Big Blue Bazooka
Friendship Park
The idea of this album was to create music for different retro sound chips while staying true to the limitations of the hardware in order to create authentic sounding music that could be programmed and played on real hardware.
Some of the staples of being true to the hardware means that most of the time you have to work with a very limited amount of voices, most often 3 voices and a noise channel, but some chips only use three voices and no noise/percussion channel and others have as little as only 2 square wave voices.
The album includes music made from simple sound chips to FM synthesis to sample based sequencer music of the SPC700 sound chip used in the Super Nintendo game console.
I really enjoyed writing with limited voices such as with the NES' three part harmony limitations, it made me have to think differently about composing and harmonisation compared to when I can have as many tracks and voices as I want in modern sound production. The simplicity in both tones and harmony limitations was refreshing to work with.
Some of my biggest inspirations for making chiptune music come from Koji Kondo, who I believe is the most significant and remarkable composer of retro game console music. I am also a huge fan of Grant Kirkhope who I absolutely adore and who cultivated my love for Low fidelity sample based sequencer music as seen in his work on the Super Nintendo and Nintendo 64 game consoles.
The sound chips used on this album (with the systems they are most notably found in) are:
Intel P8253 (IBM PC compatibles)
Yamaha YM2413/OPLL (Japanese Sega Master System, Yamaha PSS-170 and PSS-270 Keyboard)
Yamaha YM2423/OPLL-X (Philips PMC100, FM Melody Maker)
Yamaha YMF281/OPLL-P (Pachinko/Pachislot machines)
DMG (Game Boy)
RP2A03 (NES)
RP2A03 + MMC5 (NES + MMC5 mapper expansion)
AY-3-8910 (Atari ST, MSX, ZX Spectrum, and arcade games such as 1942, Elevator Action and Moon Patrol)
SID (Commodore 64)
SPC700 (Super Nintendo)
CASIO VL-1 (Casio VL-Tone VL-1 instrument)
M5232 (Korg Poly800)
SN76489 (ColecoVision, Neo Geo Pocket, Sega SG-1000, Sega Game Gear, Tandy 1000)
D1771C (Super Cassette Vision)
NEC D65010G031 (Casio PV-1000)
MOS Technology TED 8360 (Commodore Plus/4 and 16)
Yamaha YM2612 / OPN2 (Sega Mega Drive/Genesis, FM Towns, Sega System 32)
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