arrangers:
- link: artist/11912
  names:
    en: Bradsmith
catalog: N/A
categories:
- Game-adjacent
category: Game-adjacent
classification: Arrangement
composers:
- names:
    en: Nick Mason
- link: artist/23229
  names:
    en: Roger Waters
- names:
    en: David Gilmour
- names:
    en: Richard Wright
- names:
    en: Clare Torry
covers:
- full: https://media.vgm.io/albums/95/30059/30059-1321559484.png
  medium: https://medium-media.vgm.io/albums/95/30059/30059-1321559484.png
  name: Front
  thumb: https://thumb-media.vgm.io/albums/95/30059/30059-1321559484.png
- full: https://media.vgm.io/albums/95/30059/30059-1321559500.png
  medium: https://medium-media.vgm.io/albums/95/30059/30059-1321559500.png
  name: Back
  thumb: https://thumb-media.vgm.io/albums/95/30059/30059-1321559500.png
discs:
- disc_length: '43:13'
  name: Disc 1
  tracks:
  - names:
      English: Speak to Me
    track_length: '1:16'
  - names:
      English: Breathe
    track_length: '2:52'
  - names:
      English: On the Run
    track_length: '3:42'
  - names:
      English: Time
    track_length: '6:53'
  - names:
      English: The Great Gig in the Sky
    track_length: '4:32'
  - names:
      English: Money
    track_length: '6:37'
  - names:
      English: Us and Them
    track_length: '7:51'
  - names:
      English: Any Colour You Like
    track_length: '3:34'
  - names:
      English: Brain Damage
    track_length: '3:50'
  - names:
      English: Eclipse
    track_length: '2:06'
link: album/30059
lyricists: []
media_format: Digital
meta:
  added_date: 2011-11-17T11:39
  edited_date: 2011-11-17T12:03
  fetched_date: 2026-01-11T04:31
  ttl: 86400
  visitors: 3690
name: MOON8
names:
  en: MOON8
  ja: MOON8
  ja-latn: MOON8
notes: 'FAQ:

  What is this?

  This is a transcription of the entire Pink Floyd album Dark Side of the Moon for
  the Nintendo Entertainment System. No expansion chips were used; this album works
  entirely within the limitations of the standard North American NES.

  How did you make this?

  I used three free programs to create this music.

  First and foremost, Famitracker, which was used to sequence the whole thing. Huge
  thanks for Famitracker.

  The sound was rendered with NSFplug, because I like the sound of it better than
  any other NSF player.

  Final editing was done with Audacity.

  How long did it take?

  It''s hard to say, because it was spread out over a very long time. Probably more
  than 100 hours.

  I started it back in December of 2006. I worked really hard for a couple weeks then,
  but only got about halfway through the album, so I kept it on the shelf. At that
  point I started a new job, and I got into a procrastinating mode about it, and I
  didn''t really touch it for a very long time. In February 2010, I got back into
  it, working a little at a time, and by the end of March it was finally done.

  Why did you do this?

  This was a combination of several things that I enjoy.

  I have an interest in old game hardware, and part of that is the enjoyment of its
  music. I also like the challenge of making something large fit into a small space.
  In this case, the small space is the limited sound capabilities of the NES. I like
  to make transcriptions and arrangements of music. By taking a piece of music and
  rewriting it for a new instrument or ensemble, I feel like I gain a deeper relationship
  with it. It becomes more enjoyable, more memorable, and it''s always a good lesson
  in composition.

  I am attracted to old video game music, not just because I appreciate the difficulty
  in working with such a limited means, but I think composers were forced to find
  a unique style because of how constrained their available palette is. Of course,
  sometimes composers fail under these constraints, and you end up with boring music,
  but when it''s done well you can get something really interesting.

