An 8-bit shooting sound to be used in old school games. Useful when a character is firing a gun,. Converting a Sound File from MP3 to 8-Bit There are a few good options for this process, and the best one to start with is the free audio editing software Audacity. Audacity is a very versatile workstation, and if you’re interested in getting into audio production, it’s a good place to learn the ropes. The 8-Bit Era is famous for doing so much with so little, and the music is no exception. Plug in your controllers and blow into your cartridges. Counting down, here are the 20 Greatest Nintendo.

In the early history of video games, developers had to face technology limitations in every step of the way, which led them to use really simple graphics, sound effects and music. Every console had a different sound chip and sounded a bit different from the others, but they all were quite similar in these limitations, which led into what we know as 8bit sound. Our aim will be to replicate the characteristics of these sound chips in our computer.

Nowadays, I would say the best way you can make 8bit music is in your standard Digital Audio Workstation (or DAW, like Ableton Live or Logic), so I am going to focus on this method. Nonetheless, there are a lot of platforms specialized in 8bit music making, the most famous one being Famitracker (that allows you to even play the music you make in your old Super Nintendo). I have to say that I am not a big fan of these because the workflow is quite different from the one in your DAW, but the result could not sound better (Shovel Knight’s OST is a great example).

Which sounds do I need to use to make convincing 8bit music?

8bit music uses basic sound waves (which came from the oscillators in the sound chip of the consoles): Sine wave, Triangle wave, Square wave (which can be changed into Pulse waves), Saw wave and noise wave. Most synthesizers (your DAW probably has a one or two of them integrated) use this waves. You will find them in the oscillator section.

Here’s how these sound waves sound (organized from sweet to harsh sounding):

1. Sine Wave
2. Triangle Wave
3. Square Wave
4. Saw Wave
5. Noise Wave

Sine and Triangle waves are classically used for bass and background elements, and Square, Pulse and Saw waves for melodies and countermelodies. The Noise wave is used for percussive sounds and special effects. But hey, this changes in any arrangement or song, so make sure you use your ears.

Also, most early sound chips had a voice number limitation. This means that only 4 waves (for example) could be played at the same exact time, so composers had to use techniques to fake the impression of more instruments being played (and sound effects like jumping or hitting something had to take one of this voices as well!).

Obviously, as technology advanced, more voices and instruments were added into the mix, but if you want your music to sound like classic 8bit you would have to keep all of this in mind.

There are some other elements that come into play (that you will also find in your synthesizer):

• Vibrato: some chips had the ability to apply vibrato to the sound waves using an LFO to improve the expression of the sounds.
• Volume envelope: this will help you shape your sound waves to achieve a much bigger palette of sounds. You will be able to make percussive sounds or sounds that slowly smooth in or fade away. Try to apply it to your noise oscillator to get drum sounds.

When you use your synthesizer and want to achieve this classic sound, make sure only the sections you are using are activated in your synth. Classic chips didn’t have reverbs, compressions or distortion units on them.

The waveforms of your synthesizer will probably be in high resolution (meaning they are not truly 8bit), and those in classic chips were not. To achieve a more convincing sound, try to reduce the sound quality inside your synth or add a Bitcrusher plugin to your tracks and set it to 8bit or 4bit.

Composers of early video games developed a big number of arrangement techniques that became the standard for chip music, and new composers kept on using them to follow the aesthetics of what we know as 8bit music. Here’s three important ones:

• Changing the pitch of a note one octave really fast: If instead of playing a quarter note you play 4 sixteenth notes and switch between the note and and its octave (above or below) you will get this “crazy vibrato” kind of sound, very reminiscent of the classic Super Mario collecting coins sound.
• Creating a fake delay or reverb: A good way to create depth is to duplicate the melody in another track, turn its volume a bit down and delay it a 16th or 8th note after the main melody.
• Creating risers and swooshes: If you take the noise oscillator and you make it rise or fall in pitch using an LFO you can create this classic sounds that will complement your percussion parts and will help you change between sections in your song.

I would like to mention two instrument plugins that will make your life much easier.

