Offline
Montreal, Canada

The thing about trying to describe chipmusic in a paragraph or so is that it's ultimately doomed to fail if you're trying to explain more than the surface of it. Although anybody who's been into it for long enough clearly understands all the nuances by sheer force of exposition, it's not easy to put into few words.

For example, for me chipmusic is an esthetic choice. I don't give much thought to what tools were used to create the music, as long as you respect a few loose "rules" about the sound. For others, it's strictly a choice of tools. Some think that sample trackers aren't chipmusic because there's no actual sound chip involved etc. Then there's the whole crossover thing where a lot of people use chipmusic as an instrument rather than a genre. You'll get chip-rock, chip-house, and etc etc. Some people call it 8bit music even though the (very) large majority of platforms used to make chipmusic isn't 8bit. Some people try to sound like videogames, some like the demoscene, some stay away as much as possible from this and try to make "modern" music on old hardware... some make "old" music on modern hardware.

In short.. it's a fucking mess. But it's not very confusing when you get familiar with it. The scene is usually both very elitist and very loose about what qualifies as chipmusic. Contradictory? It sure is.

When I say your description is "wrong" it's mostly because you state clearly that chiptune is something that doesn't use samples. The "official birthplace" of chipmusic is the Amiga, a computer that didn't generate any real time sound and relied strictly on samples. The term "chiptune" was invented in that era because they were "tunes that sound like old sound chips". One can argue that the C64 which came before was chipmusic too, and you'd be both right and wrong. Right in the sense that.. by today's standards and definition, all the pre-amiga soundchip-based platforms are seen as very valid chip machines. But wrong in the sense that back then.. it wasn't called chiptunes, it was just called music...or computer music... or noise, by the parents being subjected to it.

In a sense.. it's like any other genre of music. Since music is an ever changing, very organic and living thing.. new genres generally just don't happen overnight. They are a result of years of permutation and kinky interracial sex between other genres. Nobody knows exactly when rock n roll became rock n roll. It was a result of RnB being pushed outside of its standards, Of blues being played "wrong". Of country/western being played too hard etc etc. But for simplcity's sake, people generally tend to agree on a starting point/era, even though it's almost meaningless since all that came before it shares tons of similarities. In the case of chiptunes, the accepted birthplace is the Amiga where the term was coined and the genre refined into something identifiable. And in those days, we used only samples. Super short samples, often a single cycle, but samples nonetheless.

I find myself constantly changing the way I refer to chipmusic or try to explain it depending on my audience. For some of my friends.. I can say "chipmusic" and they know instantly what I'm talking about. For others.. I have to call it "my nintendo music" otherwise they don't get it. If you're trying to explain it in a single paragraph for people who have never heard it before, don't give specifics about the technical aspects of it like "it has no samples" or "it's from sound chips" because you'll always get nitpickers, like me, to point out it's not quite right smile

"Chipmusic is a forward-facing and ever evolving genre of music deeply rooted in the early digital computer music of the 80s"

Or something like that... yknow.. keep it simple and surfacey, otherwise you'll end up saying something that's not true smile

.... damn that was a uselessly long post.

Offline
Chicago IL
TalkPolite wrote:

So apparently all ive done is make it painfully obvious that Ive only been exposed to the genre officially for a week.

TalkPolite wrote:

And there are a couple chip tune pages yes. One chiptune page that facebook generated from searches, that people dont update, and two chip tune/step pages that havent been updated since 2011.

TalkPolite wrote:

I got into the music and instantly wanted to create a community based off the awesome sounds that I was exposed to.

These are probably connected. A lot of people get into chip, get really excited about it, and then stop. You'll probably be bored of all this by 2014. There's a weird thing that the internet, and especially social media, has done to people, it makes them think that just enjoying something isn't good enough, and that they need to contribute, create, and be known for contributing and creating, regardless of their experience with it. You found out about chip a week ago on newgrounds, that's fine, but you don't need to appoint yourself to any sort of position other than someone who listens to an incredibly small amount of chip.

