BY ANGELO VALDIVIA FOR LEVEL AND GAIN
Kenny McAlpine is a Scottish chiptune composer who resides as a fellow in Interactive Composition at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music. His work as a musician, educator, and author has led him all across the United Kingdom, United States, and Australia.
Kenny specialises in a specific corner of video game music: chiptune.
Since the 2000s, and more so in the last decade, chiptune music has surged in popularity as its own genre of music. Originally the product of limitations in earlier generations of video game hardware, the chiptune scene has its own musical artists who perform and record using either emulation (software-based sound systems) or modified game consoles — or both.
Here’s what Kenny had to say when we prodded him on this neo-retro phenomenon. Kenny was selected to co-present the panel The Evolution of Chiptune at APRA AMCOS High Score: Composition for Sound Art and Gaming on 5 October, 2019.
How did chiptune music start for you?
It all came from my love of video games. I grew up with the 8-bits — particularly Sinclair’s ZX Spectrum and Commodore’s C64 — and playing arcade games in that golden era when Pac-Man, Dig Dug, and Wonder Boy ruled the roost.
And, if I’m honest, I played video games way more than I should have done. So, while most of my school-friends were spinning vinyl and listening to Iron Maiden or Depeche Mode, I was listening to the soundtrack from Monty on the Run and One Man and His Droid on repeat. So chiptune, really, was the soundtrack to my childhood.
But the soundtrack that really got me hooked was Atari’s Paperboy. I spent most of the summer of 1984 pumping my pocket money into that cabinet. I loved the concept; I loved the graphics, and I loved the bike handlebars you used to control the game. But most of all, I loved the music. It had sardonic, sampled speech during the level intro that set you up for what is actually quite a sophisticated piece of soundchip-generated cool funk.
I love that track, and still gig live with it today.
In those earlier days when you began getting more invested in making chiptune music, did you foresee it being a viable way to develop a career?
Not then, no. All my 10-year-old self was thinking about was whether or not I could get through to the end-boss on R-Type with all my power-ups intact.
That said, even then, I realised that making games must be a job, and I remember telling my mum when I was about 10 or 11 that I was going to make games when I was older.
It wasn’t until a few years later — and by then, we were into the 16-bit era and soundtrackers — that I really began to think about pursuing a career in video game music.
By the time I got my first professional commission in 1997, we were well into the [3D] console era and production music. It took a while before chiptune came back around as a stylistic statement in game soundtracks.
How might someone get their start in making chiptunes today? Is it as easy as buying hardware online and tinkering?
I think tinkering is a great way to start, and the beautiful thing about chiptune is that it’s very, very accessible.
Read the full story right here on Level and Gain, a new screen music publication from the creative team behind CutCommon.
Image supplied.
