Chiptune

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A musical genre that utilizes synthesized audio derived from vintage computer sound hardware and classic video game consoles
2. A style of electronic music that employs sounds generated by the sound chips of retro gaming platforms and early computing devices
3. Music produced by using the audio chips from old video game consoles or computers to create melodies and rhythms

Etymology: Chiptune is one of the few common music terms built largely from hardware. The "chip" is the sound chip inside an old computer or video game console, the small integrated circuit that generated the audio. The "tune" is the familiar English word for a melody. Put together, the compound first described music made by those chips, the bleeps and square-wave tones of early game machines. The word started out as a label for a distinction rather than a genre. People used it to contrast real chip music, produced directly on the hardware, with imitations made on other equipment. Only later did the term broaden and get reinterpreted, so that it came to mean any music with that retro electronic sound, whatever it was made on.

Synonyms: 8-bit music, bit music, video game music