Chiptune

Chiptune has always oddly intrigued me. The fact that computers and game consoles of the 80s and 90s all had different sound chips with unique capabilities/characteristics, leading to some truly iconic sounds and tracks that people still emulate today.

Trackers and the Demoscene

My first exposure to chiptune music was through keygen programs and cracktros, which often included chiptune music and graphics made by various teams within the demoscene / warez subculture. These songs were made using trackers, which are software programs that allow users to sequence melodies for various "voices" of a specific sound chip. Read more about the demoscene / warez scenes on my dedicated demoscene page.

Making Chiptune with a Game Boy

While I started my chiptune experiments with simple trackers like Famitracker, I really fell in love with the simplicity of the original Nintendo Game Boy (DMG).

The DMG's sound chip allows for four simultaneous monophonic sounds at once:

  1. Square 1
  2. Square 2
  3. Wave
  4. Noise
The two square channels have adjustable duty, which make them great for melodies, and the noise channel is perfect for chip drums, but the wave channel is where you can really create some complex synths.

Having such hard set limitations with an environment like this really forces you to be as creative as possible, and I really love that about the Game Boy. Plus the portability and form factor of the device means you can comfortably crank out some tunes no matter where you're at!

Software like LSDJ and mGB + hardware projects like the ArduinoBoy have really helped bring out the full potential of the Gameboy and keep it relevant in the chiptune space for all these years.

LSDJ

LSDJ allows for such an awesome sound and song creation environment and UI, that new projects such as the Dirywave M8 are still adopting it decades later.

mGB and the ArduinoBoy Pro

Another really cool modern use for the Game Boy is via a hardware project called the ArduinoBoy coupled with a piece of software called mGB

This setup allows the Game Boy (DMB, Color, GBA/SP) to become a Midi instrument that can be controlled via a dedicated MIDI controller or DAW!

Depending on the Game Boy you use, you'll get access to different channels of the respective sound chip, controllable on different MIDI channels. The DMG has an added bonus of having a 5th MIDI channel that allows for 3-voice polyphony by using the three melodic channels together. allowing

The source code for mGB wouldn't build with my modern Linux OS, so I forked it. The build worked as recently as March 2022 and can be found here: tonytwostep/mGB

Chiptune Demos

TODO