• Magical 8bit Plug (Free): Basically a plugin that makes everything for you. It comes with the sound waves, envelopes and vibrato effect.
• Chipsounds by Plogue: A huge collection of sampled sounds of a ton of sound chips in early gaming consoles. Much more complex than the Magical 8bit Plug.

Remember that though 8bit music is a genre in itself, but you don’t have to be a purist. All this knowledge can be useful for any kind of soundtrack: adding classic 8bit touches to a more modern indie game can probably fit the game aesthetics, without the soundtrack needing to be full classic 8bit.

Do you know of other methods to make 8bit music? Did you find this information useful? Let me know in the comments.

Also, if you like what you read, consider subscribing to my newsletter and sharing this article.

Do you love 8-bit music and want to know how to make your own tunes? You have come to the right place :)

Introduction

This is a guide to making 8-bit/chiptune music. The guide will be focused on covering these topics:

• The basics on how to get the right, real sound.
• Some common game consoles and computer systems that are most often thought of when it comes to 8-bit music.
• Waveforms that the sound chips can produce.
• Effects that are used to modify the sound.
• Other useful things that come in handy when you make the music.

If you need some inspiration to get started I suggest listening to my playlist '8-bit, chiptune, bitpop' on Spotify, embedded here. It has my own chiptune music, as well as a wide variety of different artists and styles within the genre, and I update it on a regular basis. Hopefully you can find something you like, and feel free to share it with others if you do :)

This is mostly technical guide, and I will be talking mainly about the Nintendo Entertainment System (Famicom in Japan) as I base most of my own music (which you can find here on the site) on the NES's sound chip and its properties.

If you like this guide and find it useful, please concider making a donation. I truly appreciate your support, and every little bit makes huge difference! ❤

The Basics of Chip Music

So, what exactly is '8-bit music'? Why is it called '8-bit music' chiptune, 'chip music' and so on? Well... In old video game consoles, the processors could send and receive 8 bits of information at a time, called a 'word' which were 8 bits in length, so they were reffered to as '8-bit consoles', and the music featured in the games for the consoles thus came to be known as '8-bit music'. The processors in these consoles were custom-built for their purpose, because that was cheaper at the time than the general purpose processors used in today's consoles and computers. They also had a chip actually generating the sounds (called a synthesizer), rather than a sound card that simply processes sound-files, as memory was very limited and synthesizing sounds take up less memory than storing and processing sound files; hence the term 'chip music', because the sound chip generated the sounds on the fly.

A basic element of 'true' chiptune music is simple waveforms, such as Pulse, Sine, Triangle, Sawtooth and Noise.
If you want to make music based on a specific chip, you should know, and stick to, the properties, features and limitations of that specific chip, and the waveforms it can generate, as well as in what way they can be modified on that chip, or you won't get a genuine sound.

To achieve the limitations without having to do a bunch of tedious work, it might be good to use a tracker or other software specifically designed to emulate the chip you want your music to sound like.

There are trackers you can use directly on the hardware, meaning that the music you create will be generated with the actual sound chip of the hardware you are using. The most prominent examples I can think of are Little Sound Dj and Nanoloop. Both used for the Nintendo Game Boy.

If you don't have access to or don't want to use the real hardware, there are trackers that emulate sound chips very true to the original sound. The most prominent example I can think of for that is Famitracker, that has the exact same sound types and channels supported by a Famicom/NES sound chip (and all of its expansion chips). You can even export NSF-files which can be loaded onto NES-catrriges and played on an actual NES! So if you want to make chip music and be sure to succeed, use Famitracker. Even if what you produce won't sound good, it will at least be playable on an actual NES, and by definition, be chip music.

As Famitracker has excellent documentation and very well written tutorials (found through a search engine near you) I won't be going into detail on how the program works. Just remember that you have to create a new instrument before you will be able to get any sound.

If you want to hear some examples of what you can do with Famitracker, you can check out these albums that I made using it:
8-bit Empire
Cor Metallicum
8-bit Run 'n Pun
Dunes at Night
Friendship Adventure
Crystal Caves HD Original Soundtrack

If you don't want to use software made to emulate a specific chip, but still make your work sound like chip music, keep reading and you'll find the specifications and capabilities of the most common systems that are associated with 8-bit music.

