You’ve heard the chip hype. But there’s something behind it: vintage digital chips can make wonderful sounds. And I’m thrilled that someone has painstakingly reproduced those sounds in an upcoming package.
Emulating analog circuitry, from amps to classic synths, has been long understood. But we’ve finally reached an age when people begin to appreciate the odd idiosyncrasies of digital technology, too. There hasn’t ever been a comprehensive attempt to emulate each detail of a range of 80s sound chips before – until now. Plogue (makers of the highly underrated Plogue Bidule patching environment) and David Viens have tackled just that as a labor of love, and you’ll be able to use the resulting “chipsounds” library later this spring.
Plogue’s chipsounds recreates the blippy personality of the Commodore 64, the Nintendo NES, the Game Boy, the Atari, the Vic20 – and circuit-bent and abused variations, too. It’s got a powerful artist endorsement from 8 Bit Weapon and Computer Her (pictured here). There are arpeggiators, noise patterns, distortion emulation, custom software, all built on the ARIA synth/sampling engine.
The basic specs:
- 7 chips: TIA, 2A03 PAPU, VIC-I, SN76589AN, AY-3-8910, POKEY, and SID. Haven’t heard of all of those? No worries. But you’ve probably heard the chips. The horribly-named SN76589AN was used in my very first computer, the IBM PCjr, my first game console, the Colecovision (boy did I pick them), and in the TI. The 2A03 is from the original NES. The TIA was in the Atari.
- Tricks, built in: One-shot arpeggiators, rapid waveform changes, envelope resync tricks are all built in – stuff that’s hard to pull off, as the creators note.
- Emulations of psuedo noise patterns, distortion
- Switch on each chip’s limited resolution and pitch values – or switch them off, and create sounds the PCjr couldn’t
- Presets from 8 bit Weapon and ComputeHer
When analog synth emulation came out, we all got something more convenient, but it didn’t necessarily do wonders for the music. Here, I think the situation is very different. Many of the original chip instruments have woefully primitive possibilities for actual composition. (The Game Boy’s wonderful LSDJ and Nanoloop are a notable exception.) Compare that to the software emulations of, say, a Moog modular, which lost a lot of what was great about the original – the interface. You can’t necessarily say that about the AY-3-8910, unless you’re the Ludwig van Beethoven of Assembler. (If you are – we love you.)
And the chip scene has also matured to the point that it’s ready to break out a bit. Getting these emulations on computers can help warp them into music and sound ideas they haven’t discovered before. I believe these sounds are really something special, not just a novelty.
I personally can’t wait to use this.
We have extensive details from a Plogue flyer – you can get it here on CDM, or if you’re on the floor of NAMM, you might get it from the Plogue guys themselves.
And if you want to hear these sounds making fantastic music, go give the artists a listen:
ARIA is an important announcement; I’ll be catching up on news from Gary Garritan soon.
We’ll have sound samples of this too, as well.
Peter Kirn
Jaymis Loveday
James Grahame
Primus Luta
michaeluna
Kim Cascone
Ben Long
Tom Whitwell
John Jacobus
Chris Stack
Marsha Vdovin
Markus Schroeder
Matt Earp
Kristin Trethewey
Dan Nigrin
[...] Create Digital Music » Authentic Chipmusic Soft Synth Emulation: Plogue Chipsounds Scoop from NAMM (tags: music commodore chipmusic 8bit) [...]
[...] Sabis in Rome: Total War for a professor at the University of Amsterdam, and attempting to get into chiptunes, all of which takes up enough of my time already when combined with school and the girlfriend, [...]
[...] Viens of Plogue will be on-hand to talk about Plogue’s “chipsound” software instruments, as scooped on CDM – and I hope David brings along some Bidule creations, as [...]
[...] Viens of Plogue will be on-hand to talk about Plogue’s “chipsound” software instruments, as scooped on CDM – and I hope David brings along some Bidule creations, as [...]
[...] Bidule to sampling engines for Garritan’s orchestra and piano products and an upcoming library of vintage chip sounds have been doing their own work. Privately, I talked with them about some of the work they had to do [...]
[...] Enter Chipsounds. Creator David Viens told us about the Chipsounds project back in January: Authentic Chipmusic Soft Synth Emulation: Plogue Chipsounds Scoop from NAMM [...]