If you want to make chiptune but really don't want to deal with downloading
all of the software to get into it, this video is for you.
Bosca Ceoil lets you make music for free online and you can even download the program if you prefer.
The point is, this is all you need to make chiptune or retro music.
For example, this is what you can make with it.
[example of chiptune music made in Bosca Ceoil]
Hey everyone, Jake from Transverse Audio here.
This is a really basic and straight forward music creator that you can learn how to use quickly
and it's great if you're a solo game developer making a pixel art style game.
Or, are just interested in making some low-bit retro music.
Now before I get into it, the link is in the description below.
Starting from the site you'll see the option to either use this in your browser or download it onto your computer,
which can be done for Windows, Mac, and Linux.
For the simplicity of this video, I'll just go ahead and use the browser version.
If you're using Chrome, you'll need to enable Flash by clicking on the lock to the left of the URL
and changing it to "Allow" (which can also be done under "Site Settings").
When the program launches, the first thing you'll be up against is the MIDI editor
(often called the piano roll)
and the option menus on the top.
Under File, you can learn more about the creators,
the program,
and play, pause, or stop the playback.
You can also use the space bar to play and stop.
Next to that, you have control over how many bars,
and beats each pattern has.
Below that there is the BPM (or Beats Per Minute)
and that determines how many beats are played over one minute.
Essentially, how fast it will play the song you make.
Switching over to the Arrangement tab, you can create patterns using this button here.
These are just individual patterns of musical notes you may write known as MIDI.
I'll get to writing music when I go over the Instrument tab.
To add a pattern to the playlist, drag and drop a pattern from the list to the right
or from a pattern in the playlist to copy it.
If you wanted to duplicate it to make slight variations, just middle-click the pattern in the playlist.
Again, just right-click to remove a pattern from the playlist as well.
To delete it completely, drag it from the list on the right to the bottom right corner.
Scroll to zoom in and out of the playlist
and use the buttons on the sides to navigate through the entire song or arrangement.
On the bottom of this, there is the timeline where you're able to set the loop points
by either clicking to set a one-column loop
or click and drag to loop through multiple columns.
Oh, and you can double-click to play the rest of the song from that point on.
If you want to delete all the patterns in a single column, just right click on the timeline
and if you middle click there, it will insert an empty column.
Okay, now we can add in instruments for each pattern to use.
You can have up to 16 different instruments per project
and you can change the instrument group and select the individual instrument in its sub-menus.
All of these are pretty retro in nature and this actually has a decent selection of drums
not to mention how many different sounding instruments there are.
[example of drum/percussion samples in Bosca Ceoil]
[example of virtual instruments/synths in bosca ceoil]
Finally, you can control the volume of the instrument and set the position of the low pass filter,
which is just a band on an EQ in the shape of this that reduces the volume of specific frequencies
to the right of the curve.
There, I'll go over the Advanced tab at the end but first let's take a look at the MIDI editor.
Here you can write out your musical score such as a melody, bassline, or chords.
Simply left click to place a note, right-click to delete and scroll to change the length of the note.
To the far right, you can scroll to higher or lower pitches to place notes.
Two quick tips, you can actually hear what the instrument sounds like on each note
by pressing the note label to the left. This is based on the note length too.
The second one is that you can tell if you have notes out of sight
in the pattern by seeing a line on the top or bottom,
depending on the position and length of the note.
Now, on the bottom, there are a few options and starting from the right you can select the key
(which is simply the note a scale starts from).
Next to that is the scale select, which will only display the notes in that scale, based on the key you've selected.
I'll link to a resource below if you want to learn more about Scales and Keys.
But for now, a scale is just a group of notes that act as a guideline for what notes you should use in your song,
this keeps everything sounding good.
Beside that, you can transpose (or change the pitch) of the entire pattern.
The next option to the far left will let you select the instrument
that is used for the pattern you currently have open.
Okay, the last thing I want to go over is the Advanced tab.
Here you'll be able to set the sound buffer size
which can be changed to fix some problems with your exported audio,
swing which makes an offset in the beat and can make your song sound like this,
[example of using swing in bosca ceoil]
and you can add a single effect to the entire track.
Kinda sucks how it's only one and is applied to everything, but it is better than nothing.
Just select the effect you want to use and slide the amount anywhere from Off to 100%.
With that, I hope you can make some really cool chiptune or retro music for video games
or just as standalone music.
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