animalstyle
Offline
killadelphia

So, I totally changed the definitions of chiptune and fakebit on wikipedia.  They were pissing me off bigtime.

The Fakebit shit in particular...  it claimed that anything made with VSTs or software emulation was fakebit.  When the fuck are we going to get over that?  Yes there are bad programs out there - but, get a master programmer who cares in the helm and you are going to get something thats amazing (maybe its not there yet, but why pidgin-hole yourself), and i for one don't want to see that definition up there when that goes down.  At some point these chips are going to die.  If we want to preserve this music we better start emulating and stop discouraging the idea of emulation.  It makes no sense.

The chiptune definition had something in the first paragraph about how samples are not Chiptune.  Fuck.  The Gameboy Wav channel is friggin all PCM.   Piggy Tracker is fucking awesome.  If not for MOD files would the demoscene have sent waves of enthusiasm into the 2000's?  Nuff said.

There are some things up there that i did not get to expand on.  I would like people to help.  Sometimes i hate wikipedia because everyone looks at it.  So, we should probably start caring about what's on there because people look at it all the time and apparently we are letting 10 year old kids write that shit for us.

Last edited by animalstyle (Jul 23, 2010 3:32 am)

10k
Offline
nɐ˙ɯoɔ˙ʎǝupʎs

I brought this up in IRC the other day and it was just met with massive differences in opinion.
I am behind what you have written.

EDIT: I think we need to start a chipmusic wikipedia taskforce.

Last edited by 10k (Jul 23, 2010 5:06 am)

celsius
Offline
Melbourne, Australia

Love a good taskforce. +1

tacticalbread
Offline
))<>((

I like what you wrote for fakebit.

ant1
Offline
uhajdafdfdfa

Sorry to be an asshole but I preferred what the fakebit page said before. I don't use it as a derogatory word (I'd call most of my own tracks fakebit) and I basically do just define it as any "chippy" songs made with VSTs and samples. I thought that was the popular definition but I guess I was wrong! sad

The article for chiptune looks like an improvement though. smile Even if it says "Chicago-based I Fight Dragons uses modified Nintendo game controllers to produce chiptune-centric power pop tunes." neutral

arottenbit
Offline
Milan, Italy

mmh...
Reading the article it seems that chiptune is all about samples.

Last edited by arottenbit (Jul 23, 2010 6:28 am)

µB
Offline
A gray world of dread

Yo! I'm the ten year old kid that edited that definition from what was copied from the 8bc wiki (RIP). Before, it was basically the 'mario on a rave' shit.

ant1 wrote:

I don't use it as a derogatory word (I'd call most of my own tracks fakebit) and I basically do just define it as any "chippy" songs made with VSTs and samples. I thought that was the popular definition but I guess I was wrong! sad

And that's how I understand and use it, too. A catch all word for emulation plus further stuff you can do in a DAW. I know it's used derogatory sometimes, but that's mainly because ye olde FLoops abuse that everyone groaned about on 8bc.

animalstyle wrote:

Yes there are bad programs out there - but, get a master programmer who cares in the helm and you are going to get something thats amazing (maybe its not there yet, but why pidgin-hole yourself), and i for one don't want to see that definition up there when that goes down.  At some point these chips are going to die.  If we want to preserve this music we better start emulating and stop discouraging the idea of emulation.  It makes no sense.

In a way, I was abusing Wikipedia there to do exactly that. I removed the silly qualitative implications connected to the word which were in the original article and added a short description on the stylistic impact that the absence of hardware limits may have. Basically, I changed the definition to a purely technical term- as I honestly think it is. Wikipedia can work both ways; I thought if the scrubs look it up and see a definition like that the word might loose its derogatory implications over time. A wee bit of social engineering.

