Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello everyone,
Speaker 1: welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Pellette and
Speaker 1: I am an editor at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Sitting across from me is senior writer Jonathan Strickland. The
Speaker 1: rhythm is going to get you, you know when you
Speaker 1: say it like that, as as white as I possibly can. Yes, okay,
Speaker 1: I may I may be without the soul for getting down.
Speaker 1: And you know what that means that Jeremiah was a
Speaker 1: bullfrog um, a good friend of mine. So we want
Speaker 1: to talk a little bit about music. We we actually
Speaker 1: did a podcast not re recorded it a while ago,
Speaker 1: but it hasn't published as the time of the recording
Speaker 1: of this about music in video games. But it turns
Speaker 1: out that the video games and music, it goes beyond
Speaker 1: just the stuff that you find in games. As it
Speaker 1: turns out, people have used the same sort of equipment
Speaker 1: that was originally intended to allow music to play in
Speaker 1: video games to create new music. Yeah, it's it's funny
Speaker 1: because if you think about it, we as we were developing,
Speaker 1: we as in like people were developing video games, we
Speaker 1: wanted musical inspiration. One of the things we talked about
Speaker 1: in that episode was musical environments, creating the right mood
Speaker 1: with music and sound effects to make the game more
Speaker 1: uh enriching, and it makes it more of a rewarding
Speaker 1: experience to play much more immersive that way, right, That's
Speaker 1: the word I was looking for, but I was trying
Speaker 1: to cover. Thank you for saving me. Um. The thing is, though,
Speaker 1: and you wouldn't you wouldn't necessarily think about this, especially
Speaker 1: if you didn't grow up with with the older video
Speaker 1: game style that too bit, four bit, eight bit, a dollar. Um.
Speaker 1: You you might be as a haircut in there somewhere.
Speaker 1: It's funny because you might you might think, well, you know,
Speaker 1: that was so cruddy. I mean that the music wasn't
Speaker 1: very high quality, and you know who cares. But as
Speaker 1: it turns out, people developed sort of an affection for
Speaker 1: that kind of a sound. Yeah, you can never disqualify nostalgia.
Speaker 1: The nostalgia factor conquers all. And then you have hackers.
Speaker 1: And we're not talking about the associated press definition of hackers,
Speaker 1: people who like to bust into computers to do damage. Um,
Speaker 1: we're talking about the classic sense of the word hacker,
Speaker 1: people who like to learn how things work and then
Speaker 1: play with them. Yeah, take it apart, see what it does,
Speaker 1: put it back together in a different form, and see
Speaker 1: if you can break it and fix it again. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's been some really cool hacks when that comes to this.
Speaker 1: So let's kind of boil down what we're focusing on today. Now,
Speaker 1: if we were just talking about music and the music
Speaker 1: you can create through video games, that would be in
Speaker 1: a north miss topic. And even even so we are.
Speaker 1: The topic we've chosen to focus on is still a
Speaker 1: pretty big one, and it's called chip tunes. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is this is the merger of hacking and the love
Speaker 1: for the eight bit sound. Right, So we're talking about
Speaker 1: the kinds of sounds you would get from classic video
Speaker 1: game systems and computer systems, things like the Atari, the
Speaker 1: original in nes, UH, the Commodore sixty four, and even
Speaker 1: some of the older like ib M s and things
Speaker 1: of that nature. We're talking about systems that had a
Speaker 1: dedicated processor that was meant to generate sound, a dedicated
Speaker 1: chip and uh, the chip was able to create a
Speaker 1: certain range of frequencies and a certain range of tones,
Speaker 1: and that was it. It wasn't like a true synthesizer, right,
Speaker 1: It couldn't. It couldn't recreate the sound of, say, a violin.
