SketchMan3
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NC in the US of America

One thing to note... sometimes you have to get creative in your usage of "chords". If you want to use fancy extended chords and stuff but don't have enough channels to include all the notes, you can drop some of the unimportant ones, like the 5th, the root, etc...

Nullatrum wrote:

Any other good classical + chip things?

http://rainwarrior.ca/music/classic_chips.html

https://soundcloud.com/ubiktune/an-age- … tary-pride (original fugue at the end)

"The Swan" homage

To answer your question directly... Yes, chords are perfectly ok with less than 5 channels if you can manage to find a way to make them work. I've been in chiptune compos where the theme was to "only use chords" in an NES composition, haha.  An important aspect of chiptune is trying to push the hardware to produce cool things through it's limitations. For example:

https://bitpuritans.bandcamp.com/track/dove-dome - This track uses piano samples imported into the NES's DPCM ("wave") channel (using no extensions) to get some nice piano chords into it.

But notes from two different channels can be held at the same time, right? So what if two or more channels are made to sound the exact same way (both the same square wave, for example, with same volume timbre/etc) can there then be chords based off of that aggregate?

Yes. If the platform you're using has the capability to do that, yes, there's nothing stopping you. 8-bit music can literally do whatever you want it to do if it has the capacity to do so.

Last edited by SketchMan3 (Jan 8, 2016 5:10 pm)

PROTODOME
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UK

Personally, I've found classical not to lend itself to much hardware chipmusic simply because the classical style (baroque, romantic whatever) often lacks a percussive line. A large part of making 3 channels of basic functions sound full is filling space with bursts of noise / sweeps at a variety of different frequencies. For example, kicks, snares, hi-hats all occupy different frequencies in the mix and help to 'fill' the soundscape.

Look at Mozart's String Quartet No.19 in C Major. You've got four channels creating simple harmonies and moving in a very restricted way. If you were to play this straight on a bunch of square waves it would sound fairly empty, slow and obnoxious. To make it sound fuller / more interesting you'd employ the standard tricks: varying up the timbre via volume / modulation / waveform all of which lend themselves to enveloping over time, expanding harmony with arpeggios or changing rhythm to state more constituents of a complex chord, and filling any empty space with hi-hats, counter melodies or miscellaneous percussion. After this Mozart's original ideas have been watered down enough that it doesn't sound much like the original genre.

There's nothing stopping you from playing straight classical, FearOfDark has an EXCELLENT fugue section in An Age of Planetary Pride. However, much straight classical just sounds technically unimpressive.

Classical fusion is a great idea though. Do that.

djhaka
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settle

Just adding a few cents on classical chip (I did some research on this for my radio show a few months back).

In my experience, if you're trying to stick to the limitations of the hardware, classical songs can be really difficult to transcribe. Disasterpeace did an awesome cover of Chopin's Prelude Op. 28, No. 4, but it sounds to me that he wasn't sticking to channel limitations.

On the other hand, some chip artists have tried doing classical covers, and they've done a pretty good job. Just a few:
RushJet1's cover of Bach's Prelude and Fugue,
HertzDevil's cover of Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 8 "Pathetique",
Fearofdark's cover of Ravel's Pavane Pour Une Infante Défunte,
and
Linus Akesson's Bach organ covers on the SID chip.

I think if you don't mind using a bit of experimentation and creativity you could pull it off, either with or without limitations. Personally I've been wanting to cover Holst's The Planets forever; I just haven't had the time hmm wink

Bit Shifter
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Brooklyn NY US

I'm not nearly schooled enough in classical music to join the discussion in any meaningful way but I will always jump at an opportunity to post videos of Herbert Weixelbaum's LSDJ renditions of Mozart works.



Nullatrum
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CA

Wow "Dandilon Ride" was so gorgeous thank you for showing that to me!

Classical favorites were fun too, and I have Roots I love Danimal Cannon but my favorite song on that album is actually Agrobactor although it's not "true chiptune" to any console.

Also the Rain Warrior stuff wounded really well composed from what I heard, and the Fearofdark song I also really like I have that on my computer already smile

Finally "Dove Dome" was really impressive from the fact that comes from NES, those arpeggios are lightning can't even tell some of them.

Anyway herr prof (are you German, by the way?) I had an idea to make some of my own stuff (FL Studio is the resource I have and I think I will use) about the classical music, which was really why I asked the initial question of chords in chip. Do you have any suggestions for VSTs, how to go about this, how to throw percussion in or if I should (as I think it would be necessary with chipmusic but it wasn't in these older songs and I don't know the most about percussion), and any other thing that comes to mind? The two songs I want to work with in particular right now are The first ballade and the fourth one both by Chopin.

Nullatrum
Offline
CA
djhaka wrote:

Just adding a few cents on classical chip (I did some research on this for my radio show a few months back).

