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I genuinely think the term Chiptune needs to be understood in its original context. Under no circumstance would traditional composers of NES and Genesis video game sound-tracks label their tracks as "chiptunes"- they were not made as stand-alone tracks. The purpose of the term Chiptune is to note a standalone track that has a 8-bit soundchip style; to label music you got off a floppy disk, or hear in a flashy demo. Chiptunes were the type of tracks you would load into a separate music player application, and load some tunes- similar to putting a CD in your CD player. Under this context, Chiptunes are meant to be standalone songs not associated with video game sound-tracks. The more classically trained composers who were hired to do soundtracks just don't have the same attitude to the music as home musicians who use micro computers (ZX Spetrum, BBC Micro, C64, Amiga) to make music from home. While more traditional composers like Koji Kondo used two notes for melody lines to avoid sound effects interrupting the music full stop, and overall had a more composer driven mindset, home musicians usually push the hardware to its maximum, regardless if it was necessary or allowed sound effects to place seamlessly with the music. I would honestly think it's more appropriate to label OST music by which soundchip/console was uses- NES music, SID music, YM2612 music- as the term Chiptune [modern use] doesn't distinguish between FM synthesis, square wave generators, wave tables, or even samples (SNES, Amiga, ect).

OMG you r my hero i really need this

"The term (chiptune) is commonly used to refer to tracker format music using extremely basic and *small samples* that an old computer or console could produce (this is the original meaning of the term), as well as music that combines PSG sounds with modern musical styles." - Wikipedia VGM composers were already making fakebit music in trackers on platforms like Amiga and PC from around 1990 onwards, where they would sample basic soundwaves. Purists are a minority that also have different views amongst themselves, such as sample-based chiptunes not being chiptunes, FM synth not being chiptunes, etc. Some think more modern but authentic tools is cheating. It's all a bit silly really. If it's important to you, just say <platform> chip music if you want to convey that it's made within the platform's limitations, it's easier.

tim follin mentioned

SERIOUSLY UNDERRATED!!!!!!

Nice!

I'd like to purchase this but not subscribe.

I prefer the mathematical definition. Earlier generations of chip tuners had only discovered the beginning of a whole range of possibilities.

gatekeeping basic ass shit from the 90’s everyone knows. 3/4 of the video is info you compiled from shorter videos posted years ago that taught a lot more than your bullshit video. 0/10. No one needs to have their work shit on by a guy who did a lazy take on a topic like this.

Dang, "Dominator" was a super heavy tune. That was some metal stuff back in the 80s!😂

lovely video, information and their explanations felt ChatGPT-ish at points though,

small thing that my producer ear noticed, You pronounced flanging with a hard g in the middle, but it's a soft g, so more like, flanjing.

I dont know what kind of music i make is, i like yo think its some distant offshoot of chiptune, but sometimes the square waves and such are the primary draw. Chiptune is a diverse genre

Sampled music from systems such as the Amiga and SNES are also chiptunes and don't sound like door chimes/Christmas cards unlike early Yamaha psgs. This is a Nintendo NES / Genesis biased perspective.

8:40 CPUs don't create the music. The audio chip could have any number of bits.

I don't really get fakebit, like, it's not like composers for the game boy composed using a game boy anyway. If you have samples of the game boy's sound chip and produce the music following the limitations of a game boy, isn't that realbit? Also, is realbit defined only by the sound chip? There are some people who have converted sound chips into midi intruments (I would like to do that too), but they make music using their fancy midi keyboard and 64 bit or ARM computers. Is that realbit?

😢 instructions per clock?

order played, ultrakill fans rise up!

God bless you

If been waiting for a video like that for ages. It was worth it

I think even using modern hardware unrestrained by limitations you can still create chiptunes in an authentic manner provided you're knowledgable and mindful of the original limitations and are willing to intentionally constrain yourself to them and be mindful to stay within what the original sound chips could theoretically produce. If not, it still could be considered chiptune, but to me although it's valid to say that chiptune truly is subjective I find that creativity thrives and flourishes under strict limitations and constraints, especially those placed upon oneself, which makes "authentic" chiptunes inherently more interesting than ones that break the bounds of what the hardware is capable of. There's nothing wrong with it, it's still music, it's not the end of the world, and in the end the only time that authentic chiptune truly matters is if it's trying to pass off as such. If you're not trying to make a chiptune song that follows any strict constraints or limitations, then there's no real reason to other than style or flair. Sometimes you just wanna make a song that uses those vintage electronic instruments, and that's perfectly okay. Other times, you wanna make a song that could truly pass off as something that old console or handheld could've played back during a gaming session. That's okay too. It's still music at the end of the day. Generally speaking though, when I see a cover labeled as "8-Bit" or "16-Bit" rather than "chiptune" or naming the chip used for the music itself, more than likely it's probably fakebit, which is fine as long as it sounds good, but again, it's inherently less interesting. Some people just don't know limitations, though, it's hard to blame them.

