Chiptunes

music · 19. 1. 2024 · [edit]

As a part of the holiday brake (mostly to prevent me from playing Factorio), I decided to get into making chip music. The goal is to, at the very least, grasp the concepts and produce an original piece of music that sounds. No qualifier, just sounds.

This (short) post is both a write-up and a place for notes as I learn. Since I am a complete beginner, take everything written here with a huge grain of salt.

day: spent comfortable with Furnace; playing around with inputting notes
- the target device is the NES since it’s channels are pretty limited
day: figured out a simple progression that sounds interesting
day: fleshed out the progression and added fluff around to make it interesting
- here are the results (it’s pretty bad): First.wav (10 seconds), First.fur (Furnace file)
- also thinking about the next, longer song I’d like to work on
day: work on the second song, which will be a Waltz
day: again some more work, this is pretty hard

A long time ellapsed here, during which I did nothing. The work during days 4. and 5. gave me a good idea of how much work it actually is to create a good-sounding chiptune (which, to some extent, was the goal of the project), so I’m going to leave it here for now. Who knows, maybe I’ll return to make more chiptunes some other time 🙂.

day: finishing touches on the (start of the) Waltz

here are the results (still pretty bad): Second.wav (20 seconds), Second.fur (Furnace file)

Terms and definitions

Chiptune music [wikipedia]:

music created using PSGs (programmable sound generators)
- chips that create/synthesize audio waves from basic waveforms
- usually a basic wave like square/triangle/saw-tooth/sin/noise
  - here is what some of them sound like
- can be used in FM synthesis to create more general sounds by modulating waves with one another (neatly explained in this video)

Tracker [wikipedia]:

generally software for creating music
music presented as musical notes positioned in several channels (top to bottom)
here is a gigantic video that dives into trackers in great detail

Using the Furnace tracker

here is a great [YouTube video] from which I learned most of the introductory stuff

Pattern window (bottom left) is where we’ll be doing the sequencing

channels have the following columns:
- note – defining the pitch and the octave
- instrument – selecting pre-made instruments from the instrument window
- volume – the volume of the note
- effects (multiple) – things like vibratos, pitch slides (see right side)
notes always play indefinitely (until another note / note cut)

Tempo (top right) is determined by the tick rate, which determines TPS

speed – how many ticks a row lasts for
highlight – highlights row multiples (i.e. determines beat/measure length)
pattern length – number of measures in the current pattern

Pattern window (top left) determines the order the patterns in the song are played

Edit window (top left-ish) has things for editing the composition

octave – the octave that will be input
step – the length of a step after a note is input

Chip manager window can be used to define the PSGs used in the composition

Controls

F4/F5 – stop/play (the stop was configured)
Ctrl+Enter/Shift+Enter – step/play from cursor
Ctrl+F1/Ctrl+F2 – Transpose -1/+1 note
Ctrl+F3/Ctrl+F4 – Transpose -1/+1 octave
notes can be input either with a MIDI controller (oof) or via a the keyboard:
- space – disable/enable note input
- 1 – note cut (OFF)
- zsxdcvgbhnmq (first octave)
- q2w3er5t6yui (second octave)
effects can be input by writing their code in the rightmost two columns
- these are not tied to one note but to the whole channel!
- certain individual effects have to be turned off!
- ECxx – note cut
- F3xx/F4xx – volume slide up/down