For the entire weekend of Friday 1/8 through Sunday 1/10, I attended a demoparty called Synchrony at the NYC indie game gallery known as babycastles (BTW, if you don’t know what a “demoparty” or the “demoscene” is, go here). All the time I was there, I worked on a chiptune cover of the John Philip Sousa march “The Washington Post” which I cheekily called “The Washington Post (is a shitty newspaper)”. What I did to accomplish this was download the sheet music from mutopia and enter the notes into an Ableton-Live-like music tracker for the Nintendo Game Boy called LSDJ. Rather than download the MIDI and be on my way with DAWs such as Logic, Ableton Live, and FL Studio, I had to enter in the notes manually. I was done right before the deadline, but I was only able to have the track played straight from the Game Boy and there was no MP3 of the track yet, as I had yet to record an MP3 from my Game Boy into my computer with my DAW of choice, Logic Pro X. When it was time to announce the nominees for the music made at the demoparty on Saturday 1/9, six out of seven of the tracks were played from PCM files (such as WAVs and MP3s) while my track was played live from the Game Boy (remember, I did not have an MP3 yet), and as soon as I was done, I went straight home and recorded the Game Boy into my computer and I was able to bounce an MP3 of it in time for the competition for everyone to vote.
The next day, voting was closed and the winners of the competitions were announced. I was not expecting to win anything at all. I was just satisfied for a job well done. When third place was announced for music, I heard “‘The Washington Post is a shitty newspaper’ by Iron Curtain”! I won third place! While the first place winner won a modded DMG (i.e. an old brick Nintendo Game Boy with a pro-sound mod), I won a fridge magnet and a pair of NYC subway socks. I didn’t want the modded DMG (I have three of them!), but I was actually thinking about picking up the subway socks. Now I don’t have to!
All in all, this makes me really proud of the hard work I have committed into transcribing the track because many people voted favorably for it, and I got a reward I wanted out of it (not to mention something I can put on a résumé). Considering that this specific demoparty in particular had performances by Chipzel and Ultrasyd, I would gladly go to another demoparty again!