CHIPTUNE HOT TAKES!!! ! :: BotB Academy

191961

HELLO AND WELCOME TO THE
CHIPTUNE HOT TAKES
THREAD!!!!!

POST YOUR UNPOPULAR CHIPTUNE OPINIONS
WITHOUT JUDGMENT
don't be actually mean though this should all be in good fun
nobody wants a flame war

i'll go first: i actually really don't like the "classic" 1-tick chiptune arp sound. arps in general can be great if spaced out more but i find that the 1-tick version (which is even the default of basically any arpeggio effect command, and lots of trackers don't let you change it) only ever has one type of sound because it's so fast and i do not care for it

191962

more channels don't make a track better per se.

also FM is overrated.

nothing beats a few channels of simple waveforms + noise

191963

dami you stole my take so now im judging you and starting a flame war

my hot take, then, is that at least for like famicom and nes, MML allows assignment of speed per track and therefore trackers should do the same thing

also patterns of different lengths should be able to play simultaneously to help people break out of the barline

191964

SN7 is good

191965

openmpt default keybinds suck ass

191966

NES 2A03 Triangle is mid for bass

Can barely hear the shit half the time, gets overpowered when anything that isn't triangle is playing)

(unless you have insane mixing skills)

191968

why chiptunes without arp effect are so rare here?... :'(

191970

furnace is not living up to its potential yet
n.b. this is a chiptune hot take as per the thread title, it lives up to other use cases

191971

Oh, I also agree with the arp speed. Arps above 30Hz start to make the frequency of the arp itself (generally 60Hz) more audible than the notes in it.

Well, I hope not to turn this into a rant post ^^ .

- While tri snares require combining tri+noise, tri kicks sound good by themselves. They get muddy when combining them with low freq noise.

- S5B is overrated.

- DPCM is becoming somewhat satanized. I love my DPCM abuse in NSF.

- I still can't enjoy most of microtonality (well, not so much of a chiptune hot take exclusively).

191974

SCC is underrated

Furnace Tracker still lacks lots of features (some are actually planned to be included soon, like .mid import, missing chips supported from .vgm format (like Yamaha YMF278 (OPL4)), easier interoperation with other trackers (import/export), allowing chords from midi controllers, microtonality (not impossible to be included, but i think the source will need to be deeply recoded, replacing lookup tables with formulas for the frequencies/notes), etc, )

191975

I just wanna know where the Nintendo DS format at???

I guess my hot take is that sample chiptune is still chiptune and should be respected despite its lack of limits

191976

Because all playback is digital, all music is chiptune

191978

i'd like to never hear NES music again

191988

OPL3 sucks, Furnace has the crappiest excuse for a DPCM sampler I’ve ever seen, the SID is annoying, DN-Famitracker is a buggy mess to the point where I wanna downgrade to j0CC, and OPN is better than OPM.

There also are no good Gameboy trackers out there (unless you count Furnace technically being able to export to VGM which you can convert somehow). I absolutely loathe HugeTracker (unfortunately it’s basically the only real way to make music for GBStudio. Unless you want to convert… Amiga MOD? What??).

Bet I just made 30 people unsubscribe and lost all my friends.

(Oh, and I agree with Hexer on the OpenMPT keybinds thing!)

191989

ty jangler

191991

true there are no good gameboy trackers out there because lsdj is Great

191994

We need more experimental chiptune!!

(I know there's already a wealth of that on botb but we need more! so much more!!)

191997

devs shld stop putting obscure ass effects into trackers. look what it did to dami (points at 1.5 gb worth of glitched data, swept into a neat pile in the centre of the room)

oh if midi is techniclly chip according to this site, it just doesnt sit right with me. like imagine loading up a bunch of midi files to play in the car, and ur passenger asking u "hey what u listening to" in the middle of this smooth textured funky track and saying "yea its chiptune"

ok more lightly tho, tempo variations gives a piece a more organic feeling and should be used more in chip music

191999

Because of LSDJ, I want the possibility to control all the music tools I use with a gamepad.

Also, fakebit: its still realbit to me darn it!

192000

damn it mioh baited me into pressing haeit

192001

"sounding like video game music" (the sentiment, not the objective fact) automatically makes something chiptune. obviously you can make chiptune that doesn't sound like video game music, and 99% of video game music doesn't even sound like video game music, but as long as the suggestion is there...

anyway, that's why all electronic music made after 2010 (brostep, trap, hyperpop) is chiptune

192003

only 1 chan dpcm? still need more smh 🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️

192005

<token kilowatt koolaid post>

Not a chiptune hot take, but a community one:

More appreciation is due for the collective talent here... I have come across a lot of work in this community and other places chiptunes reside that in my opinion is easily as good/interesting/inspiring/meaningful as other music I have heard out in the wild. Good art in the real sense abounds and I remain grateful for it

192015

i like hugetracker idk ive warmed up to it, devs are real friendly too :>

potatoteto made a furnace to uge converter so you can work in furnace then convert your file so theyre usable in gbstudio

my hot take: i dont care much for the « wow it’s pushing the limitations of __ chip/console » aspect of chiptune. I tend to enjoy music that has other things to say asides from technical details. I recognize it still has its place tho, and pushing boundaries does open up the door for more ways of self expression later down the line

192016

VRC6, (maybe VRC7?,) N163 and S5B are stupidly overrated (mainly N163, yall be abusing the poor shit, let it live in peace!)

