Boing Boing » chiptunes

8-bit Radiohead

Rob Beschizza — Tue, 22 May 2012 15:34:06 +0000

Quinton Sung created full-album chiptune covers of Radiohead's OK Computer and Kid A. [via Pitchfork, Killscreen, Waxy]

The End of Chiptune History

Rob Beschizza — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 15:32:10 +0000

Thomas Gilmore offers a brief history of chipmusic, whose practitioners "make complex music in a minimal way."

The more popular tools of the chipmusic (or chiptune, or 8bit) trade were made from the early '80s to the early '90s, when the most efficient way to add sound to a video game or computing experience was with a sound chip. These sound chips are limited, there are no two ways about that. Usually they're restricted to a small number of voices (sounds that can be played at once) and the palette of sounds themselves are set to a handful of presets that the chip is capable of creating. As a result of these limitations, the sounds created by these electronic devices are unmistakably distinctive.

What I love about it is the reminder that it isn't a new thing: music was always written for these devices, and many of them came with consumer-friendly composition software from the outset.

One thing about this history that's not quite right—and many of us in geeky indiedom make the same mistake—is in believing that this stuff is only just "starting to change what is happening on the surface of popular music."

On the contrary, this stuff has been mainstream for a good decade now, and the interesting thing is that all these pixels and bleeps are not just another passing fad. The undercurrents of dependence between nostalgia, avant-garde and mainstream culture obscure the way they've become weirdly, persistently invisible to one another. Derrida probably coined a word for this sort of thing 30 years ago, but I can't hear you looking it up because I'm listening to pseudo-orchestral dance arrangements of classic arcade chiptunes.

Why fair use doesn't work unless you've got a huge war-chest for paying lawyers

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 01:27:57 +0000

Last year, Waxy released Kind of Bloop, a chiptunes tribute to Miles Davis's Kind of Blue. He meticulously cleared all the samples on the album, and released it for $5 (backers of his Kickstarter project got it for free -- Waxy is founder of Kickstarter). One thing Waxy didn't clear was the pixellated re-creation of the iconic cover photo he commissioned. He believed and believes that it is fair use -- a transformative use with minimal taking that doesn't harm the market for the original, produced to comment on the original. Jay Maisel, the photographer who shot the original, disagreed, and sued Waxy for $150,000 per download, plus $25,000. Waxy ended up settling for $32,500, even though he believes he's in the right -- he couldn't afford to defend himself in court. He's written an excellent post on copyright, fair use, and the way that the system fails to protect the people who are supposed to get an exception to copyright:

In practice, none of this matters. If you're borrowing inspiration from any copyrighted material, even if it seems clear to you that your use is transformational, you're in danger. If your use is commercial and/or potentially objectionable, seek permission (though there's no guarantee it'll be granted) or be prepared to defend yourself in court.
Anyone can file a lawsuit and the costs of defending yourself against a claim are high, regardless of how strong your case is. Combined with vague standards, the result is a chilling effect for every independent artist hoping to build upon or reference copyrighted works.
It breaks my heart that a project I did for fun, on the side, and out of pure love and dedication to the source material ended up costing me so much -- emotionally and financially. For me, the chilling effect is palpably real. I've felt irrationally skittish about publishing almost anything since this happened. But the right to discuss the case publicly was one concession I demanded, and I felt obligated to use it. I wish more people did the same -- maybe we wouldn't all feel so alone.

Kind of Screwed

8-bit guerrilla

Rob Beschizza — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 00:52:16 +0000

8-bit guerrilla is a new chiptune and bitpop database.

Retrocovers

Rob Beschizza — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 23:14:58 +0000

Via Submitterator, pasq242 points to Retrocovered, Brendan Becker's chiptuney NES cover album of classic songs by The Cars, Men Without Hats, U2 and others. Download.

Games Inspired By Music: A game development competition with Safari Books Online

Rob Beschizza — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 01:10:56 +0000

We love chiptunes, the quirky celebration of 8-bit-style music that's become a a vibrant genre of its own with a thriving scene supporting it. The compositions evoke a time when electronic musicians had to make the most of the limited resources offered by primitive computing technology. Keeping that fire alive, the latest compositions are like the soundtracks to vintage videogames that never existed.