  Familiarity I think is one of the basic aesthetic elements that can produce a pleasurable
  response. A lot of people grew up playing NES games, and the sound of a NES has
  a deep bank of memories to draw upon and colour the experience. Drawing out these
  memories and comparing them against something different, something separate, like
  Pink Floyd, maybe causes your brain to scramble to make new connections between
  them. Like a joke, it makes the right connection, and you laugh, you feel pleasure.
  At least, that''s a little bit of how I think aesthetics works.

  Why Dark Side of the Moon?

  Dark Side of the Moon as an album has been around me all my life. It''s one that
  I''ve talked about and listened to with many different friends, and people of different
  ages.

  There are a lot of albums I really love, but of my favourites this one I think is
  the most widely appreciated. I wanted to make something that a lot of people could
  understand, and Dark Side of the Moon seemed like a good option.

  Is this a joke?

  Well... a little. When I first started working on it, I thought I''d probably put
  it on at a party or something just to get a confused reaction out of people.

  It''s only partly a joke though. I spend a lot of time listening to old game soundtracks,
  and I do find them fully aesthetically satisfying. The concept of MOON8 is a bit
  funny, but that joke is over pretty quickly. This is a cover. This is me presenting
  Dark Side of the Moon in a way I hadn''t heard it before, and in a way I think is
  actually beautiful and worth sharing.

  What inspired you to do this?

  When Kind of Bloop came out, and it''s a fantastic album by the way, it reminded
  me that I had my own chiptune album still sitting half finished on the shelf. I
  think that project spurred me on a little.

  As I said above, sometimes you get very unique art by working within a limited means.
  A few years back I read Christian Bök''s book of poetry, Eunoia, which dealt with
  a very arbitrary and limiting set of constraints, and it was exciting and inspiring
  to read.

  My favourite video game composer is Hiroki Kikuta. I first heard his music in Secret
  of Mana, which is my favourite game soundtrack. My second favourite is Pierre-Eric
  Loriaux''s Atari ST Toki soundtrack. I''ve always been impressed by the unified
  theme that carries through all of Koji Kondo''s Super Mario World (also check out
  Shnabubula''s incredible remix). Shinobi III on the Genesis has a unique sound,
  and it pushes the hardware hard, using both the Yamaha FM chip and the old TI chip
  from the Master System at the same time. Tim Follin''s Solstice on the NES is another
  one that really went to the limit of what could be done with that system. Actraiser
  2 had the probably the best orchestral sound on the SNES. Rob Hubbard''s One Man
  and His Droid, Ryoji Yoshitomi''s Metroid II... I should stop this list before it
  gets too long.

  Which parts were easy? Which were hard?

  Sometimes it is hard to represent the sound with just three tonal instruments to
  play with.

  Things like the guitar solos were usually easy; all I really needed to keep was
  a bassline, and put the solo in one of the pulse channels, leaving me with an extra
  channel for an echo effect.

  Other times, I really want to get a chord sound, but I don''t have channels to spare,
  so I try to cram it into one channel with a really fast arpeggio, i.e. if I play
  all the notes in the chord really fast it''s almost like you''re hearing them together.
  This effect was more typical in home computer game music, like the Commodore 64,
  but the NES could do it too.

  Still other times, the original album is just really dense with tones, like with
  the organ echoes in Any Colour You Like. In these cases I try to pick out the more
  salient sounds and just give an impression of the rest.

  A lot of the expression you can get from layered sounds was completely untranslatable.
  Eclipse, for instance, has a long build-up where each individual part is not very
  complicated, but the overall effect as many of them accumulate is a rich and complex
  sound.

  There''s a weird moment in Any Colour You Like, after the opening passage on the
  organ, I was trying to represent the stereo hocket between the two guitars, and
  I had to do it with mono sound. What came of the attempt sounds very strange to
  me. It''s a musical passage I would never ever have thought to write, but at the
  same time I really liked it.

