Honestly, I think emulators have a nicer sound than a real NES (no baseline hum/noise, for starters).
I personally got an NES as a programming toy, and to help test the dark corners that emulators still don't get right. Playing music or games on it is just kind of a fun extra thing for me.
Anyhow, make good music. If you want to learn the boundaries of a chip, do it (and FamiTracker is a great tool for this). If you don't, just get back to making good music.
That's why I call my music "chip music" - because it has its roots and soul in those sounds, not because it will run on a chip.
I know why you are calling your music "chipmusic"!, I understand your reason, but the reason why you are calling the things in the way you are calling really does not matter, you can call "moon" to "sun" if you want, you are free, what is really important here is the definition of "Chipmusic" and the definition of "Sun", in order to know if it is fine call the things in the way we call it.
So,
01: If "Chipmusic" are the songs that can be executed on the soundchip, then you are simply misusing a word.
02: If "Chipmusic" is a song with roots and soul in old consoles and arcades, then you are correct using Chipmusic.
I vote for 01, and if you think that 02 is correct, fine, call it Chipmusic, no problem, but I simply don't agree.
Xyz, don't "assume" anything. Actually, no one has "authority" over a word, and we can and will call our music chipmusic if we see fit! Actually I think the tunes I've written for famitracker would run on a chip (? - check out the posted ones in the "show off your work" section) - but again, who cares if it runs on a chip or not? It has absolutely no practical application for my music. I'm creating it on a laptop, sharing it on the internet and handing out CDs of the stuff. None of these technologies were mainstream when the NES was built, but we're all using them.
By this ridiculous definition that's being proffered, the same tune in different formats is two different genres. And let's be clear what "chip music" is - it's a genre. Genres are loose terms based on styles and sounds. Under no other genre would anyone propose that a tune had to undergo a scientific test to see if it was authentic (except perhaps if the Nazis had won WWII?).
Despite my agreeing with you, I don't believe your stance on the issue really lends your argument any credence, as it comes off as rather ignorant, in my opinion.
Aha! Well now we come to the crux of it! I am ignorant. That is, I know virtually nothing about hardware, I know nothing about chips, or the difference between a 20a whatever and a VR7. I don't know what a 6802 is, or understand any of these $values or a lot of the stuff that is posted on here means. I am completely ignorant of it, I don't claim to be otherwise. I know hardly any music theory either. It's not that I'm closed to learning about it, I'm all ears, honestly, and I'm sure I'll learn more about it as time goes on.
Thing is this: for me it's about the music. For a lot of people it's about proving their superior knowledge, proving that they are more authentic, that they are king of the scene.
Despite you agreeing with me you come off sounding arrogantly like the latter.
Thing is this: for me it's about the music. For a lot of people it's about proving their superior knowledge, proving that they are more authentic, that they are king of the scene.
Why do you think they are here, using a limited tracker for a limited platform to produce limited music? The more you know, the more you can bend the chip to your will to do more and more impressive things with it, and the more you will be respected for making kick ass music, while staying within these harsh and unbending limitations. Yes, you can make simplistic music with it that sounds good, but if you can pull off new sounds and things that have never been done before, then it can be even more impressive or respectable than any song.
If you feel that the music is more important than the technical ability behind it, then more power to you. Feel free to use your Famitracker stuff in FL studio and make it the most badass chip music anyone's ever heard, if it's anything like your funk track in the SOYW section then I look forward to hearing it. But please don't expect raw talent to be enough to cut it when dealing with the 2a03, VRC6 or any other expansion. You have to know how to use each channel to its fullest abilities, which is something not many have accomplished, which is why it is a never ending journey of technical progress. When limiting yourself in this manner, it is not just about the music.
I don't think it should matter. The only reason I get annoyed when there's "fakebit" about is when people post things and say "this is NES" and it's clearly not, it has like 30 channels. It is chipmusic, but it's certainly not playable by hardware. I am writing several 22-channel songs for a game, they are all in .nsf format, and I wouldn't say they were for NES. They could be played properly, in stereo, by ... six famicoms. But they all fit on one NSF. Things like gxscc are bad usually because people put no work into it- they just take someone else's midi, shove it through that program, and upload it as "theirs" and say it's 8-bit. That's clearly not like what several people do with their music, look at MattWilson/Savestates, he writes chipmusic that's not playable on hardware, and I love it.
The whole point of limitations is to try to see what you can do inside of them. When you remove them, it can lead to sloppy use of channels, and it's not as challenging. Kind of like authors who avoid certain letters in their works, or artists who conform to a specific style, etc.
I knew nothing about 6502 programming or how a sound chip worked as late as 3 years ago. I didn't even own an NES! Yet now I have at least a basic idea of how a chip works, a crude understanding of binary and hex, and I own an NES, a Famicom and a Power Pak cart (and soon - hopefully - a TNS-HFC3 cart) to play my NSFs on either of those!
If you put your mind to it, it'll all come in due time. You don't -have- to understand how the 2A03, VRC6, N163 etc. work to make music on them, but it certainly helps!
As for what is and isn't "chip music", the definition varies greatly depending on who you ask. Me, I call chip music any piece of code written specifically for music playback on a synthesizer chip intended for such use. I specify synthesizer because to me, SNES, Amiga and other systems with sampler chips don't fall under chip music. But for the next person it might! And technically I guess it is since they use a chip whose primary function is to output sound.
