Passionate as we may be about video game music, it’s easy to gloss over how much work it takes to make computers sing songs, especially in the old days. I’m definitely guilty of that so I always appreciate when someone takes the time to break things down and explain to a simpleton like me.
Our own Sebastian Urrea [1] has done a fabulous job combining history, hardware and composition and similar to his post, NES Sounds as Instruments [2], is this informative video from The 8-Bit Guy, How Oldschool Sound/Music worked [3]. In less than 10 minutes the video covers the evolution from simplistic beeper speakers, through FM synthesis and finally the PCM sampling of later PCs like the Amiga. There’s great visual examples, simple explanations of what’s going on and some great music to be heard. Thanks go to Engadget [4] for originally posting about The 8-Bit Guy’s video.
Comments Disabled To "Watch the Rapid Evolution of Early Game Music"
#1 Comment By Smeg On October 12, 2015 @ 10:14 am
The NES didn’t perform FM synthesis outside of Konami’s VRC7 mapper, which was only ever used for one game (Lagrange Point).
#2 Comment By Shawn Sackenheim On October 12, 2015 @ 11:15 am
Well I figured I’d word that wrong. Thanks again for the correction.