I’m a geek; there’s no shame in that. I remember spending many afternoons after school building up the calluses on my thumbs, wrapped up in the action of a Nintendo game. There’s nothing more endearing, or nostalgic, than the sound of old-school video game music.
27-year-old musician Danny Culp, a Denver transplant from Chicago, agrees. A classically trained musician since the age of five, Culp has composed for various motion pictures and is the driving force behind the one-man indie project called Theadore; he had also played with various chamber and orchestra groups while residing in Chicago. “I was in sixth grade before I started listening to anything other than classical or oldies.”
Danny tickling the ivory
Six years ago, Culp was at work when he was first exposed to the Chiptune genre. “I was at work, and a friend of mine hooked his iPod up to the speaker system,” he recalls. “He started playing an artist called Bit Shifter.” After that, he was hooked. “Chiptunes automatically have a high level of nostalgia, and it took me back to my childhood. I went online and looked into the genre and found more of the people who were doing it, like: Trash 80, Anamanaguchi, and YMCK.”
“I fell in love with the genre. I didn’t realise I was able to write it myself until two years ago.” Now, Culp is spear-heading the Denver Chiptune scene with his project, Aethernaut. “I’m just a guy who likes video games and music, and puts the two together in the very basic sense.”
Chiptune music is an offshoot of the 8Bit genre. “Chiptune is basically music utilizing a sound chip from old game consoles, like a Sega Master System, or a Gameboy,” Culp said. “There are certain techniques in getting those nostalgic sounds out of the chip.”
While Chiptune and 8Bit are very similar, 8Bit music is written with the rules and constrictions of the chip itself. “8Bit only utilises four channels,” Culp explains. “The most standard way of doing [8Bit] is having two channels that are square waves. One channel is made out of triangle waves, and the fourth is a noise channel–usually for the drums. Only one note can be played in each channel at a time.”
“Chiptune does away with those restrictions, depending on the way you want to do it.”
When asked how long Chiptune music has been around, he replied, “That’s kind of a tough question. Obviously, as long as the music chips have been around. Someone had to write the music for the games themselves. As to when people started using the chips to write music themselves, I’m not really sure.”
Culp has been influenced by game classics such as the Mega Man series, Sonic the Hedgehog, Super Mario Brothers, and many more. “I grab inspiration from everywhere, much like any other genre I write in,” he says. “So, like, my favorite bands and the video games I used to play. Depending on what it is I’m trying to make, if it’s not nostalgic, then it’s going to be influenced by my favorite bands. If it is nostalgic, then it’s probably inspired by one of my favorite games.”
Catching up on some reading…
“The Denver Chiptune scene is just starting. Several people were probably doing it before I got here, but as far as the community, that’s why we started the Denver Chiptune Society.”
Denver Chiptune Society put on its first collective show this past November at the Mercury Cafe. “As the first show, it felt a little awkward at first, but as the night went on, it got more comfortable. People started getting into the music as the night went on.” Culp said that the Mercury Cafe was the ideal local for the show. “We did a lot of promotion, and we had a great turnout.”
By far, the biggest hot-spot for Chiptune right now is New York, according to Culp. “When I first got into the genre, I noticed that most of the artists I came across were from New York. A collective of the artists there created the 8bitpeoples, which is a popular collective on the internet.”
For his music, Culp uses a software package called Reason. “One of the modules I use, Thor, is a synth that I use to make almost all of my 8Bit sounds with the exception of the triangle wave bass. For that, I use the Magical 8Bit plugin.”
Danny Culp’s Aethernaut project can be found on SoundCloud and FaceBook. The Denver Chiptune Society can be found here.
“I want to stress there are many different ways to write Chiptune,” Culp concludes. “A lot of people prefer to use the tracker software on a gameboy, or a hack system. Then there are people who are more comfortable with plugins or other software, and that’s cool too.”
“Some purists get snooty about it, kind of nay-say anything that isn’t just four channels. That’s not everyone, but that’s why we have Chiptune and 8bit.” *
Unpause the Heat, by Aethernaut
Poolside Dreams, By Aethernaut