Speaker 1: It could just create kind of a a weird sort
Speaker 1: of simulation of a violin that no person who had
Speaker 1: at least at least decent hearing would ever mistake for
Speaker 1: a violin. But you could, you know, you could evoked
Speaker 1: the same sort of feeling, right right, Um, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's uh. I also wanted to clarify too, before we
Speaker 1: go too much for the one I said eight bit
Speaker 1: a minute ago that that seems to be uh the
Speaker 1: slang term now for old video game Uh. So, don't
Speaker 1: take that literally because some of the things we're gonna
Speaker 1: be talking about, our our even more rudimentary than eight
Speaker 1: bit uh sounds. In our History of Video Game Music podcast,
Speaker 1: we talked about how on the earliest systems, the chip,
Speaker 1: a lot of the system sounds on games like the
Speaker 1: the early Palm consoles and the Atari, those were hardwired
Speaker 1: into that, so programmers had to take advantage of whatever
Speaker 1: was available to them on that chip. They didn't have
Speaker 1: a lot of flexibility in that regard, and it wasn't
Speaker 1: until several years into the video game home video game
Speaker 1: craze that UH developers were able to create their own
Speaker 1: sounds and put it embedded in the software and the
Speaker 1: machine would play it back. That way, it would give
Speaker 1: them more ability in that regard. So a lot of
Speaker 1: people who make chip tunes are are taking apart consoles
Speaker 1: like UH Jonathan mentioned and the the game Boy too
Speaker 1: because they're portable. Um And the first person I ever
Speaker 1: heard about I wrote a blog post about it a
Speaker 1: while ago, was a guy named pixel Hate. He's a
Speaker 1: probably or easily one of the most famous chip tune makers. UM.
Speaker 1: He actually I've actually seen him busting. There's a video
Speaker 1: of him on YouTube. His name's Matthew Applegate. He's lives
Speaker 1: in the United Kingdom and UH, I actually seen him
Speaker 1: with a modified UH game Boy out with a namp
Speaker 1: on the corner, and there's a video of him playing.
Speaker 1: And it looks like he's standing there playing a video game,
Speaker 1: because that's he's essentially taking it apart and doing this,
Speaker 1: but he's ah, it looks like he's just standing there
Speaker 1: playing a video game, but he's actually playing music on
Speaker 1: the device. Now, the question is, how do you make
Speaker 1: that happen. Well. Part of the challenges that you actually
Speaker 1: have to create software that will allow you to sequence music,
Speaker 1: loop music to create those different uh frequencies that the
Speaker 1: device is capable of. Now you gotta remember that you
Speaker 1: are you are confined to the the sounds of that
Speaker 1: chip is capable of creating, right, It's not like you
Speaker 1: can create any sound. Um. But there are quite a
Speaker 1: few of these programs specifically for the game Boy. Um
Speaker 1: let's see. I know that pixel Hate actually had come
Speaker 1: out with some of those himself and has since retracted them.
Speaker 1: It does not offer them anymore. Um, there's one because
Speaker 1: he he said that he thinks it's um it wasn't
Speaker 1: right for him to do that anymore, so he's not
Speaker 1: making that available. But uh, yeah, he he was one
Speaker 1: of a number of people who. Um, it requires some
Speaker 1: some hardware modification because you have to you have to
Speaker 1: wire the buttons up to take advantage of the sound
Speaker 1: chip to some degree. And it depends, I think on
Speaker 1: the console if if I've read correctly. Um, but yes,
Speaker 1: it does require some some software engineering as well in
Speaker 1: order to make it work. Yeah, there's uh there was
Speaker 1: one cartridge specifically for the game Boy that would let
Speaker 1: you do a lot of this, which you know, that
Speaker 1: was great because the cartridge did the work for you.
Speaker 1: Um and it was called Little Sound DJ or l
Speaker 1: S D j UH and again it had a sequencer
Speaker 1: built into it. It could produce the different four bit
Speaker 1: sounds that the game Boy could create. UM and it
Speaker 1: had four channels for that, So you could create four
Speaker 1: channels of music with this thing. And you could actually
Speaker 1: create music live just like Chris was talking about. You
Speaker 1: could using using the control pad and the elect and
Speaker 1: start buttons and the A and B buttons, you could
Speaker 1: create loops and insert different sounds and actually sort of
Speaker 1: be a in this case, a four bit dj UM.