I guess for you it is something purely insulting. If you're reading that article and think 'Hey, that makes any emulated music shit' I can understand why you edited it, because I agree. The thing is, 'Fakebit' is terribly catchy, so I wanted to nab it for good wink

Edit: By the way, most people on here seem to use it like me and ant1 understand it. If you look at the tag search, almost all tracks (tagged by the authors themselves) escape the floops-unce definition you think it implies. http://chipmusic.org/music#s=tag:fakebit

Last edited by µB (Jul 23, 2010 6:51 am)

GaMEcat
Offline
Manchester UK

im not familiar with what went before, but I dont think either of those pages work very well. The chiptune page launches straight into a defense of why samples are okay, while glossing over the very essentials of chiptunes -  trangle waves, square waves, arpeggios, filters, broken chords.. etc
I wouldn't -remove- the sample part (heck, the c64 could do it as an exploit), but I agree with Arottenbit above, it seems predominantly focussed on samples first which is not really what its about.
The Amiga section needs a mention of AHX or HivelyTracker (which attempted to recreate the c64 sound by synthesis, not samples)

regarding fakebit, that seems to comes across as puposefully inflammatory.  I dont use it as a derogatory term, but a term that distinguishes 'real' chiptunes from ones that are created on proper hardware with all the technical restrictions that entails. 
But then that probably puts me firmly in the camp of 'elitist' which is why it sound inflammatory to me.

animalstyle
Offline
killadelphia

If Chip Music is a set of restrictions... count me out.

Where's the part in this definition that focuses on harmony and notes - i think the whole fucking problem is people are looking at the tool in front of them and trying to legitimize that paticular object as authentic or cool or something.  Most likely a gameboy... and we're not focused on the harmonies being produced and where they come from or the lineage that's led to this point.

In my talk at H.O.P.E i talked about Chip Music's cross-genre compatibility.  maybe thats the problem.  Maybe there really is no chip music.  Maybe we're just tracking other styles of music - so really chip music is sort of like a funnel or a filter where we shit out other genres like some disposable waste (presented in a certain kbps).

Maybe we should break the definition down into a couple different things:  TEXTURE, HARMONY, RHYTHM, HISTORY, TOOLS  ...shit like that.  might make more sense than like immediately talking about the tools. The actual sound is more important than whatever hipster gadget we decided to use or create that particular day.

This stuff is fun to talk about.  I enjoy hearing what you guys say.

Fakebit (for me) is like an elitist calling card - people should stop using it.  That term in effect cheapens the term Chip Music or 8bit, and in general saying "fakebit" too noobs provides a rigid atmosphere for them to compose in because they feel like they have to stay away from the certain ideas that actually might make them grow as a musician.  Why do we have to stay away from certain ideas?  At one point i was not ready to use a tracker - i didnt like it - i couldnt be creative on it.  I had people saying my shit was not even chip music.  It hurt and i did not like it.  I wanted to be included not excluded.  People are choosing to not write chip music because they can't grasp technical details.  I see this as a problem.  Its sort of depressing because this music is supposed to be fun.    Fuck - music in general is supposed to be fun.  I think people should think before they use that term.  Chipmusic can be many things.

Last edited by animalstyle (Jul 25, 2010 3:23 pm)

µB
Offline
A gray world of dread
animalstyle wrote:

If Chip Music is a set of restrictions... count me out.

It is most certainly not. However, it is hardly debatable that the circumvention techniques created to deal with restrictions make up a big part of its core style. It's at least historically important.

Maybe there really is no chip music.  Maybe we're just tracking other styles of music - so really chip music is sort of like a funnel or a filter where we shit out other genres like some disposable waste (presented in a certain kbps).

It's just that what happens with any musical genre in time: It evolves. Breeds with others. Creates offspring with more or less traces of its DNA. I'd draw a circle around the mid-eighties to early nineities and call it the point of origin. When the sample trackers hit, people started to emulate techniques and timbres even when there was no real need for it (minimizing for demos aside). It was mainly for aesthetic reasons. That, for me, is what I'd call the chip music genre. From there people started to branch out, while some continued in "the good old way". I've made this comparison before, but I do think it's similar what happened to House/Acid. In contrast to the chip music scene (which for some reason tries very hard to avoid genre labels) the House guys went the opposite way and labeled anything down to Deep Progressive Minimal House-Tech.

