There is something unnatural about the hypnotic sound of electronic music: a drum machine can keep the rhythm perfectly straight, but a computer can play parts that are impossible for humans. Electronic music is born out of the interaction between man and machine. So it’s particularly interesting to look at genres that are created by engineers, rather than musicians – by people who are on a first-name basis with the machine.
Circuit bending
Circuit bending is a genre at the intersection of music and radio engineering. The idea is to take a child’s electronic piano or a talking toy and make them sound in a new way. To do this, the electronic circuitry of the instrument is re-soldered (hence the name).
Musicians of this genre often started their careers with an accidental find: for example, digging up an old children’s synthesizer in the garage. It is obvious that such an instrument sounds bad. If you fiddle with its electronic circuitry, the sounds it produces become so disgusting that you even start to like it. It is enough to open the case and randomly short-circuit the various contacts to see the result. Usually, it starts to change the pitch, there are strange effects, glitches, slowing down or speeding up the signal. It is not even necessary to study radio engineering, the main thing is to take something unnecessary as a “test subject”. And a battery-powered one, so you don’t get an electric shock.
It’s worth it: musicians get new and unique sounds that can’t be found in sample libraries. Artisanal synthesizer effects give your tracks more personality and make them stand out from the music you create with a standard set of plug-ins.
Some enthusiasts assemble really sophisticated instruments from old junk. This is how entire organs are created from toy singing hamsters and synthesizers from dozens of Gameboys.
Musician Reed Ghazal is recognized as the father of the genre. He began to solder his own synthesizers back in the sixties, not having the money to buy a proper instrument. The idea proved successful and paved the way for him to collaborate with many top artists. According to him, anyone can find a grandmother’s synthesizer at a flea market and do crazy things with it without any knowledge of electronics or radio engineering. All you have to do is put your finger on the pins to use your body as a variable resistor – and watch the effects. In this way, says Ghazal, man and machine merge into a single circuit. All in all, another cyberpunk we deserve.
Representatives of the genre: Modified Toy Orchestra, Amps for Christ, Dan deacon, Look Mum No Computer.
8-bit music
Eight-bit music gets its name from the eight-bit processors of early PCs and game consoles, primarily the Commodore 64 and Atari 2600.
Their audio chips could only play a limited number of audio tracks (voices). Each track could play only one note at a time. For example, the Nintendo Entertainment System (better known in our area as the Dendy) had five voices. Each could only play a specific waveform:
- A square one (for melody);
- A second square (for melody);
- Triangular (for bass parts);
- Noise (for percussion);
- Channel for in-game sounds.
The Commodore 64 computer, on the other hand, had only three voices. But each of them could play any waveform and change them on the fly. This created a more variegated sound palette. Yamaha later released even more advanced audio chips with FM synthesis. These became the hallmark of arcade machines and PCs of the eighties. They had nine voices and were even used in some of the company’s synthesizers. All of these products gave rise to the genre of eight-bit music.
Eight-bit tracks, despite their simplicity and angularity, are firmly ingrained in the brain. Technical limitations and specificity create a truly hit sound. First, the creators of the next game had only a few kilobytes to store the music, so the compositions were usually very unpretentious. They were mostly repetitions of a few simple and catchy tunes. Second, the use of a tempo and musical harmony characteristic of pop music. Usually it was 120-160 bpm and C Major (as, for example, in the famous Super Mario).
Today, the eight-bit sound is often mixed with other instruments. This is how a subgenre of chiptune emerged. Old-school sounds are crossed with different genres of electronic music, rock and metal, forming unusual combinations. Today it’s easier than it sounds: a lot of synthesizers and instruments are produced on appropriate audio chips. For example, Machinae Supremacy created the soundtrack for the game Jets’n’Guns in this combination.
Retro Dendy console + 300 games + light gun
Representatives of the genre: Crystal Castles, Anamanaguchi, Sabrepulse, Bondage Fairies, Bit Shifter.
Demoscene
Demoscene is a close relative of eight-bit music – both originated on the Commodore 64. But the demoscene is not just about music. It’s about an entire culture created around the capabilities of the PC. It’s usually spectacular demonstration videos to music, generated on a computer in real time.
The demoscene originated in the screensavers for hacked programs on the Commodore 64. Hackers would modify their code to add their animated logo to groovy music.
With time these screensavers started to become more complicated, there were more animations, there were no more logos, but various messages to the audience or other hackers… As the result, the screensavers in front of the hacked programs became a separate genre of demoscene: a combination of music, graphics and code. They are enclosed in a specific file (demo), usually extremely small in size.
The release of the Commodore Amiga computers opened up even more possibilities. Their audio chips could work with samples. Third-party sounds could be loaded into the PC’s memory, not just those that the audio chip could generate. The music was sealed in a file containing both samples and notes. The software to handle these files is called a tracker. Therefore, music in this genre came to be called tracker music. Creating such compositions is more like programming than music making.
