Historical Overview

    Musical/Cultural Analysis

    Historical Overview

    Musical/Cultural Analysis

 

Chiptunes

Everybody is familiar with the blips and bloops of Pac-Man and Super Mario Brothers, but how many people actually put that music on their stereo or in their car. Surprisingly it is quite a few, the number of video game music websites, remixes and cover bands is growing exponentially and in amongst all this is a culture and scene that is beginning to make waves in the musical world. Chiptunes, which in this paper is defined as any original music that is either created with or trying to emulate the sound of retro sound chips. The reason that original music is specified is because the remix and cover band scene is quite different, whilst not completely separate, from the original music scene. This definition is far from its pure form, as stated on VORC (n.d.) “the term… [lost]… some of its traditional purity and started to mean something like anything bleepy…[and that]..music using just phrase-sampled chip loops or music partially featuring chip tones are not considered as Chiptunes or chip music” (para.6). This purity and authenticity debate happens within every musical genre, however this paper is interested in just the music and culture that was born from the original Chiptunes, which includes songs that emulate the original sounds using samples and modern software.

    The Amiga, Atari and Commodore 64 were some of the first commercially available computer systems. These machines had sound chips that began to be used as sound effects, and as technology advanced 8-bit audio with 4 mono-channels became possible and this meant music could be made (Barton, 2003).  It is these early computers along with the first generation Nintendo consoles that form the basis of the Chiptune sound and because of this it is often referred to as 8-bit music and many artists use the term 8-bit within their name. This 8-bit technology came about in the late 1970’s and remained dominant until the introduction of 16 bit machines (McDonald, n.d). During that period in Europe and eventually most of the northern hemisphere a culture emerged known as the ‘demo’ or ‘mod’ scene. This was a group of teenage programmers who ‘cracked’ Amiga and Atari games and programmed their own intro on the front. This initially was just some graphics trickery, but soon music programs such as SidMon and Ultimate Soundtracker were released for the general public (VORC, n.d). The music editors created for these systems are known as ‘Trackers’, which in most cases have a timeline which scrolls vertically in which notes and instruments can be inserted. Trackers output very small files that can then be used in programming, or today for Internet sharing many plug-ins have been created to allow people to listen to ‘tracker’ files on modern PC’s. This built up a community parallel to the mod scene which focussed primarily on music, this culture was all about pushing the boundaries of the technology and getting as much as possible out of single sound chips (Lysloff, 2004). This is believed to be the birth of Chiptunes, however at some point it became quite separate from the demo and tracker scene, possibly in 1999 with the release of chiptunes.com, because in 2000 the Chiptune scene began being influenced by people other than programmers. Some of these new Chiptune’s were created by 8-bit Construction Set, made entirely from Atari and Commodore 64s and released on vinyl with recorded binary data that could be dubbed onto cassette for use with the Atari or Commodore (Flat Four Radio, ep.2, 2005). This record had outside impact on the musical world, with artists such as Mixmaster Mike and Mathew Herbert praising it (Beige Records, n.d).

This culture expanded beyond owners of old computers and people using trackers on modern computers when an artist who goes by the name of Rolemodel released Little Sound DJ, a software cartridge for the original Gameboy that allowed tracking on a hand held console (McClaren, 2003). The resulting Gameboy music scene is probably one of the biggest within the Chiptune culture. Nanoloop was released soon after by Oliver Wittchow, this is another piece of software that allows music to be made on the Gameboy (Nanoloop, n.d). Gameboy music has been noticed by the infamous ex-sex pistols manager Malcolm McClaren (2003), who said, “It's the Nintendo generation sampling its youth. The essence of chip music is in reverse engineering an electronic interface - whether it's a Game Boy or a computer's sound chip - and subverting its original design.”(para.2.3). Gameboy music has had a brush with fame with Beck’s “Gameboy Variations” EP released exclusively online in 2005 on Interscope, (Apple, 2006). The sound chip in the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), called the 2A03 has been emulated in many ‘trackers’ such as the popular Famitracker, these programs output NSF, Nintendo sound format, files which have very small file size which can either be uploaded onto NES cartridges or shared on various online communities such as 2A03.org (Allen, Ep.11, 2006). The NES has had even more of a musical revival when recently MIDI-NES was released by Wayfar. MIDI-NES is a cartridge that allows MIDI input into a NES console for control of the internal sound chip (Wayfar, n.d). Enthusiasts, hackers, students and hobbyists, not official designers are constantly creating new technology for use in conjunction with old hardware. This retrospective design or ‘reverse engineering’ is at the heart of Chiptune music.

It is clear to see how this musical genre is solely influenced by and dependent on certain technologies and their misuse. Be it from the early ‘demo’ scene trackers, to people using Gameboy’s with a music cartridge they bought off the ‘net’, all Chiptunes come back to the sounds created by small chips within early computers and consoles.

