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♪ (early video game sounds and music) ♪

(garbage truck sounds)

(clipping, sizzling sounds)

(drilling sound)

(crowd chattering)

(Spanish): Let's see,

- How much? - That works OK.

- How much? - Two Euros.

Give me one Euro.

(traffic noise)

(hammer smashing)

(vintage video game and machine sounds)

I don't know that much about the 8bit, you know,

outside of my own experience of 8bit.

But I mean, it's certainly...

what it seems to represent to me is a something

which is a...

It's a...

I don't think I'm the right person to ask this question to.

Basically it comes from video games.

There are ways, but I'd rather...

I don't feel that the talk about the techniques is important on any level.

Somebody, at least one person,

come up to me and is like, "What is this?"

I heard one guy say that it was like Super Mario on acid.

It's like something which people really do believe in,

and represent themselves by.

(Dutch): Now everybody likes it

Because they realize we're doing something

original and different.

I suppose it's just, it's that kind of creative energy

Definitely, a lot of people don't,

didn't appreciate just how important it had become for me.

I would skip school for weeks just sitting up at night.

Almost turned into an obsession.

I mean, practically still is an obsession, but..

(sawtooth drone)

I remember we didn't actually know what to call it.

- Yeah. - Yeah. there was no definition.

I remember we had the discussion about,

what the fuck is this stuff?

Is it 8-bit?

- Could be 12-bit? - Yeah.

16-bit.

I think it's-- chip music is good.

♪ (chip music sound check) ♪

(clapping)

♪ (music builds) ♪

(device dings)

(crowd cheers)

(Unknown language): Let's get going with the fun! (laughs)

♪ (8 bit electronic music building up) ♪

♪ (music rythm increases) ♪

(crowd cheering)

(German): Chiptune is music that is being generated

On various chips as the name suggests.

Originally from 8-bit machines or consoles.

You don't need to say the music is like this or like that.

You can make any type of music,

and as long as it has 8-bit sounds, you can be 8-bit.

(Italian): Because it's not a genre, it's a container of genres.

I use the Game Boy to make my music

You want the sound of the chip itself,

Like the Game Boy sound chip.

It's got this special character that you want to use.

You want the sound of the chip.

Yeah.

(Italian): The primitive audio chip is very simple,

and allows you to make simple waves like the square wave

with low resolution,

With a very dirty and characteristics sound.

It definitely has an extra edge to it,

because it's so intense.

It's so in-your-face you can't ignore

that high-pitched beep no matter how hard you try

because it's so loud.

(Catalan): I try to escape from all this,

it's a little contradictory.

but it's like using this technology to try and find

new sounds as if it were a new tool to do what I like.

(Catalan): Normally I always start with the rhythm, I don't know why.

and then I continue with the complements and the melody.

For example, I'll show you quickly

how the union of these four channels would sound like

With a few modifications in each one of them.

Okay, this is the noise channel that gives you the percussion sounds;

the more dry in noisy sounds

And we would add a more synthesized channel.

See, for example,

Now it has three channels and it's missing the last one

that would be the bass drum.

(German): I produce my music on different equipment,

so mainly I use Amiga.

This is how it sounds:

This is the bass drum which it generates.

(Catalan): I'm going to modify the waveform

so it gives us a little more character.

We start off with a softer sine wave,

we make it squarer.

And it'll sound more aggressive.

And the bass drum.

(German): Well, you have 4 tracks here

on which you can lay your notes vertically

And can combine different elements in a free way

So you're not tied down to one track for the beat

Or the bass drum or something similar.

(Catalan): What I also like to do, once I have it all arranged,

Is to change it completely.

♪ (fast paced chiptunes music) ♪

Hello, my name is Jim Butterfield,

and I'd like to tell you about the Commodore 64.

It's a pretty good computer. It has a lot of features.

Very good color, sound, picture, graphics,

And some good music can be played by the Commodore 64.

It has a built-in chip,

which is called the Sound Interface Device,

the SID.

And so what we're going to do

is concentrate on the wave forms we can hear.

The first waveform I have here is a triangular waveform.

