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A chiptune, or chip music, is music written in sound formats where all the sounds are synthesized in realtime by a computer or video game console sound chip, instead of using sample-based synthesis. The "golden age" of chiptunes was the mid 1980s to early 1990s, when such sound chips were the most common method for creating music on computers. Chiptunes are closely related to video game music, which often featured chiptunes out of necessity. The term has also been recently applied to more recent compositions that attempt to recreate the chiptune sound for purely aesthetic reasons, albeit with more complex technology.
Early computer sound chips had only simple tone and noise generators with few channels, imposing limitations on both the complexity of the sounds they could produce and the number of notes that could be played at once. In their desire to create a more complex arrangement than what the medium apparently allowed, composers developed creative approaches when developing their own electronic sounds and scores, employing a diversity of both methods of sound synthesis, such as pulse width modulation and wavetable synthesis, and compositional techniques, such as a liberal use of arpeggiation. The resultant chiptunes sometimes seem harsh or squeaky to the unaccustomed listener.
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Technology
Historically, the chips used were sound chips such as:
- Ricoh 2A03 on the Nintendo Entertainment System or Famicom
- the analog-digital hybrid Atari POKEY on the Atari 400/800 and arcade hardware
- the MOS Technology SID on the Commodore 64
- AY-3-8910 or 8912 on Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, MSX and Sinclair ZX Spectrum
- Yamaha YM2612 on Sega Mega Drive
- Yamaha YM3812 on IBM PC compatibles
For the MSX several sound upgrades, such as the Konami SCC, the Yamaha YM2413 (MSX-MUSIC) and Yamaha Y8950 (MSX-AUDIO, predecessor of the OPL3) and the OPL4-based Moonsound were released as well, each having its own characteristic chiptune sound.
The Game Boy does not have a separate sound chip but both instead use digital logic integrated on the main CPU.
Paula is known as the sound chip on Amiga, but is not really a sound generating chip by itself. It is only responsible for DMA'ing samples from RAM to the audio output, similar to the function of modern day sound cards.
Most of (but not all) chip sounds are synthesised by simply dividing a clock square wave to get a square wave of desired frequency, and sometimes using a sawtooth/triangle wave from volume LFO or an (ADSR) envelope to get some kind of ring modulation. LFOs are used to control or influence a sound parameter such as pitch or filters in a repeating cycle.
The technique of chiptunes with samples synthesized at runtime continued to be popular even on machines with full sample playback capability; because the description of an instrument takes much less space than a raw sample, these formats created very small files, and because the parameters of synthesis could be varied over the course of a composition, they could contain deeper musical expression than a purely sample-based format. Also, even with purely sample-based formats, such as the MOD format, chip sounds created by looping very small samples still could take up much less space.
As newer computers stopped using dedicated synthesis chips and began to primarily use sample-based synthesis, more realistic timbres could be recreated, but often at the expense of file size (as with MODs) and potentially without the personality imbued by the limitations of the older sound chips.
The standard MIDI file format, together with the General MIDI instrument set, describes only what notes are played on what instruments. General MIDI is not considered chiptune as a MIDI file contains no information describing the synthesis of the instruments.
Common file formats used to compose and play chiptunes are the SID, YM, SNDH, MOD, XM, several Adlib based file formats and numerous exotic Amiga file formats.
Style
Generally chip tunes consist of basic waveforms, such as sine waves, square waves and sawtooth or triangle waves, and basic percussion, often generated from white noise going through an ADSR envelope–controlled synthesizer.
For the above reasons the classic chiptune 8-bit sound can be recognised from its synthesised square or pulse wave instruments, simple white noise percussion and heavy use of ultra-fast arpeggios to emulate chords of three or four notes on a single channel (due to hardware limitations, several notes must be placed on the same channel).
Demoscene intros came to feature their own particular style of chiptune music. Although chiptune could historically refer to any style of music, the term is mostly used today to refer to the style of music used in these intros, since other styles of music have moved on to more sophisticated technology.
More recent "old school" or "demostyle" MOD music, although sample-based, continues the style of the chiptunes used in these intros; new compositions in this style can still be regularly found at www.chiptune.com (new chiptunes from old computers/formats can be found here as well).
