A chiptune, or chip music, is music written in sound formats where all the sounds are synthesized in real time 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.
Tracker chiptunes
Commodore Amiga (1985), with its sample-based sound synthesis, distanced the concept of microcomputer music away from plain chip-synthesized sounds. Amiga tracker music software, beginning from Karsten Obarski's Ultimate Soundtracker (1987), inspired great numbers of computer enthusiasts to create computer music. As an offshoot of the burgeoning tracker music culture, a type of tracker music reminiscent of Commodore 64 SID music was born. This type of music came to be called "chiptunes" or "chip music".
Earliest examples of tracker chiptunes date back to 1989–1990 and are attributed to the demoscene musicians 4-Mat, Baroque, Turtle and Duz. Tracker chiptunes are based on very short looped waveforms which are modulated by tracker effects such as arpeggio, vibrato and portamento. The small amount of sample data made tracker chiptunes far more space-efficient than most other types of tracker music, which made them appealing to size-limited demoscene demos and crack intros. Tracker chiptunes have also been commonly used in other warez scene executables such as keygens.
Nowadays, the term "chiptune" is also used to cover chip music using actual chip-based synthesis, but some sources, such as the Amiga Music Preservation project, still define a chiptune specifically as a small tracker module
Chiptune - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOlzqsbJ0bg]YouTube - Zabutom & Dubmood - You can do it but, but not like we do it[/ame] [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=regyYBQAs74]YouTube - Dubmood - Kenny The Toffelskater[/ame]
One very popular chiptune artist is Dubmood,
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.
Tracker chiptunes
Commodore Amiga (1985), with its sample-based sound synthesis, distanced the concept of microcomputer music away from plain chip-synthesized sounds. Amiga tracker music software, beginning from Karsten Obarski's Ultimate Soundtracker (1987), inspired great numbers of computer enthusiasts to create computer music. As an offshoot of the burgeoning tracker music culture, a type of tracker music reminiscent of Commodore 64 SID music was born. This type of music came to be called "chiptunes" or "chip music".
Earliest examples of tracker chiptunes date back to 1989–1990 and are attributed to the demoscene musicians 4-Mat, Baroque, Turtle and Duz. Tracker chiptunes are based on very short looped waveforms which are modulated by tracker effects such as arpeggio, vibrato and portamento. The small amount of sample data made tracker chiptunes far more space-efficient than most other types of tracker music, which made them appealing to size-limited demoscene demos and crack intros. Tracker chiptunes have also been commonly used in other warez scene executables such as keygens.
Nowadays, the term "chiptune" is also used to cover chip music using actual chip-based synthesis, but some sources, such as the Amiga Music Preservation project, still define a chiptune specifically as a small tracker module
Chiptune - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOlzqsbJ0bg]YouTube - Zabutom & Dubmood - You can do it but, but not like we do it[/ame] [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=regyYBQAs74]YouTube - Dubmood - Kenny The Toffelskater[/ame]
One very popular chiptune artist is Dubmood,
- the chance you've heard one of his songs in a keygen is huge.
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