Let's listen to the triangular waveform,

and hear its mellow sound.

♪ (musical chord) ♪

Pretty Good. Pretty soft, right?

Let's listen to a square wave.

♪ (brighter chords) ♪

OK, that's pretty good stuff.

The Commodore 64 Family Pack is the best way I know

to introduce your family to the world of the future.

The Commodore 64 is the world's largest selling computer,

with more than 7 million units purchased worldwide,

and the world's largest software base

for education and entertainment.

(Italian): As a child, I used to play video games a lot

And what I will never forget is a TV screen.

A huge TV screen,

with mono speakers

and the image of that player with a bow and arrows

who is devoured by a huge spider

but in a terrible way.

The huge spider gets to his head,

sucks his blood, there is a lot of 8-bit blood that comes out.

I remember four seconds of strident sounds,

square wave sounds,

which have completely changed my life.

If you lift the lid of a computer,

you will see a circuit board,

into which a number of little boxes have been plugged.

Each box contains a chip,

which consists of thousands of microscopic electric circuits,

each of which can be either on or off.

This is the only language that the computer understands.

"Is one of my circuits on or off?"

And we can symbolize these ons and offs

by using a 1 to stand for "on," and a zero to stand for "off."

It is called the "binary code,"

and each of the ones and zeros is called a binary digit,

or, "bit," for short.

So it takes eight bits to represent any keyboard character.

It has to be at least somewhere in the 80s

where these cheap,

mass-produced home computers and video games appeared.

The whole gaming industry, they needed soundtracks for the games.

So everything they had was the sound chip,

which was originally only implemented for alert sounds.

The games of that era contained really strong music,

especially western home computer games.

There was this guy who came to influence me at the beginning,

called Rob Hubbard,

who did fantastic music for Commando and ACE II, and things like that.

♪ (videogame music) ♪

(German): I especially liked what Rob Hubbard

and Ben Daglish did

all the time, as well as a few others.

They had a really special energy,

some kind of special hysteria,

Which even as kid somehow hypnotized me.

They're so simple because they have to be.

Because the hardware can't make--

So they were very distinct melodies.

You played Ski or Die,

you could remember the way that soundtrack was.

♪ (Ski or Die music) ♪

And then people started to crack these games

and spread them for free.

And they put signatures on these cracks, called crack intros.

(French): We made intros

Demos which we distributed on discs before the Internet era.

You met with people at a gymnastics hall in a school,

and everyone brought their Amigas or 64s

And you were copying, copying, copying.

♪ (electronic rap music) ♪

(German): There were quite a few cracker groups

which had their own sound and graphic people.

And that was usually,

similar to graffiti artists, present themselves with a demo,

So a demo, then, is like a moving graphics and sounds.

(French): We made demos with videos

and I was responsible for the music,

and this is how it began on Amiga.

Instead of making these very simple signatures in the beginning,

they added more and more graphics and code.

In the demos it's really important to be technologically impressive,

to really push the technology to make something new.

It's kind of like a competition of technical merits.

(German): And people kept thinking of new ways

to fit as much information as possible into a very small space.

Even when you compare it to contemporary stuff,

it is outstanding what can still be done on the old equipment.

From that it kind of grew into a strong demo scene.

And from that it grew into people being good at programming

and making music and being artists.

You put the game in not to play the game,

but to listen to the music and see the graphics.

And we went, "Yeah this is almost like real music!"

I thought that moment, "why don't I hear this on the radio?"

I remember an argument I had with a friend

when I was maybe nine or ten years old, and I said,

"yeah, this music is so good, you could sell it as real music."

And he was like "no, you can't." (laughing)

♪ (train and electronic sounds) ♪

My neighbor was having an Amiga computer.

He showed me some music software where you could make your own music.

(Catalan): I had a Game Boy.

and there was a game called Game Boy Camera,

that you could take pictures with,

and it had a small app to make music

and I started to do some experiments,

this was in 1995, more or less.

Consoles went from being extremely expensive -

one kid in the town had it

to everybody had a Nintendo, or everybody had a Game Boy.

And it kind of became our generation.

We were the first console generation.

