCM channel for samples. And the samples you use, need to be very small files, you only have about 16k total to work with. Its really tough. But it is really satisfying when you can make something that sounds so close to the real thing.

HOLV: Why the NES? Are there any other platforms you could make music on?

ND: The NES was a huge part of my life. A huge part of most peoples lives in my generation. I played a lot of video games when I was a kid. And it was really the first music I was exposed to. So the music was really important to me. I used to tape record the music from games like Megaman, and Journey to Silius and listen to the music on the bus when I would go to school. So when I started playing music, I tried to cover NES songs on guitar, and bass. I even took drum lessons for a few years. I jumped from instrument to instrument, until I realized that what I really wanted to do, was everything at the same time. So eventually one of my good friends introduced me to writing NES music. And it seemed like the perfect way to keep my love of NES music alive. As far as other platforms of music, I do play a few instruments, and that helps a lot when I write NES songs, but I don't really end up writing any other style of music. Or using a lot of other programs, although I am starting to get into making SNES music.

HOLV: We believe you are currently without a label, are you exploring having Nintendude released?

ND: I'm not on any kind of label right now, and it's not really something that I've explored that much. It would be cool to be able to share what I do with a larger audience, but right now I am really satisfied with the response I'm getting. There are a lot of people that feel the same way I do about NES music, and if I can impress those people, and keep having fun writing music, then I'm happy enough to just keep doing what I'm doing. And I'm sure as time goes by I'll find a way to release an album or five.

HOLV: California Games for us is still an all time classic. What is your favourite NES game?

ND: My favourite NES game. That's probably the hardest question I'll ever have to answer. But I guess if I'm forced to name one that stands out, I'd have to go with Super Mario 3. I just remember when it came out, and thinking it was the coolest thing that would ever exist. Plus the music is amazing, there are a lot of songs, and such a wide range of emotions. Koji Kondo is a genius. It's one of those classic games that is so well known, that it's become very easy to overlook.

HOLV: As we are running a feature on electronic music, can you tell us who your favourite artists of the genre are?

ND: As far as composers in the industry, my main two favorites are Nobou Uematsu, and Shoji Meguro. Nobuo Uematsu is of course famous for his music in the Final Fantasy series, but also has contributed to a lot of very cool games like 3-D World Runner on the NES. He's my hero. Shoji Meguro is the composer behind most of the recent games in the "Megaten" series. Like Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne, and Digital Devil Saga. He is incredible. He has written some of the best leads I've ever heard. As far as other artists like me, there are a lot of really good musicians out there. Anamanaguchi, Sliver, Virt, Rushjet1, those are some of my favorites. But chip music is expanding really fast, and there are a ton of really talented musicians out there.

Interviewed By Hammond