MMC5 is actually underrated.
Yes, VRC6 has more channels and better duty cycles.
Yes, N163 allows you to add unique waveforms to your song.
Yes, S5B has envelope.

But while MMC5 simply offers a couple extra pulse channels, any extra channels is good, and they can free up your pulse channels (meaning free chords)

The NES is undeniably "worse" than the SNES, yet people still use it.

MMC5 doesn't offer much, but what it offers, it offers quite nicely.

(Oh and uhhh
FDS modulation is busted)

...
~~(RIP EPSM fans)~~

192017

vanilla famitracker is better than all of the forks

192018

Battle of the Bits should be called Combat of the Chips

192019

1tick arps are good

also "chiptune" literally means "fakebit"

192020

the best chiptune is chiptune that takes and synthesizes some sort of outside influence or style and brings it to life in these restrictions

192021

it's cute when people call chiptune "8bit music" even if it's not actually 8bit music

192024

@Prestune: Championship of the Chips

192025

@agargara We need more experimental chiptune battles!!

192044

MIDI fucking sucks and people do crazy and unintended shit in MIDI in order to make an excuse. the only real usage for MIDI are these shitty unison audio pro level chord progressions... trackers do it better

impulse tracker is bloated, XM does everything already, no need for NNAs because they're counterintuitive (you cannot stop unwanted note trails effectively without ruining the purpose of NNAs). the only thing impulse does better is the compression (basically nonexistent in XM) and the usage of 1 sample for multiple instruments. there's no need for stereo sample support because even in IT, it's more effective to split it into 2 samples. channel volumes are interesting but not really needed. edit history is so stupid and not needed at all. the UI is ugly, st3 does it better.

192047

Recordings from emulation are fakebit

Editing on a modern pc and exporting or syncing is… borderline

192064

gxscc was made for fakebit and only 3 botbrs used it here... (from the tagged fakebit entries, only me, Snabisch and Bravoman - https://battleofthebits.com/arena/Tag/gxscc/gxscc )

192068

Wait, there’s a furnace to uge conversion tool??

192082

@retrokid104 @robotmeadows https://github.com/potatoTeto/fur2uge

192086

yeah its not 100% accurate but it should do most of the heavy lifting

192090

gxscc is good

192094

hey viraxor what is your street address and full legal name I would like to send you a gift

192101

fakebit and chiptune are not at odds. the distinction is technical, not musical, and i don't think it's cheating/stolen valor/nostalgiacore to use chiptune elements in a modern context. ok maybe it is nostalgiacore

192113

Here is a big post that I did not expect to write so much of.

My big grievance to chiptune, while I love it so much...

I don't really like how chiptune is so centered around the most "easy" or well known software. I feel like the true essence of chiptune doesn't really come from any sort of main idea, it's a SUPER broad spectrum and I think people should be more educated on the more complex ideas that chiptune has as a genre.

Also

My biggest chiptune pet peeve of them all...

WHEN PEOPLE ASK WHAT SOUNDFONT THEY USED ON A CHIPTUNE TRACK OR WHEN THEY GO "HEY IS THAT THE ____ SOUNDFONT" ON AN SNES TRACK. EDUCATE YOURSELVES!!!! (granted, I used to think chiptune was a bunch of soundfonts when I was younger, so I guess it's kind of easy to fall for that idea

Yeah, just kind of frustrating that there isn't a agreed common standard on what exactly chiptune is, It would be nice to have every tool for chiptune at our disposal, but sadly there are quirks and cracks in the mold of everything we seem to create. It's almost beautiful in the sense that chiptune really exemplifies the subjectivity of art.

Chiptune is basically what you make it, and working with limitations and unorthodox digital ways of making music is fun, so at the end of the day, I think it's really nothing to tear each other apart for. We should just enjoy the fun and unique sounds the super broad and vast world of chiptune has to offer. Like any other form of art :)

192114

there are better ways to talk about making good use of some tool/function/mechanic than using the word 'abuse', which has obvious negative connotations outside of this context. it's never quite sat well with me. gamers do this too when referring to taking advantage of some game mechanic. but i hear it a lot in chiptune when somebody does something cool with a specific channel or ability of the chip or whatever.

192119

Please stop making your "boss battle themes" 160+ bpm with loud drums and giant orchestral sounds, it's just obnoxious and overstimulating.

The Undertale soundtrack is just _good. Why are we acting like because it's made by only one guy that it's the greatest game OST of all time? As if that's never been done before? Megalovania is like the "Let It Go (Frozen)" of video game tunes, just catastrophically overplayed and boring. I appreciate a lot of the tunes in that soundtrack but somehow the worst ones find their way to hog the attention.

I do also find FM to be overrated in the sense that so many artists just distort Sega Genesis style soundfonts to be extra loud and jarring, it's just so ear-piercingly loud all the time, it's not an aesthetic.

