Amunex
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Hey Ya'll. Im Amunex, I'm a professional Chilean Drummer and I'm new to this forum.

Skipping the introduction, I want to discuss something with everyone here. What exactly are the limitations Chiptune Artists?

As to why I'm asking this, its pretty simple. I'm working on my thesis. I'm looking for a way to enhance, or bring new comers into this musical area called Chiptune music, or known as midi music down here in SA. By no means have I considered altering the prepossess of Chiptune creation.I find this extravagant and interesting, on how gamers and programmers unite in one spectrum called music. I'm looking for a way to step up the creation  game and/or facilitate the use of live music creation.

What I'm looking for are the limitations. Being in the creation of tunes, to playing live. Anything counts; any experience, situation or problem you might have encountered and/could overcome. I have a general idea of what I want to do, but i want feed back from people that have superior experience in ChupTuning, hence why I arrived to this Forum.

For Example, something I find to be a hindrance in Chiptune Music ( And don't get me wrong, its my opinion as a drummer ) Is the lack of control over the beat. Its repetitive and essentially if you don't have it prepared, the beat will stay the same. Playing live music with musicians, essentially jamming with friends, the drummer has the power to keep and alter the beat and structure. In Chiptune, there is no freedom in percussion, which bother me at least.

Guys, I'm just looking for opinions, and anythings helps.

Last edited by Amunex (Jun 15, 2016 4:49 pm)

an0va
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i feel like many people are going to bring up the obvious specifics like note polyphony or dynamic range so if I may, I'd like to bring up something a little off kilter here wink

one caveat i've *personally* found is that it's very difficult to avoid being typecasted; for better or worse

the larger music world may often aim to brand you as a video game/nerd culture obsessive and also seem to often think you are incapable of doing anything that isn't chiptune - which can be a little frustrating. the larger world also spawns many unnecessary debates about "what chiptune is" - and i've noticed that more often than not, if it doesn't sound like gameboy dance music, many press outlets get confused quick! i think it all stems from chiptune being such a specific sound that it's easy to become a marketing tool

on the other hand tho, you also may often be seen as a gear fetishist - discussions of how tracks were made are very common and when performing live many people expect to see the hardware being used live. that is to say, there is often a predated expectation of what your chiptune shows are supposed to be (i.e. - "you've made your tracks on an Atari ST, so the audience will expect the Atari to be onstage with you"). i've contributed to this belief in the past, but over the years i've become way more open minded. i got upset with the idea that many people are coming to see the gear itself rather than the actual music being played - this "hardware versus software" debate comes up in all genres of electronic music, but I feel that it comes up especially often in chiptune because the entire concept of this came about by pushing old hardware devices. but my personal beliefs are this: it's 2016, you can do it however the eff you want -  I've seen people play straight up amazing live sets with laptops, CDJs, whatever smile

none of these may be a big "limitation" to you but I think it's something worth acknowledging at least a little bit when talking about this kind of music today

garvalf
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France

There are no limitations at all in chiptune music. The only limits are the ones of electricity and physics wink
If you're a drummer, you might find this musician quite inspiring:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7b29HfoD48 (André Duracell)
http://andrediamant.free.fr/duracell.htm

There are captors inside his drums which trigger the chiptune notes, in addition to playing the drum itself, so he has control over the beat (which is often at full speed in his case...)

Last edited by garvalf (Jun 15, 2016 7:01 pm)

!cube
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Amunex wrote:

For Example, something I find to be a hindrance in Chiptune Music ( And don't get me wrong, its my opinion as a drummer ) Is the lack of control over the beat. Its repetitive and essentially if you don't have it prepared, the beat will stay the same. Playing live music with musicians, essentially jamming with friends, the drummer has the power to keep and alter the beat and structure. In Chiptune, there is no freedom in percussion, which bother me at least.

