1-bit music
[audio
synth
8bit
]
What is 1-bit music?: “produced by repeatedly switching the current that goes to the built-in speaker on and off, or in other words, they are produced by toggling a signal between two states”. Depending on how you look at it, this is the most digital (it’s only ones and zeros with no pretense of waveforms) or least digital (it’s only 1-bit of digital precision) you can get. The challenge (as stated in Victor Adan’s phd thesis) is that the 1-bit music composer is “directly confronted with the problem of creating pitches, timbres and polyphony (parallel perceptual streams), all from a single train of pulses. With only two symbols (0 and 1) there is no ‘vertical’ information, no subtlety in the degree of push and pull. Thus, in the confines of a 1-bit music, one is forced to use time to convey all information; time is the only carrier of information. i.e., everything must be created from rhythm.” Examples and technical guidance…
Musical examples
- A classic example: Agent X spectrum
- An impressive example: 4000AD: 1-Bit Beeper Music (1 bit x 4 channels)…with a C-library for running these off AVRs
- why not put your old TI-82 to a higher purpose?
- some fine compositions by Tristan Perich
- A web app for playing these
Technical guidance
- Troise (2020) “The 1-Bit Instrument: The Fundamentals of 1-Bit Synthesis, Their Implementational Implications, and Instrumental Possibilities” doi:10.1525/jsmg.2020.1.1.44 find it online… see also: Troise’s PhD Thesis (2020) Micro Music Exploring the Idiosyncratic Compositional Strategies Encountered in 1-Bit, Limited Memory Environments
- a history of tricks in early 1-bit music development
- algorithm implementation styles in Z80 assembly
- Victor Adan’s phd thesis is epic! But I think Troise’s thesis is better for the typical application. Adan’s is highly formal and the music is…