Broadly speaking, most would compose on actual instruments, notate on staff paper, and then program the audio chip instructions manually, in Music Macro Language, or using a custom utility developed by the musician or studio. Tracker programs became available starting with the Amiga platform in the late 1980s, but most trackers were still written specifically for the hardware the program ran on. Today, NES... Source: about 1 year ago

You can use a program like FamiTracker (tracker-style interface) or FamiStudio (midi/piano-roll-style interface) which reproduce the NES's limitations and can export .nsf files which you can play back on an actual NES or emulator. Source: over 1 year ago

Try famitracker. It is a popular software used to make authentic 8bit music. Source: over 1 year ago

I'm really not sure if this is close, but FamiTracker has somewhat of a text interface. Source: almost 2 years ago

🤦‍♂️ when I read the title I thought you meant classic videogame consoles and thought COOL I know about FamiTracker for authentic NES music, and was excited that maybe people would post similar things for other systems. 🤓🤷‍♂️😅. Source: about 2 years ago

I've also used ZynAddSubFX, which is also a very powerful synth, though its interface (at least to me) is a bit of a clusterfuck. You could also try browsing this index of microtonally capable synths on the xenharmonic wiki. Source: about 1 year ago

The code for this can be found here on shadertoy! The audio was made with an Ibanez bass, Guitarix, Hydrogen Drums, ZynaddSubFX and Ardour! Source: over 2 years ago

Here is an additive synth - https://zynaddsubfx.sourceforge.io/. Source: over 2 years ago

There are VSTs for Linux. Surge, Vital, and ZynAddSubFx are three prominent examples, as well as OxeFM, Dexed, and plenty I'm forgetting. Surge and Zyn also come LV2 and DSSI, which are native Linux formats. For those who don't know, the VST3 SDK supports Linux, and is released under GPLv3 by Steinberg. Source: almost 3 years ago