Any World 1-1 (That I'm Welcome To)
February 9, 2022 7:17 AM   Subscribe

Q: Chiptuned Steely Dan?
A: Chiptuned Steely Dan. (Via)

Almost Gothic (MrHopeTelevision)
Do It Again (8BitRenditions)
Do It Again (8BitMix)
Doctor Wu (Chiptune Covers)
Gaslighting Abbie (MrHopeTelevision)
Glamour Profession (Key-chain)
Here At The Western World (MrHopeTelevision)
Hey Nineteen (Chiptune Covers)
I Got The News (MrHopeTelevision)
Jack of Speed (MrHopeTelevision)
Josie (Chiptune Covers)
Kid Charlamagne (Chiptune Covers)
King of the World (MrHopeTelevision)
Lunch With Gina (MrHopeTelevision)
Midnite Cruiser (MrHopeTelevision)
Miss Marlene (Fagen solo) (MrHopeTelevision)
Monkey In Your Soul (Steely Daft Jakuson)
My Old School (8BitMix)
Negative Girl (MrHopeTelevision)
Peg (8BitMix)
Planet D’Rhonda (Fagen solo) (MrHopeTelevision)
Reelin’ In The Years (8BitMix)
Rikki Don’t Lose That Number (8 Bit Jazz)
Rose Darling (MrHopeTelevision)
Sign In Stranger (MrHopeTelevision)
Throw Back The Little Ones (MrHopeTelevision)
Trans-Island Skyway (Fagen solo) (MrHopeTelevision)
West of Hollywood (MrHopeTelevision)
Your Gold Teeth (MrHopeTelevision)
posted by gauche (43 comments total) 25 users marked this as a favorite
 
Damn, one letter away from being eponysterical.
posted by hangashore at 7:34 AM on February 9, 2022 [12 favorites]


...this is ... there's a lot of them. One or two I understand, but there's ... there's a lot of them.
posted by From Bklyn at 7:35 AM on February 9, 2022 [9 favorites]


I would never try to stop someone from creating what they want to create, but part of me is troubled that this exists. Re-creating this complex jazz-rock is very time-consuming.
posted by 4midori at 7:50 AM on February 9, 2022 [1 favorite]


but there's ... there's a lot of them.

I listened to some small samples from six of these -- I'm not sure that any of these sound like true chiptunes (instruments are a weird mix, no one has the right drum (noise) channel), so I'm guessing what happened is it's a MIDI or similar fed through standard audio software. So probably not actually a lot of work on the artist's part.

I don't know anything about Steely Dan so can't really comment on whether or not the choices made in instrumentation are interesting or bring anything new to the pieces, but am really curious to hear from longtime SD fans about this!
posted by curious nu at 7:52 AM on February 9, 2022


You can also use this nifty online MIDI player -- SoundFont or OPL3, your choice.
posted by credulous at 8:03 AM on February 9, 2022


It feels very busy and oddly, empty, to me. I don't know if enough can be said about the virtuosity of the players in Steely Dan but without the gentle nuance of their playing that helps to explain what the fuck is going on musically, all of the complexity turns into a bunch of static and there's no there there. Does that make sense? I mean, Kid Charlemange is just chock full of fucking bizarre tonalities and polyrhythms and it just works like crazy in the original, but this 8-bit cover is just lying there like a squeaky toy duck being rhythmically run over by a train. It's recognizable, okay, sure, but it does not honour the original, which for me is kind of the bar a cover has to pass. It's like an instagram filter applied without any artistic skill?

TBH I only listened to a couple of them and moved on but I really liked the idea of chiptune Dan.
posted by seanmpuckett at 8:07 AM on February 9, 2022 [2 favorites]


learn to work the Casio
posted by thelonius at 8:09 AM on February 9, 2022 [35 favorites]


The 'kid charlemagne' one sounds like the soundtrack to an 80's beat 'em up arcade game

which is to say 'awesome'
posted by logicpunk at 8:25 AM on February 9, 2022 [2 favorites]


I'm not sure that any of these sound like true chiptunes

That was my first thought too. They sound neat but I don't think they were made on 8-bit hardware. Maybe I just don't understand what 'chiptune' is. The few bands I know use 8-bit hardware and it's a huge amount of work. These are still really enjoyable though. I have my soundtrack for the day!
posted by Clinging to the Wreckage at 8:33 AM on February 9, 2022


These are great. Happened to join a Zoom call while listening with bluetooth headphones and the audio quality dropped in the most perfect way.
posted by TurnKey at 8:34 AM on February 9, 2022




Hey World 1-9
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 8:37 AM on February 9, 2022 [1 favorite]


frankensteinian proportions comes to mind
posted by elkevelvet at 8:48 AM on February 9, 2022