Music written using VSTs (or even using a tracker with appropriate samples) to resemble NES, Genesis/MegaDrive or any other system's music doesn't qualify as chip music because you can't play in back on the system it's meant to emulate, regardless of how well it does so, and no matter how good the music itself is. I guess my term for those is simili-8bit or just fakebit. It sounds more pejorative than it actually is though, because fakebit music may very well be very good!
My only gripe is with people who make half arsed MIDI conversions in GSXCC and pass it off as 8bit music. :p
So yeah, keep making good music, and if you're interested enough in it, the technical stuff will come to you as naturally as a smile on a baby's face. If not, so be it!
I understand that there are serious depths to chip music, and that using famitracker and bending circuits and all that jazz can produce awesome effects, and can be awe inspiring when it's done right. I also know that amongst the people here there are some high calibre composers, whose knowledge both of famitracker and music theory are way beyond my scope.
But to me, a simple tune done with love sounds better than a masterpiece done to rub people's noses in it. I said this in my first post and that's what I mean.
When people start over-classifying to separate your music from their music, it's stinks of a status thing. I'm not interested in that at all. Some guys are way above me in many different musical stakes. And I guess I'm not the worst music producer in the world, which could put me "above" others if I thought about it and chose to invest myself in the idea. But I'm not interested in status - it's about the music. If another producer approaches me with some music I'm not going to be looking at whether I include or exclude him in my genre. I'm going to be looking at whether I enjoy the music, and if they're more beginner than me I'm going to adopt an inclusive attitude, in order to be able to help and encourage them.
If you have knowledge I feel you should be like a teacher and share it, without making anyone feel inferior. I'm always learning about various musical production techniques. But at the end of the day if I can take a few simple pulses, a simple triangle and a bit of noise and artfully put them together to make a jolly little tune I'm happy.
From the way you are posting it seems to me like displaying any amount of technical proficiency and being proud of it is equatable to arrogance and is done purely to show how superior one is over every one else.
Believe it or not, most of us are here because we love the music we write as well, and are not doing this simply so we can rub our tracks in every other artist's face. Why else would anyone bother to push their music to the fullest extent of the limitations they are willingly embracing, save for love? Very few tracks I've seen here, if any, were done "to rub people's noses in it." They were written because the author cared enough to learn what was possible, and capitalized on that opportunity to write music that they love. I can assure you, if someone has written what you consider to be a masterpiece, it was not done to demonstrate to everyone else that they are inferior, it was done because that artist is skilled enough to write such music and has the ability to write it well.
That's why I call my music "chip music" - because it has its roots and soul in those sounds, not because it will run on a chip.
At the end of the day if we create very similar sounds using different methods, we're still part of the same genre
etc.
If you do not call chipmusic what it is defined as, then we are NOT in the same genre. As in kind; the kind of music that cannot be played on a real specific hardware is entirely different to the kind of music that can.
Your adherence to counterfeit PSG/FM VSTi's and other programs is not only cheating. It's an attitude of disdain to the real sound chips, it's apostasy. These contraptions are made there to forcibly deviate the demoscene from its pristine state of exact limitations, ripping apart whatever "roots and souls" apart the sound chips to which they are embedded.
Unless you are the kind of people who make fake, unethical chiptune, and then use supernsf to put that into raw $4011 write. It works on NES, Famicom, and NSF. Kudos for you.
The rest of this thread is pretty much the same, so here it is: What is cheating? Cheating is to make an IT with openspc and to copy everything frame by frame to FamiTracker at 900BPM.
It's not the music I'm judging, Dan, it's the "My music's REAL chip music, and your music's not" attitude.
I'm not sure you bothered to read my posts properly, as they go on quite a lot about how technical stuff is "awe inspiring" and what-not. I never said that displaying technical efficiency was arrogant, just that it doesn't matter a jot how much technical efficiency you show if your work is marred by arrogance. Please stop taking everything I say to hyperbole, and editing out the moderation in my text. It doesn't you any favours, because other people can patently read that I'm not saying those things. Ta
EDIT: I didn't see your post nicetas, so here is my reply to that now. It's a pretty amazing post, so I'll reply to it point by point.
nicetas_c wrote:
If you do not call chipmusic what it is defined as, then we are NOT in the same genre.
"what it is defined as"? Please show me the dictionary definition - or are you personally dictator of the genre and your definition is what goes?
It's funny you should use the word apostasy, because of all the posts I've read, yours reads most like a religious fundamentalist's. It seems a little odd to me to deify an old sound chip, but I guess there're people for everything.
I don't "adhere" to VSTs, but I am known to use them - I also use Famitracker look, so I'm not adhering to any dogma, rather enjoying making my chip music in any way I see fit.
"unethical chiptune"? Haha, oh my God. Does this chiptune kill babies in Africa?
I don't understand half of your post, what the whole $4011 or opensps and all that means. I haven't copied anything into famitracker at 900bpm though, so maybe you don't think I'm a cheat?
It's strange, I've noticed that those who have posted who are being pedantic upon the topic of chip music have black and white pictures, whereas people who have a more pleasant attitude have colours... perhaps these people can only see in black and white...
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