Speaker 1: And that's pretty cool, that's uh, you know. And and
Speaker 1: that's actually taking direct advantage of the the chip in
Speaker 1: the game Boy. It's taking advantage of that chip's capabilities.
Speaker 1: As it turns out, not all chip tunes makers are
Speaker 1: using actual chips. But let's I want to talk about
Speaker 1: one other chip that was really important as far as
Speaker 1: chip tunes are concerned. It was one of those that
Speaker 1: kind of inspired a lot of the early music makers
Speaker 1: in in computer music and uh, and that was the
Speaker 1: MS technology S I D Sound Interface device, which was
Speaker 1: for the Common or sixty four. And this was one
Speaker 1: of those devices that, like I said, was really instrumental.
Speaker 1: If you will, it's a little bit of a fun uh.
Speaker 1: And in launching this US craze about the eight bit music.
Speaker 1: Another interesting thing just off off is kind of a
Speaker 1: tangent is that you know you mentioned that, uh is
Speaker 1: it pixel hates that? What you said? Yeah, pixel hate that.
Speaker 1: He was from the UK. I've noticed that a lot
Speaker 1: of the musicians who use the chip tunes method are
Speaker 1: from Europe, or if if you're from the UK and
Speaker 1: you don't like being lumped in with the Europeans from
Speaker 1: the UK or from Europe. Ah, it's interesting. It was
Speaker 1: just interesting to me because I also saw a guy
Speaker 1: who had created a chip tunes synthesizer. He had converted
Speaker 1: an old oregan uh into a chip tunes player. He
Speaker 1: called it the chip a phone. What kind of organ
Speaker 1: was this? Um? It was this old like electronic organ,
Speaker 1: like not not like a bellows organ or anything like that,
Speaker 1: but yeah, it's like an electric organ. And he had
Speaker 1: converted it so that the various switches that would usually
Speaker 1: change the tone actually would do the different waves because
Speaker 1: chip tunes could play sound waves in various formations. You
Speaker 1: have like triangle waves, saw tooth waves, pulse waves, and
Speaker 1: each of these waves have have sort of a distinctive
Speaker 1: sound to them, right, So you know, you think of
Speaker 1: the think of the different video games songs from the
Speaker 1: classic era, things like Legend of Zelda or Super Mario
Speaker 1: Brothers and the various bleeps, bloops and ants, and you
Speaker 1: know that those are all coming from the different shapes
Speaker 1: of sound waves. And uh and actually the fellow who
Speaker 1: made the chip a phone uh lenis Akisson probably totally
Speaker 1: mispronounced his name. Um. He has a website where he
Speaker 1: talks about exactly what he did to create it, in
Speaker 1: including like the wiring that he did in order to
Speaker 1: make uh this this um this organ that would let
Speaker 1: him play chip tunes live. Because usually with chip tunes,
Speaker 1: what you're doing is you're either pro gramming something directly
Speaker 1: and so that it will play automatically on a chip.
Speaker 1: So you know, you're not live, you're not performing it live.
Speaker 1: You you you actually program it, or you're doing a
Speaker 1: program with an emulator. And we'll talk about the emulators
Speaker 1: in a little bit, But that that Commodore sixty four chip,
Speaker 1: like I said, was a big um, a big inspiration
Speaker 1: for a lot of different musicians, not just musicians, but
Speaker 1: also engineers who are working on similar chips because the uh,
Speaker 1: the Commodore sixty four chip was the project started back
Speaker 1: in one and can you guess where it premiered. It
Speaker 1: was let me let me put it to you this way,
Speaker 1: biggest consumer electronics conference in the world CS two c
Speaker 1: E S the Commodore sixty four Music Sound Interface Device
Speaker 1: chip premiered. The engineer who designed the chip was Robert
Speaker 1: Bob Yannis, and uh he actually later went on to
Speaker 1: be a founder of a synthesizer company, so that makes sense.
