My First Bleeps: A Beginner’s Guide to Blip Festival & Chipmusic Culture
If you’ve kept your ear to the pavement lately, you may have heard the quickening rumble of low-frequency square waves that heralds the coming of Blip Festival, the world’s largest and longest running festival for 8-bit music and art. The festival, which kicks off tonight at The Bell House in Brooklyn, has already flooded New York City with droves of musicians, artists and enthusiasts from around the world. Those of us who have been involved in this sort of thing for a while are in a state of unyielding excitement, counting down the hours until the first act kicks off three days of lo-fi festivities. But to the uninitiated, the whole idea of ‘chipmusic’ and its associated culture might be a bit overwhelming, and perhaps a tad confusing as well.
Fear not, for within this article I will attempt to demystify the culture surrounding the Blip Festival, as well as clear up some common misconceptions about chipmusic and its practitioners. If this will be your first Blip Festival, I urge you to read on… and also be aware that you’re in for one heck of a weekend.
Videogame Systems, NOT Videogame Music
So, what is ‘chipmusic,’ really? Videogame music? Videogame remixes? Well, not quite. In it’s purest form, chipmusic, or ‘chiptune’ as it is sometimes called, is original music that is composed and performed using obsolete videogame and computer hardware. Although nostalgia for the ‘golden age’ of videogames has certainly played a large role in the scene’s growth, chipmusic itself actually has very little to do with games. It’s easy to immediately associate the two, seeing as how the audible timbres and visual iconography of the game consoles is instantly recognizable to those of us who grew up with them. But in the same way that the first percussion instruments were once tribal drums used to pay tribute to the sun, these consoles, rather than merely remaining mired in the dregs of nostalgia, have been re-purposed to create new, original works.
So, this is some new ironic fad, right?
No. But there are a number of legitimate reasons why artists choose to make use of this outdated tech. First off, it’s unique. Systems like the Commodore64, Game Boy and NES represent a transient phase of computer audio where sound was produced entirely through software synthesis generated by the microchips inside the console. That is to say, all the sound being heard is coming from the processors and sound chips of this hardware. Naturally, this produces certain limitations when creating music, which leads me to the next reason: It’s challenging. Artists throughout history have discovered again and again that limitations and restrictions create the potential for a more meaningful and intriguing product. Go ahead and grab someone in the audio production biz off the street, take away the convenience of today’s Digital Audio Workstations and give him a Game Boy with 4 channels of audio 4-bit audio and see what happens. Not as easy as it looks eh, Timbaland? But despite this self-inflicted hardship that chipmusicians revel in, mastery of this minimalist approach to music can yield truly astounding and diverse results. Suddenly, it’s not videogame music anymore — It’s a unique and evolving form of musical expression. And that’s what’s so exciting about Blip Festival: Being able to see and hear all the varying ways that different artists have made use of this incredibly limited hardware.
We are all here to have fun!
I may have discussed a lot of artsy-fartsy concepts and technical mumbo-jumbo in the above paragraphs, but the bottom line is that Blip Festival is a celebration. The chipmusic community often gets a bad rap, commonly perceived as an insular group of music snobs who want to preserve their precious little niche culture and keep you from ruining it. While I can’t speak for all of my peers, I’d like to shut down this notion right here and now. Blip Festival is not a gathering of hoity-toity scenesters. It’s a celebration of unique and deliberate choices in the production of music and art, and most importantly, we want to share it with you. So if you’ll be experiencing live chipmusic for the first time tonight, don’t be intimidated — Ask questions, socialize, drink copious amounts of alcohol (21+ ONLY) and discover what chipmusic is all about. After all, like most festivals, Blip Fest is all about love.
And square waves. And duty cycles.
Enjoy your time at Blip Festival 2009! See you there!