192155

viraxor, thank you for reminding me that people can have hot takes that are so disagreeable that i physically cannot fathom how they hold those opinions, compelling me to write an entire paragraph detailing exactly how and why i disagree with them only to realize there isn't a universe in which i change their mind anyway

no hard feelings tho, it's just silly music tools

192156

@Luigi64

Jeffrey Lim
9 Wilgena Avenue
Myrtle Bank
South Australia 5064

(note that this is in the text files shipped with IT)

192158

we shld start willing doxxing ourselves in tracker modules in hopes of getting job offers via mail again, i think that wld be funny

192159

I wholeheartedly agree, the Undertale soundtrack is… fine? I mean yeah it’s not the greatest. Eschatos surpasses it for me, and it’s only like 15 tracks.

192162

I feel like the only reason people don't like megalovania is they've heard it 1000 times but it's actually a good song

Though I agree that it's not super amazing as an OST, I think it's mainly the emotional attachment that makes it so highly regarded

Even Deltarune has better music so far I'd say

192166

The Undertale soundtrack is a masterclass of leitmotifs. Almost every piece is connected to other pieces; some are modified beyond recognizability (how long did it take you to realize that Dogsong is just the default battle theme in major key?). The soundtrack works together as a single organism. It's the skeleton on which the game world is built, in a similar fashion to how Tolkien's Legendarium is built around his languages. I know of few game soundtracks that even attempt anything like this.

I dislike Megalovania because it sticks out like a sore thumb. Like a temp track that was left in. Even its name is a reference to the Homestuck character for which it was written originally.

192167

Song That Might Play When You Fight Sans++
MEGALOVANIA--

192169

Ahem
OPZ > OPL

192175

ok hot takes thread activating EVIL BLOWER MODE

@max yes its a good soundtrack but that's just too much. if you like leitmotifs so much go watch an opera

@nard not getting distracted during the boss fight is part of the challenge. I saw someone on #maj7 say this so it's probably true

@robotmeadows Re:pushing the limitations - totally agree. But alas, I have been poisoned by this line of thinking and will never recover.

@gotoandplay Re:"furnace isn't living up to its potential" it likely never will because the scope is too large

@everyone Re:fakebit - It's chiptune when I do it, it's fakebit when you do it

Everyone here needs to start uploading compilations of their music if they haven't. I like listening to my local files but I don't like downloading them one by one off your soundcloud.

If you're not using the amen break extremely creatively - do not use it at all. Find something else, I guarantee it will make your music more interesting.

I know it's pointless getting mad about niche genre names but if I hear one more person call your nostalgic 2020s DNB breakcore I will kill you <- Except I won't do that because I Love Everyone!

192176

"It's chiptune when I do it, it's fakebit when you do it" is the realest shit of all time

192181

I chipped my tooth and now it whistles.

192182

I always treat amen break appearances as kinda-shitposty jokes. so if your song uses amen break, I treat it as a non-serious track.
same goes for tracks that use the lick.

this doesn't mean joke music is bad, but it's a different vibe

192217

the presence of made-up fantasy chips in furnace is extremely silly

i obviously understand the appeal of Making Up A Guy - it's fun to kick back and theorycraft your own ideal sound chip or whatever. but it is absolutely bizarre to have them listed and available in a tool built for replicating/emulating real actual sound chips

addendum: if you actually designed and built your fantasy chip as a physical object though that is sick as hell, although i would still find it strange to appear in furnace with all these old mass marketed products

addendum 2: honestly i think it's similarly silly to have the single-channel "generic DAC" sampler in furnace when you have plenty of options for actual sampler chips, some of which are quite robust and capable

192220

i hate how fairchild channel f sounds. beep bop. it sounds stupid get outta here

192233

This thread pretty much became a Megalovania hate thread.
I think that it's an alright song on it's own and maybe we might be overhating it.... but at the same time there's already a way better indie game metal song since 2008.

Anyway for chiptune takes and etc.... i might say something controversial: i feel like the digital fusion community might sometimes have a bit too much saying and influence over what's popular in adjacent communities... like this very website.

It's probably my very own biases again, but sometimes I feel like there are some songs that deserved to do better than the funny chiptune or digifu anthem we suddenly have decided that it should win.
I mean these anthems still are really good songies, but a part of me wants to see more underrepresented styles in this place take the spotlight rather than something that won because it sounded like Nintendo-core music which is what people are familiar and comfy with.

192239

there's nothing about chiptune specifically that makes it more interesting to me than other styles of music

and FM is underrated

192241

SMS/GG is the best sounding 8-bit chip

192243

@BubblegumOctopus ColecoVision as well! ;p

192248

i think the idea of fakebit as a unique distinction from "true" chiptune is silly, like that feels on the same level as claiming someone using a daw and plugins instead of recording a live band is "fakeinstrument" like no the facsimile and actual one are functionally undistinct outside of edge cases at this point. also the tia is the best chip sound and i stand by that fact

192249

I don't know if the result is distinguishable, but the process of making fakebit is different. Without hard limitations I feel like my work naturally shifts in a different direction.