Speaker 1: But his original plan was actually much more grand than
Speaker 1: what came out, and part of the reason was just
Speaker 1: that it was a time crunch. But the originally this
Speaker 1: chip was supposed to have thirty two independent voices, which
Speaker 1: is yeah, yeah, and you know, it just it was
Speaker 1: it was too ambitious a plan, and it turned out
Speaker 1: that that was just not gonna happen. He claims that
Speaker 1: about seventy of the things he had planned to incorporate
Speaker 1: in the chip made it into production, which I mean,
Speaker 1: when you think about how ambitious it was, I guess
Speaker 1: that's not too bad, but uh, yeah it was. It
Speaker 1: was this this sort of interesting mix of noises and
Speaker 1: music that really got a lot of people interested. Um.
Speaker 1: And a lot of that stuff did carry over into
Speaker 1: the various chips that you found in other devices, not
Speaker 1: not all you know, the Commverse six before had that one. Uh.
Speaker 1: The other devices like the Atari had a chip that
Speaker 1: they called Pokey. I remember Pokey. Yeah. Actually was going
Speaker 1: to mention that in the history podcast, and it looked
Speaker 1: like we were going to take a long time, so
Speaker 1: I just skipped over Pokey. Yeah. We we actually lived
Speaker 1: through most that history, which is why we were ready
Speaker 1: to talk about it at length. Uh. The Nintendo Entertainment
Speaker 1: Systems chip is the RICO to a O three, which
Speaker 1: is you know, just rolls off the tongue. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then you had other chips made by Yamaha and other
Speaker 1: companies that um that were found in other devices like
Speaker 1: IBM s and the Sega Genesis things like that. So
Speaker 1: the the people who make chip tunes either have found
Speaker 1: ways to to create software to write music and then
Speaker 1: play them using these chips, or they found ways to
Speaker 1: emulate the sounds generated by these chips in software format
Speaker 1: and then they write the music for that. So, um,
Speaker 1: you've probably heard us talk about emulators before. In case
Speaker 1: you haven't and you're not familiar with the term, an
Speaker 1: emulator is some sort of hardware or software that recreates
Speaker 1: or emulates the effects of another kind of software or hardware.
Speaker 1: You hear about it a lot with video games because
Speaker 1: the old arcade games all had dedicated chips that were
Speaker 1: specifically designed to allow those video games to play. So
Speaker 1: everything from the graphics to the sound, all of that
Speaker 1: had dedicated hardware. So in order for you to play
Speaker 1: the arcade game on a computer, you have to create
Speaker 1: software that can sort of fool the the the program
Speaker 1: into thinking that your computer is that hardware. It has
Speaker 1: to recreate that. And that's why if you've ever played
Speaker 1: an emulated video game on a computer, sometimes depending on
Speaker 1: how good the emulator is or how appropriate it is
Speaker 1: for the RAM that you're playing, the RAM is essentially
Speaker 1: the game, the game may end up being very sluggish.
Speaker 1: I remember I had a friend of mine who had
Speaker 1: emulator that played most games really well, but there were
Speaker 1: a couple of titles that if you were to try it,
Speaker 1: it felt like the game was running on a quarter speed,
Speaker 1: which made the game incredibly frustrating to play because you
Speaker 1: pressed jump and then you'd have to leave the room,
Speaker 1: get a sandwich, drink a drake, come back, and then
Speaker 1: you see that your guys finally off the ground. Um.
Speaker 1: So yeah, emulators come with their own set of problems.
Speaker 1: Not you know, not all emulators are created equal, but
Speaker 1: that's your basic set of tools if you want to
Speaker 1: be a chip tunes musician. Right. Yeah, it's funny because
Speaker 1: I wanted to make the distinction earlier and then just
Speaker 1: completely forgot to get into it. Um. The difference in
Speaker 1: chip tunes is uh and and another technology. UM. Chip
Speaker 1: tunes is generally the programming side of it, when you're
Speaker 1: programming an old machine to make music, whereas circuit bending.
