This is an excerpt that Cutman wrote about a year ago as a guest blog author. While this is some stuff many of you probably already know, it goes great with our indie musician series and is the perfect place to start if you’re thinking about delving into creating your own tunes!

8-bit music, or Chiptune, is the art of creating new music with classic, nostalgia-inducing sounds found in antiquated video games and computer hardware, like the Nintendo Entertainment System and Gameboy. Originally restricted to almost exclusive use within video games, Chiptune music has now grown well beyond the cartage into its own unique style of electronic music.

The word Chiptune was affectionately applied to this sub-genre of electronic music in the 90′s, as communities of musicians around the globe began to assemble around the love of this classic sound. The word “Chiptune” was given because the music was primarily created on a system with a single hardware sound chip (much unlike modern computers and recording equipment) Now-a-days, there are many ways to create this type of music, from running homebrew software on a modified Gameboy, to downloading standalone software and plug-ins for modern Digital Audio Workstations (DAW).

Continue reading Music Stuff: Getting Started with Chiptunes →