Arpeggio

In chip music, an arpeggio is an effect that rapidly alternates a tone generator's period among two to four pitches to create a warbly approximation of a chord. The effect was highly popular on Commodore 64, and it was popular on the NES among European developers who started in the C64 scene. Japanese developers, on the other hand, tended to shy away from arpeggio.

Arpeggio tends to sound muddy when notes are below middle C, and some listeners think it sounds grating when the volume envelope has no decay to it.

"Non-looped arpeggio" is a term used in NerdTracker II for playing the beginning of a note at a different pitch from the rest. A lot of games used non-looped arpeggio, especially playing the first frame an octave above or an octave below the rest of a note.

Games whose music has plenty of arpeggios

• Asterix
• Jurassic Park
• M.C. Kids
• Silver Surfer
• The Smurfs
• Several games by Codemasters