 

Musical/Cultural Analysis

Chiptunes culture as with its music is very much about the retrospective, as well as computer games. The distinctive sound of early computers is due to the lack of processing power, modern computers can emulate real sound by sampling it in thousands of separate parts, early computers only had to synthesise sounds from scratch. Because these computers operate in binary, ‘on’ and ‘off’ (1 and 0), the easiest thing to synthesise therefore is a square wave which is just an ‘on’ followed by ‘off’. The most common combination is 4 or 5 monophonic channels that consist of various combinations of square wave, triangle wave, noise and a sample channel (Allen, ep.3, 2006). These are more often than not arranged in classic rock band format, squares are melody, triangle is bass and noise is drums. The sample channel can be used for various things such as speech emulation or actual drum samples. Various filters can be applied to vary these waveforms such as vibrato, which gets the ‘classic’ electronic phone sound or pitch bends and slides.

Creating drums from the noise channel is one of the most distinctive features of Chiptunes, as Paul Davis, from 8-bit construction set puts it “it just has a totally crap crunchy sound” (Flat Four Radio ep.2, 2005). The noise is controlled via pitch and envelopes, a low pitched blast of noise with fast attack and release makes a good kick, a very high blast of noise with the same envelope makes a good hi hat and a midrange noise with medium release makes a snare.

As previously mentioned the sound is what defines Chiptunes so all the other musical considerations change from artist to artist. There are a large number of artists that are inspired by other musical styles and incorporate that into the Chiptune sound, for example NESmetal makes metal songs using Nintendo sounds and Japan’s YMCK incorporate 50’s style jazz within Chiptunes (Wikipedia, 2006a). Some key musical features that are present within the majority of Chiptunes are defined by the technology. Because of the lack of channels chords above 3 notes were impossible, this means more often than not long bass notes with a melody channel playing fast arpeggios provides the harmonic progression. Fast-synchronised passages are also common; this may be borrowed from video game compositions as many game composers often “went out of their way to compose complex rapid sequences of notes” (Wikipedia, para.2.3, 2006b). Obviously with all these limitations all that is left is the melody, and on almost all forums the melody is discussed as the most important aspect of a good Chiptune (Jakobsson, 2005). So musically Chiptunes always use similar sounds and the technology dictates some stylistic features, what changes from song to song are most notably its outside genre influences and its melody.

The subculture that exists around Chiptunes is also a product of the technology. Almost all people within the Chiptune subculture have a keen interest in video games and geek culture. This extends to things such as many Chiptune artists use the gamer language ‘leet’ to name tracks, for example ‘w34k & sm411’ translates as ‘weak and small’ (Burke, 2005). Retro video game imagery surrounds the culture, often with particular reference to Nintendo, for example Nullsleep, a Gameboy artist, performs wearing a shirt that say’s “Classically Trained” around an image of a NES (8bit Masters NY, 2005). The counter cultural element of the Chiptune community is emphasised by Malcolm McClaren (2003), for example,                    

 

Chip musicians plunder corporate technology and find unlikely uses for it. They make old sounds new again - without frills, a recording studio, or a major record label. It would be facile to describe the result as amateurish; it's underproduced because it feels better that way. The nature of the sound, and the equipment used to create it, is cheap. This is not music as a commodity but music as an idea (para.2.3).

 

The anti-corporate nature of the culture is basically unspoken, but quite clear.  The majority of Chiptunes are available on the Internet for free download. The website VORC collates a lot of these free downloads from various database sites like 8bitcollective.com and puts them into a Podcast. (VORC, n.d). 8bitcollective allows anybody to upload songs, videos or images in Chiptune style and stores them in a database where they can be commented on and rated. Within the Chip community people are very keen to hear what other people are doing and constantly share techniques and song files. One of the largest Chiptune net label’s ‘8bit Peoples’ places most of its releases online under a creative commons licence (8bitpeoples, n.d).  These are all examples of how the Chip community avoids the mainstream music industry, whilst still not pointing the finger and stating their dislike of the mainstream. This is the main element of counter culture present that seems to encapsulate the entire scene.

    McClaren (2003) also likes to emphasise the scene’s dislike for Hi-Fi music, quoting an example of a Gameboy musician wearing a t-shirt that says “F*&K ProTools” (para.1.4). This however may be an element of the counter culture that McClaren is over emphasising, as VORC (n.d) says about McClaren “ casual people focus on just punky gadget aspect of Chiptunes, not musical appeal” (para.4). Most Chip musicians are more interested in the music than promoting a cause or message; interestingly a majority of the musicians also listen to and are involved with either experimental art music or intelligent dance music. So I believe the interest is not so much the punk nature of using cheap gear but the skill of using limited resources to create good music.

    Chiptune culture in general is far more diverse and complex than the simplicity of the sound chips that inspire it. The music is restricted by the technology, however these limitations are pushed to their extremes in the name of creativity. The culture is very friendly and community based, with ideals opposing the mainstream corporate world, without being ‘preachy’. The use of limited technology is more about creating good melodic music than attacking the world of over produced pop. Overall the music and culture stay true to the ideals of early video games, having fun.