Raised in the 80s on a trusty Atari 2600, Ipswich based circuit bender Pixelh8 has spent much of his adult life ripping apart old Gameboys and turning their unique plinks and bleeps into music.

Last year he created Music Tech – a batch of 100 cartridges that, for £25, could turn any Gameboy, from the original to the DS, into a portable music machine. Each was capable of burping out the type of bit-crushed sounds Crytsal Castles and David E Sugar have made a careers out of.

After the initial run sold out in three hours, he’s gone back to the lab to make another run – available March 2008.

Your album is called The Boy with the Digital Heart - how long have you been hooked on Gameboys?

 

Ever since I saw one in a glass case in Sears in Louisiana whilst on holiday in America, how clearly I remember it.

The 8-bit sound is quite trendy at the moment with yourself, Crystal Castles, David E Sugar - why do you think this distinctive sound is catching on? 

 

I do I feel it's largely to do with the sounds being ingrained in our childhood psyche, happy memories of destroying alien invaders and eating mushrooms are retriggered and a good feeling all round is generated, and alot of the music made by chip tune artists is quite happy so that I would also say adds to the overall catchiness.

How/why did you start to make your own music software for gameboys?

 

I was tired of seeing chip tune artists pretending to play live, they would just normally use a tracker program (you preprogram the song) "hit play" and pretend to play live, it was pissing me of these people pretending to play these 200 bpm solos on a game boy, it was all show and didn't impress me, it was time for a change.

What was the breakthrough moment in the development?

 

When it made a buzzing sound, It wasn't even a proper sound, I almost cried, I'm not a trained programmer, I sifted through the internet and spend along time doing the research, when it made a buzzing sound I knew I could do it, I think it's my biggest achievement yet, and it's helped loads of people write new songs quickly, which is great.

Castlevania was my favourite gameboy theme tune - what is yours?

 

Balloon Kid, it has been locked in my head every since and I am big fan of a composer called Aleksi Eeben who wrote a lot for the game boy, recently I built up the courage to contact him about music/software and we have been friends ever since, he is an amazing composer.

How long does a cartridge take you to make?

 

Well I have to cut apart a pre-existing cart for the shell, check the pcb, burn my software to a 27c256 chip, check it, solder it, re check it, put it in the shell and re check it. Normally about an hour to make. Overall the language took a month to learn and the software a month to make, I can now learn languages in about, oh, a few hours and start writing new software immediately. My brain recently seems to have learnt new systems/practices for learning.

Do you ever get sick of hearing plinks and beeps?

 

I do when I know there are being produced on fruity loops via a damn plugin, and not a real vintage machine. I listen to curtis mayfield, sly & the family stone, marvin gaye so I am in a bubble when it come to chip tune music, If I do gigs with other artists I'll listen to them, but yeah I'm in a bubble or is it a bobble?

How many have you sold and over what time period?

 

I made a limited run of a 100 and they sold within 3 hours, doing anymore would have seriously hampered my second album. I had to make them up over several weeks whilst working on my new album, but I feel it was an important thing to do for chip tune music, and judging by the nice emails I get back it has helped alot of people.

Have you approached Nintendo to see if you can market this?

 

I approached them when I was 11 years old, about an idea, I got a standard reply back from them, ever since then I have decided to go at it alone with my ideas. We are at a really exciting time in software development, in the 80's people wouldn't dream of being able to develop games for a NES in their homes, now 2008 we are able to program for the wii system on our home computers, new technology is assimilated, dissected and the knowledge is shared via the internet, the programmers in the bedrooms have caught up with the companies and their labs, and things will change.

© TIM NOAKES 2008

www.hiddenyouthrecords.co.uk/musictechgb