Bits and Pieces: A History of ChiptunesBits and Pieces tells the story of chiptune, a style of lo-fi electronic music that emerged from the first generation of video game consoles and home computers in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Through ingenuity and invention, musicians and programmers developed code that enabled the limited hardware of those early 8-bit machines to perform musical feats that they were never designed to achieve. In time, that combination of hardware and creative code came to define a unique 8-bit sound that imprinted itself on a generation of gamers. For a new generation of musicians, this music has currency through the chipscene, a vibrant musical subculture that repurposes obsolete gaming hardware. It's performative: raw and edgy, loaded with authenticity and driven by a strong DIY ethic. It's more punk than Pac-Man, and yet, it's part of that same story of ingenuity and invention; 8-bit hardware is no longer a retired gaming console, but a quirky and characterful musical instrument. Taking these consoles to the stage, musicians fuse 8-bit sounds with other musical styles - drum'n'bass, jungle, techno and house - to create a unique contemporary sound. Analyzing musical structures and technological methods used with chiptune, Bits and Pieces traces the simple beeps of the earliest arcade games, through the murky shadows of the digital underground, to global festivals and movie soundtracks. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
The Rise of the Machines | 11 |
The Sound of One Bit | 37 |
For the Masses Not the Classes | 69 |
A Shop of Strange and Wonderful Things | 103 |
5 The Ultimate Soundtracker? | 125 |
6 Going Underground | 153 |
A Handheld Revolution | 171 |
9 Fakebit Fans and 8Bit Covers | 223 |
10 Chips with Everything | 247 |
Acknowledgements | 259 |
Notes | 263 |
Glossary | 279 |
285 | |
303 | |
8 Netlabels and RealWorld Festivals | 205 |
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Common terms and phrases
album Altair Amiga analogue arcade arpeggiated artists Atari VCS audio band bass Ben Daglish bytes cartridge channels chip music chip sound chiptune chords classic coin-op Commodore 64 composer console cracktros create creative culture demo demoscene developed early electronic music example FIGURE filter FREQ frequency Galway Game Boy gameplay going graphics guitar hardware home computer idea in-game interface Interview keyboard Kondo lo-fi machine Manic Miner melody memory modulation musicians Nanoloop netlabel Nintendo noise notes º º original output Pac-Man performance pitch platform play player processor pulse punk release Rob Hubbard routine says scene screen sequence SID chip signal song sound chip sound effects soundtrack stuff style Super Mario synth synthesizer Tetris theme thing tone track tracker tune users video game music voice wave waveform YouTube ZX Spectrum