Chip tunes!!!
Posted on June 7, 2011 by Jingles | No Comments
Continuing the Nerdy music tip from the other day I thought I’d take a look at chip music aka chip tunes.
Chip music refers to music made with sound chips of old computers and video consoles, emulation is also used to produce chip music.
In the 1980s PCs became more affordable and popular, but as hardware and software became better and cheaper users abandoned old hardware and software for newer generations.
Despite this there is a small group of artists that still use old software and hardware to write music. Hardware from the 80s through to the 90s is typically used. Commodore 64, Nintendo Game Boy and Nintendo Entertainment System were at the forefront of consumer tech, they also marked an important milestone in the development of computing and audio production because they used dedicated hardware sub-systems (or sound chips) to create sound.
Wikipedia has a decent article about chiptunes. The ABCs Good Game show also did a short piece on chip tunes and interviewed some Australian chip tune artists.
Chipmusic.org is a forum for the chip tune community, but if it’s chip tunes that you are looking for then hit up 8bitpeoples for a bunch of mostly free and downlodable chip tunes.
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I'm Jingles, I'm like the Keith Miller of geeks, i.e. an all rounder, I'm a web scientist, an A+ certified (it means I'm not a “noob”) computer technician, and this is my blog. I'm your curator of all things awesome, cool and geeky on and off the net. More...
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