192252

my hot take is that Famitracker is dead and people should put it out of its misery by adding an NSF exporter to Furnace

192254

@damifortune: the "Generic DAC" is really dumb, you also can't set multiple channels of it, meaning each channel of Generic DAC you want MUST be added separately.

And hot take: Furnace's UI is clunky as hell. I've never really enjoyed UI that's modular. I'd rather spend a couple minutes learning the UI than have to spend hours setting it up the way I think I want it. It has grown on me recently but that's really not my main issue with the UI: it's that there are usually too many panels of info in furnace. Some things should have really been condensed into one panel without tabbing, like Song Info and Edit Controls and Play Controls, or allowed you to dock them next to each other without a border

Another thing I don't like about furnace is people seem to put it on a pedestal when it should not be viewed as a replacement for dedicated trackers. You should have options, especially given not everyone will jive with furnace even with the hardware export being added.

EDIT: more thoughts

192256

agree about the furnace UI -- it makes the end user solve problems that should have been solved by the designer. flexibility is overrated. plus some of the panes are unusable or unreadable anyway unless you made them at least a certain size, so why let them come up in a little side panel?

i'd be curious to hear from someone who likes the furnace UI though

192257

i do actually really like the furnace UI and appreciate its modularityness. i think the things i prioritize are not necessarily the same as others so i like that i can give space where i want it. one thing that especially suits me is that it means a dual-monitor layout becomes really powerful, as in the program being dragged all (or most of) the way across both screens. i can maximize my number of visible channels while perfectly placing all the other info where i want it up top and keep a side pane for all the editors + fx list. if i resize significantly, sure i might have to do a little size reconfiguring, but it does not bother me, and i do not do that often anyway

granted, you are right that some of the panes require particular minimum widths or heights to really serve their purpose. and there's an extent to which just having a few relocation options, like with famitracker, solves most preferences well enough - i love my famitracker layout. but i ultimately enjoy the ability to make the layout Mine, you know?

192261

i do not like the default furnace interface settings, they look too much like deflemask which i do not like even if i get that it was originally designed to make the transition from that program to furnace easier.
so that means i fucking love how customizable furnace's interface is, i love how you can change the colors, layout and even some ways the program behaves. i adore my furnace layout and color scheme :3

192283

a perfect example of the "should have been solved by the designer" thing is when I had to spend like 15 minutes changing the note input keys to the chromatic-style openmpt binds because you have to add each note separately from a dropdown that's sorted alphabetically. Yes that technically allows you to have any note binds you want but realistically who is taking advantage of this feature? and if they find it so useful why does it suck so much to use?

While I'm still taking shots at furnace I'll say I'm not sure why the hexadecimal effect names are necessary (E1xy, ECxx etc.) There's probably some good reason somewhere why they aren't just adapted from the alphanumeric XM or IT ones.

I will say I underestimated furnace and I've gotten used to it a bit now that I've tracked more with it (and spent an hour and a half in the settings menu). It's 2-op controls are way better than famitracker's with all of the modulation and macros and such (I mean, obviously). I still prefer the way famitracker handles dpcm though, even if the sample map is buggy.

192286

it hurts my brain that mod64k awards different classist points to every other tinymod format. put that thing in chipist where it belongs!!!

192290

the snes fucking sucks LMAO

192291

@roz tbh just make 4/8/12/16k chipist and 24/32/48/64k mixist. a nice even split. the smaller ones are more about restrictions anyway

192292

@ord we duel at high noon

192294

what annoys me the most about furnace, is that you cant easily move around some windows without thinking much, because they will always get attached to any random containers.
and then I need to figure out where they went and how to unattach again.
it's annoying.

unless there's a feature to deactivate that altogether???

192295

okay I'm feeling extra SPICY right now so here we go...

HOT TAKE 1: I genuinely love the Furnace default UI!! The flexible customization options are just a plus on top of that.

HOT TAKE 2: there are too many tinymod formats. They should be squashed down, maybe to 4/8/24/48. anything else should just be normal s3xmodit

HOT TAKE 3: Generic DAC in Furnace is Good and Cool.

HOT TAKE 4: Amen break is always good. It's never bad, it never gets old, everyone should keep using it all the time.

HOT TAKE 5: 25% Pulse is the Best waveform. It has the perfect balance of harmonics (skip every 4th harmonic).

HOT TAKE 6: Every famous chiptune composer is overrated. All of them.

drops mic

192298

i was kind of dreading reading the rest of this thread but it turned out ok ish

one more take; some great songs have been made for the zx beeper ( see this for instance
) but they should be much much much better, given that there are some otherworldly sound design possibilities available in the likes of 1tracker and the earlier version of bintracker. i havent maximalised it and i kind of thought that by now someone else would have done

192299

trackers should let me move chip channels to the sides so i can organize them. it's pain using
2A30 + 2A30;
2A30 + MMC5;
or 2A30 + VRC6, etc.
...and not clumping up the pulse channels, instead having the triangle and noise channels split them, like

bad!!
P1 | P2 | *TRI* | *NOI* | P3 | P4

good!!
P1 | P2 | P3 | P4 | TRI | NOI

it seems like such a simple feature to add

192312

hexer coming in with the actual goated take

192313

amiga chiptunes are fakebit

192314

I mean furnace lets you, but so far it’s the only one I can think of. Agree with this one ^^

192316

yeahhh another thing i love about openMPT is it lets you move channels! which i take advantage of all the time. oh i need an echo channel here? just sliiide one over

192317

furnace lets you do that!??!

