I know this topic has been done to death, but I’m doing it again.

Recently I’ve been added to the media team at Chiptune Cafe, meaning I’m assisting with bringing back the blog. For my first article I thought it’d be fun to survey people on what they defined as chiptune, and where they drew the line between chiptune music and… not chiptune music.

This is not so much a discussion thread as much as you just post what you think. You also might be quoted in my article!

My honest definition would probably be something like, you know NES and C64 music? Stuff like that.

A more rigorous definition would be something like, music performed in real time (i.e. not a recording) by a computer with very limited audio capabilities, which has been written around those limitations. This would be the purist core, and around this you can add the periphery - music made by emulators of said hardware, or by trackers with similar limitations, or made to resemble the core chiptunes in aesthetic.

A form of music that is kind of chiptunish is electro-acoustic music, which uses either intentional instruments (e.g. a computer-controlled player piano) or experimental/repurposed ones (disk drives, Tesla coils). Culturally though, I think it's a separate hobby from the chiptune scene.

prepare for the ramblings of a lunatic



if it can be played back on hardware that we consider old enough to consider "chiptune" (zx, nes, snes, pc98, possibly n64?), whether because its emulated or something, its chiptune

if its made in a daw but adheres to limitations so closely it could be recreated on hardware near perfectly, its...psuedobit? idk what name to call this, blame beepbox mod users. i do think it can sorta fit under the umbrella...possibly.

stuff like s3xmodit - besides .mod itself - is probably a grey area for me given the amount of channels and sample quality you can get.
_{(i should probably mention that i have NO idea what s3xmodits are played on besides the "soundblaster/adlib" but idk what limits that has...)}

limitations aren't real in "s3xmit", and limitations are kinda what makes chiptune chiptune
without that, you kinda are just...composing....in a weird daw
and you'll probably be using an external daw for the samples...that will be of the same quality in your tracker format. that you can have several of.
"oh but you can't use reverb and vsts and sf2s like chiptune" you can bake it into the sample.

i'll admit having to "bake" something inside a sample sounds like limitations but i'll elab on this below

i think the concept of limitations is what makes chiptune...well, chiptune now i think about it
and i guess to better word it i can only currently think of these things:

1) synthesis choices
how are we synthesising our sounds?
opn2 (like sgen), opm (like ym2151) and opz (ym2414) is fm, snes and mod and mariopaint is samples, nes and sms is uhh...psgs? probably?
its not like im boutta see someone pull synthesis with pulse waves...(looking at you, ssg-eg....though then again there are pitch limits prob so- come back here!)

2) size limitations
if there's like a file size limitations (eg, mod,snes aram...without bankswaps) its probably chiptune
im aware s3xmit probably has sample amount limits but we can't be deadass, that thing can hold like 200+ samples at really high quality, i am NOT putting that under the same coat as zx spectrum music we CAN'T be real if we do.

3) is there a specific chip/set of audio chips dedicated to making sound?
sn7 for sms, ym2203 and ym2610 for pc98, vrc6,s5b etc on nes - you get the idea

4)...does it sound chiptuney.
no, seriously. this is what i meant with s3xmodit. sure you have "limitations", but it doesn't sound like chiptune at ALL, and said limitations are SO lenient compared to things like snes, with aram's sample size and echo being in one 64kb file.

now for where i go insane (more)
say a program like....wavetracker. is stuff made in that chiptune?
possibly. you have wavetables like pcengine and virtual boy. you have limitations. blatant ones.
but you can also play samples. high quality ones.
but you also have channel limitations.
and you aren't really playing it on a "dedicated" chip

does fakebit (including botb's format and wildchip) count?
no - unless its stated that it is some form of chiptune like 2a03+s5b for example, if i start hearing high quality samples for an extended period and NO sawtooth or pulse wave in sight, we aren't chipping

there is no "making" a line with this shit
the limitations vary so much




thank you for coming to my ted talk

music made for a soundchip