Chiptune artist Double Hex is the brainchild of local musician Joel Edinberg, search better known for his work as the bandleader and saxophonist in the gypsy-punk Somerville Symphony Orkestar and for sitting in with presidential rockers the Van Burens and soul psychedelics the Stepkids—all of which have songs featured on Double Hex’s debut cover album Volume = FF (released July 18, malady 2013) along with the baroque pop of the Michael J. Epstein Memorial Library and reggae artist Uzimon. The album features a chiptune cover of one song by each band with a bonus track of Edinberg’s own “Sexy Sax” (MJEML’s “Amylee, purchase ” the Stepkids’ “Suburban Dream,” Uzimon’s “Titty Taco,” SSO’s “I Never Knew,” and the Van Burens’ “Jeffrey’s World”). Allston Pudding sat down with Edinberg over a beer at Deep Ellum to talk about Volume = FF, Mario Kart, and nerd communities!

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Can you explain a little bit more in detail what a chiptune is?

Joel Edinberg: If you grew up like I did, instead of having a social life, you played video games—Nintendo, or Super Nintendo, which is what I grew up with, or Atari. All of those video games had certain sound cards that had certain limitations. So everything would be done in eight bits, which we could go into, but I don’t think you want the whole computer science background.

So it’s more of the vintage-style video game. It’s not necessarily like video games these days. 

JE: Now, you can take any recording and just put it on a video game. That’s just a recording. But these were, like—you know, the old computers didn’t have good enough sound cards to actually play any recordings. They had, like, five different sounds that they could make and you had to sort of find some variation between those five sounds to make a song or make something. A lot of these are very melody-based things that everyone knows—like the Super Mario themes are 8-bit or Mike Tyson’s “Punch Out!!”… You hear these specific type of sounds, too, so it’s not even like the synth you’ll hear from the ‘70s, like the Moogs and the Junos. It’s a very specific type of sound as well, not just the limitations of the number of sounds, but also the type of sound. It’s very specifically an 8-bit sound. There’s only so many steps that the volume and the wave shape can take.

So you were sort of looking for a creative way to record these? Was it sort of a nostalgia throwback?

JE: A lot of this is a nostalgia throwback. That’s a good way of putting that. And it’s a fun thing. There are a lot of people right now writing original sounds for chiptunes, but that’s not what this is doin’. I’m a musician in the [Boston] area and I have a lot of friends [in Boston] that are also musicians, so this was like a fun way for me to work with some of the music that they’ve written… I just gradually started getting into [writing chiptunes], seeing these pop up on YouTube and other things, and realizing no one’s doing a lot of these things locally. Some bands are doing them for themselves, but no one’s really doing the, “Here’s my version of your tune in this format,” for chiptunes for smaller, local bands.

To go along with the local bands involved—you sit in with the Stepkids as well as the Van Burens.

JE: Yep.

And your tie to the Michael J. Epstein Memorial Library is kind of obvious with Rachel [Blumenthal, MJEML’s flute player and Edinberg’s girlfriend].

JE: [laughs] Yes, I definitely have that tie with the Library.

What’s your tie with Uzimon?

JE: I actually don’t know him at all. I’m really good friends with this producer and guitarist Brett Tubin from Channel Tubes… We grew up together and played in a lot of ska bands and reggae bands [together] in high school. He’s gone off to become a reggae producer and I keep seeing all these things about Uzimon. The guy is just ridiculous. He’s hilarious, he’s talented. I approached them with the idea [of covering one of Uzimon’s songs as a chiptune] and they were all for it, which was really exciting.

[At this point, Joel orders a Banner Summer Ale: “Now you know the beer I like!”]

What made you pick these five songs in particular by these five artists?

JE: For the Somerville Symphony Orkestar, a lot of how I compose is that I’ll make, rather than sit there with a pen and paper at the piano, I’ll do a lot of these [songs] on the computer using [recording software] Logic or GarageBand. I’ll have these midi versions of [a song]. I can hear how the harmonies sound, I can hear the sounds of the different timbre of each instrument. Mixing violin, sax, and trombone isn’t as intuitive initially, so it’s much easier for me to hear [recording on the computer], so I’ll do that. A lot of these times, when I’m doing these midi compositions, it just sounds like video game music. I’ll show it to the band and everyone starts laughing because it sounds like a video game. Eventually, I was like, “Well, why don’t I just convert this [song] to video game music?” That was the song “I Never Knew.” The first part of that song just screams out “video game music” when everyone heard it. So that was kind of the inspiration, although that wasn’t actually the first song I did.

