Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from my Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. How the tech are you? And you know,
Speaker 1: I've noticed something. Everyone notices this. This doesn't make me special,
Speaker 1: but every now and again, trends have this tendency to
Speaker 1: repeat themselves. You know, you see things that were trendy
Speaker 1: once upon a time fade away and then years later
Speaker 1: kind of get a renaissance, and trends that are really
Speaker 1: rooted in nostalgia do this a lot. So I thought
Speaker 1: it would be cool to talk about something that occasionally
Speaker 1: becomes trendy, and that is eight bit music or chip dunes,
Speaker 1: and these are things that often find their way into
Speaker 1: various types of pop culture. Sometimes there's a resurgence in
Speaker 1: the style. Sometimes music will reference this kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: either directly or indirectly. But first we got to figure
Speaker 1: out what the heck we're talking about, right, Well, we're
Speaker 1: really talking about that distinctive kind of electronic music that
Speaker 1: sounds like it came straight from a classic video game,
Speaker 1: perhaps in the old Nintendo Entertainment System era. Really, the
Speaker 1: NES era is like the golden age for the eight
Speaker 1: bits sound. It would sound something like this that was
Speaker 1: cannon indeed for eight bits. Since by Kevin McLeod, you've
Speaker 1: likely heard a lot of McLeod's work online. His website
Speaker 1: incompatach is a popular source for royalty free music. This
Speaker 1: particular our piece really touches on the features that make
Speaker 1: eight bit music distinctive. Now, there's one thing that we
Speaker 1: really should clear up right away. The reason music like
Speaker 1: what you just heard sounds the way it sounds is
Speaker 1: not specifically because the chip responsible was an eight bit chip.
Speaker 1: The eight bit designation tells us that the chip is
Speaker 1: able to store and process a maximum of eight bits
Speaker 1: per data block, and a bit, just to remind you,
Speaker 1: is the basic unit of digital information. It can be
Speaker 1: represented as a zero, or as a one or off
Speaker 1: and on. As I often say, now, if you have
Speaker 1: eight bits strung together, you can represent up to two
Speaker 1: hundred fifty six different values from zero up to two
Speaker 1: hundred fifty five. Now, the eight bit designation really did
Speaker 1: have a big impact on software. It limited what you
Speaker 1: could do graphically and computationally. But really, when it comes
Speaker 1: to the sound generated by systems like the classic in
Speaker 1: ne s, the factors that shape that sound weren't directly
Speaker 1: tied to the fact that the chip set had an
Speaker 1: eight bit word size capability to them, but the reason
Speaker 1: for that distinctive sound is really due to the microchips
Speaker 1: used in classic gaming consoles and the types of sounds
Speaker 1: that they were capable of generating. For example, the AT
Speaker 1: had a chip called the Television Interface Adapter or t
Speaker 1: i A or TIAH. This chip was responsible for quite
Speaker 1: a few jobs. Actually, it served as the interface for
Speaker 1: inputs coming into the console from the controllers, so, in
Speaker 1: other words, it was what was responsible for making pac
Speaker 1: Man go up when you pushed up on the joystick.
Speaker 1: It was also responsible for generating what you saw on
Speaker 1: your television and screen, and it was also in charge
Speaker 1: of generating sound effects. The Autary had two oscillator channels,
Speaker 1: essentially to audio channels, and it was really limited in
Speaker 1: what it was able to produce. One channel was essentially
Speaker 1: a pulse channel which could produce different tones, and the
Speaker 1: other channel was a noise channel. You couldn't really program
Speaker 1: sophisticated music on it without jumping through a lot of
Speaker 1: programming hoops in order to play a specific note. By
Speaker 1: using the pulse channel to play two D tuned notes
Speaker 1: and quick succession. So, in other words, rather than being
Speaker 1: able to produce, say like a middle C, you're producing
Speaker 1: tones that are a little below and a little above
Speaker 1: middle C, and you're alternating them very quickly, and the
Speaker 1: vibrato effect makes us perceive a warbly middle C note.
Speaker 1: The noise channel would generate noise that would serve as percussion.
