Hi, I would like to create my own chip music but I have no idea how to do it. Can someone tell me how to get started, what device i will need and so on? Thanks! feat

I have no idea what "chip music" actualy is?

It''s a particularly annoying tracking style.

Get modplug tracker; www.modplug.com

What it is: Go to http://www.chiptune.com/ for a lot of chip tunes.

Chip music, in its best roots, was music that was played by a chip, with the frequency and duration programmed into the computer.
For instance, the NES had something like two two square wave, one triangle wave and one sine wave generating chip, and a noise chip(could have that ass backwards, but the idea is correct) and all the music from your nintendo games was created by simply manipulating those waveforms in their simplest form.

Chip music is used almost exclusively in the 64k demo scene, and is easily accomplished with a tracker, wherein each sample in your song is exactly one cycle long, a single sine curve, etc, and you use those as the instruments in your piece.

Some people can accomplish amazing stuff using the bultin in tracker effects and some creative composition, but yes, if you don''t like your music to sound computer-y, you''ll consider it an assault on your ears.

Ah ok, I know what that is, I''ve just never heard the term "chip music" before.

Some simple methods:

A whole lot of mods have some basic square, triangle, sine, etc waves as samples. That would work well. Just grab ModPlug Tracker.

Use the synth in Reason. Someone''s once done an entire song using only one synth unit. It''s got drums, bass, melody - everything! bloody awesome.

I just threw together a really simple chip tune in ModPlug.

ybChipDemo.it

Download and see how it's done in modplug.

Have fun!



[edited by - yjbrown on February 17, 2004 11:20:17 AM]

LOL! fantasticly whimsical.

One suggestion is that it needs better mixing - the high pitched thing is quite loud and irritating (althought that might work better on a gameboy speaker )

The high pitched thing is the CRUX of chip tunes, this is how they were done on C64 - an arpeggiated chord as it only used 1 channel.

quote: but yes, if you don't like your music to sound computer-y, you'll consider it an assault on your ears.

And yes, I do a lot of Gameboy Advance stuff which is probably why it sounds GBAish

ybchpchp.s3m something I did quite some time ago, it's a 4 channel chip.


[edited by - yjbrown on February 21, 2004 12:29:48 AM]

krikkit, actually 64ks generally use software synths nowadays to generate all sorts of samples. 64k tunes don''t really sound like chip tunes anymore. Even 4k intros are doing amazing things with music! They often will use MIDI though as 4k is a bit much to squeeze in a mod player, synth, and a decent intro :-)

Check out:
http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=7135
and
http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=10545

for some absolutely amazing 64k intros!

btw hey Yannis! It still says you''re from the U.K. :-)

sam