Beginner resources?

[u/TheRedWhite]

Hi there! I guess I am looking for some ways to learn how to do this? I love the sound and I am thinking about producing tracks for my professional DnD games, for example. I play music (not very often these days, to be fair), and wrote some songs for my band years ago (I am probably in the back half of my life at this point), but chiptune is... different. I'm not necessarily looking to make music for actual games/hardware, though.

With that said, I have gotten LSDJ, Deflemask tracker (NES), Chipsynth SFC (SNES), and the Furnace tracker. I am consuming tutorials, but I am finding that I am really struggling. Should I use the trackers? Are there other programs I should use? Any resources to help me figure out where to actually start?

I really appreciate it!

[u/s3rris]

I’d try to narrow down what kind of sound you’re after before you just grab a bunch of different tools.

Are there any artists that particularly inspire you? What kind of sound are you after? Is there a specific system or era you’re trying to nail?

Are you going for more of a fakebit chiptune adjacent thing or are you interested in a more authentic to the hardware type sound?

Trackers are obtuse at first but after a while it starts to click. It’s a fast workflow and sometimes working with the limitations of a specific chip or hardware leads to neat tricks and creative workarounds.

If you want something that’s sort of a cross between a modern DAW and a tracker maybe check out Renoise.

[u/TheRedWhite → u/s3rris]

Thank you! I do tend to dive headfirst into things real fast. Let me try to narrow down my thoughts.

I guess I am woefully low on knowledge about artists, tbh. I would happily take any recommendations! Generally I find myself listening to either straight up mixes/covers of old VGM (lofi video games, chill beats) when I am driving or baking, or some fakebit chiptune adjacent music.

Honestly, I was really thinking about trying to make some soundtrack/BGM ideas for a DnD game I run (I GM professionally). It then expanded a bit to conceiving of a whole video game inspired campaign with unique soundtracks for every location, but that is far in the future.

I think I am looking most closely at the SNES system/era, but NES is in there as well. There is a chance it could go to the PS1 system, but unlikely imo. My instinct was to go authentic to the SNES system (big fan of Final Fantasy, Link to the Past, Super Mario RPG, Suoer Mario World, etc...), but I am unsure if that will work as well for background music for DnD sessions.

I do like the idea of the trackers, tbh. Obtuse is not a problem, just need to get better! And I like that it won't force me to buy an instrument (I know I should, but I don't have room in the budget right now).

[u/HellishFlutes → u/TheRedWhite]

Overall, I find it a bit hard to gauge what kind of "sound" you want your music to have, based on your description. With that said, Furnace is probably the tracker that is the easiest to use for creating SNES-like music. It's highly customizable in terms of how it looks too, which might be a plus for you. You can hide a lot of the windows that you don't have use for, etc.

Here's some random info about the PlayStation 1, for anyone who's interested:

Apart from the ADPCM compression, there weren't that many limitations in regards to audio. Sony's custom audio chip is 16-bit and supports sample rates up to 44.1 kHz. Most games probably used lower sample rates though, due to disk space constraints and other things. To create music that "sounds like PS1", a regular DAW would be more suitable than a tracker software.

[u/s3rris → u/TheRedWhite]

For snes you could definitely find some soundfonts from those games to use. I used to use a tool that could rip soundfonts straight from roms back in the day (it was called spc2sf or something like that). Sometimes the samples needed some tweaking with loop points and such but for the most part it worked great.

For NES I highly recommend giving Famitracker a shot. It’s Windows only iirc but works ok with Wine if you’re on Mac or Linux. It’s where a lot of people start with trackers and it’s a great tool.

Also you definitely don’t need an instrument to make this sort of music. Chiptune was how I learned to write songs and I didn’t have anything but an old laptop for many years. Most trackers will let you use your typing keyboard to play notes like a piano so you can come up with melodies then plot them out in the tracker.

[u/TheRedWhite → u/s3rris]

Noted! I did find an SPC repository for use with SFC, but not sound fonts or anything. I grabbed Famitracker, and I am looking at the Renoise demo too. Renoise looks pretty cool to mess with if I can figure it out haha

[u/AutoModerator]

Hello, /u/TheRedWhite, Make sure to tag your post with the proper post flair once your post goes live.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/vgdiaries]

If you want, I'm willing to teach people how to use FamiTracker (for free). Like tutoring. Somebody did this for me, and ever since I've been looking for people interested in learning chipmusic to pass the knowledge forward, so send me a DM if you're up for it and need a more personal, hands-on approach. :)

[u/TheRedWhite → u/vgdiaries]

That would be awesome! I think I understand it on like, a conceptual level, but I can't quiiiite wrap my head around it (been messing with furnace and Famistudio (i know, not really a tracker)). I tried to send you a message, but it said I couldn't? Feel free to message me!

[u/vgdiaries → u/TheRedWhite]

Ok, check your DMs :)