This stuff is fun to talk about.  I enjoy hearing what you guys say.

Agreed. smile

Fakebit (for me) is like an elitist calling card - people should stop using it.  That term in effect cheapens the term Chip Music or 8bit, and in general saying "fakebit" too noobs provides a rigid atmosphere for them to compose in because they feel like they have to stay away from the certain ideas that actually might make them grow as a musician.

Then there are at least two different (main) interpretations of the word around. I like it as an easy way to label "Music with chip timbre created through emulation or aproximation which may or may not ignore restrictions of chip hardware and may or may not use effects and samples of modern DAW quality". Rolls a bit easier off the tongue tongue

Anyways, I'd say delete that article for good and maybe insert that word as a jargon term in the chiptune article. As it stands now, the Fakebit article is just silly. Hardly warrants an article of its own.

irrlichtproject
Offline
Nomad's Land

and i always thought fakebit was just a meme...

as for the chiptune article, it doesn't seem to be very precise and it's missing a lot of information as it is now. for example, i don't see any reference to the origins of the word, which was coined in the amiga scene, if i recall correctly.

iLKke
Offline
Psydney, Australia

My two cents...
I find this very similar to the eternal pixel-art debate.
I think that it would be ok to say that chipmusic is an aesthetic, a result, and not necessarily the process.
As with pixel art, it is very hard to get results that employ the aesthetics well, unless you are familiar with the 'classic' creative process.
Having limitations can make you think and work real hard to get the maximum results, but once you've 'gotten your hands dirty' and know what you want, then you can devise your own methods without sacrificing the quality.

iLKke
Offline
Psydney, Australia
irrlichtproject wrote:

and i always thought fakebit was just a meme...

as for the chiptune article, it doesn't seem to be very precise and it's missing a lot of information as it is now. for example, i don't see any reference to the origins of the word, which was coined in the amiga scene, if i recall correctly.

Ask 4mat about that one ;D

irrlichtproject
Offline
Nomad's Land

and how come "8-bit (music)" redirects to "chiptune"??? i think 8-bit is a totally different story. chiptune can refer to the tech side of things as well as to a certain style, whereas 8-bit is a completely instrumentation/tech-related term.

xero
Offline
▐▐▌▌▐▌▌█▐ ▐▐▌▌▐▌▌█▐ ▐▐▌▌▐▌▌█▐

since there are some many styles and so many generas i feel like chip music is a really broad term.
if you think about it, we're all just musicians. whether we're using a piano or a gameboy. does it really
matter if it's considered one huge genera or a sub-sub-genera or another?  you can be a chip tune
artist playing dub-step, micro-electro, chip-grind, c64-core, whatever. i feel like arguing over labels
is a waste of time...

dont get me wrong!
im all about editing wikipedia. especially when articles are wrong.
IMHO i just feel like this debate is played out and pointless.

arfink
Offline
Minneapolis

As far as I'm concerned, the end result is the important part of the label of chiptune.

Concerning the idea that these chips "won't be around forever," most IC's will pretty much last forever barring thermal breakdown, massive inductive damage (EMP bomb, nuke, etc.), driven by too much voltage or current, or static discharge damage. Properly cared for, IC's will last. Most IC's can be replaced without difficulty. Everything besides the IC's is also replaceable. For those IC's which are impossible to replace, proper care will keep them around in working condition indefinitely. I've done a fair bit of computer restoration work, and the only time that IC's will fail is when they're not looked after properly. A properly maintained PSU will prevent power irregularities which kill chips, replacing electrolytic capacitors and heat sync compound periodically will prevent other irregularities, and everything else is just environmental precautions, which doesn't have to be elaborate. Just keep the dust out of the device to prevent heat buildup during operation, keep the operating temps reasonable, and hope nobody sets off an EMP bomb. smile