I just kinda stumbled across it on the internet.  I had discovered MIDINES first, and had wanted to use it in my band or something, I don’t quite remember.  Somehow my interest in that eventually led to LSDJ, Nanoloop, 8bc, chipmusic.org, and all that mess.

Felt good!  I honestly wasn’t sure what to expect, there were a lot of really great tracks entered.  Seems like it ended up being pretty close.  Regardless, I’m excited to mess around with that MIDIboy!

Its been in progress since the beginning of 2012.  Desolate Time was essentially my first attempt at making a live mode track.  I also was just kinda trying to see if I could emulate any of the sounds in mainstream hi-fi dance music.  Honestly, I’m still making changes to it.  I’ve started performing it live at CHILLBRAVE shows, and hopefully a final version will be available on the CHILLBRAVE release, whenever that happens.  I think it fits better with the style PopSTAR and I have been trying to associate with CHILLBRAVE than my other solo work.

Find ways to use LSDJ its not meant to be used!  I’d say try to avoid letting it sound too chiptune, if that makes any sense.  I’ve been trying to do my best to make my game boys sound as little like game boys as I can.

Practice I guess!  Good mixing goes a long way.  I’m not the kinda person that has any secret patches that are super awesome or anything.   I’ve always been really, really liberal about my use of commands.  When I write a melody, I’ll use try to imagine how a vocalist would sing it, then throw in L, E, W, V, P, K, or whatever else commands to try to make it sound like that.  Silence is important!  K and E have always been my two most-used commands.  This might be getting a little out of the realm of LSDJ, and simply into composing in general, but good phrasing is INCREDIBLY important in creating a memorable melody!  Silence is just as important as the notes!

Yes! Especially if you study something you love.  I’m studying music technology.  My program only has about 30 people in my class (including PopSTAR).  It is pretty awesome to have such a great source of really, really constructive criticism for music.  I’ve learned a lot so far.

Loved it!  Personally, I really regret missing Blip 2011.  This year had a lot of new names for me though, and I found some new artists I’m really getting into!

Took the Bolt bus from Baltimore.  That’s always fun…

Just gonna try to get through this summer and work.  I’m back in Maryland for the rest of the summer, then it’s back to New York!

There’s actually a decent amount of us in the MD/DC/VA/WV area, but we are so spread out that it is really difficult to get a big group together for shows.  Usually we just end up hopping in on DIY shows with punk or math rock bands or playing shows with local DJs.  Byte Nyte happened for a while, but I think it became difficult for us to bring in a good variety of performers.  Good venues are hard to come by too, especially in Baltimore.  It’s not like Philadelphia or New York where the majority of the scene lives in the city.  Most of live out in the suburbs, or even way out in rural areas.

There used to be a local monthly DIY music festival called Fredrock.  It started in November 2009 (before I was into chipmusic) and I went to all of them except the February 2010 one.  Trey played at that one, and I remember looking up the performers and listening to his stuff and never even realized it was game boy music.  Anyway, I totally forgot about all that for a long time.  I got into chipmusic in March 2010, and a few months later (I think it was May 2010), I went to Fredrock again.  Trey was playing, but I had completely forgotten about him and I guess I didn’t know him from 8bc at that point either, because I was completely surprised when I saw him walk up on stage with game boys.  I had already done a decent amount of composing in LSDJ, and was pretty blown away by Trey’s set.  I walked up afterwards, said something like, “so, was that all LSDJ?” He was surprised that I knew the program.  We didn’t talk for months after that, but I kept composing in LSDJ.  In October 2010, Companion <3 (now CompyCore) found Trey and I and set up the ORIGINAL BRKfest in Thurmont, MD.  It was really small… Trey, Compy, and I played.  8bit_chris also showed up.  He later became known as DJCATS, then Daedalus, and now Datacats.  After that, Trey and I teamed up and started playing a bunch of split sets around Maryland and West Virginia.  We actually just did another one (possibly our last one?) just last week at an old venue we used to play at a lot.

Yeah, he probably would.