Musical Greeting Cards

Early computer sound chips had only simple tone and noise generators with few channels, imposing limitations on both the complexity of the sounds they could produce and the number of notes that could be played at once. In their desire to create a more complex arrangement than what the medium apparently allowed, composers developed creative approaches when developing their own electronic sounds and scores, employing a diversity of both methods of sound synthesis, such as pulse width modulation and wavetable synthesis, and compositional techniques, such as a liberal use of arpeggiation. The resultant chiptunes sometimes seem harsh or squeaky to the unaccustomed listener.

The program played a major role in the Game Boy chip music trend that came to attract a lot of attention in media. The now non-existent Swedish duo Puss is one of the better-known chip music projects, and was nominated 2003 for a Grammis prize in "Årets klubb/dans". The same year, Goto80 probably played as the first chip musician live at Hultsfredsfestivalen. In 2005, Paza produced an Atari song for Beck. The Stockholm club Microdisko has since 2004 arranged gigs with the biggest chip music artists worldwide.