Speaker 1: Have you hearn that term circuit bending is actually is
Speaker 1: actually creating short circuits in an electronic device in order
Speaker 1: to have it make music. Um. And there are believe
Speaker 1: it or not, festivals dedicated to both of these. So
Speaker 1: circuit bending would that be like the kind of stuff
Speaker 1: that people would do where they make hard drive spin
Speaker 1: at certain speeds in order to generate music. I I
Speaker 1: that's my understanding of postics. Um and and actually one
Speaker 1: of the projects. When I first found out about Matthew
Speaker 1: Applegates work. UM, the very first thing that I saw
Speaker 1: called chip tunes wasn't actually by that by the definitions
Speaker 1: I just mentioned a chip tune. UM. His album Obsolete
Speaker 1: was a recording of devices. Is that. Uh. He had
Speaker 1: to work with the National muse Museum of Computing in
Speaker 1: the UK to get access to Do you remember this?
Speaker 1: This is this is new to me, okay. Uh. They
Speaker 1: gave him access to the machines at Bletchley Park. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Bletchley Park for those of you who are not familiar. UH,
Speaker 1: is a computing center in the United Kingdom. It was
Speaker 1: instrumental in again no fun intended in um helping break
Speaker 1: the German code system that they were using in World
Speaker 1: War Two. Um. This goes back to h r UM
Speaker 1: podcast on Alan Touring. He's one of the people that
Speaker 1: worked at Bletchley Park. UM. And now it is the
Speaker 1: side of the National Computing Museum. Uh. And they gave
Speaker 1: him access to some of the computing equipment that they
Speaker 1: had there, and of course he had to promise he
Speaker 1: wasn't going to break it, because creating chip tunes sometimes
Speaker 1: involves hacking to the point where stuff just doesn't work anymore.
Speaker 1: So he had to promise he was just going to
Speaker 1: uh to record it. And what he recorded he was
Speaker 1: able to manipulate with uh you know, sound editing software
Speaker 1: and basically used the electric relays, not you know, the
Speaker 1: the uh little electric switches that they used for computing.
Speaker 1: And uh it's very staccato and percussive. But that's the
Speaker 1: very first chip tune I ever heard. Really, I guess
Speaker 1: technically wasn't a chip tune, yes, but yeah, using the
Speaker 1: mechanical devices or you know, I guess you could call
Speaker 1: him electro mechanical because they are electronics, but they are
Speaker 1: also mechanical like a hard drive. UM, so yeah, you
Speaker 1: have you have the difference there. Um. But the festivals
Speaker 1: I was mentioning earlier, let's see, Uh there is um
Speaker 1: the Blip Festival, which is a chip tune festival, and
Speaker 1: uh there there is a series in New York called
Speaker 1: Pulse Wave UM that is dedicated to this um. And
Speaker 1: the Bent Festival is for circuit benders um, people who
Speaker 1: use things like the speak and spell nice to create music. Well,
Speaker 1: and it just shows that that these little simple bleeps
Speaker 1: and bloops can really inspire people to do some pretty
Speaker 1: cool stuff. And I mean like, for example, uh, you
Speaker 1: know I talked about video games live the orchestra uh
Speaker 1: presentation of video game music. What's funny to me is
Speaker 1: that now you've come to the point where you have
Speaker 1: full orchestras, yes, playing and in some cases emulating in
Speaker 1: the sense that they're trying to get these very sophisticated
Speaker 1: instruments to sound like the bleeps and bloops that came
Speaker 1: from the old video games. You've gone full circle because
Speaker 1: the video game bleeps and bloops were meant to kind
Speaker 1: of get us close to what we consider your classic music.
Speaker 1: You want them to sound like violins and and and trumpets,
Speaker 1: and now they're using trumpets to sound like leaps and bloops.
Speaker 1: It's a madness. Well, um, if you want to join in,
Speaker 1: there is a chip Tune Marching band. And if you
Speaker 1: go to the chip Tune Marching Band website um, which
Speaker 1: I thoughtfully didn't include the address to in my notes. Um,
Speaker 1: I can look it up in a second, or you
Speaker 1: can if you want to. They will give you instructions
Speaker 1: their instructions online and what you need to to create
Speaker 1: your own chip tune instruments so that you can participate.