Today
Modern computers can play a variety of chiptune formats through the use of emulators and platform-specific plugins for media players. Depending on the nature of hardware being emulated, 100% accuracy in software may not be available. The commonly used MOS Technology SID chip, for example, has a multi-mode filter including analog circuits whose characteristics are only mathematically estimated in emulation libraries.
The chip scene is far from dead with "compos" being held, groups releasing music disks and with the cracktro/demo scene. New
Contemporary interest in chipping has also led to numerous web sites dedicated to the history of music groups, artists, and antique platforms.
In the last couple of years, chip music has returned to modern gaming, either in full chip music style or using chip samples in the music. Games that do this in their soundtrack include Mega Man Battle Network, Seiklus, and Tetris DS.
Chiptune music is relatively unknown in North America, and most of the chiptune artists are European, Australian or Japanese. Due to Myspace, chiptune artists have gained some notoriety. There has however been a small number of artists coming out of the United States, Canada, and South America.
Film
The chiptune scene was recently the subject of a documentary called Blip Festival: Reformat the Planet by 2 Player Productions[1]. This film was an official selection at the 2008 South By Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Texas.[2] The Premier took place on March 8, 2008 at the Dobie Center.
Representative artists and ensembles
Classic chiptune composers
Contemporary chiptune artists/bands
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Media
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See also
- Elektron SidStation - Professional synthesizer with a built-in SID chip
- GoatTracker - crossplatform C64 music editor. Supports HardSID soundcard, CatWeasel MK3 or emulation via reSID
- HardSID - A PCI card for modern computers that features from 1 to 4 actual SID chips
- SLAY Radio - Commodore 64 Remixes
- The High Voltage SID Collection - Commodore 64 music archive
- Game Boy music
External links
- solipsistic NATION No. 8: Chiptunes Podcast. Documentary on chiptunes featuring interviews and music from Role Model (the creator of the Little Sound Disk Jockey program), One, Nullsleep, The Mikro Orchestra Project, Goto80 and 8 Bit Weapon.
- BlipFestival.org
- Charco Cardboard Robot : 8-Bit Internet Radio - Charco Cardboard Robot Chiptune broadcasts.
- 8-Bit Collective - Collection of 8-Bit/Chiptune Tracks and Artists
- 8bitpeoples - netlabel for chiptune music (creative commons licence)
- Gainlad - Commodore 64, Chiptune and Game Boy Music Tracks and Artists
- Pixelh8 - Pixelh8 biography, discography, software and blog.
- Nolife-Radio : A webradio broadcasting a fine selection of video games soundtracks from the early days till now
- Atari ST SNDH YM2149 Archive : Atari ST, chiptune archive for game and demo-scene music.
- 8bitfm.com : 8-Bit FM - Chiptune radio station streaming online 24/7
- Game Boy Australia : Popular blog about the Australian chiptune scene.
- Chipamp : Chipamp - Winamp Chiptune Plugin bundle
- Audio Overload : Audio Overload - Free Chiptunes player for Mac, Linux, Windows
- Woolyss Chiptuning : Woolyss Chiptuning - Many resources (VSTi, trackers, webradios, composers)
- ZXTunes: World's largest ZX Spectrum music collection. YM2149/AY-3-8910 chiptune archive
- Japanese Chiptune
- KeygenJukebox - Keygen Music Directly to Your Web Browser Chiptunes from key generators
- 8bit L8bit presented by DJ Juno! Internet radio broadcast starting every Saturday night at 12AM CST. Requests can be made at 4chan's /b/ board.
References
- ^ Album on NES Cartridge, Synth on GameBoy , Create Digital Music Published July 4, 2007.
- ^ Pixelh8 Music Tech Pro Performer Brings Live Performance to Game Boy , Create Digital Music. Published March 24, 2008.
Further reading
- chiptunes documentation project - chiptune documentation and history
- Vorc.org - daily news about chipmusic and old videogame music.
- / ChiptuneSynthesis zenpho.co.uk - modern and historical chiptune synthesis techniques
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