I don't perform live at all so all my concentration is on the creation part. Having a repetitive beat is more of a style issue rather than a limitation of chipmusic creation. As the genre has its roots in sequenced electronic music rather than live music with live instruments, beats might have a lesser importance to the composers than for example the melody. Disregarding the obvious limitations of different platforms, in creation, the limitations are what you choose them to be. "Chipmusic" is a broad genre than can encompass pretty much anything you want to do, from melodic synth pop to polka to metal to folk.

However, depending on who you ask, there are differences as to what people consider "chipmusic". For a hardcore oldschooler like myself, chipmusic means "music composed for an old low polyphony audio chip with limited capabilities" whereas for someone else it might mean just about anything that happens to use chippy instruments here and there. For me, if the creation involves MIDI in any way, it's not "pure" chipmusic smile Therefore the only limitations for me are the limitations of the software being used and the features of the used platform.

Not sure if any of this helps or not but anyway smile

marcb0t
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Yeah, with percussion, as was said, it all depends on how you sequence things. Most people don't focus putting a lot of variety in percussion. I don't, because melody and progression is more important to me. But you can mimic the percussion of the greatest jazz drummers with an NES chip, if you take the time to program that to your track.

Most pepole don't spend a lot of time on drum variety though.

Chiptune is different than MIDI. Because it is sound produced with specialized sounds chips using special code that may look nothing like MIDI data... except in terms of concept and purpose.
The coding is different, and so is the sound.

There is indeed a lot of misunderstanding. People say "8-bit" music, which is really not describing anything specific. But Gameboy and NES sounds ate what they generally mean. However, Sega Genesis had 8 bit sound for its music that is FM synthesis. That and the SNES both use 8 bit sound samples. And it sounds much more advanced than NES.

The Turbo Grafx 16 has a 16 bit sound chip, but it sounds closer to an NES chip than a Genesis.

These ambiguous terminologies create confusion and misunderstanding of what chiptune music actually is. Using a MIDI workstation will not give you the most accurate sound design when compared to the original hardware. And people miss out on all the little tricks and techniques when working with specialized software and code, like dual channel chorus and reverb effects, swapping of channels rapidly to fool your ears into thinking that more sounds are there than there actually are, etc.

Last edited by marcb0t (Jun 15, 2016 11:48 pm)

my.Explosion
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Finland

Yeah honestly. Chipmusic is as good as the composer is. That's what I like about it, it's entirely skill-based just as other instruments. You have to really understand it to great depths before you can start producing stuff that's interesting and takes advantage of the instrument (in this case a variety of hardware soundchips). (To compare it to something that arguable takes no/less skill. Buying already composed loops, sound effects and just arranging them one after the other in a DAW. That's gonna give you a semi-polished EDM track that you had like no hand in creating, you opened your wallet LOL, that's where the effort was. No skill. And yes, you could argue that the arranging is still a skill but whatever, if you don't know how to make your tracks sound good on your own, you're lacking skill.)

And the hinderance you're expressing with the percussion part, it's tough for me to imagine specifically why that'd somehow force your hand. Do you mean when you perform on the fly live? or just when programming out drumparts. Because the intricacies lie in your programming if the latter. (Obviously )The more stuff you program out and the more you change tempo, swing etc all that the more dynamic your drum programming becomes..

But if you're indeed talking about performing live then yeah it's a bit tougher and less hands on to change something navigating possible menues and then playing drumparts so that they get synchronized. But that's also true for every choice instrumentation that isn't drumming on an acoustic or electronic kit, not just chipmusic? smile

But yeah, uhm. I feel that there's always space for "push/pull", somehow. If you're running out of channels and stuff, remove something that isn't as important or, if you are so inclined, add another set of channels from another device.
I can't really imagine a situation where you couldn't "bend the limits", so to speak. So for me the answer is: No limits, only skill.

