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pengan1987 / intro-to-demoscene

Introduction to Demoscene
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Buzzer music #6

Open utz82 opened 1 year ago

utz82 commented 1 year ago

I would argue that the term "Buzzer music" is mostly found in historic descriptions. Today, "beeper music" or, more correctly, "1-bit music" is more common.

The paragraph also makes this sound more niche than it really is. Two demoparties have dedicated compos for it (DiHalt for ZX beeper music and SillyVenture for Atari 8-bit GTIA music), a 1-bit entry took 2nd place in the oldschool music compo at Revision 2016 (https://demozoo.org/music/154960/), and on music competition site battleofthebits.org, ZX beeper is one of the most popular chiptune formats. Iirc it used to be the 4th most popular behind the various NES/Famicom formats, Sega Genesis, and Gameboy, but stats for the site are no longer public, so I can't check.

pengan1987 commented 1 year ago

Thanks for the feedback!

Since many tutorials online refer to the square wave generated by DAW as "chiptune", when I first planned this lesson, I was largely trying to correct that. So I put more emphasis on the sound chip in the lesson, but neglected the beeper/1-bit music which is also very influential in the scene.

Let me do some research and see how this section should be revised

utz82 commented 1 year ago

One way to look at it is that 1-bit music uses the CPU as a sound chip.

A side note on the term "chiptune"/"chipmusic". While I certainly like your focus on sound chips, the origins of the term are not that clear cut. It used to mean "Amiga music that sounds synthetic and/or is made using short looped waveforms" just as well as actual PSG music. Compare https://chipflip.wordpress.com/2011/08/31/chipmusic-festival-1990/

Going down this rabbit hole might be a bit out of scope for this Intro to Demoscene though. The way you use the term "chiptune" in your paper is fine as it is, I think. Just wanted you to be aware of the discussion.