Speaker 1: It was pretty jankie for that reason. The vast majority
Speaker 1: of a hundred games had no background music. They might
Speaker 1: have a little bit of intro music, and there were
Speaker 1: a couple of exceptions, notable ones. In fact, Pitfall two,
Speaker 1: for example, had an actual game soundtrack, and not only that,
Speaker 1: the soundtrack was dynamic, which meant the music would change
Speaker 1: depending upon what was going on in the game. This
Speaker 1: was a pretty tough thing to pull off from a
Speaker 1: programming standpoint back in those days, simply due to the
Speaker 1: limitations of the hardware, and in a way, those limitations
Speaker 1: ended up being a big part of what makes eight
Speaker 1: bit and chip tune music so distinctive. The limitations forced
Speaker 1: musicians to find ways to be creative and expressive within
Speaker 1: very tight boundaries. Now, sometimes restrictions lead creative types to
Speaker 1: do amazing work for at least some types of creatives,
Speaker 1: being unbounded ends up being kind of a drawback. If
Speaker 1: you're told they're limitations and you have nothing to push against.
Speaker 1: Then for a lot of creative people, including myself, it
Speaker 1: can actually paralyze you because you realize like there are
Speaker 1: no like when when there are no limitations and everything
Speaker 1: is on the table, you have to choose what you do,
Speaker 1: whereas restrictions limit your options, and it actually can make
Speaker 1: it easier to create. It seems counterintuitive, but for many
Speaker 1: people that is the case for myself included. So restrictions
Speaker 1: and boundaries create certain rules that you can play around within. Now,
Speaker 1: in the arcades, it was a different story from video
Speaker 1: game consoles. An arcade machine has a lot of specific circuitry.
Speaker 1: So your basic classic arcade machine is designed to play
Speaker 1: one game and that's it. All the circuits in the
Speaker 1: arcade machine are the actual game itself. It's not running
Speaker 1: a program off a disk or a cartridge or a
Speaker 1: digital file. The actual game is hard coded on the
Speaker 1: ships and circuitry. But arcade machines could incorporate multiple sound
Speaker 1: chips to increase the number of audio channels available and
Speaker 1: thus produced more sophisticated music. One very early example of
Speaker 1: such a game was a game called Vanguard, which came
Speaker 1: out way back in The crazy thing about Vanguard from
Speaker 1: a music perspective, anyway, is that it was one of
Speaker 1: the first arcade games to make use of licensed music.
Speaker 1: For one thing, it used a bit of the theme
Speaker 1: from Star Trek, the motion picture that would end up
Speaker 1: being the same motif that would be used later on
Speaker 1: in Star Trek the next generation. It also incorporated a
Speaker 1: motif from the nineteen eighty film Flash Gordon, which had
Speaker 1: a killer soundtrack composed by the band Queen. Specifically, the
Speaker 1: game has a chip Tunes version of Voltan's theme from
Speaker 1: the movie, and it totally rules. Now, these chips could
Speaker 1: produce certain types of wave forms of audience, and typically
Speaker 1: these chips were very limited in that they could produce
Speaker 1: only one kind of wave form per chip, or per
Speaker 1: audio channel I should say, not chip, but audio channel.
Speaker 1: So let's talk a bit about oscillators and signals and waveforms. Now.
Speaker 1: First off, an oscillator is essentially an electronic circuit that
Speaker 1: generates a continuous output signal and that's it. We typically
Speaker 1: see that output in the form of some sort of
Speaker 1: repeating curve or sinusoid. If you have familiarity with trigonometry,
Speaker 1: you likely are familiar with sinusoidal waves or sine waves.
Speaker 1: You've got a triggonometric function that, when plotted on a graph,
Speaker 1: generates this wave. Now, a simple sinusoidal wave produces waves
Speaker 1: that are equal length and amplitude. This is very simple.
Speaker 1: This is like if you're produce saying a steady unaltered signal,
Speaker 1: Like if you were just to produce the electronic equivalent
Speaker 1: of a C note, so you would have the steady
Speaker 1: frequency of identical waves. The frequency refers to the number
Speaker 1: of waves that pass a given point within a given
Speaker 1: amount of time. And we can plot sound waves like
Speaker 1: this too. Like electronic waves, we can plot this way,
Speaker 1: and sound waves we can plot this way. So that
Speaker 1: C note where you have a regular pitch and it's
Speaker 1: like a pure C note, there's no vibrato going on here.
Speaker 1: You're gonna have a a side wave plotted to represent
Speaker 1: this sound wave where you have this very smooth curve
Speaker 1: where you have uh waves that are each the same
Speaker 1: wave length and they're all the same amplitude or height,
Speaker 1: which means it's all played at the same volume. The
Speaker 1: way we hear it, and it would be very pretty
Speaker 1: and neat. It would also be boring to listen to. UM.