  When transcribing the drums and bass especially, I noticed that Waters and Mason
  hardly ever play a pattern the same way twice. This is actually common in a lot
  of music, but it''s not something that you really notice until you start writing
  down every note you hear. It kind of reveals what part of the composition was premeditated,
  and what parts belonged to the moment. With video game music, though, everything
  must be premeditated, and because I was transcribing a lot of this pretty close
  to what''s on the record, tracking a slightly different version of the same bass
  pattern in every measure felt like a bit of a style clash. I enjoyed that, though.
  I got to make NES music out of something that wasn''t, and see if it might still
  be a beautiful thing that way.

  Why didn''t you include sampled vocals? Couldn''t the NES play samples?

  The NES actually had the capability to play back low quality sampled sounds, but
  I didn''t want to make extended use of that. For the most part I just used it to
  play a synthesized sounding snare drum, but I did also use it for the cash register
  sound in Money.

  I didn''t really want to use it for vocal snippets, because that really was outside
  the realm of NES sound (the only exception I remember is Blades of Steel). Occasionally
  I tried to substitute something close with the square waves, like the laughing in
  Speak to Me, but for the most part I had to let them drop out of the experience.

  If you''re interested in what it would sound like, though, you''re in luck! John
  Saylor has produced an edited version of MOON8 with synthesized voices. See above
  for a download link.

  Will you cover another album?

  I don''t have any plans to right now. I''ve got other projects I''d like to work
  on first before I''d consider it. I was thinking if I did another one it might be
  Aja or The Downward Spiral, but don''t wait for it, it might never happen.

  Would this really play on an NES?

  It''s certainly possible. All of this sound could be produced by the standard North
  American NES sound chips. I didn''t "cheat" anywhere by using extra sounds.

  There would be some technical difficulties trying to get this onto an actual cart.
  I didn''t write this for compactness, i.e. every pattern is unique data, so you
  might have a hard time fitting it all in the limited memory. You could replace similar
  patterns and try and get it down; there''s probably some way it could fit on a cartridge,
  but this would be a lot of work.

  So... if you really want to, feel free to try to play this on a real NES. Let me
  know if you do.

  Can I have this in NSF format?

  I have made the Famitracker source files available. You can export NSF files from
  these with Famitracker. But, even better than NSF, you can edit them easily with
  Famitracker, or just take a look at how I wrote it.

  If you do happen to make your own edits or additions, please send them my way. I''d
  love to hear them.

  Can I redistribute this?

  I personally don''t mind my recording being redistributed freely, but there is a
  legal complication that this is a cover album and the original songwriters/publisher
  may be entitled to royalties for downloads. If you do redistribute it, please keep
  it intact, leave all the files together in the zip, and don''t remove my name.

  Will you make MP3s of just the individual songs?

  My original release of this album did not have individual tracks. I think people
  who had this on vinyl might understand why I only wanted to present this as the
  two sides. However, now that I am offering it for sale by digital distribution,
  I was forced to make these divisions, so, the answer to this question is yes.

  Have you been interviewed about this?

  Wired.com Gamelife 4/06/2010

  tralala.gr 4/08/2010 (Greek translation)

  G4TV The Feed 4/03/2010

  Hightower and Jones 4/01/2010

  Floydian Slip 4/01/2010

  drop-d 3/29/2011

  If you have questions or comments, e-mail me.'
organizations:
- &id001
  names:
    en: iTunes
  role: publisher
performers: []
picture_full: https://media.vgm.io/albums/95/30059/30059-1321559484.png
picture_small: https://medium-media.vgm.io/albums/95/30059/30059-1321559484.png
picture_thumb: https://thumb-media.vgm.io/albums/95/30059/30059-1321559484.png
publish_format: Doujin/Indie
publisher: *id001
related: []
release_date: '2010-03-29'
release_events: []
release_price:
  currency: USD
  price: 9.99
reprints: []
stores:
- link: http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bradsmith2
  name: CD Baby (OOP)
- link: http://music.apple.com/us/album/413428377
  name: iTunes (OOP)
vgmdb_link: https://vgmdb.net/album/30059?perpage=99999
votes: 0
websites:
  Official:
  - link: https://rainwarrior.ca/music/moon8.html
    name: MOON8
