The 8-Bit Big Band rehearses to a classic Super Mario game. (Photos courtesy of The 8-Bit Big Band) A full-size orchestra that plays video game music? Whoever heard of such a thing? For Los Angeles ...

Composer David Farrell started making 8-bit covers of Christmas songs several years ago for fun. Using tones roughly based on the sounds that an old Nintendo console makes, Farrell would generate the ...

The 8-Bit Big Band, under the direction of Tony-nominee Charlie Rosen, has released their third full length album, Backwards Compatible. An exploration of the "Great Video Game Songbook'', this ...

In the basement of a Bowery Street bar in lower Manhattan a musician was working the crowd like a younger (and geekier) version of Keith Richards. Slung waist high was not a guitar, but a PC keyboard ...

Japanese artist and developer Riki Iwasaki last month released 8-Bit Music Power, a chiptune album that as of now can only be played on Nintendo's original home console. Adam Bolton is a contributor ...

This piece was performed at the Bent Festival a few years ago. Written by Jeremy Kolosine, it's called "I Bent My Heart in New York City," and it's played on a Gameboy, those little handheld devices ...

On a typical day in 1992, the young guy who would go on to become the chip-rockers Anamanaguchi would be hanging out in their parents’ basement. Bottles of Jolt cola might be sitting next to a ...

Over 11 years and 570 episodes, John Rabe and Team Off-Ramp scoured SoCal for the people, places, and ideas whose stories needed to be told, and the show became a love-letter to Los Angeles. Now, John ...

Earlier this year, the Digital Culture Beat had the pleasure of attending the “8-bit Music Exhibit” for the Digital Studies Institute, planned by Toni Bushner and Norah Vulpes — a digital scholarship ...

As far as the Internets go, Doctor Octoroc is the real deal — he's the animator, composer, and wizard behind more or less every good retro videogame parody online, like “Jersey Shore: The RPG,” “Game ...

I played video games as much as any other kid growing up in the GameCube era. My earliest memories of video game music come from playing “Sonic Adventure 2” on the Dreamcast, where you could listen to ...