As teased last week, we're joining with Safari Books Online, the massive online library of technical know-how, to honor the mighty chip in the form of a Game Dev Challenge. Your task is to make real the imaginary games embodied by chiptunes. For inspiration or technical insight, Safari Books Online is offering Boing Boing readers 30 days free access to five videogame-related books from the library.

The game can be in the format and language of your choice, but we'll be particularly impressed by those whose style and economy matches the music. Compatibility with mobile browsers is a big plus, too! Flash, javascript/HTML5, Silverlight and Java will allow us to embed your game in our site, but native iPhone and Android apps are good options as well.

Of course, if you love Python or Unity or Locomotive BASIC, don't let us stop you.

You have until July 5 to complete your game. If that feels like a tight deadline, remember that games don't have to be epics. A perfectly-formed 5-minute vignette is better than a poor RPG.

To submit your entry, email it to us or host it somewhere and email the URL. You're welcome to post links to works in progress or completed games in the comments, too!

We'll select the finalists and showcase them here on Boing Boing starting July 8. Then we'll hold a public vote and announce the winners on July 15 16. Prizes? Of course there are prizes.

The grand prize is a year of access to Safari Books Online, a $515 value. Safari Books Online provides searchable, on-demand access to more than 10,000 technology, digital media and business books, videos and pre-published manuscripts from more than 40 publishers.

The winner will also receive a treasure chest of goodies from our pals at Gama-Go, ranging from a limited-edition art print to a Gama-Goon statue to a set of handy Sing-A-Long Tongs!

Two runners up will score three month subscriptions to Safari Books Online, valued at $128 each, and a fun pack of Gama-Go goods like a Yeti Qee Keychain, Pocket Journal, Hip-Hopsicles, or the Gama-Go art book. Additional feats of 8-Bit excellence may be rewarded with other Gama-Go bits or items retrieved in Rob's gadget dozen.

Read the full rules for the fine print, including such notices that your submission should be appropriate for gamers of all ages. Only one entry per person is eligible for a prize. Prize winners must live in the U.S. and be at least 18 years old. (Sorry about that!) You keep the copyright in your entry but allow us to use it.

Here are a few parallel universes to pull ideas from:

Tettix

Tettix, AKA Judson Cowan, lives in Atlanta and is responsible for energetic compositions such as Earth's Assault on the Central AI. If a tune ever came up and demanded a game to go with it, it's that one! He recommends tracks from his free-to-download albums Technology Crisis, Technology Crisis II, and T.K.O.E.P.

Listen: Earth's Assault on the Enemy AI

Listen: Flying Butt Pliers

Disasterpeace

If you haven't heard Neutralite, a free-to-download introduction to Disasterpeace's music, download it right now. The 'narrative of a young hero chosen by elders of Neutral Town to protect their village from the unfolding conflict between the Plaid and Argyle nations,' it serves as proof positive that music alone can conjure complete, if pixelated, fantasy worlds. Atebite and the Warring Nations is your next step.

Adds Disasterpeace, AKA Rich Vreeland: I have whole albums that are basically non-existent game worlds, so it shouldn't be too hard!" Follow him on twitter. Other projects he's worked on include Rescue: The Beagles and A Kind of Bloop.

He suggests Violet Violet Garden, Gray Daycare Riot and Funky Fruitstand as good tracks to check out -- all come with the Neutralite album. For inspiration, don't miss Samuel Lopez's video to its title track, embedded above!

Listen: Gobber Grove (A collaboration with Spamtron - link)

Listen: Gray Daycare Riot

Garry Lee

As Sycamore Drive, scotsman Garry Lee posts compositions to 8bit Collective, a popular online haunt for chiptune composers. He offers Starlight for platformers and Happiness in Winter for RPGs!

Listen: Starlight

Listen: Happiness In Winter

Prizmatic Spray

Prizmatic Spray works for game audio design company Audio Aggregate and has just released a chiptune album called Sky Burial. He suggests Ingest the Geode and Nocturnazoide as tracks that could inspire games.

