Chiptune Music Production
By Y2K4


Hi everyone!

Chiptune music is quite complex when you think about how it was composed, and how each individual sound is produced. Composition and production is used significantly in the creation of Chiptune music, which is why I am going to be investigating the entire process that takes place, from a blank sheet to a full-on 8-bit masterpiece.


Chiptune: A Quick Retrospective

Chiptune music dates back all the way to 1951, where the CSIRAC[*] computer and a Ferranti Mark 1 were used to create real-time digital-synth music live in public. In the early 80s, the price of personal computers had decreased dramatically, so they became more popular and really kick-started the chiptune music industry, which made the genre be known by a wider audience and start the garage-computer kid become a digital musician.

*The CSIRAC (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Automatic Computer) was Australia's first digital computer. See [2].

If I were to sum up how Chiptune music was made in a small sentence, I would say: "Chiptune is a genre where video game sounds and effects or 8-bit sounds are manipulated and sampled to become a dynamic-tone synth, which in-turn, can be used to create music".

There is a musician called Composerily, and he has influenced me into the music production scene, and I will be analysing the production techniques he uses to create his music.


Technique Analysis

In his videos, he likes to begin with introducing the focus of the video and explaining why he chose that topic, although, his reason is usually "because I can and it seems like a good idea", which is honestly the best reason anyone could give! He likes to keep his video intros small so the audience doesn't lose interest. To go between the intro and the next section of the video, he says: "Let's just get straight into it!".


In the video above (which was used for the analysis), Composerily used industry-standard production software called Ableton Live 10[3].


The first step to a successful production session is preparing the sounds you are going to use. You can use either the instruments that are built into the software you are using, or you can make or download your own sounds. In this instance, he used sounds from the game called Super Mario Bros 3.

Now that you have your sounds ready to go, it is time to categorise/sort them into groups. The easiest way to begin is to find percussion sounds. These sounds would be something like a kick, an unlocked and/or locked snare drum, a bass drum, an open/closed hi-hat, a wood block, a triangle, a glockenspiel, etc. The list goes on, but the ones listed are usually the only ones you really use at all. Another category to sort sounds into is sound effects. They aren't really needed, but when utilised properly, it can create something quite special! The last category would be synths. You would use these as instruments that can be played on MIDI keyboards and have their pitch be with the note you physically press. In this instance, you would need to make the sounds "8-bit-like" if they aren't already, because of the theme that was chosen. Don't worry if not all of the sounds you collect are there, you can reuse some sounds but modify the waveform to whatever seems right to you!.

The last step in this 'production rollercoaster' is actually creating the music! The steps you take to put the song together is completely up to you. It really is personal preference how you do this section. Composerily started with creating a chord progression, and after he was happy with the key and chord progression he chose, he would start layering instruments. After this, he would fix up the mistakes that were made off camera (such as timing issues, wrong notes, quantisation, etc.) and make sure the track sounded good.

At this point the track is finished, so he starts to conclude the video and reminds the audience to smash like and subscribe, and plays the finished track from start to finish, and that would be the end of the video.


Attempting to recreate the technique

In this section, I am going to show you my attempt at Composerily's production technique. With this in-mind, I am going to be making a song with just sounds from the Nintendo Mario-featured games such as:


You can download the sounds I used from TheMushroomKingdom[4].


Audio Only version:


Reflection

In the making of this song, I definitely learnt a lot more than I thought I would have. The entire production process took me 16 hours (over 2 days) because it was something that I haven't had a lot of experience with and it was generally a new thing to me. Most of the time I used in the production process was actually finding, downloading and modifying the sounds to use in the song. Other than taking time to learn how to use the tools I haven't touched before, I think I did an alright job with the song in the end. In the future if I was going to attempt this again, I would try and avoid modifying the audio and just use the sounds as they are, because it just took way too much time to modify them. When you are exploring a genre for the first time, it takes a very long time to think about what to do or how to do it. It's just so time-consuming!!!

In my opinion, by completing that song with those specific limits such as only using "8-Bit" sounds, it has helped improve my ability to produce music efficiently, effectively, and in a more timely manor because I have had practice at this certain technique.

I hope this investigation has been helpful for anyone who is thinking about or looking into this certain production pathway, and I hope you've enjoyed this as much as I did!

Until next time, see ya!


References