(Italian): In 2000 or 2001,

I read in a blog that a German guy

had made a cartridge

to use the Game Boy as a sequencer, a musical instrument.

(German): A friend started to fiddle around with the GameBoy,

to use it as an actual computer

and that it would be cool if we could program this game boy.

The first purpose that came to our mind

was for a music program.

(Italian): I discovered this Nanoloop

and at the same time the LSDJ.

And I bought both

Little Sound DJ is a music program that I made for the Game Boy.

It's similar to a game, except you can make music on it.

Back then I didn't even have any idea

if it would be possible to make a music program,

and it seemed like it could turn out pretty great.

(German): There was a Lo-Fi contest.

Where you could bring all that fits on a sheet of paper

This was the first time I performed with the Game Boy on stage.

The people were very impressed

and totally freaked out.

♪ (Game Boy music) ♪

In the beginning, the scene was definitely very European-focused

because we were centered around this website called micromusic.net.

It was a website that was made by two or three people from Switzerland.

(French): In Switzerland everything started with Wanga and Carl,

who co-founded the website micromusic.net in 1998.

That was pretty much before you had Facebook and social media websites.

It was sort of the website to exchange information with each other

and listen to songs that people made.

Micromusic is like a part of the do-it-yourself culture.

It focused on music.

It's about using what you have,

using an old computer,

starting to build your own hardware, build your own software,

use it as an instrument.

That was a very unique new way of expressing yourself as an artist.

Didn't build on the demo scene.

They created a new thing.

Process has gone from being more exploring

to being more expressive.

That's what excited me and so many people,

about the possibilities of these old bits of hardware.

(French): When they started it,

it never occurred to them that 10 years later

there would be people in the US and all around the world

who would adhere to,

who would feed this enormous community.

People from the US as well,

people in Australia uploaded songs on the website.

Participants could submit their music for consideration for release.

And then periodically, every few months,

the micromusic.net staff would select a handful of tracks

and release them, and they were freely downloadable.

And at some point a woman, Electro Girl,

she had the idea of bringing the people together

to do a live show where some of these people of the website

would show up and actually do like a club night.

You could sort of say that that was pretty much

the first real chip event that was of some international character.

(Spanish): For us it wasn't what we were used to.

Besides, back then it was like: "What is this? Wow!"

I looked out into the crowd and people were dancing to my set,

but I really didn't like the music anymore at all.

I had realized that I was just playing the same old tunes,

and I wanted something new, something new musically.

I sold most of my synthesizers

and started using guitar for Chiptunes.

(Spanish): It was like a discovery and a revelation for us at that moment.

A change of direction, it was like finding where to head.

You feel like you're discovering a whole new world.

(French): It was like an explosion.

It only made me want to continue doing this.

(drilling sounds)

That's where it all started and then kept on growing.

Yeah, it just sort of happened. (laughs)

♪ (chip music) ♪

In the early days when you had a concert,

people could just walk up and ask what are you doing,

which game are you playing?

I played stuff for my mother,

and she would sit there with a smile and nod like,

"Oh, this is really, really good."

In retrospect I know it must've been torture for her, because you know,

the high-pitch sounds just droning and droning,

and a 40-year-old woman sitting there going like,

"Yeah! I'm happy for you, son, that's really good."

(French): My parents didn't understand anything. (laughs)

For them, I created in electronic music.

That's something weird.

I did this light-heartedly.

(Italian): You fell like...

I think we feel like white blackbirds

When you speak to someone who has never listened to micromusic.

You feel like a kind of alien.

(Spanish): In my opinion, frankly, this Chipmusic thing...

doesn't move me much.

It doesn't excite me.

I'm not sure if we can say that there is a certain...

Peter Pan syndrome...

That youth, from different regions,

share that affinity to stay anchored in a past time

when they were happy using all those instruments.

There were so many misunderstandings

about what chip musicians were actually doing.

(Dutch): They laughed at us. (laughing)

People don't take it seriously and are like:

"Grow up! Go and make real music."

It was frustrating

that people didn't understand what we were doing at all,

and didn't really take it seriously, either.

