Unlike most genres of music, chiptune arose out of necessity.
Early video games needed music.
Technology wasn’t quite at the stage it is today, so the only music available were a few square waves and distorted samples.
But how did this restriction of technology turn into the massive genre that spans the world over today? Let’s ask some questions…
What’s it all about?
When did it start?
How did it start to get popular?
Why is Chiptune so fantastically timeless?
Where can I get it?
When video games programmers in the 80s and 90s realised their consoles needed sound, they had to create audio chips to make the synthesised blips and bloops to accompany the action. However, since audio was (and still is) generally the last thing on a games developer’s mind, the chips were not very powerful – hence the aforementioned blips and bloops.
So the composers that got roped in to program the music were presented with a challenge – let’s take the game boy for instance: 2 square wave channels, 1 customizable wavetable channel and 1 white noise channel doesn’t exactly add up to lush, epic soundscapes. So the audio programmers had to compromise…
Notice how the drums are all different length pieces of white noise? The bass will have been one channel and the two leads (they are an octave apart most of the time) will be another – notice how each time they are played it is in quick succession? This emulates chords without having to use an extra channel! Sneaky.
If you were wondering, the sample channel will have probably made the sound effects.
This is where the point of authentic chiptune was born – being creative within a restricted environment.
Technically, (you know something geeky is coming up after you read that word) chiptune started in the 1970s, with arcade machines such as Pac Man offering the immense capabilities of one channel of synthesized sound. Monophonic chiptune was born!
More conventional chiptune took place later in the mid 80s, with the birth of the NES – Nintendo Entertainment System. There were other consoles before this, but Nintendo, as they have continued to do, managed to appeal to the masses and release a console that really made a name for itself.
From the mid 80s to early 90s a whole host of future legends in the video game music world were born – Koji Kondo of Mario and Zelda fame, Nobuo Uematsu of Final Fantasy… the list goes on.
However, chiptune began to die out as the 90s rolled on and better technologies allowed video games music to progress. It wouldn’t resurface until later…
The mid 2000s gave rise to a new wave of interest in chiptune. Artists creating music on old hardware, sometimes modified or emulated, began popping up all over the Internet, most notably on myspace.
This new wave of chiptune culminated when artists achieved mainstream notice, such as Pixelh8 achieved a great deal of exposure by opening for Imogen Heap on her 2006 UK tour and Unicorn Kid (Who actually supported my band at our Edinburgh show on tour last year – nice guy!) getting appearances on BBC Radio 1 and XfM.
Artwork for Chiptune Artist "Reteris" by Emmie of Graphicsgirl.co.uk
However, it’s still a relatively underground genre, with a small but hardcore group of followers dedicated to preserving the style.
Why is Chiptune so fantastically timeless?
It’s a combination of things – the blippy synths lend themselves to happy music, so the genre is intrinsically uplifting, separating it from other more intense electronic music styles and giving it an audience who enjoy the grin-inducing square waves.
Another reason is the retro aspect – the synths bring back memories of older, simpler times for people who grew up playing the games that used the synths and so combining that with newer genres (common genres used in modern chiptune are gabber, dance, happy hardcore, emo (Sometimes known as “Emotronic”) and occasionally hip hop (with the adorable sub genre name “Chip Hop” – aww!)) allows new interests to be combined with old ones!
Finally there’s the element of challenge – writing interesting music with only 4 channels of music is a skill reserved for only the elite chiptune composers. While not all modern chiptune artists restrict themselves, a considerable amount use old school hardware, such as LSDJ (Little Sound DJ) and “Music Tech” for the Game Boy (incidentally programmed by the aforementioned artist Pixelh8) for live performances.
Chiptune has another wonderful thing about its community of underground followers – the amount of free music. Most chiptune artists give their music away for free, so you just have to go to their websites or myspaces and download them, or head over to web repositories such as 8bitcollective, a massive community for chiptune artists to share music.
Some artist I’d recommend are:
Henry Homesweet
Painfully happy music coupled with gorgeous trance – Win. Another one is Unicorn Kid:
Gorgeous. Look out for my upcoming “Top 20 chiptune artists” blog for more recommendations for awesome chiptune!
Anything important and influential to Chiptune I missed out? Know of any good Chiptune artists? Share it in a comment below!
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Wow! That is stunning. Appreciate all the history with the genre great work man
Awesome, enjoyed reading it all. Great stuff Dave!
[...] 5th, 2009 by Dave If you’ve been producing or listening to Chiptune music and want to know where to promote it or find more new tunes, look no further. A community of [...]
Been in love with it ever since i heard it 2 years ago
Hopefully we’ll hear from Sabrepulse in that top 20 (Y)