Chiptunes: 10 Years of Blips and Bleeps (1997-2007)

This post is going to be an informative rant of sorts. If you read my blog then you'll know that I make music using Game Boys and various software. You'll also know that each entry pertains to that subject in one way or another. If you're new to my blog, and the world of chiptunes/8-bit/micromusic, let me be the first to say, "You're missing out on quite an amazing event!" The chiptune community is a global collective of artists, musicians, fans, geeks and aficionados. Google the word "chiptunes" and you will have a vast sea of information to explore. I don't think I could give you an exact number to represent the number of artists and communities all over the word because the scene keeps growing. This is my take on the scene and I've gotten some help from a few people along the way.

My Introduction to the Scene (1998-2004)

    In 1998 I received a Nintendo Game Boy Camera for my 13th birthday. Most people who owned one probably used them to take grainy lo-fi pictures with the camera. But I had another use for it. After navigating through a series of menus and screens you can access a DJ game (also known as Trippy-H) which allows you to compose three 16 step sequences (2 pulse, 1 noise). Now for those of you who don't know, 1999 was the year that Atari Teenage Riot front man Alec Empire released the album We Punk Einheit under the alias Nintendo Teenage Robots.

This album consisted of tracks which were composed using the Game Boy Camera DJ game. For its time this may have been something new and innovative (although Alec wasn't the first to make music on a Game Boy), but by today's standards this lacks a lot in terms of composition. Of course, Alec may have wanted a very lo-fi minimalistic sound. A statement from Alec was printed on the back of the record. He spoke of two scenes in Berlin at the time...

...two movements attacking each other with the sound of static bleeps. One gameboy scene is putting up exhibitions at art galleries - overproduced melodic gameboy songs with reverbs and delays... The other scene called "out" is doing abstract futuristic cold atmospheric dance parties at disco clubs. A different sound: gameboy straight into DAT or CD Recorder.

     This album inspired me to create my own short pieces with the sequencer (Trippy-H) and it has been a part of my setup to this day. My earliest creations were very rudimentary and extremely simple. Maybe they'll appear on Myspace one day soon. Before I discovered Nanoloop in 2002, I didn't really use my Game Boy too much. It sat there collecting dust and every once in a while I'd pick it up and I'd beat a game I hadn't played in a while or I'd mess around with Trippy-H. But I wanted to do more with it! It is such a wonderful little machine. I grew up listening to the sounds of Kirby's Dream Land, Super Mario Land, The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, Balloon Kid, etc... I didn't have a console until the PSX and N64 hit the market. So I came to know and love the sounds of the Game Boy. I listened to a lot of acid techno at an early age and I longed to make music similar to this with something as minimal as a Game Boy. You had four channels to work with,and yet, there were so many possibilities. Sure, Nintendo Teenage Robots was great, but I wanted more! I wanted to hear more artists dabbling in this new undiscovered gem of a genre. I wanted to hear varying styles and composition techniques. I wanted a whole program dedicated to making music with a Game Boy! Then, along came Nanoloop.

    In 2002 I discovered the Nanoloop 1.0 compilation at my local record shop. It featured artists such as, DAT Politics, Merzbow, Pyrolator, Hrvatski, AGF/Dlay and of course Oliver Wittchow (the man responsible for Nanoloop's initial creation). On the cover was a number of pixellated people standing in front of a large blue Game Boy Color (Yes, color. You can tell by the IR port at the top. Is it sad that I know this?). 

The back cover only listed artists, a catalog number, url and copyright information, no tracklist or information about the contents of the CD was present. It seemed very promising so I purchased it and it immediately went into my CD player. What I heard was nothing like any other music I had heard before. The sound was very raw and lo-fi. These sounds were coming from a Game Boy but it didn't feel like you were listening to the soundtrack for Super Mario Land or a Zelda game. This was something entirely different. The inside of the CD insert listed the artists, track titles and equipment used. Some artists used Nanoloop with editing software or custom software, and others just used Nanoloop alone. A url for a website was listed as well, this was nanoloop.com. I visited the site and discovered that Nanoloop was available for purchase on cartridges. I ordered a copy of Nanoloop 1.2 and had it delivered to me shortly.

    When I put the Nanoloop cart in my Game Boy and turned it on I was greeted with a user interface unlike any I had ever seen before. The layout had a very experimental feel to it and took some getting used to at first. Once I had become familiar with the interface and operations of Nanoloop I started writing a series of patterns and put short phrases together with the song editor. I did this for a while and recorded bits and pieces of it. It wasn't until 2004 that I started recording full tracks under the alias disassembler.

    From 2004 onward I acquired more Game Boys and various versions of Nanoloop. I began putting what I had done up on Myspace and after a few months I'd gained a number of friends and fans (although I think I deleted my original Myspace and made a new one. I'm not sure why). This is when I really began to explore the vast world of chiptunes...

The Beginnings of a New Movement (1997-2002)

    The term "chip tune" may have been used as early as the late 1980s. This of course was used to describe music made with the chips of computers (i.e. the SID chip present in the C64). In the 1990s sounds produced by the SID chip were being reproduced with trackers. The terms "computer music"and "video game music" may have been used to describe this type of sound. However, both of these terms are very broad general terms. Nowadays the term "computer music" encompasses a wide range of styles, genres, techniques and composition methods. "Computer music" can refer to the music made with internal chips, but today it usually refers to music made on computers with software that doesn't necessarily produce the sounds of a certain chip. Most computer music software to day consists of DAWs (Digital Audio Workstations), software that emulates hardware synthesizers and drum machines of earlier years, or software used for building customs modules and synthesizers that have a wide range of uses not seen (or heard) in typical electronic music. Sound chips, MIDI instruments, VSTs, programming languages and software are all used to make music on computers, and that music includes a variety of styles, genres and sounds. (Thanks to Bit Shifter for sending me a link about this on VORC.)

