Earlier this year, the Digital Culture Beat had the pleasure of attending the “8-bit Music Exhibit” for the Digital Studies Institute, planned by Toni Bushner and Norah Vulpes — a digital scholarship research consultant, advisor and lecturer at the Digital Studies Institute and producer within the 8-bit community, respectively. Between their historical and interactive exhibit and the “Little Sound Dj” workshop, we were given the special opportunity to take a look at an incredibly generous, passionate community that thrives through pushing hardware to its limits — even when things get broken.
Calculators, industrial controllers and computers all transformed their respective industries, and gaming consoles were no exception. The iconic sounds of Nintendo and Sega captivated a generation with 8-bit technology, and the Chiptune genre takes that creativity and makes a celebration of it.
Directly referring to the number of bits used in the processor’s internal logic, describing something as “x-bit” essentially determines the amount of data that can be manipulated at any given time. More bits mean more room for calculation, and though 8-bit computing is nowhere near as capable as today’s 64-bit processors, its versatility and influence in the digital revolution are still celebrated today through Chiptune, generally described as music composed and produced on dedicated 8-bit hardware. Though this type of sound might be traditionally associated with the bloopy melodies of Tetris or Super Mario, the Chiptune sound thrives in nearly every genre of music. For example, discographies of Chiptune artists like Anamanaguchi and Disasterpeace span pop and movie scores; little-scale delves into drums and bass while Sabrepulse makes electronic dance music. Though this is just a small sample, Chiptune reinforces itself through a diverse set of sounds, as more of a method than a genre, and the exhibit provided the perfect playground.
Walking into the “8-bit Music Exhibit,” we were almost blinded by everything on display. Chiptune albums sat loaded onto Nintendo Entertainment System cartridges, and posters hanging on the walls dug into community lore. On a projected screen, artists spoke candidly about their experiences in the community. And behind all that, along the illuminated walls, sat arcade cabinets housing retro music studios.
Being aspiring musicians ourselves, we were immediately drawn to the arcade cabinets, curious about what Chiptune sounded like. Having little-to-no experience with it, we couldn’t help but be just a little skeptical, though this feeling didn’t last long.
Within the first few seconds of mashing buttons, we immediately saw the emergent possibilities in mixing and matching synced loops. We expected a song, but what we got was an improvised performance — a compositional playground ready to raise, match or otherwise subvert the expectations of our audience of two.
In our tinkering, poking and prodding, we found several moments of wonder and joy. While we weren’t the ones composing the melodies, we didn’t need to be to enjoy the experience fully. Mixing various sounds was a creative and experiential process, even more so because we had no idea what could come next. Though the hardware was limited in the technical sense, that didn’t matter to our ears — the movement of the music gave enough of a foundation to feel just what Chiptune is capable of.
Blending pre-loaded phrases, we threw together tracks as if they were ripped straight from Celeste. And when it was finally time to unplug, we kept asking ourselves — how could hardware this ancient create such complex sounds?
In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Bushner talked about how her first moments with Chiptune informed the exhibit’s creation.
“It’s a very exploratory methodology, … something where I was letting my curiosity just kind of guide me,” Bushner said. “And so I modeled (the exhibit) after my own experience, which was first about falling in love with the sound.”
The arcade cabinets, designed by Bauer, were stocked with hardware emulating a Nintendo Game Boy. Complete with a Cathode Ray Tube display and large candy-colored buttons reminiscent of arcade fighting games, these cabinets made maneuvering the software look and feel retro.
Loaded onto these virtual recreations of older hardware was the software used to actually make the tunes — a program called Little Sound Dj, commonly referred to as a “tracker” within the Chiptune community. Similar to a digital audio workstation like FL Studio or GarageBand, a tracker’s main purpose is making music, but the difference lies in the lack of bells and whistles and the level of control offered to users.
In response to technical limitations faced by console compositional software, trackers were designed with the intent to act as an unrestricted interface between user and hardware. In practice, this means the user is granted near-complete control over the Game Boy soundcard, encouraging creativity by design.
The same soundcards that produced what we may think of as “simple music” 30 years ago are still being used today to make wholly dynamic music, incorporating bends, reverbs and new instrumentation and to produce sounds that completely redefine the boundaries of capability.
Though trackers are typically played through linearly, with a set start and end, the cabinets at the 8-bit exhibit were switched to “live” mode. This meant sequenced loops could be turned on and off in sync with the beat, effectively making a mixing board. We were placed in a collection of tailor-made loops, scrambled like a jigsaw puzzle. The surprising thing was that, no matter how we attempted to fit these loops together, it all sounded amazing.
All credit for that goes to Vulpes. A long-time member of and producer within the Chiptune community, Vulpes crafted every musical sequence within the arcade cabinets, using a dynamic range of BPM, scales, melodies and harmonies — and she nailed it.
Bushner raised the question of approachability — how to make someone fall in love with the Chiptune movement and, arguably more difficult, how to foster that love.
“I was hoping that (Vulpes’s work) would maybe help people understand, ‘How is this song structured from start to end? How is she making her sounds?’” Bushner said.
Along with building the melodies in the exhibit’s arcade cabinets, Vulpes also led the LSDJ workshop, where she introduced the general mechanics of LSDJ and passed out a dozen or so modded Game Boys for tinkering.
While it took some getting used to — and a lot of guidance from Vulpes and Bushner — everyone in the room eventually crafted songs of their own. After a short while, we were sharing sounds, geeking out over arpeggios and trying to figure out the esoteric method behind a copy-and-paste formula. These are relatively simple things in terms of music making nowadays, but the construction behind it seemed like some huge secret that everyone needed to know — and that made it an absolute joy to learn.
It was fascinating to mess around with the physical hardware — to see that software running on something nearly 30 years old could still sound that good. Compared to a contemporary digital audio workstation, working with four monophonic channels and an idiosyncratic sound chip became a chance to challenge our understanding of not just music, but the process of creating music — its derivation and fluidity.
The room for personality behind supposed simplicity made our tracks exactly what they were — reflections of us. We made something, and that meant something. None of us are perfect, but when we all had our heads focused on curious tech, when everyone was working with finicky, esoteric hardware, it became a cooperative effort to share the methodology — a sentiment echoed in our interview with Bushner and Vulpes.
“The thing that really opened up LSDJ for me was (that) a lot of Chiptune artists that I talked to at Little Sound Assembly were really generous with (sharing project files),” Bushner said, referring to a popular Chiptune event.
Vulpes shared a similar sentiment.
“It’s not an insular community at all. … Nobody’s hiding any special tricks from anybody,” Vulpes said.
That huge “secret” everyone wants to figure out isn’t really a secret at all — it’s just a bridge for connection. During our time together, Bushner and Vulpes never shied away from the questions we had about the intricacies of some characteristic sound or the history behind the community. They held nothing back, welcoming us with open arms and a nerdy fervor still resonant in our minds today.
The threads running through Chiptune are equal parts exploratory and social. Connected by our love for technology and its supposed limits, the 8-Bit Music Exhibit has given the Digital Culture Beat a glimpse into an extremely passionate community, determined to push technology to its limits.
Daily Arts Writer Nathaniel Ross and Daily Arts Contributor Marceline Jacques can be reached at nateross@umich.edu and domjacq@umich.edu, respectively.