Just wanted to say that I love the sound of the Gameboy via LSDJ, I've been listening to Nonokuso for years at this point even if it looks like he has disappeared...

I think 3D style rendering, and the animation of it, is called "Animeyshon" in japanese. Anime have a different style of animation though - not just the artstyle. It's usually way less frames for most scenes - with the only real difference being fight scenes (and even that's not the case with all of em). It's the same when people talk about videogames. People used to complain about "japanese games", and most of the time they meant the "stupid 30 FPS limit" - but japanese games don't really have their own term, so they are just "japanese games". Calling them cartoons ain't wrong, but people usually have a hangup when it comes to "sensitive terms of different cultures" (only a problem in the west) - and other times it makes it easier to recognize what you are talking about (i.e. "do you know of this one cartoon character with a red / orange suit, who has long hair and a stick?" - "do you know of this one anime character with a red / orange suit who has long hair and a stick?)

En conclusion somos victimas del lenguaje

youre never gonna get "vgc" to stick as a shorthand for game consoles sorry to say

If the song COULD be played on older hardware (usually achieved through running some sort of emulator on modern hardware), I consider it chiptune or even just colloquially "8-Bit" music. Basically, not 8-Bit Universe. This is why I'm always skeptical of 8-Bit artists who don't list the sound chip that they're trying to emulate. If there is a mix of 8-Bit with other sounds and instruments, great (looking at you, Undertale), but I wouldn't consider the Undertale soundtrack "8-Bit," just a beautiful piece of musical art.

The gate keeping and judgemental attitude of this video makes me sad. I don’t think the chip com needs more bitter haters

I love gatekeeping random things. "It's not authentic" just let people create what they want and call it what they want.

Damn

nice

I don’t mind fakebit artists bending the rules of the genre and purity, but using too many voices changes the sound of chiptune music and makes it muddy. As long as they use proper techniques and don't just lazily dump a MIDI file into a DAW and call it a day, they can still create awesome, authentic-sounding tunes. For example, if there's a limit of, say, a maximum of three lead voices, along with sample size and bit depth restrictions, they can move beyond "fakebit" and embrace "neochiptune."

Why did they talk about anime for the first 3 minutes? Hella wierd

It's a song that I really like. Thank you 🫢💓 Is there an arranged version of the piano trio? I really want to play it✨

You know it's really funny because as soon as I saw heard the pictionary theme I needed to stop watching and lose my mind how much musically ideas it had inside the song.

"Modern hardware like DAWs" I don't think that's correct

what the hell are you doing talking about anime for 3 minutes when its a chiptune video seriously lmao

YAY ANOTHER LAUFEY PIECE!! Will you be posting the sheet music for the arrangement?

this is incredibly beautiful, i love every second of it

One area where this gets interesting is emulators or "fantasy consoles" running on modern hardware. For example, PICO-8 largely has the same limitations of that early hardware (4 sound channels, limited available waveforms) but those limitations are created artificially via software rather than hardware (by design of course). Does that make it realbit or fakebit? The limitations are the same as realbit, but the hardware is the same as fakebit

I can't believe I actually found a whole grand sheet music with other instruments. I was looking for arrangements as I want to suggest this to perform with our group haha. We have, Violin, Octavina, Bandurria, Guitar, Piano, and Double bass in our group and this song absolutely would sound so beautiful in a live setting

Play this at a formal event and see if people like it

Feeling kind of sick tonight All I've had is coffee and leftover pie It's no wonder why Ooh, still you take up all my mind I don't even think that you care like I do I should stop, heaven knows I've tried One day, I will stop falling in love with you Some day, someone will like me like I like you Until then, I'll drink my coffee, eat my pie Pretend that we are more than friends Then of course I'll let you break my heart again I'm just tryna understand What I am to you More than songs we've exchanged Midnight calls Sunset views Promise I don't mean to cry But I get overwhelmed and confused If only you knew What I felt like One day, I will stop falling in love with you Some day, someone will like me like I like you Until then, I'll drink my coffee, eat my pie Pretend that we are more than friends Then of course I'll let you break my heart again Some day, one day I will stop falling in love with you Until I do I'll be thinking of you Let you break my heart again

naisu naisu very naisu

You forgot to mention the people who "make" chiptune music by simply downloading a MIDI file from the internet, slapping it onto a program called GXSCC, and then uploading it to TH-cam calling it their own creation. So basically "Lazybit".

