Chiptune Run's!

[T_laz]

Hi guys wondered if someone might help me dissect those infamous chiptune run's that we hear in a lot of great complextro and other EDM genre's.

I'm working on a complextro track at the moment and have toyed with standard scale runs and some suspended chords to use as arpeggiations but none seem to deliver that continuity between layers, anyone have any tips or experiences they could share?

[MadBrain]

It's hard to go in detail without a precise example, but chiptune is often written in strange tools like trackers where basically everything is in monophonic/legato mode and 100% quantized, and all the effects such as delay or chorus are faked (baked into the music data). Slower arpeggios are just a fast series of notes (16ths or 32ths). Fast chord arpeggios are done with a special command that cycles through a 3 note chord once for every 32th note (which results in 96th notes).

[T_laz]

Thanks for the response mad brain. Specifically I'm listening to Atrium By Sirens Ceol

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-XocvnGwio

And Spectrum By Zedd

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsuVMdnF8A0

In both the drops they have these great little runs and although I think in the zedd example its not specifically a chiptune sound these runs fit in really well within the context of the others parts occurring around them. I'm keen to try and find some tips on writing these types of parts.

[Endor-8o8]

Hi T_Laz !

Well I listen to a bit of Atrium and there seem to be some hits made
with simple synth arpeggiator. Basically you need a VSTi that have an arpeggiator
with Up and down mode, sync mode and 2 octave range. Then most of these sounds
are based on square waves (or PWM). Chiptunes are mainly made with the basic waveforms
(sine, square, triangle). And to get that kind of rising bleepy chords just
set an arpeggiator at around 1/32 or maybe 1/64 (sync to host mode) with a range of 2 octaves,
then just play a basic minor chord let's say A minor and I think this
could take you near where you wanna be....

[barmyfluid]

If you want to get into chiptune without going down the hardware route, an easy solution is to use an emulator and LSDJ:

One of the best sounding Gameboy emulators:

http://bgb.bircd.org/

http://www.littlesounddj.com/lsd/

There's a 'C' command in LSDJ that will play an fast arpeggio note to approximate a chord, that may be the sound you're looking for? It's quite unique.

bx