I started 3 years ago, which is sad considering the amount of time I've had to improve and how little I actually did.

I started composing my own things when I was about 12 yrs old, so that's about 18 years ago. but I didn't actually receive any lessons or training until about 6 years ago, which is really the amount of time I've taken music 'seriously'

Also been doing it since I was 12 (nearly 7 years ago), but back then I didn't know shit about making music. None of my work from that era exists anymore though (aside from a small snippet that I used in a school presentation video *cringes eternally*). It wasn't until I was 14 and stumbled across FamiTracker that I began to make music that actually sounds like music.

*looks at calendar*
hey, exactly 21.5 years ;)

more or less this was the story:
>had a 486 PC running DOS, listened to modules obtained from friends sometimes
>12 dec 1995: got first modem for 16th birthday
>20 dec 1995: discovered "kingmod", a fairly awful piece of software that lets you write 4ch MODs, on a local BBS
>between 26 jan 1996 and 29 jan 1996: discovered scream tracker 3
>"the rest is history"

and I don't have an eidetic memory, but I do still have ~all my old compositions with timestamps intact ;) (in fact I can only think of 2 of my modules that I seem to have misplaced the source for... more or less always the thing I've cared most about saving from computer to computer!)

i picked up a guitar in 2007 and immediately started writing my own music to some degree or another. w/r/t electronic music, i used fl studio some in ~2009-2010, then started using trackers (beginning with famitracker) in 2010 or 2011.

(for reference, i turned 14 in 2007.)

well... I would make up pieces on the piano when I was 7-8 (nothing too complex of course)
Then I discovered music notation software when I was maybe 13-14 and just kept writing things occasionally and learning as I went. I got into midi because I had sibelius and that's what it exported into. Then I got into writing music for doom because that's what midi could be used for. I've been writing in midi for over a decade now.

My earliest surviving music is on a PS2 memory card starting from March 2004. I have no prior recollection (although I likely got MTV Music Generator on Christmas Day, 2003... and there is probably one that pre-dates this one that is long gone/buried). Thus, that's at least 13 and a half years for me.

well i've been playing instruments for about 15 years but i only started really making my own songs 2 years ago when i started making mediocre games and found out about bosca ceoil and sunvox.

my first chiptune stuff was early 2012 (using famitracker via danoocts yt tutorial haha)
i was aware of chip before then but thought it was all voodoo and not accessable

5 Years.

I started listening to chiptunes from a video game show called Bytejacker in which they would feature some new chiptunes album. One show from 2010 featured Spiny Norman's "Across the Milky Tracks" which blew my FREAKIN' 14 YEAR OLD MIND!!! I dove deep into chip music and listened to as much as I could, mostly 2A03 chips or Gameboy chips. I downloaded and first started playing with FamiTracker in late 2011 and by 2012, I had actually written my first halfway decent pieces and was bold enough to share online. To this day I've never written an original song for a traditional instrument.

I started making chiptunes with LSDJ and Nanoloop in a gameboy emulator in 2009, but I've actually discovered the chiptune genre in 2006 back in the days of 8 bit collective. I still miss 8bc to this day and it will never be forgotten. I'm pretty sure some of you Botbers remember 8bc.org.

My beginnning was banging on pots and pans when I was young while listening to Buddy Rich albums at age 4,(i am 42 years old at this time ) Afterwards discovered the fun I could have with a C-64 while i was calilng demoscene related C-64 BBS's in the early 90s.

I've had access to PC computer as early as in 1996 for the first time, but i haven't touched any music related software until ~2000, especially given the fact that i had no internet connection back in the day. First time i actually fooled with computer-generated music was on my PSX console (anyone remembers Music 2000, an amateur tool allowing anyone to build more or less shitty tracks in minutes from ready-made blocks?). After that non-serious initiation i wasn't really active in the music making department for long years, and of course none of that music has ever been published, lol). Some time around 2013 i started listening to and hoarding demoscene modules, which sparked an incentive to learn more about it, because it's fascinating topic, so i went to fiddle with trackers and other music software again, started discovering various communities, and eventually landed here as well ;)
I wouldn't call myself a musician though, since i obviously can't compare to the mighty ones of BotB - i'd rather call myself an enthusiast of everything computer-music related, in the lack of better word for it

A lot of interesting backstories going on here.


Everyone learns recorder at around seven years old, at least in elementary schools in California. That was my first real introduction to music that wasn't singing, and I was hooked. Instrumental music allowed me to fiddle around to make sounds rather than project from my voice. I had been in choir all through elementary school, however, in addition to band.

My brother had played clarinet, and I remember trying out my mom's flute and his clarinet, unable to produce a single note. I got frustrated and thought it was too difficult. I really liked the clarinet--how it looked, smelled--and I was pretty upset that I couldn't play it. I decided to give saxophone a try in fourth grade beginning band but after a week of blowing into it and running out of breath, I mistakenly thought it was the instrument and switched to trumpet.

I worked on trumpet for the next year, being pushed into advanced band the first year but sent back after I talked back to the teacher, as I was unable to produce dynamics other than FFFFFFF. ;)

In sixth grade I decided to play drums. I'm not sure if I started out that year on trumpet and switched, but I remember learning the very basics of handling drum sticks and beating my practice pad to death. Sadly, I had no idea what a metronome was at the time, and didn't start using one until two years ago.

