New Music The Gameboy Madrigals

Joey Mariano Combines Composes Counterpoint for the 8bit Gameboy

May 31, 2008

Composer and guitar teacher Joey Mariano has released the Gameboy Madrigals as a free download. The music combines psuedo-medieval polyphony with video bleeps and buzz.

Have you ever played your gameboy with the sound turned off because of the mind-numbing repetitiveness of the soundtrack? If you have, then the gameboy doesn't seem like the ideal "instrument" for which to compose creative works. Who would want to compose a gameboy madrigal, for instance?

Yet composer Joey Mariano apparently appreciates a challenge. His mission was to create a set of chiptune madrigals that will demonstrate the creative possibilities of a medium that, frankly, seems to offer the artistic potential of a dripping faucet.

Electronic Polyphony: An Eclectic College of Sounds

His efforts have produced the Gameboy Madrigals, a collection that works surprisingly well (at least for a few listens). The early madrigal only required two or three voices to create a somewhat stark but sonorous polyphony. Since the gameboy only has three monophonic channels, the early madrigal style fits perfectly. Having only a few voices to work with forced Mariano to keep it simple and create straightforward yet interesting counterpoint.

Purists will have much to criticize, as Mariano's "madrigals" are more suggestive of an era than particularly true to the style. In addition, he mashes techniques from several epochs in Western classical music history--Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque--into the same piece.

Mariano draws from sources as varied as early role-playing and puzzle video game music, Japanese folk music and the music of 14th-century, blind madrigal composer Francesco Landini. The instrumentation itself is the electronic 8bit of the gameboy, complete with bleeps and whistles.

One would think that the sound effects and electronic timbre would not fit with pre-industrial medieval music. Many madrigals, referring to lords and ladies, suggest a particular kind of world unfamiliar to 21st-century listeners. The Gameboy Madrigals evoke a fantasy peopled by characters who jump on mushrooms, but rescue princesses nonetheless.

The timbre has its limits. Though Mariano does a good job with what he has, I am not sure I would want to listen to low-bit, slightly buzzing frequencies all day. However, the madrigals are worth investigating for the sake of novelty and perhaps nostalgia.

Track List

The names of the tracks evoke as many eclectic images as the sounds themselves, juxtaposing vocabulary that reflects all of Mariano's diverse inspirations.

Mariano has made the madrigals available for free download at the net music label iimusic.net. Look for Animal Style (Mariano's chiptune alias) among the other experimental chiptune composers on the website. Listeners so inclined are welcomed to donate to Animal Style.

Sources

The copyright of the article New Music The Gameboy Madrigals in Music Composition is owned by Sarah Canice Funke. Permission to republish New Music The Gameboy Madrigals in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.