Chiptune, also called 8-bit music (although not all chiptune is 8-bit), is a style of electronic music, and its associated subculture, made using the programmable sound generator (PSG) sound chips or synthesizers in vintage arcade machines, computers and video game consoles. The term is commonly used to refer to tracker format music using extremely basic and small samples that an old computer or console could produce (this is the original meaning of the term), as well as music that combines PSG sounds with modern musical styles. It has been described as "an interpretation of many genres". Any existing song can be arranged in a chiptune style. It can be defined by choice of instrument, by timbre more than specific style elements.

A waveform generator is a fundamental module in a sound synthesis system. A waveform generator usually produces a basic geometrical waveform with a fixed or variable timbre and variable pitch. Common waveform generator configurations usually included two or three simple waveforms and often a single pseudo-random-noise generator (PRNG). Available waveforms often included pulse wave (whose timbre can be varied by modifying the duty cycle), square wave (a symmetrical pulse wave producing only odd overtones), triangle wave (which has a fixed timbre containing only odd harmonics but is softer than a square wave), and sawtooth wave (which has a bright raspy timbre and contains odd and even harmonics). Two notable examples of systems employing this technology were the Game Boy portable game console and the Commodore 64 personal computer. The Game Boy uses two pulse channels (switchable between 12.5%, 25%, 50% and 75% wave duty cycle), a channel for a 4-bit waveform generator, and a pseudo-random-noise generator. The Commodore 64 however used the MOS Technology SID chip which offered 3 channels, each switchable between pulse, saw-tooth, triangle, and noise. Unlike the Game Boy, the pulse channels on the Commodore 64 allowed full control over wave duty cycles. The SID was a very technically advanced chip, offering many other features including ring modulation and adjustable resonance filters.

Due to the limited number of voices in early sound chips, one of the main challenges is to produce rich polyphonic music with them. The usual method to emulate it is via quick arpeggios, which is one of the most relevant features of chiptune music (along with its electronic timbres).

Some older systems featured a simple beeper as their only sound output, as the original ZX Spectrum and IBM PC; despite this, many skilled programmers were able to produce unexpectedly rich music with this bare hardware, where the sound is fully generated by the system's CPU by direct control of the beeper.

The earliest precursors to chip music can be found in the early history of computer music. In 1951, the computers CSIRAC and Ferranti Mark 1 were used to perform real-time synthesized digital music in public.

One of the earliest commercial computer music albums came from the First Philadelphia Computer Music Festival, held August 25, 1978, as part of the Personal Computing '78 show. The First Philadelphia Computer Music Festival recordings were published by Creative Computing in 1979. The Global TV program Science International (1976–1979) credited a PDP-11/10 for the music.

Chiptune music began to appear with the video game music produced during the golden age of video arcade games. An early example was the opening tune in Tomohiro Nishikado's arcade game Gun Fight (1975). The first video game to use a continuous background soundtrack was Tomohiro Nishikado's 1978 release Space Invaders, which had four simple chromatic descending bass notes repeating in a loop, though it was dynamic and interacted with the player, increasing pace as the enemies descended on the player. The first video game to feature continuous melodic background music was Rally-X, an arcade game released by Namco in 1980, featuring a simple tune that repeats continuously during gameplay. It was also one of the earliest games to use a digital-to-analog converter to produce sampled sounds. That same year, the first video game to feature speech synthesis was also released, Sunsoft's shoot 'em up arcade game Stratovox.

In the late 1970s, the pioneering synth-pop/electronic dance music group Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO) were using computers to produce synthesized music. Some of their early music, including their 1978 self-titled debut album, were sampling sounds from popular arcade games such as Space Invaders and Gun Fight. In addition to incorporating sounds from contemporary video games into their music, the band would later have a major influence on much of the video game and chiptune music produced during the 8-bit and 16-bit eras. Sega's 1982 arcade game Super Locomotive for example featured a chiptune cover version of YMO's "Rydeen" (1979); several later computer games also covered the song, such as Trooper Truck (1983) by Rabbit Software as well as Daley Thompson's Decathlon (1984) and Stryker's Run (1986) arranged by Martin Galway.