Listen: Ingest the Geode

Listen: Nocturnazoid

4mat

If you'll permit yourself a heavy nod to modern dance sounds mixed into your chip, you won't go wrong with 4mat's blend of Konami-style shoot-em-up melodies and 21st-century breakbeats.

Listen: Breathe

Listen: Black Lipstick

Decktonic

Decktonic, AKA Christian Montoya, makes electronic, dance and chip. His 'weapon of choice' is the Korg DS10, a Nintendo DS cart that emulates a classic analog synth. Sky World and Square Signals are great chip.

Listen: Square Signals

Daniel Merrill

Merrill's been composing rock, electronic, and orchestral music for a few years, but spent the last few months on "a chiptune kick," creating a three-track album named "Caverns of Gossimar." It's inspired by the heroic themes, battles, and dungeons of the Legend of Zelda and other RPGs -- but you're free to use your imagination.

Listen: Medley

Beta to the Max

Robert Allaire, a composer who recently graduated from CalArts with an MFA in music composition, says he mostly works on indie film and art music. But his true love is 'chiptune dance,' which features in a music-based iPhone game he developed last year.

Last year I teamed up with a classmate and friend, Steve Rusch, to form a chiptune duo that we lovingly call Beta to the Max. One thing we do differently than many other chiptune artists is use modern dance sounds and try to adhere to strict production values. That puts us more in the camp of artists like 4mat and Trash80. We make heavy use of a beautiful, modded NES with Wayfar's MidiNES for our sound. We're based in Los Angeles, and recently released an EP called UPC_EP (so named because I couldn't figure out where to put the bar code on the CD, and so made it the prominent feature on the cover).

Allaire recomments FTW, Intergalactic Elevator and Dial 3 to prospective game developers. Beta To The Max's music is released with a creative commons license. Here's Dial 3, inspired by Philip K. Dick's mood-dialing machine, which blends traditional chip with housey beats.

Listen: Dial 3

Golab

Golab is the solo effort of Joel roberts, co-founder of Ohio New-Wave outfit Stylex. Beach-boys style harmonies, vintage synths, Casio keyboards and acoustic instruments make for "songs as unique and catchy as they are haunting." There is a Myspace page where you can hear more.

He suggests one of these three Gameboy-made tracks fom his 2006 record, "Simply Banquet."

Listen: Showgirls

Listen: Fright Night

Listen: Thought Crimes

Any questions?

Q: Can I base my game on a different chiptune?

A: Yes! If the chiptune is not already explicitly licensed to allow appropriate re-use, you must secure the written permission of the composer if you wish to embed it in your game.

Q: I'm a chiptune composer, can I put my tune into the pool?

A: Yes! Email it in. Don't forget to tell us a little about yourself and how you went about composing the tune.

Q; I want to participate, but I can't program!

A: Take advantage of the free 30 days of access to these books from Safari Books Online. Check out Game Maker, Adventure Game Studio and Ambrosine's list of authoring software for non-programmers.

Update: Missing your comment? We forked a new thread for discussion of the comment rules and might have moved it there.

With chiptunes, silicon rocks

Rob Beschizza — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 19:01:00 +0000

Jeffrey Lim's Impulse Tracker, a freeware DOS app popular among chiptune makers in the late 1990s.
Photo: Dave "SMOKEHARD" Mattt

