Generally chip tunes consist of basic waveforms, such as sine waves, square waves and sawtooth or Voice Cards triangle waves, and basic percussion, often generated from white noise going through an ADSR envelope–controlled synthesizer.

Sweden has ever since year 1980 been prominent in the chiptune scene, as well as the demo scene, video games and generally in the musical popular culture. Possibly, this is because of an early high degree of computerization and music that attracted a lot of attention. In 2001, Johan Kotlinski (Role Model) created the music program Little Sound DJ for Gameboy, which quickly gained a lot of attention in Europe and the United States.