I played drums in 6th/7th grade, switching to trombone in 8th grade, using nothing but a slide chart and a pencil. I messed around a lot, playing songs by ear. Particularly the OST from Cowboy Bebop. That was my first real introduction to what jazz is, and probably why I am so much in love with it today.

I played trombone all through high school; concert band, marching band, jazz band; and played horn one year for concert band. Back in 8th grade I went camping and really liked how the a camper's guitar sounded. I asked for one for Christmas or my birthday and my dad got me a Yamaha. In 11th grade I took guitar class in high school after buying myself an acoustic guitar online.

I pretty much dropped out of music for the next ten years after high school, basically just lazing around and playing my guitar. I wanted to be a rock star.

It wasn't until a lot of rough events in my life that I got my focus back on music, taking piano and theory class over again, talking to the teacher about trombone and jazz band, which led to me joining the jazz band in 2015 spring semester at the community college. I had always wanted to play clarinet and saxophone, however, so I bought my own clarinet, taught myself how to play every single note in the regular three registers, and joined symphonic band, playing basically only the major notes in the music.

It was pretty overwhelming at first, but being surrounded by talented musicians and having the music move along whether you can play it or not really pushed me. I practiced all the time, using the practice rooms, and becoming a music major, enrolling in applied music, which introduced me to my clarinet teacher.

That summer I bought myself a tenor sax, with the intention of playing in the jazz band, no longer playing trombone. I didn't quite make it for jazz band, but I enrolled in the jazz improv and jazz combo classes, and it's that teacher who has inspired me to drive my own playing to reach the level I want.

My mom had given me her flute, but just this year I purchased an intermediate flute, open holed, with a b-foot joint, and so now my main instruments are clarinet, saxophones, and flute.

I have been listening to chip music for many years, now, mainly djCutman's "This Week in Chiptune" and I had always wanted to be able to create chip music of my own. Just about a week or two ago I stumbled on this site and have been binging ever since. I set up FS-UAE to run Amiga and use Protracker 2.3d and the AHX tracker. I installed Milkytracker and Schismtracker on my native linux, and finally figured out I can just run a virtualbox to run an old copy of windows XP SP3 I had lying around to run 0cc-Famitracker, since running it in WINE was proving a pain in the butt. I got my MIDI-to-USB working with an old keyboard I got from my grandma some time after she died.

That's something I failed to mention earlier. My grandma loved piano, and she had an upright piano that I would fiddle around on whenever I visited. It was during those visits that I really grew comfortable with music, both with her piano and this keyboard.

I'm pretty happy with my setup right now, and now I just need to stop talking and start tracking!

I've studied music since I was 6yo [around 2004]

But I only dared to try writing my own stuff in 2014, and started making chiptunes in 2015 because raphaelgoulart scolded me for using GXSCC

Sometimes i wish i could go back in time...

Played Music 2000 around 1998~2000 (You CAN actually make ACTUAL music with it, MiDoRi, i checked it out again some while ago when i was playing around with the ISO, databending it to get glitched sounds), played some shitty E-Jay game around 2010-11, made comedic joke raps with stolen instrumentals about albanian pseudo-thugs acting ghetto in Switzerland, made ultra noisy black metal and ambient around 2004-2007 starting with windows recorder, windows movie maker, a half-dead microphone, a half-dead guitar amp and a bass guitar which i abused as a guitar, also used Virtual DJ for effects (i was the biggest noob in the world and this made the sound so obscure after all - later in the psytrance/experimental idm-esque time i would come back to using stupid and obscure methods of alienating sound - using that typical distortion sound of old quicktime movie files as an effect, for example), around 2007 i found out about DAWs and i experimented with FL and made exclusively ambient or dungeon synth-like music until 2008~09~, made fast psytrance and other extreme or experimental (noise too, again) electronic music around 2009-2013, finally started to make chiptune (SMS, first with MOD2PSG2 and then Deflemask) right after the psytrance period and won't go back again. I may make non-chiptune at times, especially ambient, noise, dungeon synth, vaporwave, experimental stuff, but most of the time i will just make these styles with old soundchips as this is what i secretly dreamed about all my life, yet - as others mentioned too - found it to be too esoteric and impossible to get into at first, not knowing about the software solutions and all. Then again, what were the tools to make SMS music in 2005? I'm VERY happy i don't have to stick with MOD2PSG2 or Deflemask for the rest of my life, and the only other alternative to Sneventracker would be the XMPCK abbyss ;) Best part is, i will not have to change the tracker when the time comes for making MD/GEN games.

Edit:
I love antique surrealist movies and the creation of movie sound effects - so basically the creation of sound effects for movies is also something i would do (and will do) in the future, regarding non-chiptune music (i am going to be extravagant enough now to classify sound effects as music)

" >20 dec 1995: discovered "kingmod", a fairly awful piece of software that lets you write 4ch MODs, on a local BBS "

that sounds so fucking awesome, You activated almost all of my vapor feels at once

I wanna hear more 80s and 90s retro PC stories, come on guys!
Also Moot where are You