Sine waves, square waves, sawtooth and triangle; white noise for a drumkit, and a cathode ray tube for a stage. Being geeky, I was into computer-generated music as a youngster, long before I caught up with pop music. In an age before cheap internet access, however, there weren't many folks to share it with. So it's with not a little jealously to see today's chiptune scene, fed as much by fresh, unhinged creativity as the nostalgia it often evokes in listeners. One epicenter of all this is 8-Bit Collective, where dozens of new tracks are uploaded daily, sourced from an army of thousands of registered users. Founded by Jose Torres and George Michael Brower, it describes itself as the first file-sharing community dedicated to chiptunes. "Pure malleability," Brower said, describing the essential qualities of computer-generated music. "I'm put off by anyone who refers to chiptune as a 'genre' because of the diversity you'll find under that umbrella."Though far from the first such site on the web, 8-bit Collective acts like a wiki or repository: anyone can add a new song, and the editorial filtering comes from the comments added by listeners. The vast size of its community--nearly 19,000 registered users--and archive ensures both a constant stream of quality tracks, fertile discussion and an inexhaustible backlist for newcomers to enjoy. Computer-generated music emerged in the 1950s, heralded by what the BBC describes as 'a truncated version of In The Mood.' The success of synthesizers in popular music notwithstanding, an early heyday for music synthesized in real time came in the 1980s, as the soundtrack to a generation of electronic games. Though held back by technology, competition for the pocket money of millions of kids forced developers to make the most of limited resources. "I grew up with a strong love for gaming," said Atlanta musician Judson Cowan, in a 2007 Destructoid interview which neatly describes how old video games inspire new music. Cowan, who releases his albums free-of-charge as Tettix, describes how a childhood affinity became a calling. "I love the musicality of game soundtracks. I love the unabashed hook usage and the freedom that working with such primitive sounds gives to the compositions. When you're not so concerned with creating synths that sound good, with avoiding making things cheesy, it really opens up your options a lot musically." Classics from gaming history are now performed by orchestras to large audiences. But it's also true that those who loved chips sounds have freed the style from its gaming roots: "It's more about the instrumentation," composer Matthew Applegate told interviewer Richard Haugh last year. Brower likes melody, but notes that the collective is home to a lot of music that completely ignores conventions familiar to gamers: "I think chip music can be a really "pure" way to communicate your ideas as a composer. That said, there's a lot of really percussive, atonal chip music. I think that's sort of a testament how colorful the scene is. I think a lot of chip musicians may be too self-conscious to admit it, but the nostalgia factor doesn't hurt either. I'm just really disappointed when people can't see through the novelty of the medium and appreciate some of the incredible songwriting that goes on in the name of chip music." Where to get started, if your own exposure comes from mainstream pop music's mining of the sound, or an occasional video interview? Wade in with Music Radar's splendid glossary of chiptune tech and lore, published just a few days ago. The first entry introduces the AY-3-8910 chip, a classic found in the Amstrad CPC and other popular machines of the 1980s. Chip Flip also has a nice timeline of electronic music, beginning in 1951. Recent chiptune projects include A Kind of Bloop, a cover album of Miles Davis' Kind of Blue. By taking the sound of chip music to a Jazz standard, the artists highlight chip music's expressive power: it can embody even the warmest classics, far from the crashing melodies found in games and Blipfest alike. Project organizer Andy Baio introduced the project thus: "I've always wondered what chiptune jazz covers would sound like. What would the jazz masters sound like on a Nintendo Entertainment System? Coltrane on a C-64? Mingus on Amiga? I've researched the topic quite a bit, and was only able to find four jazz covers ever released." The project reached its funding goal within hours of its announcement, and the resulting album is just $5: download it here. Another new project, however, lives firmly in the retro 1980s zone: 8 Bit Weapon's Tron Tribute takes Wendy Carlos' 1982 analog score and renders it as pure chip music, only to mash it up with a chaotic modern sensibility. Last week, chip artist The Disco King remixed Kansas' '76 prog rock classic Carry On Wayward Son. How well did he distill a track "strewn with complex guitar work and rhythmic changes" into pure melody and white noise? Judge for yourself: hear the result at Music Radar. If you like the sound of all this, 8-Bit Collective's relentless deluge of music beckons. Other interesting sites include 8-bit peoples, the Mod Archive and Chipmusic.org. Game nostaliga-centered sites include Amiga Music Preservation and The High Coltage SID Collection. Kohina offers streaming internet radio feeds. Want to try your hand? Hardcore composers craft new sounds with the old hardware. Others use specialist equipment like the SidStation, which uses the same audio chip found in the Commodore 64. A more approachable method is to buy software that emulates classic machinery, letting you attend the old school with modern apps such as Garageband, Logic Studio and MU.LAB. On the iPad and iPhone, bleep!BOX is a fun place to start: the straightforward interface makes composing a cinch even for beginners. And once you're happy with your first attempt, critique is only an upload away. "I'm honored to have had a hand in the creation of a platform that's given so many people an outlet to express themselves," Brower said. "And if its done anything to increase awareness of this 'movement,' style of music, whatever you want to call it, then I'm more than happy."