We just had to sort of figure out a way

to make it more serious;

to give some kind of artistic and political touch to it.

♪ (frenzied music) ♪

We take old technologies

and do things that nobody has ever done with them before.

(Italian): I think it's a kind of rebellion

towards contemporary technology

that does not reveal anything new regarding reality.

♪ (chip music) ♪

There are all sorts of things within the establishment

that "this is what music is,"

or, "this is what culture is,"

and anything that comes outside of that

and uses equipment in a different way

is going to be kind of, in some ways,

oppositional and antithetic to that establishment.

Some people also started to arrange shows around Europe.

We were discussing if we could make some kind of

more regular party scene in Stockholm.

And somehow we do manage to find this great place

where we were actually allowed to do this party.

They read in the newspaper that this is a cool club,

and I think they didn't know what to expect.

You never really knew what was going to be on the stage.

I think the people in the US and Japan

heard that this is one of the cool places.

♪ (chip music) ♪

And I think those people were really pleasantly surprised.

You're not leaving such concerts without being struck

by the intensity and the power and the rawness of it, I think.

It was just working really great.

♪ (chip music) ♪

And then the guys in New York organized this huge festival,

called the Blip Festival,

and this really started up a wave of popularity of 8-bit music

in New York and the surrounding area.

♪ (chip music) ♪

What has happened in the States has largely been

a step or two behind what's been happening in Europe,

and that was very much inspired by Microdisko.

I think that Johan Kotlinski, the developer of Little Dound DJ,

was a part of both.

A pretty big community seemed to just sort of coalesce

around that event series in Stockholm,

and so the Pulsewave series we were doing in New York

was very much inspired by that.

♪ (Pulsewave music) ♪

Universally, all the people involved in Chipmusic,

whether they're from the United States or from Europe or Australia or Asia,

pretty universally, everyone seems to be in it for the same reasons

and really friendly and really excited about it.

The people make it.

Everyone that I met who has to do with 8-bit music,

they're really honorable and they believe in the music

and it really keeps me going.

8-bit, it is about the music, but it's also about the people involved.

(Italian): You feel part of the movement,

each thing that you do...

can have an impact in the 8-bit community,

In Rome, Italy... in Europe and in the world.

(Italian): When I organize a party here in Milan

I'd like to be able to say,

"Come over I'll pay for the ticket and I'll pay you €500."

but I don't have the money.

So then I say,

"Look, come to play,

You'll have a good time, you'll eat good food,

you'll be with friends, you'll meet a lot of people,

you'll see a city you didn't know,

with nice musicians and nice people."

And people come.

(Spanish): Sharing information in a selfless way also generates

publishing records with, most of the time,

free downloads with Creative Commons.

(Italian): I found myself saying,

"This sound you've made is so beautiful."

And the other guy, instead of saying,

"No, I won't tell you how I did it,"

says to me, "yeah, take my GameBoy and look how I made it".

(Italian): - It's a real passion. - Passion, yeah. Passion.

For music. Any kind of music.

(French): Free of concessions. Always doing what I enjoy.

The purpose is to be creative.

(Italian): There's a story by William Gibson

that talks about the "Gomi No Sensei"

a kind of metropolitan saint

who recovers old technological objects that have been abandoned,

and he prepares and modifies them to make new things.

He's the master of garbage

(Spanish): I've only picked up junk today

because it had already been picked over.

But still, anyway, it all helps to enrich my private dump

that I have here outside,

the rubbish that I like to have.

Come and see.

During this time of changes and new fast technologies,

changing objects, reinventing them,

I think it is, in a way, fighting back.

This is number two. This is the Mierdofón.

The second one I made.

The legs are made out of broom sticks.

Very cool broom sticks,

but that's what they are, broom sticks.

They're light and strong,

and behind here you can see the mixing table it has

for sound mixing.

Either you really like it a lot, or you don't make it.

You don't get into all this fuss, or mess your house up

and spend as much time as I do on what I do.

My reason for doing all this is that, for example,

like they did in prehistoric times,

when they wanted to build an instrument, and axe,

they grabbed..