192328

dang Hexer is cruising with this 2a30 access

i'm so left behind in crummy 2a03 land :sobglasses:

192337

openmpt's ui is actually good and it usually becomes trash when people customize it. it's easy to learn for beginners because everything is easy to find, the samples, the instruments, the patterns, everything is navigated easily with a mouse. no stupid keyboard shortcuts (alt+f4 lol) like in other trackers.

renoise is unstable and clunky as hell, not only that but all music made in it sounds like it was made in some opensource DAW, even though it's paid, the demo songs are atrocious... also it looks way too ugly. the only thing that is good in renoise are the samples given with it, I've saved all of them on my hard drive. these are great

interpolation is stupid, unless you make chip music there is no difference between sinc and no interp, and even in most chip tracks there's no difference. but people like to be annoying "ooohh why are you *oink* not playing it *oink* with no interpolation!!" I didn't because it's the same and I'm also too lazy to change the settings and restart the tune because of your sensitive ears and elitism...

192340

openMPT? GOOD UI?!
that thing burns my eyes (please i just want darkkk modeeee, or just proper customization. even deflemask and Impulse got that part right.)

also...why tf does using Ctrl+A not select everything?!?! WHY IS IT CTRL+L GODDAMIT?!?!
(ik Ctrl+A is for increasing notes by a semitone but jeez, can't openMPT try not to be quirky af and just decided to use...normal keybinds?? idc if it was inherited from Impulse or smth, just please I beg whyyyyyy are you different?!?!?!
so many of these keybinds hurt my feeble brain (and its not like all of them are mapped or anything, so you basically HAVE to remap this shit)!

192344

ok wait actually i have actual hater talk

all the s3xmodit and tinymod shit sucks it isnt fun all the tools are clunky and need 100+ keybinds and 50+ extended techniques to learn before you make anything that sounds good, just use a daw like a normal person no one gives a shit about you using 6 squillion channels in openmpt or impulsetracker. society has progressed past the need for impulsetracker. openmpt is ass btdubs

renoise is the actual goated format mostly due to the dsps and insane routing bullshit you can pull. for every 1 bad thing about renoise theres 2 more stupid things that make the format fun.

the nes fucking sucks i hope i never have to listen to an nsf ever again, no one ever bothers doing something cool or good with it they just try and make a rather shit anamanguchi b-side or channel the crack that flaminglog was smoking back in 2018.

192348

when is hottake getting a botb format

192349

I'd win every battle (I have more hot takes in stock, gotta put them here later)

@srb2er: I didn't know that ctrl+l was for select all, I just used my mouse for it lol
it's actually really funny that you can use only the mouse to make a song in mpt, it's very tedious and slow but you'll gonna have something at the end.
also I don't really get dark mode all that much, it's worser for your eyes actually. I just use light mode on everything except discord because discord looks crap with light mode on

192350

there is one specific famitracker piece people keep making over and over (as individual original pieces) and ive started actually physically recoiling when i hear it, because i know the intent was not to make that song again. they might not even be aware of all of the other times other people made it. you give someone who's somewhat proficient w/ famitracker a blank module with the VRC7 or 4+ channels of n163 available and they go to make something epic, there's an unfortunate chance it'll be this piece again.

if i hear that opening noise fade again i am going to cry. i have already cried on hearing it before, i will cry more. it is like famitracker users are haunted by this piece. I have probably made this piece before. as far as i know, this piece was probably originally written by jsr himself as a way of testing how epic the tracker can be.

browsing famitracker music from people i dont know personally on youtube is like a minefield. this piece lurks around the corner at all times. one wrong recommendation click, and i am listening to another user's rendition of this piece. it is like hell made specially for people like me, a weird slightly condescending prog metal musician who calls herself "composer", and a fretless bassist no less.

the pain of accidental generic music, knowing the person who made it is likely blissfully unaware... it is the circle of hell devoted to those who spend days of their time complaining that people online don't bitch about their music enough...

192355

@kinkinkijkin is this "anime openingcore" or are you talking about something else

192402

I've been growing more and more towards the opinion that trackers have modernized to the point that writing music with them has more in common with a DAW production than someone making music for games or demos in the 80's and 90's. This is not bad, but it makes me dislike when people talk about making chiptune as a "retro" thing and they're using Furnace. Software limitations are just as important to what defined the sound and composition process back then as the chip limitations themselves, if not more.

Moreover, the obsession with retro console accuracy and "pushing the soundchip to the limits" doesn't add any value to a song if you don't have the hardware to play it back, even less if the song can only be played only in the tracker emulation itself. Having a chip log in VGM that can in theory be played back in hardware (rarely on original hardware [and rarely without a cutback to the song unless you have it in mind]) becomes just a pat in the back compared to doing the same song in a DAW with VSTs.

I don't say this as "Furnace is bad", it's the opposite! My point is that there's a lot in chiptune as a cultural identity that has been carried over because of the novelty even though it doesn't apply anymore. The idea that a song could be classified as "fakebit" has pretty much been destroyed for me.