In my experience, if you're trying to stick to the limitations of the hardware, classical songs can be really difficult to transcribe. Disasterpeace did an awesome cover of Chopin's Prelude Op. 28, No. 4, but it sounds to me that he wasn't sticking to channel limitations.

On the other hand, some chip artists have tried doing classical covers, and they've done a pretty good job. Just a few:
RushJet1's cover of Bach's Prelude and Fugue,
HertzDevil's cover of Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 8 "Pathetique",
Fearofdark's cover of Ravel's Pavane Pour Une Infante Défunte,
and
Linus Akesson's Bach organ covers on the SID chip.

I think if you don't mind using a bit of experimentation and creativity you could pull it off, either with or without limitations. Personally I've been wanting to cover Holst's The Planets forever; I just haven't had the time hmm wink

That Chopin Prelude was haunting, really captures the sad soul of the prelude, and I love the doppler-esque effect from the quick panning from ear to ear as well as those high arpeggios in the background.

The Bach Prelude and Fugue was pretty nice actually and became a lot more fun/interesting when the percussion came in (I'm not as big a fan of baroque as I am romantic/impressionistic eras)

Pathetique really gets a lot of adding that percussion, that blew me away and makes me think of that piece in such a different light now wow.

pavane for a dead princess was always beautiful as well, personally nothing can beat the sound of an orchestra with this one but that being said, that particular vrc6 cover was still very moving nonetheless. Listening closely, it's funny how much that one low bassline can add to the song, it really adds to the sense of profundity.

Akkeson's organ covers were good too, it's really clever how many times the 8-bit voices sound ubiquitous with organ.

"The Planets" is such a great idea for an album, I'd love to see that in action. There's so much diversity there, and you gotta appreciate Holst's inadvertent contribution to movie soundtrack a lot of stuff sounds inspired by him.

djhaka
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settle

Yeah, for sure! I especially liked the idea and challenge of working with fluid tempos (like in Venus) and time signatures (Mars) and such. I'm pretty new to composition too, though, so I have no idea how to go about cramming a full orchestra into a DMG or NES hmm

Nullatrum wrote:

Do you have any suggestions for VSTs, how to go about this, how to throw percussion in or if I should (as I think it would be necessary with chipmusic but it wasn't in these older songs and I don't know the most about percussion), and any other thing that comes to mind?

As for VSTs, as I'm sure people elsewhere have mentioned, Magical 8bit Plug and Plogue Chipsounds are two high quality ones. M8BP is free, and Chipsounds has a free demo to mess around with. Just some ideas smile

Nullatrum
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CA
djhaka wrote:

As for VSTs, as I'm sure people elsewhere have mentioned, Magical 8bit Plug and Plogue Chipsounds are two high quality ones. M8BP is free, and Chipsounds has a free demo to mess around with. Just some ideas smile

Yeah I've used magical 8bit plug. Do you think I can get by on that for the my project on just that and maybe some other free ones I can find? Or is it necessary to buy something like plogue chipsounds?

Ledfyr
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Sweden

Another chipmusic release with classical influences: Soleviio - Sonus Antiquitatum.
http://soleviio.bandcamp.com/album/sonus-antiquitatum

Nullatrum
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CA

oh what did I just get a shoutout? lol

Hawk
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Oregon
Nullatrum wrote:

oh what did I just get a shoutout? lol

Heh I saw that on the front page and came straight to this thread to see if anyone had mentioned it.

djhaka
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settle
Hawk wrote:
Nullatrum wrote:

oh what did I just get a shoutout? lol

Heh I saw that on the front page and came straight to this thread to see if anyone had mentioned it.

This is why I like this site lol

Nullatrum wrote:

Yeah I've used magical 8bit plug. Do you think I can get by on that for the my project on just that and maybe some other free ones I can find? Or is it necessary to buy something like plogue chipsounds?

I'd just say give it a shot with the free stuff! Mess around with them, see if you can get the sounds and effects you want. And, if they don't cut it, then try out the chipsounds demo and see if that's better. No one's really keeping score wink

xX 8 BIT CHAMPION Xx
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Madison, Wisconsin, USA
Nullatrum wrote:
SketchMan3 wrote:

Edit: Also, your example video of that Bach 8-bit thing... sounds like a lazy "take a midi of a song, load it into GXSCC or some other '8-bit' soundfont, export audio" deal. I personally wouldn't trust any youtube video calling itself an "8-bit cover/remake/remix" as something to follow the example of...

Oh yeah definitely it's just what I happened to be listening to at the moment based on youtube's auto play... I think that could actually be a cool idea if done well, taking baroque/classical music and making chip our it. I remember I used to have some album with a very good remix of the first movement of moonlight sonata. Is there more stuff like that?

https://soundcloud.com/bitmuch/8bach