Chiptune

Chiptune is music composed for, or in imitation of, the programmable sound generators inside early video game consoles, home computers and handheld systems. Its palette is restricted to simple waveforms such as square, triangle and sawtooth tones, a noise channel for percussion, and very few simultaneous voices, so composers rely on rapid arpeggios, vibrato and echo effects to imply harmony. Originally the functional soundtrack idiom of 1980s arcade and 8-bit game audio, it became a self-conscious genre through the demoscene and tracker communities, and survives, in the work of acts such as *Anamanaguchi* and *Disasterpeace*, as both a compositional discipline and a nostalgic timbral language.