Peg does sound like town music in a SNES RPG.
posted by dismas at 8:53 AM on February 9, 2022 [3 favorites]


Hi. My name is Dr. Wu, and I ... am intrigued, puzzled, and somewhat ambivalent about the existence of this slice of DanWorld.
posted by Dr. Wu at 8:54 AM on February 9, 2022 [5 favorites]


Walking around listening to that cover of Peg, everything becomes pixellated. Press A to make coffee.
posted by spikeleemajortomdickandharryconnickjrmints at 8:57 AM on February 9, 2022 [4 favorites]


No Bad Sneakers? One more chiptune isn't here.
posted by emelenjr at 8:57 AM on February 9, 2022 [2 favorites]


I'm troubled by the omission of 'Black Cow' and, to a lesser degree, 'Kings.' I'd like to hear both of those in chiptune format.

This version of 'Aja' is pretty nice though.
posted by box at 9:04 AM on February 9, 2022 [1 favorite]


Maybe I just don't understand what 'chiptune' is.

Its been watered down in the same way that almost any game you see that says it's an "8bit" or "16bit" game is.. not. ("retro-pixel" is awkward but more accurate). Folks taking part of an aesthetic but none of the interesting design challenges/limitations that actually define the structure. At this point "chiptune" means "sounds like it came from a 90s video game, if you never actually paid attention to what those sound like" versus the original "we are using an actual GameBoy to DJ this set".

I know it LOOKS like I am busy dying on this hill but I am completely not, I'm walking away, look, I don't even care there's a hill, who needs hills anyway, etc.
posted by curious nu at 9:27 AM on February 9, 2022 [16 favorites]


At this point "chiptune" means "sounds like it came from a 90s video game, if you never actually paid attention to what those sound like" versus the original "we are using an actual GameBoy to DJ this set".

which is probably "chipcore" at this point. Or "chip roots".
posted by flabdablet at 9:35 AM on February 9, 2022 [4 favorites]


Is there any particular reason Steely Dan--of all bands--has this weird internet following? I have neutral opinions towards them (wouldn't seek them out, wouldn't turn them off if they came on the radio), but as funny as some of the Dan fandom is, I don't quite understand why these guys and not someone else.

Possibly unrelated: The drummer in my band told me she thought of Sparks as "Steely Dan for theatre geeks," and, well, that is certainly a take.
posted by pxe2000 at 10:55 AM on February 9, 2022 [2 favorites]


Is there any particular reason Steely Dan--of all bands--has this weird internet following?

the internet is Dads and/or people who miss their Dads or people who long for a Dad
posted by dismas at 10:57 AM on February 9, 2022 [10 favorites]


You know, "Gaslighting Abbie", from 1999's Two Against Nature, was the first place I encountered the word. Had to look it up. Now people use it as, more or less, a synonym for "lying", which dilutes its original meaning quite a lot.

This happens to many words that are fun tp say and that make you feel kind of smart, and, perhaps, it happened to "chiptunes".
posted by thelonius at 11:13 AM on February 9, 2022 [1 favorite]


Because Steely Dan is one of the greatest music projects ever to have happened. Though my extreme love of the Steely Dan project kind of ends with the album Gaucho, personally.

Like the George Michael album says: listen without prejudice. Some of the best music ever made. Period.
posted by SoberHighland at 11:25 AM on February 9, 2022 [3 favorites]


And it's not even about "real hardware sounds better" because sound chip emulators are near 100% accuracy at this point. It's more about whether the tune is within the capabilities of the hardware. It's like a guitar piece played on a MIDI keyboard -- how would you know whether a guitarist was capable of playing it, unless you got a guitarist to play it? Similarly, how do you know the hardware of the period could make that sound?

You can install chiptune softsynths into your DAW, or even stream a list of hardware register values into a sound chip simulator, and it sounds pretty good. But to really answer that question, you have to make a 6502/Z80/whatever program do it within the CPU/RAM/ROM constraints of the hardware.
posted by credulous at 11:28 AM on February 9, 2022


...and the arguments "LOL dad-rock" and "LOL prog-rock" is just as banal, uninformed and asinine as "Disco sucks"
posted by SoberHighland at 11:29 AM on February 9, 2022 [1 favorite]


THE BAND THAT'S NAMED FOR A DILDO
THE BAND THAT'S NAMED FOR A DILDO

chiptune that
posted by chavenet at 11:57 AM on February 9, 2022 [2 favorites]


For an aspiring hobby musician like myself, these are helpful for teasing out the relationship between parts in the arrangements. The limitations of the instrument essentially ‘boldface’ parts that are more nuanced by the players or in the mix of the original recording. Hugh McCracken’s excellent rhythm guitar part on ‘Hey Nineteen,’ for example. Or when trying to digest something like Larry Carlton’s legendary solo on ‘Kid Charlemagne.’ For songs I’ve listened (and I mean really listened) to hundreds of times, there’s a quality of hearing with ‘fresh ears’ that provides some useful clarity.
posted by barrett caulk at 1:41 PM on February 9, 2022 [2 favorites]


I don't think this is about someone listening to Steely Dan and thinking this music would sound better reproduced with chiptunes or MIDI. I think it's about people who love the timbre of chiptunes finding music that creates rich and satisfying arrangements of those voices. That arrangement of the Josie intro would have made a fantastic level theme for a Nintendo platformer.

