I realize that I’ll be throwing around a lot of jargon that may be unfamiliar to most folks, so I’ll try to give a brief summary of the most crucial and common ones here.
- 16-bit: A term to describe a certain aesthetic of audio/visuals popular from roughly 1987-1995, characterized by reduced fidelity compared to the present day. Though reality is more complicated than bits = resolution, early consoles exhibited a strong correlation.
- Sequenced music: Music information stored as a set of instructions, rather than a recording of a performance. This method was preferred in early games due to memory and hardware limitations. Sequenced music can be stored in files such as the .vgm (Video Game Music) format, containing note pitch and rhythm data, parameter values for the instruments, etc. MIDI music is a sequenced form well-known today in programs like FL Studio and Garageband. The alternative is called streamed music, where a file containing audio waveforms directly tells the speaker how to move.
- Tracker: Sequenced music is created using programs called trackers, designed to provide an organized method for controlling the system’s soundchip(s). Some key differences from other methods of recording music include:
- Unlike Western music notation which expresses time horizontally (left to right), trackers show time vertically (top to bottom).
- For trackers, measures of time are divided into units called rows which cannot be divided further, while traditional notations can divide note duration in half infinitely. Thus, if the number of rows in a measure is not a multiple of three, it’s not possible to equally space notes in groups of three (triplets).
- Trackers define notes by their start and end points, rather than a start and a duration.
- Each soundchip’s output capacity is divided into units called channels, each of which represented by a column. A column’s data for one measure is called a pattern. All the columns’ patterns for that measure are collectively called an order.
- Song information is stored in a spreadsheet called a pattern matrix or order list, with a hexadecimal value to identify each pattern value. Just as a grid of colored pixels makes an image, a pattern matrix of instruments’ data makes a song.
- FM Synthesis: Short for Frequency Modulation synthesis, a way to create sounds. FM is an additive process that uses sine waves, the fundamental building blocks of sound. Waves called modulators describe the impact of an effect on other modulators or waves that convey only pitch information to the mixer, called carriers. The best analogy I have heard is that of a whammy bar applying vibrato (pitch bends) to a plucked guitar string. A trace of the position of a person’s hand as they press on a guitar’s whammy bar is the modulator describing magnitude of the bend effect, and the wave produced by plucking the string is the carrier. The repeated sound of the pitch bending back and forth is the FM instrument. In a synthesizer, the modulator and carrier waves are produced by circuits called operators, which can be arranged in many configurations called algorithms, even using feedback loops back into themselves! Needless to say, the possibilities of FM are near-infinite.
Block diagrams showing some arrangements of four operators. The blocks at the bottom are carriers (always block 1 in the top row, expanding to 1/3, 1/2/3, and eventually 1/2/3/4, which is a special case called Additive Synthesis with no modulators.