I take issue with calling music 8-bit or 16-bit because it doesn't tell you anything meaningful about the music. When you say a song is "16-bit", what does that mean? Does it mean it's SNES-styled? Genesis? Atari ST? DOS? A 16-bit PCM sampled at 44.1kHz which can sound like literally anything including the pop song Cassanova Frankenstein released the other week? Likewise, what does "8-bit" music mean? It doesn't do anything to distinguish between the sound of a 2A03, SID or VRC6, which all sound very different. I feel like calling a song "8-bit" is a disservice. If you were going for an NES aesthetic, call it NES or 2A03 music. If you were going for a Commodore 64 sound, call it C64 or SID style. "8-bit" is too vague and tells me that the person who made it probably doesn't understand what makes their inspiration sound the way it does, and that's usually true, as they made it in FL Studio using the sytrus plugin and a bunch of square waves / PWM preset.

I believe ChatGPT wrote this script.

I would not even call all tracker music chiptunes since is not really played in the same way an old school chiptune do. After all the classic tracker music is based of samples. Not the output of a chip Though there are exceptions Note tracker music is some of my favourite kind of music. And is it own thing. And there is tracker music that uses samples that are from those 8 and 16 bits machines. Funny enough one reason why early tanker music adopted this style was actually due to technical limitations. To make songs smaller memory wise. Since if you use a simple sound sample rather than complex one it takes less memory. One could see this as the original fakebit music. But I am not that keen on the term fakebit. I do not mind more pure fakebit music ether. And by that I mean music that drawns inspiration from chiptunes but do not follow the conventions. I sometimes can get a bit annoyed at something that tries to pass itself off as original stuff, but is cheap inauthentic way of doing so. It is hard to explain. But something that try to emulate the sound of chiptunes but just sounds off. Not breaking with conventions like including traditional instruments like real electric guitars or violins. But something that sound similar to something a chip would produce... but off. If it was pixel art in a game, it is like having the pixel art graphics inconsistent resolution, something like that.

I've been into electronic music and chip-like music ever since the 25th of June 2021, being introduced in the world of the so-called „chiptune” by Bossfight's „Milky Ways”. Upon research and asking people, they considered all of the works of Bossfight (from when they were still a trio) as chiptune music, even though they weren't composed using actual chips, but rather computer softwares, so I just assumed that everything similar to them are also part of the chiptune genre (such as the „nonstop live chiptune music” videos, that apparently mostly feature fakebit songs, or the songs written by Toby Fox, or most of the official FNaF soundtracks produced by Leon Riskin). After literally 3 years since „chiptune” had been part of my life significantly, I find out... that the chiptune I knew isn't even considered chiptune, but rather fakebit! I just thought the term of „chiptune” could be used to talk about both the classic-style music produced using Gameboy (or other chips) AND the modern-day music, made using more advanced technology... I seriously didn't know that things don't work like this, but I still love both genres just as much now as I did before! Tho it's still a BIT of a shocker to me (get it? BIT? 8-bit???) Ahem, anyways, this video was very well-made, it doesn't matter that there were a few typos and mistakes (as I can see from the comments), this really helped me understand how chiptune music works and what the differences between chiptune and fakebit are! Thank you so much for making this video, and I hope you're alright! Stay safe! (Oh, and really, am I to be judged if I REALLY like some fakebit songs? Such as Bossfight's aforementioned „Milky Ways”, or Dunderpadrullen's „Call me Katla, baby”, or „Liftoff” and „Chromium” composed by Schtiffles? If not, I recommend checking them out! Well, I'm recommending them anyways, but still)

Great video! It's good to have a video to point to whenever someone thinks they can make chiptune music just by throwing a bitcrusher on something. I used to write music in FamiTracker and it was interesting to work within the limitations of these simple waveforms and limited channels. Kudos~

"Anime" is a gairaigo from French, man