Speaker 1: If you were to change the pitch of a sound, well,
Speaker 1: then that would mean that the frequency would go up
Speaker 1: and the wavelength of the waves would decrease, so you
Speaker 1: would have shorter waves and more waves would pass a
Speaker 1: given point within a certain amount of time, So the
Speaker 1: frequency increases lower pitches. It's the opposite. The waves would
Speaker 1: be longer and fewer would pass a given point in
Speaker 1: time UM or a given point within a given amount
Speaker 1: of time, I should say, and thus you would have
Speaker 1: a lower pitch. But with electronic oscillators, we can produce
Speaker 1: lots of different shapes of waves, and those different shapes
Speaker 1: can correspond with different sounds in the case of audio chips,
Speaker 1: that is. Keep in mind that continuous signals can be
Speaker 1: used to produce all sorts of different stuff, not just audio.
Speaker 1: So when we come back, we'll talk about these different
Speaker 1: waveforms and what they can be used to do. But
Speaker 1: first let's take this quick break. Okay we're now. I
Speaker 1: Am not going to do a full deep dive into
Speaker 1: all the different kinds of waves that oscillators can produce.
Speaker 1: Because that would be a podcast all by itself. But
Speaker 1: let's talk about the basic forms that you found in
Speaker 1: say the nes You know, the different audio channels and
Speaker 1: what they could produce and what those sound like. So
Speaker 1: in the case of electronic audio and synthesized audio, the
Speaker 1: shape of the wave form determines the timbre or character
Speaker 1: of a sound, the tone. So one type of wave
Speaker 1: form that's really important in the eight bit sound genre
Speaker 1: is the square wave. Square wave forms and electronics are
Speaker 1: often used for stuff like clock timing signals. A sign wave,
Speaker 1: like I said, has a smooth curve, so it it
Speaker 1: rises and reaches a peak and then descends in a
Speaker 1: very smooth fashion. Square waves go from the zero point
Speaker 1: and they jump straight up to whatever they're a alitude
Speaker 1: ends up being for however long the wavelength is, so
Speaker 1: there's no curve. It just goes from zero and then
Speaker 1: jumps straight up to whatever the amplitude is, stays that
Speaker 1: way for the length of the wave, and then drops
Speaker 1: right back down to zero. So they look like squares
Speaker 1: when you plot them on a graph, Thus the name
Speaker 1: square wave. Now, in digital audio, that kind of wave
Speaker 1: produces those chirpy beep noises we think about with eight
Speaker 1: bit or chip tune music. So these wave forms are
Speaker 1: typically used to create the sounds used to generate a
Speaker 1: melody in a musical piece in a video game. So, uh,
Speaker 1: you usually do this in order to create the main
Speaker 1: melodic theme of whatever the pieces. The Nintendo Entertainment System
Speaker 1: or the NES had two channels capable of producing square waves,
Speaker 1: and by using both of the channels at the same time,
Speaker 1: you could create warbly vibrato sound. You know, you could
Speaker 1: have one channel producing one pitch and the second channel
Speaker 1: producing a different pitch, and then you could you know,
Speaker 1: slightly offset them so you would get that warbly sound.
Speaker 1: Or you could even create a melody and harmony together
Speaker 1: and program each of those those uh lines of of
Speaker 1: data to produce different squares on their square waves. Now,
Speaker 1: next up we have triangle waves. Triangle waves. Hate person waves.
Speaker 1: They have a fight, triangle wins triangle waves. And yeah, well,
Speaker 1: these triangle waves, when you plot on a graph or
Speaker 1: you display it on a monitor, they look like triangles.
Speaker 1: The wave rises very sharply to a point and then
Speaker 1: immediately descends afterward, and so they're not it's not straight
Speaker 1: up and down like a square wave. It's at an angle,
Speaker 1: but it's at a sharp angle, so they look like triangles. Uh.