Last edited by my.Explosion (Jun 16, 2016 11:07 am)

Delek
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Buenos Aires, Argentina

The Chipmusic have two types of big limitations, one is the technical limitations of the soundchips (channels count, waveforms, effects, rom size, volume control, etc) and the other is the "game environment" limitation or "mental limitation". There's a very deep interrelation between those two factors.

The first is very well known so I will try to explain what the second one means and how it is affected by the first one:

The majority of chiptunes comes from actual games and the big majority were intended to be played as a background thing, as a secondary factor in the whole gameplay. This adds new barriers to the composers, and, back in the day, they were asked to make songs that:
1) Loop beautifully (lack of tempo changes fits here by 30%).
2) Doesn't distract too much the attention from the actual game (the lack of changes in the percussion tempo fits here by 60%)
3) One channel of your track (almost always the percussion) will be removed randomly from your song because of sound effects (this was very popular on chips with less than 6 channels)
4) The player routine code should be very small (for that reason you can hear very simple tracks in good games or very complex tracks in bad games, because of the rom space distribution balance, too much graphics but little music, too much levels but no music, too much music quality but no space for textures, and so on)
5) Your song should be very small too! (memory space!!!), for that reason the loop should be perfect, sweet and gentle (point 1)
6) The speed. Your music runs side by side with the AI, collision detection, rendering, etc. Maybe ALL of your songs were forced to run at 150bpm because of the scan cycle (update frame), or to be a factor of 100bmp who knows.


There are many more things to add to this list but I don't want to fill this post with technical stuff, the thing is that the Chipmusic is limited by many things and not only by the channel count and waveforms. Maybe you're thinking that you have found a new niche to exploit (tempo changes, crazy drum patterns, that's cool!), but the reasons behind why it is not so present is that the Chiptune have a soul molded since the cradle, that psychologically affects what you can do, and makes the excessive complexity in the final rom size or a tricky loop a good reason to get you fired...

Contemporary chiptune artits have all of this in mind, so think as a composer in the 80s writing assembly code and, suddenly, you will understand lot of things of the Chipmusic. It is a form of art not only limited to waveforms, it has part of the history inside it. heart

Last edited by Delek (Jun 16, 2016 2:23 pm)

an0va
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another personal limitation that i have is that i will never be anywhere near as fucking good as 4mat

Warez Waldo
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Planet Zaxxon

I love limitations. I think it's my strong point. It's extremely easy to get lost when everything is so easily available and right in front of you. It can just be too much. That's why I enjoy using hardware, and old hardware at that. It's simple, shorter learning curve (compared to these new wacky vst space stations), and I like the tone of old stuff. Limitations force the artist to write better music, as opposed to using 10 massive vst's layered with multi-band compression, 21 band eq, delay and Carnegie Hall convolution reverb programming. When you have it all, you just tend to keep using more and more of it, just because it's there. I personally enjoy the challenging nature that limitations provide, and again, it forces me to write better music. And also, it's less stressful in a way.

The artist, Aliceffekt, wrote an entire album using just a Minibrute for sounds/synthesis. And you would never even know that unless you were told. Keeping it simple and using limitations to your advantage is a very successful method.

SketchMan3
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NC in the US of America

(To compare it to something that arguable takes no/less skill. Buying already composed loops, sound effects and just arranging them one after the other in a DAW. That's gonna give you a semi-polished EDM track that you had like no hand in creating, you opened your wallet LOL, that's where the effort was. No skill. And yes, you could argue that the arranging is still a skill but whatever, if you don't know how to make your tracks sound good on your own, you're lacking skill.)

