Chiptunes: music from video game consoles

Far from being a fad for hobbyists and kiddults, chiptunes is a subculture with substance – one that boasts a growing fan base of techie nerds, ’80s revivalists, electronic purists and good old-fashioned music lovers. On first impressions, it seems more like a novelty – making music with videogame console parts evokes memories of an era when Atari ruled arcades full of giant pixels and cartoonish sound effects. In reality, there’s nothing amateur about chiptunes artists. They come off as more serious and well-informed about their craft than many other musicians today – partly due to the movement’s tight-knit international community (thanks, internet!) and left-field appeal. Throw in punchy visuals, and chiptunes’ high-energy bpm count can get a full house moving faster than you can say ‘metroid’.

While some may categorise chiptunes as general ‘video-game music’, they are no longer synonymous, as the latter depended on chiptunes as its only available source of technology. Put simply, instead of producing synths based on audio samples, videogame console sound chips are used to produce sound. The new school of chiptunes emulates musical styles from bossa nova to thrash metal; think of playing ‘Girl from Ipanema’ in Megaman-style bleeps and you’ve got the general idea. The original 8-bit chiptune sound is familiar to anyone weaned on Pong, and with the development of programs and trackers that sync modern computers with old-school gear, any enthusiast can learn the art.

Enter Singapore’s own Ikuma, aka Ikram Choudhury. Last year the 25-year-old was invited to play at New York’s annual 8-bit extravaganza, Blipfest. ‘I release most of my music online, so once it gets around, it gets around,’ he explains. Choudhury began messing with his brother’s bedroom turntable set-up as a teen. He brought MiniDisc mixes to school to ‘impress girls’ before he stumbled across the work of NYC-based Bit Shifter, co-founder of the 8bitpeoples music collective along with pioneers like Nullsleep and Random. ‘I found out he made his music on a Game- Boy,’ says Choudhury, ‘and it was so poppy, so fresh to me, that I did more research online and I found out that there was a whole scene full of people modifying and hacking these things – things people take for granted, that are forgotten. Things that in our terms are considered “ancient technology”.’

‘I found [the Famicom] upside down and wet, and the guy sold it to me for nine dollars… then I modified it and got the cartridge so I could play Mario music to it.’

In this case, ‘ancient technology’ consists of the Nintendo’s iconic grey Super Famicom system, the 8-bit home computer known as the Commodore 64 and the original handheld gaming device native to public transportation all over the world: the GameBoy. Choudhury lucked out and salvaged a treasure trove of Commodores and assorted bits from an old-school gamer who was moving to a smaller home; the rest of his gear came from places like Sungei Road Thieves’ Market: ‘I found [the Famicom] upside down and wet, and the guy sold it to me for nine dollars… then I modified it and got the cartridge so I could play Mario music to it.’

It’s this DIY spirit that appeals to hands-on musicians, especially for those with an interest in computers and writing code. Pierre Boquet – better known as Sidabitball or Jambon Bill – recently moved here from Paris and now makes up half of the core of our local chiptunes scene, which is essentially the Bill and Ikuma show. ‘There’s two or three other guys, they have a MySpace page but I don’t really see them anywhere,’ Choudhury says, citing difficulty in sourcing for obsolete parts here. ‘In Europe, it’s very easy to find the old cartridges and parts – there are lots of flea markets and eBay is full of them,’ says Boquet, a software programmer. ‘But in Singapore, it’s difficult because not as many people keep their old stuff here, which is the interesting part of chiptunes.’ The two hooked up online and are planning to work on a project together – Choudhury, a longtime techno/acid house fan, even borrowed Boquet’s Roland 303 synthesizer for a live gig (‘the one that makes the squelchy sounds’), hinting that their joint work might go a little along those lines.

Besides the thrill of the hunt, chiptunes also has a visual component that Boquet is keen on developing, as he explains: ‘When I am performing live, there is not much to see because I am just playing on the GameBoy.’ He has worked closely with his designer friend Camilo on syncing pictures and sound with a video-game aesthetic – a prime example is the clip on his website called ‘Boxing Tonight’ (www. sidabitball.com). ‘[A chiptunes show] is like seeing a guy perform with a laptop – quite boring – so I wanted to find a way to make it more interesting,’ Boquet says. ‘I worked on how I could externalise the tempo and stuff of the GameBoy and wrote some software so we could link the pictures to the sounds. We worked together for one year perfecting the system. We call it Bricovision – “brico” is “DIY” in French, so really it’s like “DIY-o-vision”.’ Choudhury agrees about the importance of visuals, especially with ‘dance music and lights and all that stuff’ – he points out that these just add to the overall effect, but aren’t actually necessary.

Chiptunes artist Hally at Blipfest 2006

So what do ‘normal’ musicians think of chiptunes as a legitimate genre? Video-game conductor Arnie Roth, who recently led a Final Fantasy concert here with composer Nobuo Uematsu, has great respect for video-game music fans: ‘They have very wonderful, unique attributes that one might associate with a classical audience, in that they are so learned and knowledgeable about the music.’ Roth, who has worked with everyone from Styx to Diana Ross to Swedish chiptunes rock band Machinae Supremacy (‘well, some of it is thrash punk,’ he laughs), finds chiptunes particularly fascinating as ‘it’s kind of the basic idea of crossfertilisation… but what’s even more remarkable is what it does as a creative backlash to the original source.’

The original source, of course, has long been considered ‘vintage’, but chiptunes is still a relatively fresh, evolving scene – especially in Singapore. ‘I realised that everything has a homebrew scene,’ Choudhury says, ‘They’re just coders and programmers who make crazy animations and graphics and games.’ And since video games have grown from an 8-bit business into one of the hottest commodities in electronics – roping in popular-music endorsements and state-of-the-art visual effects – how do these purveyors of ‘ancient technology’ view the brave new world of Wii and PSPs? ‘I really don’t like Guitar Hero,’ says Boquet. ‘I think they take the creativity out of the player. I really hate them.’ As for Choudhury, he’s thinking of trying something besides chiptunes – something new ‘like a one-man Stereolab’. With what kind of technology, you may ask? ‘Oh, you know, keyboards, guitars and vocals,’ he laughs.

Check out our music listing for Video Games Live at the Singapore Indoor Stadium.