CHIPTUNE CONCERTO
There’s something wonderfully transportive about chiptune. No matter the context, hearing a few bars of a square wave melody instantly brings you to a better time and place, evoking images of countless hours spent in front of classic consoles. Think of the Super Mario Bros theme; with just a few repeating melody lines and minimalistic percussion, Koji Kondo created something truly timeless. “I wanted to create something that had never been heard before, where you’d think, ‘This isn’t like game music at all, isn’t it?,’” Kondo said about his soundtrack in a 2007 Wired interview. “It had to fit the game the best, enhance the gameplay and make it more enjoyable. Not just sit there and be something that plays while you play the game.”
However, its history can be traced back decades earlier. Broadly defined as making music using sounds generated by retro computer sound chips, composer and enterprise fellow at The University Of Melbourne Kenneth B McAlpine traces chiptune’s origins back to the Fifties, when researchers used computers. “Although it would be a few more years before this voice echoed in the virtual space of videogames, it hinted at how those games might sound.”
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