It is tracker music that plays in keigs for programs hacked by pirates – some even collect them. Trackers have influenced many electronic musicians. Deadmau5 and Erez Eisen of Infected Mushroom used Impulse Tracker in their early work. Over time, the PCs became more powerful, the demos became more and more evocative, and the music became more complex and less eight-bit. But, of course, the synthetic sound didn’t go anywhere.
The demoscene is fueled by offline meetings – demoparties. The bands’ works are demonstrated there, the voting is held and the best ones are awarded. In addition, the genre was featured on the soundtracks of the video games Deus Ex, System Shock and Unreal.
Representatives of the genre are Farbrausch, Haujobb, Andromeda Software Development, Alexander Brandon, Peter Hajba, Michiel van den Bos and Dan Gardopee, Thomas J. Bergersen, etc. There is even a corresponding online radio.
Black midi
MIDI is a type of digital signal by which electronic musical instruments “communicate” with a PC and with each other. Parts for synthesizers and samplers are recorded in this format. A MIDI file usually contains a notation of a piece of music that you can open in an audio editor.
You can load such a file into tutorial programs like Synthesia. The application will visually display the parts in real time to learn how to play the keys. The process is similar to the Guitar Hero game.
Complex pieces are displayed particularly spectacularly in such programs due to the large number of notes. With time, MIDI scores of different tracks began to be specially complicated by multiple copying of parts. The result was an interesting visualization and a strange sound. At that, there were literally millions of notes on the sheet music, and that is why it became completely black. That is how the Black Midi genre appeared.
A characteristic feature of the genre is the almost complete absence of original melodies. Most of the compositions in it are covers of famous tracks. The second important point: all parts of the musical composition are voiced only by the piano. Therefore, the composers have to go to different tricks. For example, the drum is imitated by a short strike on all keys – a sharp percussion sound is produced.
It is not difficult to notice the influence of eight-bit music on the genre: the high speed and the use of tricks to enrich the primitive sound. In addition, for a long time, the most popular tracks for Black Midi covers were the music from the Touhou series of games. This is a Japanese bullet hell kind of scrolling shooter where you fly around the screen and shoot everything, dodging thousands of shells. The creator of the series of games is one man, he also writes for them eight-bit music. The fan community has made thousands of covers for it in every possible genre, from orchestrations to Black Midi proper.
Demogroups try to squeeze the maximum out of computer hardware for a spectacular audiovisual demonstration. Black Midi artists do about the same, but have found a more different approach. Watching tens of thousands of falling notes per second is just as addictive as watching a 3D visualization. Some musicians draw pictures and even animations with notes. At the same time, the tracks load the processor so much, that even the top hardware starts to slow down: some glitches and croaks appear.
It’s interesting that the composer Conlon Nancarrow created works with unplayable parts at a frantic pace for a mechanical piano long before all these MIDI were invented. It’s even more difficult to listen to the rest of the track, but it’s just as addictive to watch the notes fall apart.
Genre representatives: ZUN (creator of Touhou), kakakaito1998 (YouTube user, who uploaded the very first track in the genre), TheTrustedComputer.
Oscilloscope Music
An oscilloscope is an instrument for studying the amplitude of a signal. For example, it can visually display an audio wave. One day, someone figured out how to plug a synthesizer into the oscilloscope. The left channel was displayed on the X axis and the right channel on the Y axis. Thus, each note got its own visual representation.
And then there’s more. You can select chords and harmonies that not only sound interesting, but also look effective on the spectrogram. You get a full-fledged video sequence that is generated in real time. Therefore, the genre is somewhat reminiscent of the demoscene: also spectacular animation with strange music. But here the visuals won’t just be a pretty picture chosen as the theme, they will be the music itself.
The music component of the genre is quite specific. Sounds should not only sound nice, but also look good, so complex pictures sound like noise, and simple – like eight-bit music. For example, a circle is two simple sine waves out of phase. If you add anything else to them, the figure collapses, so there are fairly strict restrictions on the music. On the other hand, even ordinary chords already look quite spectacular on an oscilloscope.
You can compose Oscilloscope Music without the oscilloscope – the VST plugins are enough (Waveform, ZGame Editor Visualizer). Then, using any synthesizer, you can experiment and create your own visuals.
I must say, that even before the genre was invented, some musicians were encrypting the messages in the oscillogram of their tracks. For example Aphex Twin ciphered in it his grimace, and the composer of the new DOOM painted one of the tracks with pentagrams.
Representatives of the genre: Jerobeam Fenderson (the creator of the genre), Chris Allen AKA Cromagbot. Some authors publish their works in thematic groups on Reddit.
