Chip Music
Music genre created with sound chips from home computers and game consoles, recognized for its characteristic electronic tones and waveform blending.
Chip music emerged from a constraint: how do you make music when you can't afford to store audio as samples? Composers instead programmed the sound chip directly—setting oscillators, mixing waveforms, and sculpting envelopes in real time. The SID chip, Yamaha PSG, and later innovations turned hardware limitations into a distinctive aesthetic. Today's chiptune artists, lo-fi producers, and game composers all trace their lineage back to the 8-bit sound design pioneers.