...I don't know, a dinosaur"s head or whatever they had

and they made it with that. But nowadays, in the city,

On any corner you can find a television

or anything you can pick up and use to make your stuff.

So it's a point of view where it's like today's nature.

It's rubbish.

Well this is the tray where the Amstrad stands on,

which is this 128kb computer.

that's in charge of controlling everything.

These are the drumsticks for the drums.

This is the other one.

There.

This is, as you can see, a paint can from the rubbish.

I just put some springs in

so it sounds better,

The real Amstrad screen...

is the one that came with the computer.

It seems to be loading.

As an artist, when you're trying to find your voice

and your kind of identity,

I think that I was blessed to find chip culture so soon.

The goal is to create your own sound.

(Italian): I like to listen to musical things I find in nature,

the mechanics of things in life in situations.

A certain kind of music is always produced:

By those guys over there working with iron,

by the cars driving by, that bird...

The inspiration to create your own music

comes from within you.

I think it's something very personal.

Honestly, the best songs that I make

are the ones I do when I'm pissed off. (laughs)

Humor changes it a lot.

Yes, it depends a lot on the humor.

When I'm feeling down I cheer myself up with music.

(Spanish): With Game Boys it's more or less as if they were tree's roots

from where the branches start to form.

Based on that I create

layers, ambiences and I add the 6DE,

a noise device complemented by Speak & Spell,

that makes deathly voices.

Then other kinds of devices can be more like pure noise,

radio interference noise.

This is a microphone,

with which you can distort voices, or speak.

This is the concept of my music:

It's not for having fun,

it's to travel, to take a walk around.

(video game sounds)

(eerie noises)

I just like the raw digital sound of it.

It's a kind of purity to it.

Definitely a lot of people have been,

"Whoa! What the hell is this?"

"This is crazy."

"Is this music?"

The modern synthesizer,

it looks like this if it's a sawtooth waveform.

but when it comes from the NES or the Game Boy,

Looks kind of like this: steppy.

(Italian): The basic waveforms have, in a certain way,

the possibility of changing our mind

or awakening in us frequencies we don't normally hear.

We're talking about basic electronic sounds,

So it's the maximum primitivism of electronic music.

(Spanish): I like the trebles a lot

out of all the sounds the Game Boy has.

I think these trebles reach parts of the brain

that aren't used to hearing these kinds of sounds.

On the other hand, it can be annoying

If it's a high volume, but I also think

it produces something

that doesn't leave you indifferent, that's for sure.

It produces something that I like.

(rising high notes)

(Spanish): The 8-bit sound really gets it going.

(air-raid siren)

Like an alarm warning you that you're about to die.

Or something like that.

(air-raid siren)

(glass breaking)

(French): But the fact that people listen to it,

and also appreciate it, it's fantastic. It's amazing.

Now, more than ever before,

there are people who know this.

There are a lot of youths

who haven't lived this but discover it now.

I was just thinking how people making music with a Game Boy, or a NES,

and I couldn't even get my head around it.

I used to go to bed and,

I used to dream about how they would actually do that,

and the solutions would come in my dreams,

even if it was completely far out and stuff.

(French): There are young people that come to my gigs

between 15 and 18 years old,

and they're hysteric!

For them this represents sounds that they've never known

I don't really grab this thing from a generational side.

There are some people, including myself,

who just like the sound,

and that's something that can get people involved in

who are not really close to gaming or these kind of things,

or not necessarily that geeky.

♪ (music) ♪

I think we all had shared like a common, popular culture reference.

If I talk about Blade Runner, or Robocop, or Super Mario, or Front242...

you know what I mean.

(Spanish): It doesn't really thrill me,

but I try to understand that each generation

has an historical obligation to create their own cultural patterns

and they have the need to subvert

the order of the old aesthetical standards.

(Catalan): In this sense it does close a circle with a generation.

But to say it more clearly, a freak culture,

or whatever you call it.

I don't think it's just videogames that go in to this music.

I think it's Kraftwerk and Techno,

and Industrial landscapes and cities, and politics.