Speaker 1: These typically come in as a softer sound than square
Speaker 1: waves do, and they very often were used to generate
Speaker 1: a baseline for video game music, so you would produce
Speaker 1: lower pitched sounds. The NES third audio channel was dedicated
Speaker 1: to creating triangle waves. So if you're keeping count, the
Speaker 1: NES had two channels that would produce square waves, typically
Speaker 1: for melody maybe harmony, and then a third one that
Speaker 1: was used to produce triangle waves for the baselines. Then
Speaker 1: then e S had a noise channel, and that would
Speaker 1: produce noise, which really just means a signal that contains
Speaker 1: a certain range of frequencies, all the frequencies within a
Speaker 1: given spectrum, and all those frequencies would all be played
Speaker 1: at the same amplitude or volume, so there's no note
Speaker 1: in noise. Or you could say there are all the
Speaker 1: notes within a given spectrum that are all played at
Speaker 1: the same volume, so you can't pick any single note
Speaker 1: out and it just becomes noise. UM. I associate noise
Speaker 1: with static, but then I also realized this is something
Speaker 1: that dates me because these days you don't encounter static
Speaker 1: in the wild anymore. Right, it's you as an effect
Speaker 1: in many cases, but it's not like you you're switching
Speaker 1: channels on your television and you hit static and you
Speaker 1: get that noise. Anyway, noise was usually used to create
Speaker 1: percussive beats for a song, so the NESS fourth audio
Speaker 1: channel would do just that. It was used as a
Speaker 1: percussion track. The NES also had a fifth audio channel
Speaker 1: which was dedicated to playing very short clips of sampled sounds.
Speaker 1: So these were sounds that you could record in the
Speaker 1: real world and play back in a digitized format. And
Speaker 1: this channel could playback stuff that included digitized speech. Now
Speaker 1: Here is where that eight bit limitation actually does come in.
Speaker 1: In the previous examples, we're really talking about the wave
Speaker 1: form being what is important to create that distinctive eight
Speaker 1: bit audio. But when it comes to digitized speech, the
Speaker 1: eight bit limitation actually plays a big part in it. Uh.
Speaker 1: If you listen to digitized speech from the NES era,
Speaker 1: you're gonna hear there's a lot of noise introduced in
Speaker 1: that speech. Like it's not a clear recording. Uh. If
Speaker 1: you were a fan of the classic Gauntlet games, I'm
Speaker 1: talking about the original versions of Gauntlet, not like remasters
Speaker 1: or anything. You probably remember there was a digitized voice
Speaker 1: with a lot of noise in it that would say
Speaker 1: things like red war here, your life force is running out,
Speaker 1: or green Elf shot the food because the digitized narrator
Speaker 1: of that game was a total snitch. Anyway, if you
Speaker 1: remember what that sounded like, you remember there was this
Speaker 1: noisy element to the speech, and again that was largely
Speaker 1: because of the limitations of a bit technology that would
Speaker 1: improve over time. So when we get to stuff like
Speaker 1: chip tunes or modern music that replicates the sound of
Speaker 1: these video games, we're really talking about musicians using digital
Speaker 1: instruments or in computer workstations to generate those classic wave
Speaker 1: forms from the nes video game era and thereabouts, the
Speaker 1: triangle waves and the square waves. It's not about slapping
Speaker 1: an eight bit chip into a digital amplifier or something.
Speaker 1: It's rather creating those very specific, continuous signals in order
Speaker 1: to get the sounds you want. Uh. They sound pretty
Speaker 1: darn cool if you ask me. But I'm also a
Speaker 1: guy who's going into his late forties, so it really
Speaker 1: hits a nostalgic place for yours truly. Anyway, I thought
Speaker 1: it would be interesting to kind of touch on what
Speaker 1: makes those sounds unique and what gives them the quality
Speaker 1: that we associate with them. And I hope you enjoyed
Speaker 1: this episode. If you have suggestions for future topics, feel
Speaker 1: free to reach out to me. One way you can
Speaker 1: do that is on Twitter the handle for the show's
Speaker 1: tech Stuff hs W. Another thing you could do is
Speaker 1: you can go to the I Heart Radio app and
Speaker 1: use the talk back feature on the tech stuff page
Speaker 1: and let me know. In fact, if there's a specific
Speaker 1: like classic video games soundtrack that you really love, like
Speaker 1: there's something in that eight bit music genre that speaks
Speaker 1: to you, I want to hear which one is your favorite?
Speaker 1: Because I have my favorites. I don't want to influence
Speaker 1: anybody else. I really want to hear, and maybe it'll
Speaker 1: be a game I'm not familiar with, and I'll get
Speaker 1: to discover music that I really love that I've never
Speaker 1: heard before. So if you have suggestions like that, use
Speaker 1: that talkback feature. You can record a sound clip of
Speaker 1: up to thirty seconds and I will see it in
Speaker 1: our little dashboard and I'll be able to listen to it.
Speaker 1: And heck, if we get enough cool responses, I can
Speaker 1: even include those in the future episode. All right, that's it.
Speaker 1: Hope you have a great day. I'll talk to you
Speaker 1: again really soon. Text Stuff is an I heart Radio production.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i
Speaker 1: heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.