Speaker 1: That website is chip Tune Marching Band dot com. I
Speaker 1: didn't know if it was something more difficult than that
Speaker 1: I could know, but that that there you what is
Speaker 1: up with me and my notes that I wasn't very
Speaker 1: good today? I don't know. I'm I'm guessing it's because
Speaker 1: you're using an um a tablet computer, which you know,
Speaker 1: I'm using a computer computer. And okay, enough of my
Speaker 1: anti tablet bias. That's okay, the keyboard on your computer
Speaker 1: computer doesn't work, This is true. But yes, the the
Speaker 1: chip tune Marching Man, and I've also seen I've also
Speaker 1: seen on YouTube. If you go to YouTube, there are
Speaker 1: of course dozens and dozens of chip tunes videos, and
Speaker 1: some of the videos like they include the videos of
Speaker 1: the guy with the chip a phone where you can
Speaker 1: watch him play on this this Oregon. You can watch
Speaker 1: him play live all the tunes that came from old
Speaker 1: video games, and he can get really close to the
Speaker 1: sound of those tunes, like to the point where, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, if you close your eyes you can almost
Speaker 1: imagine that this is the video game. Um, it's not
Speaker 1: quite the same, because, of course, when you program a
Speaker 1: song for a computer, it's always gonna play it at
Speaker 1: that speed, you know, the tempo and everything. None of
Speaker 1: that's gonna change there. It's never gonna make a mistake,
Speaker 1: right Whereas we're humans and we occasionally do like you
Speaker 1: hit a wrong note or you lose the tempo a
Speaker 1: little bit, specially if you're a drummer, and uh say,
Speaker 1: I almost never hit a wrong note, right, you just
Speaker 1: hit the wrong beat. But yeah, the the you can
Speaker 1: watch that. And there's also I saw a guy who
Speaker 1: had what he called the chip tunes. He called it
Speaker 1: a chip tune guitar or an eight big guitar, and
Speaker 1: maybe he called an eight big guitar. Yeah. It was
Speaker 1: actually a really cool project. He had designed it for
Speaker 1: a college project or high school project. I think it
Speaker 1: was college, but it was. It looked like a guitar body,
Speaker 1: but instead of strings, it had six arcade buttons on it,
Speaker 1: and then the fret had actually strips of of of
Speaker 1: capacit type material so that it could detect when he
Speaker 1: was touching it, and by pressing a button he would
Speaker 1: generate a certain tone, and then by moving his hand
Speaker 1: up and down the fret, it would actually change the
Speaker 1: pitch and he could play it like a guitar, and
Speaker 1: he could create loops. He would play a certain series
Speaker 1: of notes that would become a loop, and then he
Speaker 1: could switch to a different button and play other notes
Speaker 1: and mix a song live using this guitar like device
Speaker 1: that used of the chip tunes mentality, it seems to
Speaker 1: me that it would be pretty easy to uh. And
Speaker 1: I'm sure someone has done it. I just hadn't thought
Speaker 1: of thought to look it up before you just said that. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, to use the guitar hero style controllers. You know,
Speaker 1: with some of those the buttons already wired up, you
Speaker 1: probably wouldn't require a whole lot of modification to make
Speaker 1: an instrument like that. And I you know, we could
Speaker 1: look it up now, but it's kind of late. But yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, it's already wired to some degree and has
Speaker 1: the switches in place so that it wouldn't require too
Speaker 1: much change. And you can think of chip tunes also
Speaker 1: being sort of the predecessor for um, for true synthesizers,
Speaker 1: you know, uh synthesizers and are a little more sophisticated
Speaker 1: than the old chip tunes chips. But uh, and of
Speaker 1: course there were synthesizers that came out before the chips
Speaker 1: meant for the computers, but you know, they didn't really
Speaker 1: get sophisticated until you got to the point where you
Speaker 1: could hit the boss of Nova button and get that.