TalkPolite wrote:

And the pokeball avatar dances - thats why i picked it big_smile

That doesn't make it better, or okay.

Offline
Spokane WA/ Simi Valley CA

But thats my reason for using it? Seriously its an avatar, and the only one that fit the obnoxiously small requirements at that.

All the recent posts have been constructive, and now your just taking cheap shots at me. If you could join the constructive crowd, that'd be appreciated. Otherwise I think your point has been made, and you dont have to stay. I realize that alot of people get into something and then forget about it a little while later. Good thing im not a lot of people.

*Borrowing your description for now n00b. It works, until I find a better one!

Last edited by TalkPolite (May 3, 2013 10:00 pm)

Offline
California
TalkPolite wrote:

And there are a couple chip tune pages yes. One chiptune page that facebook generated from searches, that people dont update, and two chip tune/step pages that havent been updated since 2011.

I don't think anyone's mentioned it yet, but the Chiptunes = Win page and group is pretty big and bustling. It's actually probably the biggest chiptune community on Facebook right now, so you could also try connecting with them if you wanna grow the community.

Last edited by VCMG (May 3, 2013 10:03 pm)

Offline
Chicago IL

Just because you don't want to hear them doesn't mean my points (other than the avatar) are cheap shots.

Conversely, if you don't like reading posts that aren't unconditionally supportive, you don't have to stay either.

Offline
Spokane WA/ Simi Valley CA

Just found them actually! Ive been listening to that 51 track album throughout the day, which has been quite good. Im going to try and get in contact with them, thanks.

Yeah Saskrotch..but while you've been doing nothing but discourage me others have provided insights and helpful tips. If you dont want to help me grow the community (but would rather not even try because ill get bored in a year) then leave this thread. In a year you can laugh at me, if your right.

If

Last edited by TalkPolite (May 3, 2013 10:11 pm)

Offline
washington
n00bstar wrote:

For some of my friends.. I can say "chipmusic" and they know instantly what I'm talking about. For others.. I have to call it "my nintendo music" otherwise they don't get it.

i've lost hope for explaining my chip shit other people, so i just say that i'm a dj and then they don't talk to me anymore,which is nice.

Offline
San Diego, CA
Saskrotch wrote:

There's a weird thing that the internet, and especially social media, has done to people, it makes them think that just enjoying something isn't good enough, and that they need to contribute, create, and be known for contributing and creating, regardless of their experience with it. You found out about chip a week ago on newgrounds, that's fine, but you don't need to appoint yourself to any sort of position other than someone who listens to an incredibly small amount of chip.

for some reason chiptune is the one genre of music that has the highest community-member/listener ratio I've ever experienced. you can just like things.

not that I want to shut down this guy's enthusiasm for it. it's cool that you're trying, TalkPolite. you just need to realize that when people say things that criticize your work, it's because most of the people on this site care about chiptune just as much, if not way more, than you do. we criticize things because we want them to get better, that's all

Offline
Spokane WA/ Simi Valley CA

Then look at it this way: If I fail, then my page goes unliked and I continue on with my day to day life. But if its successful, more artists are able to bring their music to a wider audience and everybody benefits. Im glad that this page is helping me spread the right image of the genre though.

Offline
.FILTHadelphia

If you REALLY want to help chip artists with promotion you could BOOK SHOWS. Chip music has enough of an internet presence already one more Facebook page or YouTube channel isn't going to tip the scales in chip popularity.

Regardless I wish you luck and I liked your page.

Offline
Montreal, Canada

I would argue that you're much better off posting chiptunes on your own facebook page where you'll be spreading the stuff to people who might be more inclined to check it out since it comes from someone they know, rather than to try and spread the word by creating something entirely new that people don't know about and that you'll have to promote the shit out of until it gets 10% of the audience of the other ten million similar pages and websites.

Offline
Brunswick, GA USA
defiantsystems wrote:

If you REALLY want to help chip artists with promotion you could BOOK SHOWS.

Very much this. Isn't the most common complaint besides "noobs are ruining everything" that "there's never anything happening near me?"