Lol, nice rant. Everyone is lacking skill in some area or another; Doesn't mean they have no skill whatsoever. Anybody can literally produce music on any instrument or platform whatsoever, whether it be through manipulation of single-cycle waveforms or purchased loops. Whether it's actually good or interesting music to listen to or not is irrelevant to the chosen platform. Making great-sounding music through the arranging and layering of loops does take skill, and it's really cool too. I doubt every single artist who can make great chipmusic can also use prepackaged loops to make music that's just as good as their chipmusic. They're lacking in skill? tongue

Also, arranging loops doesn't have to end up as EDM, haha. People have been arranging loops long before EDM was even a thing tongue

my.Explosion
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Finland
SketchMan3 wrote:

Lol, nice rant. Everyone is lacking skill in some area or another; Doesn't mean they have no skill whatsoever. Anybody can literally produce music on any instrument or platform whatsoever, whether it be through manipulation of single-cycle waveforms or purchased loops. Whether it's actually good or interesting music to listen to or not is irrelevant to the chosen platform. Making great-sounding music through the arranging and layering of loops does take skill, and it's really cool too. I doubt every single artist who can make great chipmusic can also use prepackaged loops to make music that's just as good as their chipmusic. They're lacking in skill? tongue

Also, arranging loops doesn't have to end up as EDM, haha. People have been arranging loops long before EDM was even a thing tongue

yeah, it takes no double-check to see that the music I make borders what I rant about. smile My point is that sound design and its place in chipmusic is ultimately what's going to cripple you at length, if you don't learn how to use the comparatively simple tools presented in Nanoloop or LSDJ (or yes, other tracker/"chiptune" software. I'm GameBoy-damaged.) through and through your sound design, and therefore, your "complexity" will be limited. Which was kind of the whole point there with what limitations are to be considered.

I don't think buying loops and arranging them to make them sound like a song(loops which by the way are already polished to a high-mirror shine, so you barely need to mix them even.) is as "skillful" as also making the sound design yourself, and that's naturally subjective from situation to situation and from composer to composer. Yes I generalized like a moron there, and that was wrong. I did not mean ALL loop/sample-based music. Some of my favorite genres are loop-based music so naturally I'm not interested in shitting where I eat, so to speak. smile

Last edited by my.Explosion (Jun 17, 2016 9:07 am)

theghostservant
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Chicago

your mind, man

Jellica
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England

i don't really consider limitations in chip music hardware any more. there is what someone might consider a workaround for everything. for example on a c64 you can easily fit kick, snr, hat and a funky bassline in one channel, and have 2 channels left over for all kindsa shit.

ive transcended that shit, lol, the only limitations are in your mind! (ive been ready too many robert crumb/old hippy comics recently)

i think that people will only encounter perceived limitations they approach hardware chipmusic in terms of other forms of electronic or computer recorded music.

using the hardware is an aesthetic choice, just like say using an old 4 track tape player to make music is, or only having a 4 string bass, or a 6 string guitar.

about the jamming with friends thing, i think you are describing an issue that anyone might encounter when trying to jam using a mix of sequenced instruments and played instruments.

learning the interface well is the key, just like a guitarist might spend years learning his skills.

Then you will be able to react to changes in the music quickly and easily and also remember that some hardwares/interfaces might be better designed for improvising

Last edited by Jellica (Jun 17, 2016 5:44 pm)

tearauth
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UK

running out of pepsi and annoying the wife are my limitations

Matej
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Solar System

Chiptunes, chipmusic uses old computers like c64, atari or zx spectrum, msdos adlip pc or old game consoles like gameboy, gba, sega megadrive...
You can make whole song on old hardware so you will have true chipmusic. Or you can use modern DAW and use modern instruments and some SID or YM VSTi and you will get "hybrid chiptune"...
But there are no limits. Simply buy gameboy (and flash and LSDJ) or sega genesis (and flash and DEFLEMASK or VGM Music maker) and make whole song without drums and than add live drums...
OxygenSTAR aka DOOMCLOUD aka RADLIB makes something similar with old msdos PCs and OPL3 soundcards!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ce72q7LUzx4

But as drum patterns... There are no limits. You can have DNB, Dubstep or Rock drums there... Anything you want. No kick and snare rules.
Chipmusic is more about using old soundchips and you can make any genre with it...