Speaker 1: I had a Cassio keyboard, you better believe it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And and despite the fact that I don't ever remember
Speaker 1: hearing the song before I got the Cassio keyboard, I
Speaker 1: did learn how to play hert and soul. Yes, it
Speaker 1: does appear that just in a quick search on Google,
Speaker 1: I'm finding that they are all sorts of chip tunes
Speaker 1: and guitar hero controller links. So I I certainly was
Speaker 1: the third person to think of that today. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: so it's it's already been done, so I should. I
Speaker 1: think everyone should probably check that out and see what
Speaker 1: people are doing with it. So people are using these
Speaker 1: these devices and these these programs to create new music, um,
Speaker 1: but they're also using them to to uh cover songs
Speaker 1: or to convert songs into eight bit format. We actually
Speaker 1: listened to a couple of funny uh examples this this morning. Uh.
Speaker 1: If you went to see the film Scott Pilgrim Versus
Speaker 1: the World, and you were there at the very beginning
Speaker 1: of the movie, it opens with an eight bit graphic
Speaker 1: version of the Universal Pictures logo, and it also has
Speaker 1: a Chip Tunes version of their their theme, which is
Speaker 1: very clever. And it got a big laugh when I
Speaker 1: saw it because I saw it in a pre screening
Speaker 1: and we were it was so it's a theater packed
Speaker 1: with nerds, right, you know, myself included. So here we
Speaker 1: are a bunch of nerds watching this, and as soon
Speaker 1: as the Universal logo popped up in that that format,
Speaker 1: we all started laughing. And then when the music played,
Speaker 1: it was that game over. Really, I mean, Edgar right
Speaker 1: had us in the palm of his hand. But I
Speaker 1: also found, Uh, if you aren't familiar with the wonderful
Speaker 1: meme of Trolo lol, which at this time has died
Speaker 1: down right, we've gotten into the point where the peak
Speaker 1: of that popularity is way past us now. It's not
Speaker 1: one of those memes that's really stuck around, but trolla
Speaker 1: lull being the Uh is he Russian? Yes? And I
Speaker 1: know that from he was from the Soviet era, That's
Speaker 1: what the clips from. Yeah, I do, I do believe
Speaker 1: he is. He is actually Russian. And the recording, however,
Speaker 1: was from a I believe Swedish TV show, and it's
Speaker 1: a fellow singing. Of course, he's not singing any words
Speaker 1: because the words were considered to be a little too
Speaker 1: uh inflammatory by the Soviets at the time, so he
Speaker 1: replaced it all with just vocalizations yeah, they call it
Speaker 1: vocalize yeah, and the or the style. Apparently it inspired
Speaker 1: the whole There was a whole movement back then around
Speaker 1: that we kind of like this, not terribly different from
Speaker 1: movements like uh like scat singing. So but anyway, the
Speaker 1: trolla Lull tune got a lot of play on YouTube,
Speaker 1: and then I found a chip tune version of trolla Lull,
Speaker 1: which amused us greatly. But but what's also cool is
Speaker 1: that people have used this kind of music to to
Speaker 1: create other forms of art that are to me really
Speaker 1: creative and entertaining. Like we talked about in our web
Speaker 1: success stories, we talked about Dr Horrible and Dr Horrible
Speaker 1: sing Along Blog. Well, there was a guy who created
Speaker 1: a Doctor Horrible sing Along blog eight bit video game video.
Speaker 1: He did the the whole story, which is done in
Speaker 1: three parts, and he also did his version in three
Speaker 1: parts as a video game. But that dated back to
Speaker 1: the Ninteno Entertainment system era, so it's all done in
Speaker 1: that style. The graphics were in that style, and the
Speaker 1: music was in that style. He took the music from
Speaker 1: the web series and converted it into chip Tunes versions
Speaker 1: of those songs, so if you knew the show, if
Speaker 1: you knew the web series, you could actually you know,
Speaker 1: humm along, you're you're singing my freezerrae will stop the world,
Speaker 1: and you're just you know, here in the chip tunes
Speaker 1: version of it. I was very clever, and I've seen
Speaker 1: other versions of that as well, where you know, people
Speaker 1: have to again popular movies or television shows or musicals
Speaker 1: even and converted it into an eight bit version using
Speaker 1: chip tunes to create the music, and it does give
Speaker 1: it that weird retro uh feel to it. That's it's
Speaker 1: kind of geeky but kind of cool at the same time.