Nintendo Entertainment System/Famicom

The NES sound chip is called 2A03 (NTSC 60Hz) or 2A07 (PAL 50Hz) and it has five mono-channels. Two of them feature pulse wave channels with a variable duty cycle of 12.5, 25, 50 and 75%. The volume for these channels can be set to 16 different levels. Hardware pitch bending is possible and the frequencies used range from 54Hz to 28 kHz.

There is a fixed volume (on or off) triangle wave channel with pitch bending. Frequencies on that channel range 27 Hz to 56 kHz.

There is also a white noise channel with 16 volume levels and 16 pre-set noise frequencies. The frequencies that can be produced ranges from 29.3Hz to 447 KHz, and aside from the pre-sets, frequency sweep is also possible. Additionally there is a differential pulse-code modulation-channel capable of playing any sound.

If you want to play samples that sound like those on the NES though, get a program that can convert your wave-files to 1-bit, as this is most true to what imported samples actually sound like on an NES.

Commodore 64

The SID-chip of the Commodore 64 is perhaps what first comes to mind for many people when we talk about 'chip music', and rightfully so, as it was thanks to the polyphony of the SID-chip that it was possible to make advanced music on a computer for the first time, and the demoscene was started.

The SID-chip has three channels which supports pulse (with full control over the duty cycle), sawtooth, triangle and noise waveforms, with frequencies ranging from 16-4000Hz. Each channel also has a ring modulator which makes it possible to essentially mix different waveforms, which creates the characteristic 'SID-sound', as well as an attack/decay/sustain/release volume control. There's also a multi-mode filter with low-pass, high-pass and band-pass. It is possible to combine the different filter effects to create additional effects.

Amiga 500

The sound chip of the Amiga 500, the most popular machine for its time when it came to producing MOD-music, is called Paula and has 4 channels with 8-bit PCM and a frequency of a maximum of 28 Khz. The volume and sample rate can be modified individually for each channel. Two channels are mixed for output to the right channel, and two are mixed to the left channel. The MOD-files are built up of sample sounds and as such, unlike the NES-sound chip, the sound chip of the Amiga 500 cannot generate sound on its own. Although the sound is based on samples, and in theory you can stuff in whatever you like as long as the memory limitation will allow it, it is more common to use a looped sample that consists of one cycle of the wave-forms described below, because conserving memory was very much a concern 'back in the day'. So doing it that way will give you the old-school sound you're looking for.

There is no way to make 'true' chip music on the Amiga 500, as, like I said, the sound chip itself does not generate any sound on its own, but a simple to use, yet flexible program I can recommend if you want to make MOD-music is Milkytracker. If you want some examples of what you can do with it, you can check out these albums I made where I use it for some of the tracks use the software:
Lesser than Three
Nackskott

Now you might understand why it is easier to use software dedicated to the task rather than trying to simulate the sound.

Nintendo Game Boy

The Nintendo Game Boy is quite similar to the NES in that is has 2 Pulse Channels and a noise channel, but there are also differences. First off, only one of the pulse channels has frequency sweep, and there is also not a Triangle channel. Instead, there is a 'freeform' wave channel that can play any sound, based on 32 4-bit programmable samples. Additionally, the channels are in Stereo so you can get an additional dimension to your sound here. The 'master level' Of the left and right channel outputs can also be individually controlled.The frequenzy range for the pulse and freeform wave channels is 64Hz-131072Hz. And 2Hz-1048576Hz for the noise channel.

Chip Music Waveforms

Waveforms can be thought of as the smallest possible unit of sound. Sound is vibration, and a waveform is the 'shape' of that vibration. Different shapes give different types of sound, and below you will find the ones most commonly used when making 8-bit music.

Pulse

This is a very interesting waveform as it is possible to adjust the duty cycle of the sound wave in order to produce different sounds. The closer to 50% (half the time on, half the time off) you go, the more hollow it will sound. If you set a very high or very low duty cycle you will get more of a creaking, almost raspy sound. This waveform is mostly used for the melodious part of the song as the two channels on the NES can be used to create neat chorus, but it is also in my opinion well suited as bass, depending on what sound environment you want to achieve.