    1997 and the years that followed would help generate what is now a prosperous, growing scene of musicians, artists and fans. I can't say for sure that what we know as chiptunes today started forming in 1997, but that was the year that Oliver Wittchow began developing Nanoloop. The first official version was released in 1998 and distribution began in 1999. 1997 was also the year that Patric Catani (of EC8OR) released, The Horrible Plans of Flexbusterman on Digital Hardcore Recordings.

Although the record may not have been categorized as chiptunes at the time, its style and sound is very similar to what people know as chiptunes today. In 1998 Oliver recorded a 7" single under the alias Nanoloop. As stated previously, 1999 was the year that Alec released We Punk Einheit as Nintendo Teenage Robots. 8bitpeoples was also formed in New York that year.

    Between 1999 and 2002 a number of artists began appearing and a small collective of musicians was forming. Artists such as Klangstabil, Bodenstandig 2000, and 8 Bit Construction Set were making music with Game Boys (or other hardware). 2000 was a pivotal year and the beginning of what was to be a worldwide collective started to form. In 2000 Johan Kotlinski created Little Sound DJ and the first version was sold on cartridges in 2001. Both Nanoloop and Little Sound DJ would be the primary tools used by chiptune artists using Game Boys. Other hombrew ROMs such as Carillon (made by Aleksi Eeben in 2000), Muddy GB and Onputor (to name a few) were used as well. The Nanoloop 1.0 compilation was release on Disco Bruit in 2002 and in 2003 the Boy Playground compilation was released on Relax Beat.

The Growing Scene (2002-Present)

    It was around this time that artists like Bit Shifter, Bubblyfish, Glomag and Nullsleep stepped onto the scene. An underground scene was developing in areas all over the globe. Soon small venues and the internet were being assaulted with bleeps and bloops. This had been happening since 2000 or so but more people were starting to find out

about it. This may have been due to the fact that there was more media coverage by this point; on the net, in magazines, the radio and even television. The most controversial article was an article in the November 2003 issue of Wired magazine by former Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren. The title of the article was 8-bit Punk.

Glomag has helped to account earlier years of the growing scene:

    I remember meeting Bit Shifter at a Bubblyfish gig in Hoboken in 2002. He had done some parties and small shows too and was developing his own sound. Nullsleep, Bit Shifter and I played at the 2003 Gameboy Music Match, a live 'competition' over the internet with gameboy musicians in Vienna, which I organized with Wolfgang Kopper and Herbert Weixelbaum. It was all on a small scale then, maybe 20-50 people at a show.

    By 2004 I had started exploring the net a lot more and discovered a number of artists via Myspace, 8bitcollective and

Discogs.com. I was surprised by the number of artists I was seeing and the numbers seems to be growing each day. I began to familiarize myself with different sites and artists. I was drawing a lot of inspiration from micromusic and Japanese noise and incorporating it into my music. I had begun work on an album and a number of short EP's.

    Most of the artists I came across favored using Nanoloop or LSDJ on the Game Boy. A lot of UK artists favoved VSTs and computer software along with modern analog modeling synthesizers. Other artists have been known to use the NES, Amiga, Commadore 64, VSTs, synthesizers and computer software. NoTendo and No Carrier use the NES for visuals as visual artists. SID chips have even been incorporated into modern day synthesizers (Elektron's SID Station and Monomachine being good examples of this). There is no end to the amount of available software or hardware used for creating chiptunes. Most software available is constantly being updated and is usually readily available for free or a reasonable price.

    By 2005 net labels were springing up everywhere (although it should be noted that 8bitpeoples had been around since

1999) and the scene was growing in the UK, America and Japan. A lot had been going on since 2003 and 2004 but now a global community was beginning to form. Hally, who is the mastermind behind VORC (launched in 2001) helped to bring the Japanese and American scenes closer together.

Glomag:

    In 2005, Bit Shifter and Nullsleep started what was to become a chain of globe hopping tours through which they met alot of chiptune musicians from all over the world. The first was the Data Destruction Tour, which kicked off at The Tank in early 2005. This was, for me, a pivotal show. The place was packed. The crowd were showing the first signs of what would become chipstyle crowd behavior- a dense, sweaty, dancing crowd, screaming and fist pumping the air.

    In the fall of 2005, Bit Shifter, Nullsleep, Bubblyfish, Mike Rosenthal and I organized the International Chiptune Resistance show at The Tank. Performers were: the four of us, Mark Denardo (who had now moved to NYC permanently), Receptors from Virginia, David Sugar (UK) and M-.-n (Belgium.) There was some press and the show was absolutely packed. We had new video artists working with us, including Voltage Controlled and Ilan Katin. The crowd was resembling a scene more now, in that we had a core of people who always showed up and the enthusiasm was contagious to the new people who had never seen a chiptune show.

     The Tank was and still is an important part of the Chiptune scene. The Tank hosts a multitude of other events, but Pulsewave and Blip Fest are what attracts chiptune fans and aficionados from all over the globe.

2006 was an important year for the scene. Nullsleep and Bit Shifter toured the US, UK and Japan (International Chiptune Resistance Tour).

This was the one where they met and got to know the 40 performers who would fill the four nights of the first Blip Festival in November 2006.

On November 24th 2007 vertexList debuted BITMAP: as good as new. The exhibit features both Nullsleep and NoTendo as well as other artists. It will be at vertexList until February 3rd 2008.

2008 is going to be an amazing year for New York and especially Philadelphia. It's only going to get better.