Photon Jive
By Disposable Planet on January 17, 2026 9:04 pm
I returned from MAGFest 2026 this past monday and, simply put, I was inspired by all the amazing talent I saw on display at Chipspace and during the Chiprave. There were some excellent artists on stage, especially during Open Mic at Chipspace. So I decided to get back into an LSDJ workflow and make some happy chiptunes as part of a new music project I'm undertaking.
You would expect by the name "Photon Jive" that it might be funky but this one is a pretty happy and chippy song. The lead is pretty straightforward - just a pulse wave with a 50% duty cycle and some table shenanigans going on to give it a plucky sound as well as some proper vibrato and L and P commands in phrase to give it some character. For the middle section which is in a minor key I used three different bass instrument patches which I am switching between rather rapidly for that spazz bass AFX-y effect. There are some fairly standard stereo-panned arps and harmonic intervals as well as some staccato intervals for the middle part. The lead was composed by just jamming out in my head over the progression and I think it came out pretty catchy.
As for the title... it's an inside joke between my best friend, Charlie, and I. Back in high school there was this one kid who used to hang out with our group of friends. One night he took entirely too much acid and became convinced he was a photon intersecting our plane of existence. He even started yelling about his newfound photonic nature. We jokingly refer to this as the "Photon Jive".
Feels good to be back in the LSDJ state of mind. Thanks for listening!
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