Speaker 1: So that's really interesting. Wow, you're ready to wrap up
Speaker 1: and I don't have anything else. It's it's funny though
Speaker 1: I know I've said that a lot, but it's kind
Speaker 1: of interesting that so much has been done with this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's the kind of thing that maybe you know somebody
Speaker 1: who does it and you think, well, you know, it's
Speaker 1: just my my friend who's really into uh RD we know,
Speaker 1: boards and taking things apart. But there's it's a whole
Speaker 1: movement and it's been around for a long long time now,
Speaker 1: you know, thirty years. Yeah, and you see you see
Speaker 1: some I mean, we've seen a lot of people create
Speaker 1: weird ways to create you know, music, live music and
Speaker 1: uh and chip tunes. That's just one version. I mean,
Speaker 1: we could talk about, like architect whether you use tesla
Speaker 1: coils to create music, uh, same sort of thing, and
Speaker 1: the idea that you know, you're taking something that's very
Speaker 1: technical and geeky and then you're adding the creative side
Speaker 1: to it, the artistic creative side. And a lot of
Speaker 1: people think that those two worlds kind of exist apart
Speaker 1: from each other, and the truth is that they overlap
Speaker 1: a lot. You know, a lot of the a lot
Speaker 1: of the engineers who created the video games, especially the
Speaker 1: early ones, were also the ones who created all the music, right,
Speaker 1: they weren't. It wasn't like, you know, you had you
Speaker 1: had the guys in the white lab coats in one
Speaker 1: part of the building and all the musicians and the
Speaker 1: messy part of the building. That's just not how it worked.
Speaker 1: They were all in the messy part of the building anyway.
Speaker 1: So that's kind of our discussion on ship tunes. When
Speaker 1: I upload. When I went I write the blog post
Speaker 1: for this podcast, I will include some videos of chip
Speaker 1: tunes from YouTube because I think it's important, including I
Speaker 1: think the troll a Lil One, because I don't think
Speaker 1: I can get away from that. So as long as
Speaker 1: I can find the troll a Lil One on YouTube,
Speaker 1: then I will include that, because the side I found
Speaker 1: it on was not YouTube. Um and then I think
Speaker 1: it's there. Yeah, I think it is. Actually, I see,
Speaker 1: I see it now, so I will include that as well.
Speaker 1: The eight bit inspired chip tune cover of the famous
Speaker 1: meme Mr trolla Lull, So I will include that because
Speaker 1: it's priceless. So if you guys want to actually hear
Speaker 1: some of the stuff, go to YouTube check it out,
Speaker 1: go to the blogs once I get the blog post up,
Speaker 1: once this podcast goes live, and check it out. And
Speaker 1: uh and and if you're interested in really do some research,
Speaker 1: you might be able to find either an emulator or
Speaker 1: maybe even an old chip set up where you can
Speaker 1: actually program stuff directly so that it plays on the hardware.
Speaker 1: There are setups like that I've seen a few kind
Speaker 1: of hack together things that are really really cool and uh,
Speaker 1: and really you're just limited by your own creativity. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and definitely if this is something that you've already been doing,
Speaker 1: we'd love to hear what you've what you've got, so
Speaker 1: certainly share that with us. Yeah, because I mean, I
Speaker 1: like to rock out at work. He does. It's true,
Speaker 1: it's a little disturbing to the rest of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you've done any chip Tunes versions of the Ramons,
Speaker 1: totally send them to me. All Right, we're gonna wrap
Speaker 1: this up. If you guys would like to interact with us,
Speaker 1: you can do that on Twitter and Facebook are handled.
Speaker 1: There is text stuff h s W or you can
Speaker 1: shoot us an email. That email addresses tech stuff at
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. Chris and I will talk
Speaker 1: to you again really soon. For more on this and
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: So learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast
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