How to Make 8-Bit Music (two free methods)

💥🎶🎮 FREE VGM AND COMPOSITION RESOURCES 💥🎶🎮

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CHAPTERS FOR EASY ACCESS:
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0:00 - Intro
0:29 - First method (VST)
1:04 - NES VST
2:30 - "Authentic" chiptune
5:01 - Second method (tracker)
6:53 - Composing in Deflemask
12:00 - Finished track
13:00 - 8-bit composition tips
17:20 - Free composition resources

VIDEO SYNOPSIS:
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Hey!

In this video, I’m going to teach you two methods for making authentic 8-bit chiptune music, like that produced by the NES, GameBoy, and Commodore 64 sound chip, entirely for free.

I’m also going to give you some compositional tips to make your 8-bit music even better.

8-bit music has made a significant resurgence in the past decade with many high-profile indie games utilizing it as their main sound palette. Apart from games, there’s a thriving chiptune community that enjoys making this kind of music just for fun.

So let’s talk about how you can do that, too.

So the first method for making 8-bit music is to use a free VST instrument inside of your digital audio workstation. I’m using Reaper for my DAW and this NES VST is the best one I’ve found on the web.

Now if you’re wanting to make just general 8-bit chiptune, you’re not looking to emulate a particular console or sound chip, you can just pluck away and use this sound palette however you want.

But, in my experience, it’s more fun to limit yourself to try to actually create something that could have been played on the NES or GameBoy or Commodore 64 or whatever.

In this case, you’ll want to do a little bit of research on the sound chip you’re trying to emulate because there are differences.

For example, the NES has five sound channels. Two square wave channels, a triangle wave channel, a noise generator channel, and a DPCM sample channel, which could play very, very low-quality samples, like the iconic bongo sound from Super Mario Bros 3.

The Gameboy had a different setup, as well as the Commodore 64.

Now we don’t have access to the original software composers in the NES era used, but a tracker is about as close as we can get to replicating it.

A tracker is a free piece of software that emulates how retro chip music was composed... GEAR AND RESOURCES
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[cerberusalphagaminginc]

I love this video, game music is something I always wanted to do but I grew up poor and never had a chance to invest in that education, now at the age of 41 I’m afraid I’m too old learn but I’m still going to try. Thanks so much for the upload 👍🏾

[carl.christiansson]

THANK YOU SO I have a passion for creating 8-bit versions of Bach's music and this really helps me getting started for real, great video

[tjmixmasta]

That finished track was SMOOTH; great tutorial!

[lincolnyongbroadrickss]

It amazes me significantly that 8-bit is crazy.

[Redhollow]

Barbershop Quartets are an excellent way of learning about contrapuntal music. I learned a lot from hymns, but when I started to sing in a quartet and got hands on experience with each voice, I gained a huge appreciation for looking at voicings horizontally instead of just vertically.

[AndreVanZark]

Wow that composition with deflemask was amazing

[FarOutJunk]

This is the most accessible, realistic chiptune/Deflemask video I found in my search, and it got me started on this whole new creative track. Great job with this.

[chrispybee]

I love how people are still using trackers!

Back in 1990 is when I started to play with trackers on the Atari ST such as Protracker and TCB Tracker. After a while I got myself an Amiga and hooked it up to my MIDI keyboards using Octamed. Then I had tracker style writing but with full on midi and using samples from the Amiga.

We did all this by jumping right in to the tracker and learning off people’s demos that I hand ripped from games and other demos.

What a time to be alive.

[rayderrich]

I happen to have made my first chiptune attempt of a song today (posting it on the 18th) and this led me to watch your video to actually see if I was completely wrong lol. I should have watched you first of course, learned cool things here. Thanks!

[hashtagzema]

Dude, I am watching this video randomly in my youtube feed.
When you made the point about removing the 5th in a chord, as it isn't needed, I'm like... "That's true, it isn't. That's pretty smart. Who is this guy? I'm gonna sub." I look at your name and I go, "Oh crap, that's Matt." LOL

[thethriftyfawn]

I wasn't even looking for this, but glad youtube recommended it to me! LOVE 8-bit NES music!!! 😍😍😍
So fascinating to get an idea on how it's made. Great job Matt!

[arthurmurfitt]

Thank you, Matt! Looking forward to having fun messing around w this stuff 🙂

[AARVMUSIC]

Great tips! Trackers are very intimidating but there's something that just makes me want to try them someday

[kevinarmes]

Dude this is good stuff. Very fun! Takes me back to childhood game days like Dragon Warrior and Willow and Zelda and Mario

[abhijeetsaraf]

Definetely in for video game composition. Thanks so much for these resources. :D

[agtronic]

This is the video I needed to see. I was NOT expecting to see a tracker featured here. In the ‘90s I learned to track in FastTracker 2, then was asked to compose techno in a 4-track DOS-based tracker which the name eludes me right now. FT2 allowed for samples, but the other program was chip tune, so you had to design your instruments using the interface. The song would be exported as an .OBJ file (or was it .BIN?) and then linked when compiled into a .COM or .EXE demo, written in Pascal or ASM. It’s crazy that I can no longer recall the details, kind of frustrating actually. All that to say, thanks for showing us this, I bought a used Windows laptop and can’t wait to receive it to start playing with this stuff.

[idxman]

NEC PC Engine - That's a console which was more popular in japan and was called the TurboGrafx 16 in the US. Loved it... :)

[morio]

i love all the melodys that you have created in this video. especially the finished track is super awsome.

[shibii]

Man I loved the video SO MUCH! I was on the premiere, but at work, couldn’t wait to get back from work and watch it again properly!

[herrvorragend]

your track was awesome! thanks for the video!