192410

no it's not animeopeningcore i think. it's like uhh.... actually it might be? i have no fucking idea it's just always identical, exact same fade-in on the noise channel, same length of intro, same approach to building up in the intro (sometimes down to exact wholesale sharing of rhythm, rather than almost-exact)

i don't wanna like, link one of these, cus that just serves to shame individual people for making it when i know full well ive probably made this song before.

192415

I think music made of all samples is trash.

192421

@B-Doh samples as in tracker samples or sampling as in hip-hop?

192457

kleeder: have u tried enabling "lock layout" in the settings submenu

192462

touhou music SUCK'S!!!!!!!!!!!!! :golden_finger:

192463

@School Toilet yeah, i never understood the hype behind touhou music.

@Viraxor trackers

192497

@B-Doh

HOW? Sample-based music (when properly executed) is so creative! Like, you don't even like Since I Left You (album by The Avalanches) or Daft Punk's "Face to Face"? Sample based music is the bomb!!!!!

192499

Congrats Dami on a 100 POST THREAD!

Keep the hot takes coming...

192500

i knew it i knew Opinions would be popular

192502

Oh, you wanna get a chiptune hot take, huh? You want a chiptune hot take? Okay, here's a goddamned chiptune hot take for you!

I'm seeing a lot of damn complaints about chiptune from people with ALLGEAR BADGES IN BRONZE OR ABOVE!

How's that for a fucking hot take, huh? HUH?!

_(lmfao)

192503

@School Toilet SO FUCKING TRUE.

People on the internet always talk about how 'amazing' Touhou music is, but I feel like most Touhou music is quite unremarkable (There are only a few songs that I like, admittedly). Touhou music is the embodiment of the term 'mid' for me.

No shade to ZUN, but it's just not my style.

192504

oh also, dear everyone that said they didn't want to hear NES anymore: who hurt you. did a famicom break into your house and started cooking hot dogs on the stove, then threw them at you when you called them out

192505

Oh crap, my aura is too heartsy! Time for an actual hot take to redeem myself and restore my classic tough guy image

-NES triangle is the best chip waveform, volume control aside, and can punch other chip waveforms in the face
-I love FM sounds but I have no idea how people can generally tell one FM chip from another just by listening, apart from differences between 2OP and 4OP patches. Perhaps my ear is just not discerning enough
-Above being said OPL3 will beat your favorite FM chip in an arm wrestle
_{come on pal I've got money riding on this}
I think I am partial to it because (a) nostalgia factor from the PC side of FM which is where I heard it the most, (b) tasty 4OP and waveforms, (c) the format on botb happens to use source modules which rules
-1 tick arp effects are good but only in moderation. They can be overdone easily
-The what-is-chiptune-and-what-isn't-chiptune debate doesn't matter at all beyond how you want to use your knowledge and what motivates you. Outside of these it's probably just hot air, the wider community ebbs and flows and shifts on its own regardless.
-A community that is already small and niche shouldn't have gatekeepers. I think we're generally pretty good at this in this neck of the woods
-People working on tools and platforms should get a raise, tools have a huge impact on making chiptunes more accessible and less archaic
-the "8-bit" term is inaccurate, yes, but this doesn't matter much. It enables regular people to find some chip music under a sort of umbrella term at least, and if they like what they hear they'll naturally delve into it more on their own and find good things.

192506

SN7 > AY-3-8910
SN7 > 2A03
SN7 > YM2151

Also
why is the SID, one of the best soundchips... have so few and complicated trackers?!?!?!?

192507

@SRB2er try this workflow (and forget about everything else! xD ): furnace -> .dmf -> crappymask -> .sid ;)

192537

bloop !

(translation: the more fucked up you make your midi the better it is)

192551

If your take gets 7 or more liēks, it's not hot enough for this thread.

192554

giving lasertooth a haeit instead of liek because they're right

192571

@kilowatt > -I love FM sounds but I have no idea how people can generally tell one FM chip from another just by listening, apart from differences between 2OP and 4OP patches. Perhaps my ear is just not discerning enough

This is especially exacerbated because basically all period FM is Yamaha and the designs are fairly similar, but I find Megadrive/Genesis has a more cronchy, dirty sound in general. It's also marked by a bug in the DAC that produces a sort of scratchy(?) distortion as a node fades out, which is pretty distinctive, along with the PSG square waves.

@SRB2er >why is the SID, one of the best soundchips... have so few and complicated trackers?!?!?!?

The default instrument settings for GOATtracker are just *pathologically* bad... I can operate famitracker drunk. Goat doesn't have a chance on that front.

192574

OPNA is overrated and sampled drums sound like butt.

192629

how can one statement be so right, yet feel so wrong to read?

192631

my hot take:

it is a shame to distribute chiptunes as flattened MP3 audio, throwing out the beautiful, compact, structured music data.*

the portable structured music formats are the defining factor of chiptune for me, personally. that's kinda why MIDI belongs. parsimony is also a factor.