All those things go into music,

and just saying that

"Oh, it's videogames that go into this music"

is just lazy, and there's always a bigger picture.

(Spanish): What really grabs my attention of this whole movement

is how brutal it is,

and in my case the graphics.

What I really like about them is that they're just a square - a pixel.

You can build everything with that.

How can you do an animation in two frames?

How can you build a universe with two frames,

and four pixels with one color...

For me it's a continuous learning process

and seeing new things,

and finding new means of expression.

I really like complicated visuals,

things that move backward and forward between each other,

and animations that are very rhythmical

with every abstract patterns.

We just look at the possibilities

of what working with the low resolution

and limited amount of colors actually provide.

Because it's nice to know where the limitations are,

so then you are more challenged to make better work, I would say.

(Spanish): I'm from the generation when computers started

and nobody knew very well what a computer was

or what they could do with one.

Then those machines started to come out, the 8-bit ones,

and people didn't know what to do with them.

The main thing was to play games, videogames.

People didn't really know what a computer could possibly do.

There was also some doubt if they could really think,

if computers were intelligent and could look at you and judge you.

(Spanish): This path that was traced back then has continued to thrive.

The supreme Promethean dream...

... of generating life.

(Spanish): One grows fond of these computers

after getting to know them a lot, spending many hours with them

doing all kinds...well...

Why not? All kinds of things.

All kinds of things.

God knows what.

(Italian): The typical 8-bit musician is a normal guy,

sometimes a little nerdy or not,

who has simply understood what's inside the Game Boy.

(French): They are not usually florists, or hairdressers,

They often work in the field of technology.

They need a passion for the machine.

The cool thing, or what I like, about Chiptune or micro music

is that it's not a genre.

It's a philosophy.

It's a way of how you do things.

Reusing technologies of borrowing, of reinterpretation.

And then also this short of spirit of community,

and of giving things away for free...

of kind of representing, and being true to, that identity.

People are actually searching for something new,

something that's more underground,

something that speaks to them individually.

(Spanish): Of course an 8-bit computer is the best choice

because it's easier to program, accessible,

you can connect things to its expansion port,

the sounds it has are awesome.

The piezo element here amplifies it

and I mix it myself, in this mixing table here.

I attached to the strings that I wanted, I tuned them as I wanted.

I actually use an alternate tuning.

I can count with my fingers

the times I've picked up a normal guitar, an electric one,

Also, they are tuned differently

and I can't play them because they have too many strings,

they are tuned weird.

Maybe I can sing something with only one string.

I mean, I'm not going to buy one of those guitars

because they don't suit me.

Hardships of love.

now no one sings,

not even the nightingale.

I'm gonna dance,

with great care,

and then sing

porrompompero, yeahhh...

The joy of singing.

it makes me dance...

A lot of people think it's a new type of punk.

A new type of political message.

That we don't need a high production quality

and a fancy studio.

We can just take a piece of 1980's dead tech and connect it up

and make an 8-bit hit.

And, you know, we didn't spend too much money doing that.

It might not be the biggest movement in the world.

There are so many bigger movements.

But rebelling against this new modern technology,

that's kind of why I do it, I guess.

(Spanish): Every time, the capacity of intervening the machine,

the computer, or the automobile, is smaller,

they are more compact, they are more impassable.

Technology changes each month, it's measured in months.

Before it was measured in decades or in centuries.

The new thing is always better than the old thing.

That's what we are sort of programmed to believe.

And I don't really buy it.

(Spanish): It gradually alienates us;

it's a classic sociological theme.

They try to turn it around, as far as possible,

so it's the machine that is used by you,

and not you who's used by the machine.

♪ (chip music) ♪

(Spanish): This...

There's no way of modifying it. It's a hassle working with this.

On the other hand, the components that were used before,

you could work with them easily;

you could make changes on the tracks.

(Catalan): There are certain models, like the older Game Boys...

Here you can see the chip

that's responsible for producing the 8-bit sounds.

Here we can see the chip exposed

so you can experiment with it, even extract it.

(Spanish): The chips are a normal size,

each chip's functions are more differentiated.

they are not all together.

Nowadays only one chip can do everything one of these can, and more.

