This is the second article in a series of writeups. The previous article covered Shader-based Screen Transitions.

I've gotten a lot of positive feedback for the NES-style chiptune soundtrack for Unlock Everything, so I decided to do a writeup breaking down the basics of how these chiptunes are structured. (It's a little easier to do this sort of writeup for chiptunes since they're so limited compared to more fully-featured tracks)

The soundtrack for Unlock Everything consists of chiptune tracks in the style of the original NES. Here's a sample track so you know what it sounds like.

This is the music for the second level of the game, titled "Face Your Destiny", and is my personal favorite out of the entire OST. In this writeup we'll be dissecting the different components of this track to see how it all comes together, as well as discussing some arrangement techniques involved in each section.

Before I go into the actual sounds used in the track, I should point out that the first thing I did when starting this song was decide on a rough tempo to compose at. I settled on 150BPM for this track, because I wanted it to have a lot more energy than the music for level 1 (100BPM) but a little less than level 3 (180BPM). This would give the soundtrack a sense of progression that matched the intensity of the gameplay.

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Read the full writeup breaking down this song on my website: https://ddrkirby.com/articles/nes-chiptunes-unlock-everything/nes-chiptunes-unlock-everything.html