Sawtooth

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Sounds very 'sharp' and can be used both for melodies and bass. Its clear, crisp sound makes it especially suitable for arpeggios. This waveform can not be used natively on the NES (Though it is commonly used on it's sibling, the Famicom Disk System, which does support it), and a lot of Amiga music composers use this wave form frequently.

Triangle

At low frequencies this waveform is commonly used as bass in NES compositions. At high frequencies it produces a 'flute-like' sound. It can also be used as tom-tom drums by sliding from high to low frequencies. Keep in mind that this channel has a fixed volume on a NES, meaning it is either on or off.

Sine

Is the waveform that most resembles that of an acoustic guitar. The sound is even and soft. It is best used at higher frequencies where it sounds a bit like whistling. At low frequencies it can be hard to hear the difference between notes.
This waveform does not exist natively on a NES unless manually shaped on the DCPM-channel.

Noise

This 'waveform' is commonly used for drums, as, if shaped correctly, noise can sound quite similar to drums. High frequencies are best suited for hi-hat/ride, mid frequencies for snare, and low frequencies for bass drum or kick.

It can be difficult before you learn how to shape the noise correctly. I would suggest using a quick linear fadeout as the base and then tweak it until you're happy with how it sounds.

Effects

When working with trackers, you are not going to be able to make very fun music if you don't know your way around the effects you can use to modify the sound. I will add more with time, and focus especially on the ones that I think are significant to chiptune music.

Arpeggio

If you want to comply to the limitations of a specific sound chip, you are usually limited to just a few sound channels, as I was describing earlier. A problem you might be facing is that making full chords would use up a lot of channels and also prevent you from playing any other sounds on those channels as the chord is playing, so doing it in the intuitive way isn't the optimal way to do it. To get around this 'limitation' there is the arpeggio effect. What it does is it rapidly loops through several different notes after one another on the same channel, thus achieving a 'chord'. This is known as an arpeggio in musical terminology. In most trackers, it is represented by effect 0, and supports 2 notes after the base note. To make a chord, you simply set the number of semitones after the note you pressed. So, if you want to make a regular major chord, you will put '047' in the effect column after the note. Be aware that the effect continues onto subsequent notes until you set a different effect or no effect. This is standard behavior for most trackers. The result you get is very characteristic to 8-bit music, as the effect is very commonly used.

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Slide up/down

The slide effect slides the pitch of the note up or down at a set speed. The effect is probably more used in a sound effects context, but can also be useful when making music. For example, adding a slide effect at the end of notes can make them sound more lively and interesting. You can also use slide to create a transition effect between notes, though I personally prefer the automatic portamento effect for that. Effect number varies by tracker. In Famitracker and Milkytracker it's 1xx for slide up and 2xx for slide down, where xx is the speed you want the note to slide at. If you stop the effect by setting 00 for speed, the pitch will remain at whatever it was at when the effect is activated.

Vibrato

To add vibrato to a note (pitch up and down), effect 4 is used in most trackers, including Famitracker and Milkytracker. The first number sets the speed, and the second sets the depth of the vibrato. For example. '425' results in a vibrato with a speed of 2 and a depth of 5. The effect is persistent until it is stopped. To stop the effect, set the speed to 0. Vibrato can be very useful if you want to add more vibrance and variation to an instrument. If used with finesse, some really cool-sounding stuff can be made!

Tremolo

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The tremolo effect is basically 'vibrato for volume', meaning that rather than the pitch, it is the volume that is affected, but in the same manner. The effect number in Famitracker and Milkytracker is 7, and the first number sets speed, the second number sets depth. For example. '425' results in tremolo with a speed of 2 and a depth of 5. And the fact it can be a very useful effect to add more vibrance to your notes also holds true for tremolo.

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Final advice

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As a last tip: A lot of the beauty of chip music lies in making rich compositions from seemingly scarce resources. Try to get the most out of every channel. And again, if you want inspiration to get you started I encourage you to check out the playlist I embedded at the top.