*and source files should always be linked on youtube/bandcamp/soundcloud 🙏

192637

On the subject of SID/GoatTracker: it's a good tracker in the sense that you can do a lot with it...if you know how to use it. The main issue with it is that it's very coder-centric, especially with how instruments are directly table driven rather than like in most other trackers where you at least have some sort of instrument macro/sequence system. Under the hood, I imagine it all gets compiled down into tables/sequences, but GoatTracker makes you operate at the lower level table abstraction.

To bring this into hotter take territory: trackers still feel like a product of their coder/demoscene roots, which is sort of at ends with trying to pick these things up especially as more and more people seem to be getting into chiptune today. For example, every tracker inexplicably requires the user to understand hexadecimal. Every tracker uses hex for effect commands. OpenMPT shows some things in decimal (instrument/sample numbers, volume effects, pattern numbers, optionally row numbers), but still has effects in hex. Not saying that trackers should have to support decimal input, but it does seem like an oddity. This is also neither a criticism nor excuse for trackers being less "user-friendly" (for whatever bar you want to set for that) but more of a rationalization of the current state of their design.

Furnace, the hot new tracker in town these days, has done wonders both on being more easily accessible to newcomers and for expanding tracking capabilities to more systems and chips. But throwing a bunch of UI widgets at the user and letting them design the tracker UI, while welcome, is a band-aid for actual UX/UI design, which to be fair is still a largely unsolved problem for OSS development. Biggest of all, of all the trackers, the lack of proper hardware target exports makes me sad. I know it's planned for v0.7 or whatever future version, but it honestly sounds so far out just because the whole scope of "support platform exports" is massive, especially if taking all the systems and chips it supports into account.

The more I think about it, the more this basically sounds like trackers are a bunch of big leaky abstraction problems
.

192640

Speaking of SID and hardware exports: It's better for a tracker to have no export at all than to have one that doesn't do the hardware justice (like Deflesid, which I will slander at every available opportunity).

On the topic of hex input: One reason why I think it's survived is that most chips have parameters that are powers of 2. If you want to enter an effect whose range is [1-255] in decimal, you need three digits instead of two. I guess you could say that exposing the true values of the chip is the leaky abstraction, but I like having granular control like that.

Off-topic, if people can't get into GoatTracker, I would encourage them to check out SIDWizard
. The instrument macros are a little less arcane and the PDF manual (which stopped being included in the download after 1.6
for some reason) is very handy.

192664

well... for me, interoperability is the main feature in all trackers! ;) (even when it sucks... xD)

( @Blast_Brothers both GoatTracker and SIDWizard, at least, need converters that would help on such interoperability )

decimal range between 1 and 100 reminds me dx7 patches (engineers thought that musicians would struggle with 0-255 range, even more in hexadecimal)

@funute "support platform exports" you mean exporting to rom files, like what deflemask "tries" to do? the furnace case has some complexity on this because it is way more flexible on creating "systems" from chip combinations than deflemask, which eventually such exporter would need to verify if the chips in the editing song are present on the desired exporting "rom" file - for this, imho, would be simpler and better if we could use converters instead (from .vgm or .fur files, for example), or having the possibility of running plugin scripts inside furnace (just like grafx2 does, for example)

192727

Generic DAC is the best chip in Furnace.

The foremost condition to determine if UI design in tackers is good is : Can you have 20pt or bigger fonts for UI and patterns ?

Famitracker is good but I prefer it2nsf

192767

opl3 is better than opm or opn2

192810

@A64 That's like saying that the POKEY is better than the ZX Spectrum or TIA.

That's not even a hot take, that's a goddamn fact.

192823

@SRB2er frequency bits: pokey: 8 - sn76489: 10 - ay-3-8910: 12

192834

unpopular opinion: writing music is more fun than playing music

192867

@nitrofurano ye thats true, but like, 16bit mode???

also, when i mentioned ZX Spectrum, i meant the beepe-

actually, off topic.
ZX spectrum on stuff like beepola and furnace uses beeper sounds 'n stuff, yet it also seemingly has an AY-3-8910?

how?

is this a C64 type thing, where the chip was improved later, or?

@Opilion mid chip tbh
best used when you dont need many channels, but calling it the best? (actual lie right there, shit dont even got effects)

192884

1. TED and VIC are some of my favorite chips, and can even outshine the SID in some cases
2. Using Furnace for everything is lazy
3. Most modern SID music is hot garbage without a shred of creativity
4. DnFT isn’t nearly as buggy as many make it out to be
5. hUGE is the best way to write GameBoy music
6. A piece of software being paid doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use it (except Defle lol) - I’m a complete Plogue simp
7. Sunsoft’s NES sound design is about as overrated and overused as physically possible
8. OpenMPT desperately needs VST3 support
9. I don’t get offended when ordinary people call chiptune “video game music,” “Mario music” et cetera. They genuinely don’t have any experience with it, and if they told me about a subject I have no knowledge of I’d make a similar comparison, if any.

192887

#9 yes yes yes i don't like the idea of punishing people just for not knowing any better. they're trying to relate to you. don't push them away. you can politely educate if they seem interested

192920

@SRB2er you can verify that from technical documentation, found in websites like smspower, grauw, etc. - in ay and sn, upper bits and lower bits are in different registers - 2a03 and scc as well

192995

Few people are ready to hear these truths.