For a lot of these songs, it was sort of just like—I’m thinking about the band and which bands are going to like this project, [which bands]  will help promote it. A lot of this is getting cross-promotion between these bands. They all have different audiences who are probably all people who like different styles of music. “I like this band from this genre but don’t know much about this genre.” So it’s a cool way of cross-promoting these five very different bands.

So for a lot of the songs, [I considered] which melody line [would be] easiest to transfer over to 8-bit. I have to kind of picture how it’s going to sound as a chiptune and then go with which song is going to be the best. For Uzimon, he does a lot of reggae rapping, so you don’t want a song that’s just going to sound like, “Do do do do do. Do do do do. Do do do do do.” I want something a little more [complex] than that. The song “Titty Taco” is one of his more melodic songs. There’s guitar lines, there’s a really cool bass line going on, the drums were much easier to figure out a way to make work. With 8-bit drums, you’re pretty much limited to a pseudo, fake kick drum and a cool, little snare. You know, you have to pick and choose.

For the Michael J. Epstein Memorial Library, Mike [Epstein, of MJEML] was promoting “Amylee” a lot and wanted to do a project of getting different artists to do different versions of that song. [“Amylee”] just lends itself really well to a melodic tune, so I decided to write it one night and I was like, “Oh my god, this is amazing. This is just hilarious!” That was actually the first one I did.

I know this project was done with the support of these bands. Have they all had a chance to hear these versions of their songs?

JE: They have. They all love it, too. I’ve only gotten good reviews from the bands, which makes me feel a nice breath of relief. They weren’t like, “You ruined my song!” I might have done that to my own tune, but… [laughs] They’ve all given really good responses. I finally heard back from Uzimon… and got a response from Uzi that was really enthusiastic, really loved it… I played [the Stepkids] an earlier version [of “Suburban Dream”]. There were a couple small nuances to their song that I caught and they were like, “Every time we listen [to your version] and hit that part, it cracks us up.” There’s one part of the melody where, the first time, [the Stepkids] keep it as the same note and the second time, they move up in the melody, like, “UHhh aaAH.” [Ed. That is a terrible rendition of me trying to textually mimic the sound Joel’s trying to make, but hopefully I accomplished it.] And I found a fun way of doing it…

While I was writing [the chiptune for] “Jeffrey’s World,” by the Van Burens, they were really enthusiastic about this. They were bugging me to hear this ever since I told them that I was going to start doing this. This past October, I was about halfway through their song… We had a Halloween show out in New Hampshire. They didn’t know I was doing this project at the time and I’d already started the song. I was like, if they don’t want it, I guess I’ll just do another band or something like that. But I was like, I know they’re going to want this. They’re going to love this. So I wasn’t too worried about it. So we were talking about what we were all going to dress up as for this Halloween show because we were headlining up in New Hampshire. They’re huge up there. They decided they were all going to dress up as Mario Kart, which was perfect. So I was like, “Really. You know, I might have some entrance music for you if you want.”

I was Donkey Kong, as I’m sure you can imagine—I have a lot of facial hair… I wore brown pants and a tie and I duct taped some bananas to my belt and threw them into the crowd. There are two brothers in the band and they were Mario and Luigi, which was awesome. But, basically, we walked on to the halfway finished version of their song, of the 8-bit version of their song—dressed up as Mario Kart. It was booming through the sound system. People dug it. I hope that’s not the high point of this album, but it was definitely an awesome moment to have months before this was released.

I wondered if you could talk about how you physically do these 8-bit covers of these songs, the physical process of doing it.

JE: There’s two ways I started doing it. When I started doing this, I learned some things throughout the recording of each song. A lot of it is just a pure transcription. I’m not taking a recording and editing it and changing it or doing anything with their actual recordings. This is all me, sitting there, playing a keyboard, programming it on the computer. I use Logic Pro at home and I’ve found some software since that mimic 8-bit sounds. I’ve found that they sound really good and it’s exactly what I remember [from] playing video games. I can work with them really well. As I got better, sometimes I would take the actual recording and make a track of it so I could easily follow through it, mimic the sound, make sure the tempos are as exact as I can [get them to be]. Not every song was recorded with a click track. The ones that were were a little bit easier because I could just line everything up whereas, with the ones that weren’t, I sort of had to give it my best shot and do a straight-up transcription. I’d sit there and find a bass sound that I liked with the synths and record the bass line and then figure out which sound would work well for the melody line and record that. [Then I would] try to listen to all the other instruments like the guitars and pick those lines. [I would also] pick any effects, like delay or tremolo—I would start adding that. That’s sort of the part where it becomes more of a recording and less chiptunes. I kind of cheated a little bit [laughs]. I don’t think anyone’s going to care—I’m still trying to recreate their song. If I have to add a tape delay, that’s not really a perfectly 8-bit-like style of effect, but I’m still going to put that in there because it helps it sound really cool. That’s kind of what brings it more to life than just a straight-up piece that doesn’t make sense.