Offline
IL, US
TalkPolite wrote:

Then look at it this way: If I fail, then my page goes unliked and I continue on with my day to day life. But if its successful, more artists are able to bring their music to a wider audience and everybody benefits. Im glad that this page is helping me spread the right image of the genre though.

though some of us may worry that you may reinforce the stereotypes of what chipmusic is (EDM, of by and for nerds, largely remixes)... there are people on this site like myself, saskrotch, most of the staff, etc. who have been doing chip stuff for 10+ years and its a shame when we get marginalized and told we aren't chip enough by people who just got into it (which has happened to me many many times).. worst case scenario is that you site gets super popular and only further distorts public misconceptions of what is and isn't chipmusic.. which is why people got upset by the remix, vgm, etc references...

Offline
NC in the US of America

Sometimes we say things to individuals, but we're really saying it to the world at large.

It sounds to me that Saskrotch is just giving a bit of warning, "be careful because these are the trends and this is what usually happens," and just generally making interesting observations on modern society and internet sub-culture. I

its a shame when we get marginalized and told we aren't chip enough by people who just got into it

Haha. When I first heard "8Bit Christmas" I told my brother it probably wasn't real chiptune/8bit/80's-game-console-music because it had too many sounds at once. ::) *smh*

This is a good read right here - http://journal.transformativeworks.org/ … view/96/94
It's amazing what you find when browsing the reference material for an article.

Offline
UK, Leicester
n00bstar wrote:

Deep musical insight

that was good.

n00bstar wrote:

I find myself constantly changing the way I refer to chipmusic or try to explain it depending on my audience. For some of my friends.. I can say "chipmusic" and they know instantly what I'm talking about. For others.. I have to call it "my nintendo music" otherwise they don't get it.

Friends - "Chipmusic? That's the one with old games consoles and shit right?"
Me - "Yeah, but there's more to it than that"
Friends - "Yeah, I get that you don't have the same limitations, full potential of the console and all that"
They just lump tracker stuff in as chip, so I don't really have to explain it any more than that, or explain what trackers are, and why they are chiptune.

TalkPolite wrote:

All the recent posts have been constructive, and now your just taking cheap shots at me. If you could join the constructive crowd, that'd be appreciated. Otherwise I think your point has been made, and you dont have to stay. I realize that alot of people get into something and then forget about it a little while later. Good thing im not a lot of people.

He's being a dick because he cares, be cruel to be kind and all that shit, even though what he said wasn't that bad, and you seem to be overeacting.

basspuddle wrote:
n00bstar wrote:

For some of my friends.. I can say "chipmusic" and they know instantly what I'm talking about. For others.. I have to call it "my nintendo music" otherwise they don't get it.

i've lost hope for explaining my chip shit other people, so i just say that i'm a dj and then they don't talk to me anymore,which is nice.

/thread, post of the year

SketchMan3 wrote:

Haha. When I first heard "8Bit Christmas" I told my brother it probably wasn't real chiptune/8bit/80's-game-console-music because it had too many sounds at once. ::) *smh*

When I started hearing stuff on milky, or any tracker stuff, I refused to call it chip, as I was strongly under the belief that "It has to run on hardware" and that it could only have the same capacity of whatever console it was running on, I'm pretty sure I even got in an argument with e.s.c. in some thread about it. This notion was formed due to me being misinformed. Back when I was on 8bc, anytime there was anything that wasn't from a gameboy or nes, it was filled with comments about how it wasn't "True chiptune" and it wasn't until I came here that I realized how wrong I was.

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As a fan of anything chip____ for the past 8 years i'd like to think that many of us, spread out and different as we all are all have the exact same opinion on things like this. There are these kind of feelings that only exist when you really figure out the genre. The sensations that occur when you listen to chip noise all operate on such an incredibly huge bizarre spectrum that the only way to really understand and appreciate it all is by spending a lot of  time getting to know it. We exist in the shadows and for some newbie to just hop on in here and make a Facebook page to shine some light on us is a bit insulting. We've been here a long time and will continue to live on once your explosive fascination with us extinguishes. Once you understand, you will understand.