(Catalan): On the other hand, you can see this other Game Boy model

that's a little bit more modern

and it has a smaller chip and a drop of silicone on top

so you can't access it so easily

and if we tried to extract it,

it would break and wouldn't work anymore.

(Spanish): Something that grabs my attention is that in places

where they throw the rubbish they don't let you take things away.

But if they are going to throw them away,

what is the problem with me taking it?

It's a bit absurd.

They dump it in Third World countries

without garbage regulations.

That's what they do.

It's stupid. Just let me take something so I can amuse myself.

Why is that so?

Shouldn't it be different?

The idea is a bit absurd, because they're producing rubbish,

Things that don't last and are soon dumped.

It makes no sense.

Built-in obsolescence is necessary for the economy to expand.

We have no choice but to destroy nature,

create rubbish to throw it away and then die.

That's going to happen. There's no way out.

(Spanish): The capitalist world is a world of consumerism.

A world of consumerism where we never use up

an objects potential.

Objects have a programmed ephemeral character,

and the makers know exactly when a part is going to break

and need replacement. And here we have the contrary.

(Spanish): Where you can get the best prices

and sometimes the best quality is in your own area,

or near your area,

in second-hand stores, street markets, flea markets...

and there you can find small treasures at good prices.

You ask if it works and usually they don't know if it works or not.

You usually have a pair of batteries on you

so you can try it out to see if it works or not.

Maybe online they sell it for 25 or 30 Euros,

but face-to-face you can get it used

in practically the same condition for a third less.

(Italian): Take an old object and give it a new spirit.

This mentality is very cyberpunk.

The Cyberpunk movement books, like Neuromancer,

take technology and make it much darker.

It's a reimagining of technologies from, perhaps, their initial better purpose.

(Spanish): What we do is we recover an old machine,

a machine that has little trade value,

and we give it a completely new use.

In that sense it's nearly a post-capitalist movement,

a recycling movement.

We always say that these technologies are limited.

But that's just sort of confirming that we live in a consumer society,

where just because something is 20 years old, it's limited.

Of course you can make more things with a laptop than a Commodore 64,

but that's just quantity.

There's more information in a laptop.

(Italian): For me, there are no limits.

(Italian): The person creates his own limits.

When we play we always discover new things.

You never stop learning, that's why it's beautiful.

If you think about it in qualitative terms,

I just feel better by sitting with the Commodore 64,

and I don't feel limited.

Limitations are limiting, that's how I see it.

(Catalan): Here we have a Game Boy

even though it doesn't look like it.

It's inside this box

simply to have more space to make all the modifications.

As you can see, there's a Game Boy here,

we slip the cartridge in.

We have the basic controls here,

and the rest are experimental modifications.

(Game Boy sounds)

For example, here we see it's blocked.

The cartridge warns us that it's going to explode,

and this negative aspect is something I like to take advantage of.

I mean, these errors of having modified it

give us sounds a normal Game Boy wouldn't.

Here's a NES, used to make visuals.

Attacking the sound chip as we do with the Game Boy,

here we modify the Nintendo's video chip.

to make strange visual behaviors.

(Spanish): They are capable of reusing all kinds of rubbish

to make new instruments.

They examine these borders they are exploring

between the limits of technology

and the limits of their own contribution,

with a certain vertigo towards the unknown

which is always inevitable in any avant-garde movement.

♪ (electronic music) ♪

♪ (loud club music) ♪

Wooooh!

(Spanish): Live shows are great,

because you can alter the information, the notes,

when you're playing live, it's incredible.

To stop it and say something.

It's the same music but it's not the same.

It's music for sharing.

The more people, the more liberating it is.

It's a feeling that everything is well

and that everything surrounding you helps.

Playing live is what it's about for me.

It always has been.

The music lives when the sound is loud.

You play on your guitar a big chord, and the sound comes around the room,

and it comes back to the strings and into your body, in the crowd...

Everything I do is always thinking about the live show,

and I think that's the place

where people can appreciate 8-bit the most, as well.

Yeah, man, playing live is an amazing feeling.

I love performing.