How long does it normally take you to put together one song?

JE: It depends on the song. “Amylee” ended up being pretty easy. Once I figured out the verse and the chorus, the words would change but the melody wouldn’t. Since I’m not doing lyrics, it was easy. I copied and pasted a lot of that and made smaller changes. That one took maybe two days. It’s nothing against the song. It’s a great song. But melodically, the choruses had a very nice, structured form. Pretty much all of the other songs were not as structured. “Jeffrey’s World” is very prog, so it goes from Point Zero to Point F. There were a couple things where I could copy and paste it, but there were so many different sections in the middle, so it took a lot more transcribing effort. Typically, I would spend a good week to a week and a half recording these. Once I got them all done, I mastered it myself, mostly because this was a simple, fun project. If this gets really big and I start getting some real support and I know I can cover the cost of mastering, I’ll probably go to someone else. I love mixing and I love producing, but mastering is a whole other world—but I’ll do it if I have to.

Are there any songs in particular that you like the most, that are your favorite?

JE: It’s tough. The one I’m most proud of, I’ll say, is—well, I like them all. But the one I’m least proud of and most proud of is the bonus track (“8-bit Sexy Sax”) because that song is just terrible in a great way.

This 8-bit version or the original version?

JE: Both. [laughs] There’s no way of making that song Not Terrible. It’s supposed to be. We can get into that later. The one I’m actually the most proud of is “Jeffrey’s World” by the Van Burens. That song is very epic. I play with them a lot… When I play with them, you don’t hear it in the same way you do as when you’re taking a step back and listening to the whole thing. You’re only focusing on your one part. So, I got to hear that song in a whole new way. Seeing how the guitar lines worked with each other, worked within the song, we figured out a few measures we were all arguing about [with regard to] what the time signature is. I finally figured that out when I made this recording. It’s like, we can all play it, we all understand it, but we were trying to figure out if it was ?, ?. They do a lot of weird flip-flops with time, which I love about it because it makes it really cool, but [I had to] try to figure that out. It’s also an eight- or nine-minute song. So it just took a lot of work to get that one down. I’m real happy with the way that one turned out.

It sounds like, geez, you must really know the ins and outs of these songs now.

JE: I do. [laughs] A little too well. Whenever you transcribe something or learn it from the recording, you spend up to, like, an hour on five measures, eight measures, especially if you’re trying to get every single part, any little nuance. If the bass player played it this way the first time but changed it the second time, I can’t copy and paste anymore. And I’m fine with that! It’s better, it’s more musical. It just makes my job a little harder.

So I really do have written down here in my notes, “How did ‘Sexy Sax’ turn out? Was that particularly interesting since it was your own?’ If you want to go into “Sexy Sax” a bit more.

JE: [laughs] Well? That’s not the only one that’s my own!

Well, you independently.

JE: Credited just for me as a solo artist, right. So, that song… There’s a story behind that song. If you look in the deep, dark depths of YouTube, there’s a video that I made for a company. They filmed me and did a parody of the Sergio Flores “Sexy Sax Man” that got sent to a short list of a bunch of people. Then SNL did the parody of that with Jon Hamm—it’s amazing. So we did a parody of that, like, “Don’t let bad music ruin your video.” I walked around playing this “Sexy Sax” thing to the whole office. A lot of people I met for the very first time while filming! [laughs] With licensing and everything, it costs a lot of money to get a song like “Careless Whisper,” so it would be much easier for me to just write a song. So I was like, “All right, I’ll write some sexy sax music, this really can’t be hard.” I think I did it in maybe two hours with the whole thing recorded. Every step was like, “What is the lamest, cheesiest thing I can do? Oh yeah, so we’ll add some wind chimes to this! Let’s add some really lame bells with long decay! Let’s put way too much reverb and delay on the saxaphone! Awesome!”

