Chiptune

Chiptune or 8-bit music is an electronic music subgenre which utilizes the soundchips of vintage personal computers, video game consoles or arcade machines.

Despite its obvious artificial and »cheap« sound chiptune music requires quite some skills in composition and especially arrangement – due to the limitations of these soundchips of the late 1970s and (early) 1980s. For example, the probably best soundchip of the 8-bit era, the MOS Technology SID (found in Commodore 64 and 128 home computers), only had three voices which could be played at the same time. So instead of chords fast arpeggios are used, and if there should be more than three instruments one has to find gaps in one instrument’s melody for another.

One of the best-known names in the chiptune music genre is German musician and video game music composer Chris Huelsbeck who in 1986 programmed the so- called tracker »Soundmonitor«, a music program which helped to get the most out of the SID chip.

Perhaps the most notable early commercial album consisting entirely of sampled arcade game sounds is 1984’s »Video Game Music« by former Yellow Magic Orchestra member Haruomi Hosono. However, many genres incorporated these sounds during the 1980s and actually they paved the way for the electro music genre. Despite having some influence on the techno music genre, 8-bit music lost popularity during the 1990s until the mid-2000s saw a comeback of it in mainstream popular music.