(And as curious nu points out, for some people that love is specifically for the timbre of actual chip-generated sounds, but for others it also includes this kind of sample-based music used in games of the SNES era and later.)

It might seem disrespectful* to use music this way, but I think something like this is unlikely to displace the original and I don't think there's likely to be circumstances where a Steely Dan fan would be subjected to listening to it if they didn't want to.

*That's not the word I want. I'm referring to the phenomenon of how we sometimes get tired of music we like and that sometimes listening to a cover version that we think is inferior can hasten that process.
posted by straight at 1:48 PM on February 9, 2022 [1 favorite]


You can also use this nifty online MIDI player -- SoundFont or OPL3, your choice.

This is the greatest thing ever! You can subtract voices, change synth engines, change tempo... and there's a visualiser!!! That's my evening cooked then, thanks credulous!
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 1:52 PM on February 9, 2022 [1 favorite]


The Glamour Profession one sounds convincingly 8-bit to me, at least. Perhaps a delicacy best tasted sparingly, but impressive (if it’s really arranged within the original limitations of some chip).
posted by mubba at 2:04 PM on February 9, 2022


There's a couple of Steely tunes in SID (C-64) format too -- Do It Again for example -- and you can see exactly what they're doing to the hardware in the Visuals tab.
posted by credulous at 2:19 PM on February 9, 2022 [1 favorite]


I didn't get through the entire list, but the links marked "MrHopeTelevision" (and, bafflingly, marked "8-bit" in their video description) largely sound like OPL3 MIDI file renderings, some of which have vaguely-chiptune-like percussion. A few of the others are a little more plausibly chippy but my own reaction to hearing OPL3 instrumentation was to close the tab.

People should make music that they enjoy making, using whatever tools they enjoy using, with instrumentation they like to play. Their labeling's a touch misleading, though. Or rather, I should clarify, I feel misled.
posted by majick at 2:28 PM on February 9, 2022


THE BAND THAT'S NAMED FOR A DILDO
THE BAND THAT'S NAMED FOR A DILDO


🎶 Which nobody can deny 🎵
posted by armeowda at 3:23 PM on February 9, 2022 [13 favorites]


Same concept, way more polygons per second:

AJA 64
posted by everdred at 5:05 PM on February 9, 2022 [2 favorites]


I've been a huge Steely Dan fan for over 40 years but the thought of covers of their songs never occurred to me until I recently found out about the soundtrack of Me, Myself, and Irene, a presumably terrible movie. It's got me wanting to find good covers. When I get around to it, I'll make a post about it if it hasn't already been done.
posted by neuron at 10:01 PM on February 9, 2022 [2 favorites]


Can't believe I failed to mention this earlier, but if you're looking for more Steely Dan covers, here's a little curio that's worth a listen: The Hoops McCann Band Plays the Music of Steely Dan.
posted by Dr. Wu at 10:05 PM on February 9, 2022


I am slightly embarrassed to admit that I thought these would be Steely Dan songs, but in the style of Alvin and the Chipmunks. Apparently that's not what a chiptune is...
posted by freethefeet at 11:25 PM on February 9, 2022 [5 favorites]


neuron, this post was inspired by a recent post on the Cover Me Songs blog. Here are all their posts tagged with “Steely Dan”.
posted by gauche at 4:49 AM on February 10, 2022 [1 favorite]


eh I guess the Deacon Blues chorus must start "learned to work...", mustn't it?
posted by thelonius at 6:18 AM on February 10, 2022


Is there any particular reason Steely Dan--of all bands--has this weird internet following?

the internet is Dads and/or people who miss their Dads or people who long for a Dad


This cuts deep. I remember sitting in the passenger seat of my Dad’s car as his new six CD changer played Deacon Blues.
posted by leotrotsky at 8:52 AM on February 10, 2022 [2 favorites]


Been a SD fan for a quarter century.

Listening to "King of The World" right now.

There's a Cyberpunk event in the Mojave Desert in April that this music will be PERFECT for. :)
posted by luckynerd at 3:13 PM on February 10, 2022 [1 favorite]


Weird that "Deacon Blues" isn't on the list, because that's the first song that came to mind when I read "chiptuned Steely Dan."
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:10 AM on February 11, 2022 [1 favorite]


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