So for “8-bit Sexy Sax,” that one actually came around because I had a friend who really wanted to hear the “Amylee” version, but I didn’t want to release it yet. So instead, I Rick Rolled him the “Sexy Sax” song. He was in that video. I basically titled it “Amylee for John,” and sent it, he clicked on it, and he got “Sexy Sax.” So I was like, I may as well just continue this thing and make it a bonus track. The cool part was, since I had recorded it at home, I had all my settings saved from the initial recording, so once I got the notes down, I was able to just add all the same exact delay, the same reverb, the same panning, everything, so it’s actually really close to the original and… just… terrible. [laughs] Actually, [“Sexy Sax” has] been picked up, too, by a couple places! The original one.

How do you mean?

JE: MTV2 used it for an online video. They had the cast of Snow White reading Fifty Shades of Grey to my “Sexy Sax” song. Telemundo used it for something…

Were they seriously using it for something? Seriously seriously?

JE: I mean, I got royalties, if that’s what you mean! They can obviously tell it’s a joke. Tosh.0 just used it. I finally found the episode. They had a viewer submit the video and they put [“Sexy Sax”] on top of it. It was a funny video of two people about to– after the bar, going home. The guy takes off his shirt and then there’s another shirt and he keeps taking off the shirt and they’re all doing this whole thing to “Sexy Sax” music. The Sisterhood, this show on TLC about preachers’ wives, used it. They go from this terrible drum intro that they have, and you see this single white rose, and the wife is sitting there in her white nightie, and they’re about to get it on to this sax music. So! I have a feeling they’re all in on the joke.

I’m going to have look out for it now! Every time there’s some weird scene…

JE: I know! The song’s called “Sexy Sax” and I think that’s why it gets picked up. People are like, “I need sexy sax music! How about this song called ‘Sexy Sax’?”

I was curious who you perceive your audience to be for Volume = FF.

JE: It’s sort of a mixed bag. The initial, obvious one is that the fans of these bands are going to be enjoying this. People who are like, “I like the Stepkids. I want to hear this other version of their song.” People like that. I’d like to see how people perceive these. That’s why people do covers. But this is not just a cover—I feel like the bands are a little bit more involved, a lot of them because I play with the bands so it kind of gets that involvement, or I’m good friends with them… They’re really in on it. Each band also gets half of [the money] the song makes. I’m making it very apparent that everyone gets their fair share on this. So I feel like there’s the bands’ fans that are hopefully the obvious first tier of fans and of people adopting this, but there are chiptunes communities. There are a lot of people who like listening to chiptunes, people who remember their old video games, and people like me who, instead of going out and having a social life, sit around and dominate Donkey Kong and Mario Kart. There’s a lot of nerd communities who are very big on chiptunes. And I don’t mean that negatively. [“Nerd”] isn’t even really a negative term anymore. A lot of people who like to go to Comic Con or people who go to PAX really tend to like a lot of this type of music and they like seeing video game versions of their favorite bands. So that’s my hope for a lot of the more general support for this.

I have some friends, too, who are really involved in that scene and who have been really supportive of this, too, who are like, “I really can’t wait for this to come out.” That’s why I’m only making it available online. Most of the people that are going to like this don’t really want CDs anymore. It’s weird saying CDs are a thing of the past when I’m writing the music, that that’s a thing of the past, but they’re going to want the new technology, the new thing. It’s much easier. Why go out to a store when I can be on my computer and just download it? That’s the hip thing now and that’s what a lot of those communities prefer. So I’m trying to keep it only online as an online, all-digital release.

So, for the title of Volume = FF, I sort of took that to mean the binary version of like Turn It Up to Eleven.

JE: Well, in this case, it would be ten. It’s maximum volume… So in hex, I said bits go from zero to F. So think of A as ten, B as eleven—it goes essentially zero to sixteen. F is maximum, zero is minimum. If you have eight bits in your programming, you have eight bits of options of volume. FF is maximum volume. So it’s like—turn it up and party hard.

And the release is out on July 18 on Bandcamp?

JE: Yes! It will eventually be everywhere else (i.e. iTunes, Amazon MP3, Spotify, CDbaby, among others)… It’s definitely on Bandcamp. That’s the best place to buy it. As far as supporting bands, too, Bandcamp takes the smallest cut from what the artists make. All the other ones take a much bigger cut… So please go through the Bandcamp!… You’ll get a code and be able to download the album.

And “8-bit Sexy Sax” is only available if you buy the whole album?

JE: It’s only available with the full album. That’s the secret, hidden bonus track.

That’s a good reason to buy the whole album then!

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