The origin of the terms chipmusic/chiptune

[BuZz]

hello. this is *-*** telling you to piss off and do your own samples because i am fucking sick of all these lamers ripping my chip-instruments. for all your notice: i created the idea of chipmusic using soundtracker. so why dont you credit me once you guys

Although not the origins of the term perhaps, one talented musician certainly though he was the first to do chip sounds in soundtracker. Although I'm not sure such a claim could ever be verified.

*plug* lots of stuff to be read using the instruments search at http://www.modland.com

@BuZz: thanks, i never noticed that search function, great stuff! i think most of us claimed too much back in the days, and i dont think that *-*** feels like this. afaik, duz and turtle did it around the same time.

here's another inventor of chipmusic: [ Show youtube player ]

[Skope]

The first time I heard chip-music that wasn't made in any synthetic tracker but in a "normal" tracker (sound-, noise, protracker) was 4-Mat's tune in that Skid Row crack intro (the name of the mod escapes me). I wanna recall that he called this type of music 'MTS'-music, short for 'Multi Tone System' or something, whatever that means.

When I tried to rip it I was actually pretty amazed to find out that it was a noisetracker mod.

The chip-music term came much later, and as for synthetic mods we just called them "synthmoduler" (swedish for synth mods). I think we used the term 'chip-mods' to describe mods that were chipmem-friendly, but that was probably just our local definition. (:

[Photon]

Originally Posted by goto80

@photon: if a definition of chipmusic does not include protracker chip modules, i am a bit sceptical. apart from the difficulty of defining it in terms of hardware/software, chipmusic has expanded during the past decade to become a pop phenomenon, where technology/history is often irrelevant. ie, it's a socially constructed genre like any other. perhaps it always was.

Yeah, popular names for things, especially names of musical genres are often (mis)labeled or (mis)used by people that go by other things than definitions. For example, a studio producer would go "Are you crazy? This is not 'disco'. this is not 'eurodisco'. this is house!" because he is more experienced and hear the telltale signatures. Or old people calling all pop music since 1995 'techno'

In normal music it's quite a bit more fuzzy than in the scene, though.

I'm having a hard time conceding that a PT module is a chip tune because it has very short looped samples. It could be just a size-optimized regular module. At which point does it become a chiptune, or even a chip module? The protracker playroutine is not a chiptune player, like the SIDmon etc players, nor is it a module player "that can also play chiptunes". It has zero extra or special code in it to facilitate waveforms, noise, envelopes, filtering, and other features of sound-chips.

The alternative way to making sense of it is to make chiptunes a full-blown, regular genre, of course. But then you must go only by the sound of it and not by any technical features in it. And then if someone makes a track with SIDmon that doesn't "sound like a C-64 song/chiptune" but just uses SIDmon to get that lovely lead guitar sound and the rest is great drum and string samples for a kickass metal song (for example) - is NOT a chiptune Which seems weird.

Galway, Rob Hubbard et al made classical, pop, rock, synth etc genre songs as best they could using the SID chip - still at least I would call every single one of them a chiptune. Nah, I'm still supportive of the definition that there must be code in the editor/player to support the creation and playback of instrument 'envelopes', ie. either code to program a real chip or code to emulate what such a chip can do.

There's a third way - to go by the composer's intent. If he set out to emulate a sound of a chiptune using whatever features the music editor supports, it's a chiptune. If he knows enough to put in the cues the audience expect from the chiptune genre, otherwise it's something else...

Making definitions that hold up under scrutiny is hard Usually it depends on how big an a$$hole the scrutinizer wants to be


You could relax and make it easy and say, "I know a chiptune when I hear one", but that's not a definition


For discussion (if you like): When does a chiptune stop being a chiptune?
Size? (Is a 2 MB tune that sounds like a chiptune a chiptune? 90KB?)
Adding a sampled instrument or effect? (Is f.ex. an .mp3 made in Reason with synth sounds sampled from a C-64 or Roland synth a chiptune, if it sounds like one?)
Adding vocals? (Ie. chiptune in protracker with sampled rap phrases, is that a chiptune?)

[Photon]

Hm, a lot of typing for no good reason. The part about using terms before knowing enough to explain what you mean when you use them giving rise to confusion still applies, though.

To get back on your topic, I never used the words 'chiptune' or 'chip music' or such back in the day, I first heard it after I got back to the scene in 2005 or so, I guess. Doesn't narrow it down much for you, I know... hehe.

Maybe it came with all those BBStros in 92/93, made to be small files for sharing over slow modems? Maybe check some of those and read credits/scrolltexts ("chiptune by so-and-so...")

Hm, I may be wrong. It was invented by the group Magnetic Fields? One prod in 1992 could maybe be related, rest is from 1993 onwards.

Maybe the term was used early in the UK (or just by MF ) and it took 2-3 years before the term was widespread?

[Skope]

Whatever the definition is I don't agree with people using VSTi's and releasing mp3's calling them 'chiptunes'. Size efficient music (anything over 10k is pushing it) that's played in realtime on the HW intended is a chiptune, to me anyway. That whole bit-pop scene is something I quite never really understood.

[CMDR]

chipmusic: substance not style.

[TGM]

Sorry to bring up an old thread... But talking of Chiptunes... http://www.chromeexperiments.com/det...iptunecom-gui/

[r0ber7]

Might be interesting.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12774683