It is OK to abort a chiptune if a battle is still in its first trimester.
Men make 20% more chiptunes than women do, because men take all the difficult chiptunes that women don't want.
I don't care if you have sex with chiptunes; just don't do it on my front lawn.

193407

Grant Kirkhope is the most overrated VGM composer.

193421

i can't decide if i should leik or haeit the posts i agree with, since it's a post about unpopular opinions, i guess haeit is the ultimate reward? pls halp!

193429

I've been going:

liek the good-faith hot takes that are controversial opinions, whether or not i agree

haeit the bad-faith hot takes that are just weird insults, or could be bad-faith but don't have enough explanation, or are predicated on deeply-incorrect information or approaches, again whether or not i agree

with that one exception i stated earlier in the thread

193431

FM can be powerful, but, like, it isn't the entirety of chiptuning, or tracking, etc.

193436

FM trumpets are innacurate because they lack the warbly transient of a real trumpet, but it's possible to do it with some pitch macro or carefully considered operator frequency relationships

193486

Oh, also, the SID is great, but (and I, too, am guilty of this,) I feel like it can be overused. Show some love to the PET, or TED, or VIC-20. Whilst the POKEY is cool, the TIA also deserves love- so does the LYNX. Also, Furnace, despite what people may say, is user friendly, and when it gets hardware exports, it'll be real easy to make tunes- yeah, the SID is a bit inaccurate and (compared to, say, GoatTracker2,) underpowered, it is still user friendly, which, at least from personal experience, is *why* it is so loved by many. ESFM is cool, and FM is not "farty," it's a sine wave or square having a stroke.

193496

trackers on mobile are actually ok
it helps you exercise your fingers

193504

RAPID FIRE ROUND

one channel music is usually really obnoxious

Ableton (DAW) is hideous and FL Studio is superior

Mixing rock/metal guitar with 8-bit-style chiptune doesn't work its not cool

All KK Slider songs/covers straight up just suck. Every single one.

Mario Kart 8 is one of the greatest - if not THE greatest game OST of all time

edit: nice, actual hot takes

193510

heres my 2nd hot take: calling soundchips/sample sets "soundfonts" i think is entirely valid and most of the time gets the point across

193527

i strongly disagree mel, keep going

193615

I agree "soundfonts" make total sense, I guess the only valid issue is that no one from say the 90s would've called the SNES soundfont the SNES soundfont, they probably just wouldve called it the sample set.

193872

Why on earth does trackers have to be ported
to tablet and phones WITHOUT a keyboard!? Almost all functionality lies in the keyboard! It looks so unconventional having to use the virtual keyboard, like what the heck...

193893

I actually have an answer for that: mobile trackers have been a thing for a while and have a range of standard UX that's different from normal trackers. They typically have featuresets that are somewhat odd to normal tracker users, and focus on having similar workflow to Sunvox mobile, which is often considered basically the protracker of mobile trackers (fully-featured, extremely popular tracker that most others copy for some time after).

A good friend has been using sunvox mobile consistently for a bit more than a decade now, after having been primarily a desktop sunvox / renoise user, cus dude cant use a normal puter no more. Looking at screen recordings of him using it looks just about as smooth as using renoise on desktop to me, as someone who uses renoise daily.

From what I can tell, the sunvox-mobile-type mobile tracker seems much more comfortable in general to use on mobile than anything pianoroll-based. Highly recommended if you accidentally drink bone removal stew but need to get your fix of the music spreadsheet.

193898

as someone who uses often furnace mobile (& deflemask mobile 💀), I can 101% say mobile trackers are the best thing humanity has made.

portability peak

193928

furnace mobile??? :O

194087

piano layout is awful (even though i primarily used it), openmpt chromatic layout also sucks balls (i have used it for maybe 10 or so songs)

the best keyboard note layout would be fourths stacked chromatic like a guitar or bass. janko layout is also nice for chords

death to ill-adapted keyboard mappings!!! trade range for increased ergonomics and isomorphism via multiple keymappings per note!!!

194096

Every Android/iOS chiptune player app is unusable garbage. There's no good way to listen to native hardware formats on the go.

194102

ZXTune:

194103

ngl I kinda wish the mobile ports of desktop trackers (or even the trackers themselves) would have a LSDJ-like controller input options even if just for the fun of it

194113

I find ZXTune to be clunky, incomplete, and a burden to use.

194128

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1taykOyAUgKY6UOFG-Z6kHJReMFcwVcIR/view?usp=sharing

try my stacked fourths layout for openmpt!

1=A# B C C# D...
Q=F F# G G# A...
A=C C# D D# E...
Z=G G# A A# B...

194133

just uploaded my openmpt
and furnace
key binds! set to chromatic major thirds. base C is on the "z" key, then C# at "w", D at "s", D# at "3", and E at "x"; strict left to right and the octave C comes in at "v"

huge range in furnace! G#3 to E7 bc I got a lot of keys mapped for live play. and openmpt can do microtones; the 22et rules w this setup ime! the blues pentatonic just feels really good this way