Honey Wizard - Startup (FULL ALBUM)
Channel: Look I Made A Thing
Date: 31/05/2022

Here, have a chiptune album! This album was made through 2017 and 2018 on either one Game Boy or two synced together depending on the song (pro-sound mods and backlights added).

And here's a Bandcamp link in case you wanna listen to it elsewhere: 
https://honeywizard.bandcamp.com/album/startup

Intro - 0:00
Level 1 - 0:13
Blink - 2:23
Say You Love Me - 5:24
Guilt - 7:42
Attacula - 11:59
INTERLUDE 1 - 15:23
Holmes - 16:37
Treesus - 19:09
Kitsch - 22:42
Magicman - 25:43
Lair - 28:07
INTERLUDE 2 - 31:30
Bugfree - 32:43
Witchbru - 34:43
Below - 37:27
Fluke - 39:28
Confidante - 41:59
Dying - 44:22
Complex - 46:38
Outro - 53:24

The low bass was achieved by flaw in the CPU-001 boards on my units in combo with the backlights. They tend to overheat due to a crappy voltage regulator. I noticed they get bassier right before overheating and turning off, so I'd play through the songs a few times before recording to "warm them up." It's most notable in "Magicman," where I left one Game Boy sort of warm and the other that had the bass on it much hotter. It's a fine balance. When recording, if it sounds too bassy at the start of the song, it'd be unintelligible by the end, so you'd have to cool the units down and start over. That said, no part's the same twice due to that constant buildup of saturation. Adds a little tension and life. The song "Dying" is actually a bit literal. By the midpoint of the song, my Game Boys were so overheated the screens were blank, and it's a miracle they didn't power off before the song stopped. That's why it sounds the way it does.

Also, don't worry: after I recorded this album, I went back and cleaned both Game Boys and resoldered the screen so it bypasses the regulator entirely. The screen now gets slightly dim (barely noticeable) before the batteries are drained, but they don't overheat anymore.

Recorded with a Hall of Fame 2 reverb pedal (for certain tracks) on a small delay setting for stereo width, then into a Yamaha MG10XU mixer plugged into a Focusrite Scarlett 2i4, then into Reaper. Multi-band compression, stereo width, EQ, and Tape encoding added (AudioThing Type A).