1-Bit Symphony

Life is strange.

Tristan Perich is making a fortune with his concept of 1-bit music, which is nothing more than the exact reproduction of the sound synthesis used in the very first personal computers (the Commodore 64 was already ahead of its time, but the sounds are similar).

In practice, a small circuit is used with a flip-flop, a device that alternates 1 and 0 at regular intervals, generating a square wave. If, for example, the flip-flop alternates one and zero 440 times per second, a square wave at 440 Hertz is generated, that is, an A, which however will only contain the odd harmonics (that's what the square wave is) and a little of the even ones but only for harmonic distortion, with fearsome effects already on the most distant consonances of 8va and 5a (that is, practically all of them).

This system was used in old PCs to drive the small and nefarious system speaker because it requires minimal resources. It was easy, then, to build very low-cost circuits capable of producing many square waves at different frequencies at the same time, as in the infamous SID of the Commodore 64 (whose technical name was 8580 SID chip, where the acronym pompously stood for Sound Interface Device).

Moreover, this type of synthesis has already been used for years by various groups that make what is called 8-bit music, precisely because it harks back to the old 8-bit machines.

Now Perich has taken up this, IMHO, disturbing sound by creating various installations and compositions, some of which are also structurally interesting but, to my ears, are indelibly marked by the sound of the C64 that makes me want to place a nice low-pass filter downstream of all the audio.

The funny thing is that, when we were kids, we did tons of things like this, laughing about it. But, I repeat, life's circumstances are strange and today people find great pleasure in having their ears drilled by square waves.

I don't know what to say. There is, in life, the charm of old things taken up and revisited, which is also what pushes people to play old music with period instruments and gut strings that, precisely because they are period, do not stay in tune for more than 5 minutes, forcing the performer to play out of tune for half the piece (NB: I have nothing against old music but only against those who do as above).

Here are some of the best examples (you can find others on his site), as well as the video of the fearsome 1-Bit Symphony.

Between the Silences for nine strings, nine-part 1-bit music (2008)
All Possible Paths for clarinet, acoustic guitar, cello, double bass, marimba, piano, 5-channel 1-bit electronics (2008), commissioned by Bang on a Can’s People’s Commissioning Fund

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