Title Slide: Waves in Video Games

Have you ever wondered why old video game music sounds the way that it does? Well, back in the 70s and 80s, technology in general wasnt able to store nearly as much information as it does today. To explain, you might have heard the term 8-bit music when people are talking about old video game music. 8-bit actually refers to the amount of storage space gaming systems had at the time. Nowadays, computers are mostly 32 or 64-bit, which is an even bigger difference than it seems. Anyways, because of the space limitations on old gaming systems, sound reproduction was limited in a few ways. First of all, you could only have 4 channels of sound playing at any time. This basically meant that a song could only have 4 instruments playing at a timeand if you wanted a sound effect to play during the video game, one of the instruments would have to cut out while the sound effect played. The other major difference that separates 8-bit music from modern music is the richness of sound. Youve probably noticed that 8-bit music seems really bloopy, for lack of a better word. 8-bit music is made out of bleeps and bloops. And the reason for this is that there just wasnt enough storage space for gaming systems to be able to reproduce any types of sounds except for really simple ones. In other words, complex sounds, such as the sound of my voice, took up too much space and were too complex to recreate. So instead, 8-bit gaming systems only produced simple sounds, sounds that would not take up a lot of memory to store and reproduce. So what makes a simple sound? Well, simple sounds have simple wave patterns. There are four different kinds of simple waves: the sine wave, the square wave, the triangle wave, and the sawtooth wave. These waves, in addition to white noise, made up the entirety of 8-bit music. So 8-bit music was made using only these sound waves. Now, you might be wondering exactly what it is that makes these waves so simple. In order to understand that, though, we first need to understand how it is each of the simple waves are formed. Well, first, lets look at the sine wave. So, it might not look like it, but the sine wave is actually the most basic sound wave. Its the building block of all other sound waves. The reason I say this is because any sound wave, no matter how complex, can actually be broken down into a bunch of sine waves superposed on each other. This theory is called the Fourier transform. [Slide 4: Example of using the Fourier transform to break down a complex wave] All of the other simple waves can be formed using the sine wave. What makes all the simple waves simple, though, is that simple waves only use harmonics of a given sine wave to obtain their shape. If youve forgotten what a harmonic is, heres a brief reminder: basically, harmonics are sine waves that fit into given lengths neatly, with both of their sides ending on a node.

A square wave is made using only the odd harmonics of the fundamental frequency. This includes all waves that have an odd number of antinodes. [Slide : Diagram of square wave] You can see here that the harmonics used to make the square wave all have an odd number of antinodes. When these waves are superposed on top of the biggest wave, or fundamental, the crests on either side of the smaller waves balance out the downward slope of the fundamental. Conversely, the troughs of the smaller waves balance out the peak of the fundamental. [Slide :Second Square Wave Diagram] As you add more and more waves, the overall wave starts to look infinitely closer to an actual square. And thats how a square wave is formed, by superposing a lot of odd harmonics on top of the fundamental frequency. [Slide : Triangle Wave] Triangle waves are made a similar way to square waves. They use odd harmonics as well, but these harmonics are inverted. This way, the peaks of the harmonics correspond to the peaks of the fundamental, and the troughs of the harmonics correspond to the downwards slope of the fundamental. As you add more waves, the overall wave gets pointier and looks increasingly like a triangle. [Slide : Sawtooth Wave] Finally, a sawtooth wave is sort of different because it contains both the even and odd harmonics of the fundamental. Because even harmonics have a crest on one side, and a trough on the other, this causes the overall wave to get higher on one side and lower on the other, creating the sawtooth. So, now you can see how each of the simple waves is made. Since they only use sine waves and their harmonics, they were easily produced by old video game consoles. As one extra note, white noise is a combination of every single frequency all at once. Ideally, it should look like a big block of sound. While it isnt technically a simple wave, it is fairly easy to produce and was used often in 8-bit music. So, now, were going to hear how each of the waves, plus white noise, sounds! All the simple waves sound very pure, because they are simple, but if you listen closely you can hear differences between them. The sine wave sounds very clear, kind of like a flute. They are sometimes used for melody or harmony in 8-bit music. The square wave sounds a lot harsher, almost unnatural. This square wave is actually at the same frequency as the sine wave, but it sounds much higher because of all the harmonics that need to be in the wave in order to make it square. Since the higher harmonics have higher frequencies, the square

wave sounds much higher than the sine wave even though both share the same fundamental frequency. Square waves are often used for melodies. The triangle wave sounds harsher and higher than the sine wave, but not as much as the square wave. This is because a smaller number of harmonics is required to generate a triangle wave than a square wave. Triangle waves are usually used for the bass of an 8-bit song. The sawtooth wave has a slight oscillating sound to it, kind of like a saw. It is sometimes used for either the melody or the harmony. Finally, white noise sounds like, well, white noise. You might not have noticed it, but white noise is actually used as percussion in 8-bit music. [Slide: Legend of Zelda Video] Heres an example of some of the simple waves in the Legend of Zelda theme. As you can see, the melody and countermelody are both played with square waves, the bass is played with triangle waves, and the percussion is played with white noise. Here are some other well-known examples, albeit without actual sound. Really, its just a list of wellknown video games. So, anywaysthe next time you hear a bit of 8 bit music, know that its a bunch of square and triangle shaped waves coming at your head. We hope you enjoyed our presentation, thank you for listening.