Chiptune

Chiptune is a category of music piece featured by old-school game console sound. Doesn’t it sound something to do with Nara-anime topic? The answer is YES, guys.


What is chiptune?

Let’s get started by searching the word, ‘8bit’ on Youtube. It is a terminology PC’s capability at the time when this type of sound is invented (oh well, we are now 64bit CPU era…). It’s basic and Lo-fi but definitely gem from energetic 80’s culture.

I picked up an example below.

Sounds familiar? There are tons of uploads that has ‘8bit-version’ of anime OP tunes. Not surprisingly, in 80’s there were tight limitation of computational power where PC could afford 3-4 voices by a sound chip. Memory limitation is another issue so it couldn’t ‘sample’ any real musical instruments either. Instead, it generates tone by LSI chip with oscillators and modulators built-in.

However….

It opened new horizon of music in a way (like ‘Tecno’). Essentially the sounds and ‘noise’ are generated from scratch electrically and no similarity to traditional physical musical instruments do.

Every anime creators are a gamer  in some sense. They grew up with those type of music in-printed so it’s natural you find some context in on-going modern anime series.

A good example of on-going 2017 summer season is ‘GAMERS’.

One of most popular TV animation series ongoing but my highlight is opening theme.

It’s elegant mix of anime music and chiptune. The story also deals with some nostalgia of early gaming culture as a good spice so you cannot miss out.

Summary

Chiptune?
  • Search ‘8bit chiptune’ to taste old-school game sounds
  • Now they are re-invented for latest anime scene as timeless 80’s taste
  • Stay tuned in Cool Nara Radio (some original chiptune songs are now on air

 

Author: Nara-chan

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