I assume this role of Henry Homesweet,

take hold of the microphone,

and give people a good night, hopefully,

and really enjoy myself in the process.

But yeah, it's great.

The energy and the vibrations...

It's perfect, man.

♪ (dance music) ♪

(Italian): It's microscopic, it's very small,

because there are rarely parties with a thousand people,

but when the parties are small, the people are very special.

(French): I really appreciate this candor.

The DJ doesn't have to be serious.

We're partying now. (laughs)

(Italian): I've played in front of five people and I don't mind,

I have fun, they have fun,

like a party with friends.

It's a very friendly version of electronic music.

And that's what I like the most about it.

(Spanish): If you have a powerful system,

where you can hear the bass, where everything rumbles,

Wow!

Everything opens up.

You have the natural reverb of the place where you are.

and that helps a lot

because a Game Boy doesn't have those frequencies.

It doesn't have powerful bass or treble so that gives it power.

You come back having a lot with very little,

the intentions...

they're more frontal, more direct, much more honest.

It's another way of understanding life...

A bit more punk, you know?

It's more about not hearing tall tales,

in case they lie to you. You're there for a reason.

(Italian): You don't only play with the Game Boy, you live it.

You arrive at the concert hall,

you connect the Game Boy and you're ready.

♪ (music) ♪

(Spanish): These here are my greatest hits. I can fit in 20 songs.

If people are very relaxed I don't start with a song like...

♪ (energetic music) ♪

Instead, I try to do something more relaxed.

Look, I'm going to turn the volume down

and let the bass play...

♪ (bass drum beats) ♪

OK?

You say a couple of things,

"Hey, were here! Let's do it! Nice and easy!"

And when you say that you mix in the drums.

So then you say, "Come on! Warm up those asses!"

You see some of them that are still behind

that are still not moving, and you say, "Let's slow it down!"

You lower the tempo.

Then you turn it up a little.

(mimics computer voice)

And then you do like "El Zorro."

And people are like "WTF?!"

Up, up, up...

(electric tone rises)

(whistles)

♪ (energetic music) ♪

I do this because of the love it,

not because I want to be part of the scene,

or I want to be the rock star,

I truly love the music, the sound,

and the people who are involved, and the spirit there is.

I don't know whether it's going to be mainstream,

but I know it'll last.

It'll go on.

(Italian): Before we used to have guitars and basses.

Now there are 8-bit computers, and they'll last forever.

Has Chiptune music changed my life?

Yes, significantly.

(Dutch): "Life changing" is a big word.

I started to see the world differently.

I think it has become a part of my identity.

(Spanish): I couldn't leave it if I wanted to.

I'll always be doing things like this.

Using these old technologies, which are not that old, in fact,

is a very good education.

Chipmusic, for me, has made me rethink this idea of limitations.

(Italian): I feel like this is mine,

I'll continue to do 8-bit until I die.

Tell him that in Tokyo there were only three people,

Sixteen. (laughs)

I think that it's actually changed the way I think about many things.

(Italian): Small technology for big sounds...

...and big emotions.

♪ (8 bit music) ♪

(Italian): Sometimes I think technology should have stopped,

because when I look at a pixel 8-bit spider,

you have to develop your imagination to know it's a spider.

Nowadays with incredible 3-D graphics,

you lose the fantasy and become a recluse.

(Spanish): To tell a story

with something that's out of fashion,

it's also being able to laugh at this modern way of life,

and to make fun of it

and to turn the situation around.

If you can take something, a little cheap-ass toy,

and make a really kick-ass bass line with it,

then there's a sense of satisfaction there.

Like, "Oh, I made this with a piece of junk!"

They're choosing that.

They're choosing to attach themselves to something,

and in some ways be limited by that,

because that's a movement against

the overall established forces and directions and conformities.

Using my old game boy as a tool, you know?

It's becoming an instrument, and transcends the technology,

which is cool.

Chipmusic has spread so fast that different people are thinking about it

and are being drawn together.

And the fact that that's outside of a commercial realm is what,

I suppose, shows that it's real, true art.

EUROPE IN 8 BITS