TW #37–38 — The Death of the Chiptune / Chiptunes Aren't Dead!
A two-part exchange from December 1995 that documents what "chiptune" meant in the PC tracker scene and the effect of the 20-minute-chip-compo.
Key claims#
- Szalemandre (#37): chiptunes were "a cute novelty item" he used to collect — from Purple Motion, Skaven, the Zapper, and necros's tune "ripped from Pisstro" — but the "recent EXPLOSION of chiptune-making" through 20mc "flooded the world with lots of VERY BAD CHIPTUNES"; "chiptune burnout"; suggests slowing 20mc from once a week.
- DennisC (#38): "the bleepy little s3ms and mods (and xms…)"; he once tracked a tune "using only st3.doc for samples" — finding or making decent samples takes too long, "so I don't think there's any harm done in looping bits of bytes"; the chippy sound is nostalgic for "earlier forms of personal-computer music"; 80–99 % of all tracked music is crap anyway, bad chips get ignored like anything else; thanks sikamikanico, necros, marwin, leviathan, mystical, calvin, lepra and amusic (20mc organiser).
Relevance#
Primary evidence for the chiptune page: in 1995 a PC "chiptune" was a tiny module built from looped bytes (e.g. samples from Scream Tracker's own documentation), made fast, prized for size and cleverness.
Pages touched#
chiptune, 20-minute-chip-compo, necros, scream-tracker-3, traxweekly.