Amiga Music Preservation -

Interview

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`qb ,dP'

TLb. ,dMP' all rite, now you get the chance to read

TML.dMMP some facts about some of the major amiga

,nmm`XXMPX musicians. read about their history in

,#MP'~~XNXYNXTb. the scene and their plans in future.yes,

,d~' dNNP `YNTb. that's meant to be read while listening to

,~ ,NN' `YNb their modules. read 'em over and over and over..

dNP `Yb.

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Handle:

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Group:

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Date of birth:

1-How did your interest for computers start? Which year was that?

1984 with the C64.

2-What machines did you previously have? What did you do with them?

The C64 interested me mostly for gaming. It didn't take long though to
get started on Basic and later a little assembler. At least I managed
to make my own moving rasters. Music came on a little later. I was
already very interested music since John Williams' work on Jaws
(which I saw in 1980) , the Star Wars as well the Indiana Jones films.
The film soundtrack to 'Return of the Jedi' was one of my first records.
With the C64 I couldn't find adequate software to put my ideas in to
notes. It's not unlikely that I was too lazy to use stuff like the
Soundmonitor or Electrosound. In 1989 I got my Amiga 500 and started
composing with this. I played games on all these machines, but music
took over rapidly on the Amiga with MED 2.00, Noisetracker 1.1plus
and then Protracker.

3-For what specific reason did you end up making music rather than gfx, coding?

Game music fascinated me with its great melodies and interesting new
sounds. Rob Hubbard is still my favorite of all C64 composers, though I
still enjoy Martin Galway, Tim Follin and PRI/Ogygen little SID tunes.
Programming still fascinates me and I hack out some Perl scripts from
time to time now, but music and the art of creating sound effects
completly captivated me because of all the games I played. Films had a
little to do with it too but not at the start of my musically creative times.
I don't see any way of diving back in to programming or gfx. I do those
two as a hobby and mainly just for myself.

4-Which composing programs have you been using? Which one in particular?

I'll start with Soundmonitor by Chris Huelsbeck. Featured in the C64
mag in Germany, this program was the first I'd ever used. The tunes
were horrible I made. I just threw sounds together and tried to get
some notes in there at random. I was a bit dissapointed by the sounds and
didn't want to invest time in creating stuff I knew wasn't possible with
this prog. I wanted it to sound like the stuff Rob Hubbard was doing and
didn't get far, so I scratched Soundmonitor fairly soon.

As soon as I got the Amiga I started looking. Zoundmonitor popped up in
a mag and I tried it. Primitive disk handling and a rather unhandy
keyboard interface but it worked and I did some beginner stuff on this.

Next, MED 2.00(MusicEDitor) got my attention because of its very good
disk access interface. Soundtracker and Noisetracker 1.1 had disk
interfaces that were unflexible and downright horrible. For about a
year I used this to compose a dozen modules and editing modules of other
people.

Noisetracker 1.1plus finally had a flexible disk access interface so I
made this my no.1 program for a few months, right untill Protracker
1.0b turned up. This one realy took the biscuit with it's great ideas
for keyboard layout and editing features. The sample editor was a dream
and who doesn't remember that 'Boost' function. Right up untill I got a
usable PC, I stuck with Protracker of the old design, which is 2.3d, IMHO
the most usable version.

Of course I couldn't ignore the PC for long and hacked up a little

386-DX33 machine in 1995 with a borrowed GUS card. I quickly got my own

GUS PnP with 2MB memory and was cooking on Fasttracker2 and Impulsetracker.
I'd hated Screamtracker for its keyboard layout and stuck with Fasttracker2
for a while, but then Impulsetracker came along with its brilliant 'Instrument'
feature and very speedy keyboard editing. This is the tracker I still use
today and I'm a registered user of IT, have the stereo WAV writer and use
it for MIDI with my Roland JV1080 synth and little keyboard.

5-With which module did you feel you had reached your goal?

Very hard to say. In retrospect I'm happy with many modules, especially
with 'Close to the Edge', 'Step my Way I + II', 'Bodacious V3 and
'Wedman', because they have so many ideas packed in to them. I like
almost all my tunes and don't want to forget a single one of the ones
I released. True, some aren't as well made and don't have great ideas
in them, and some even copy ideas from other people('Hike A Run' copied
the instruments and drumline from Jesper Kyds AmigaTheme 2.8) but it's stuff
I was proud in at the time. I listen to them occasionaly and think that I
didn't do all that much wrong after all.

I'll pick one for you to shout about though, and this would be 'Lovestar',
which I wrote on Impulsetracker 2 for the Hornet Music Contest 6 and later
improved a bit is probably the more accomplished of my mods. It combines
simplicity with a beautifull melody and nice sounds.

6-Is there a tune you would like not to remember? For What reason?

There are none that I wish to forget. That's why I listen to them from
time to time, so I don't.

7-In your opinion, what's the value of a music in a demo, game?

It will make or break the demo with the general and musically inclined
audience. Coders won't mind bad music much but everybody else does.
In games this is a different story, evey since the PC became the
platform of choice for computer games. PC were never known for their
sound qualities and looking at what it takes to produce the level of
sound magic we had with the C64 and Amiga makes me sad sometimes.
Videogames are different in many ways and I've always found music to
accomplish itself as an important part of the game experience there,
but hardly ever in PC games. Short of cut scenes and cd audio, which
is a quick fix hookup to the soundcard via the CDROM, there is little
notable music in PC games these days. The last tune I liked was the
Episode1 Mission2 music from Doom.

Still being an active game player, the N64 holds up to be the musically
best platform for me. Zelda,FZeroX,Banjo Kazooie to name a few all have
great music. I don't think a PC game has this. It's a strange situation,
that gets discussed heavily on the Gameaudiopro list I take part in.

8-At present, are you still composing? For professional or leisure purposes?

I compose for leisure and free projects. The Quake Done Quick team makes
Quake movie that can be called demos, and I handle all the audio there.
Check 'Scourge Done Slick' for our most recent effort at
www.planetquake.com/qdq .
By trade I'm an audio engineer and perform post production duties but no
composing work.

9-What do you think of today's pieces of music such as mpeg,wave,midi,etc...?

The medium is, as they say, what you make of it. MP3 is a blessing for
all those guys that couldn't get their music, that was made with samplers,
mics and mixers, to the public attention. The quality is increasing here though
I can't judge how much as I don't check out that much off the net. MIDI isn't a
distribution medium and I find it's only real use to be in the Karaoke range.
Nobody uses WAV anymore for distribution over the net. Those that do
aren't doing their homework(11kHz/8bit! HA!)

10-Could you tell us some of your all times favourite tunes?

Easy.Modules I cherish are 'Just for the Blues' by Dizzy, several
works of Dr.Awesome&Fleshbrain(TranzeSeven,Graveyard,GroundZerO....),
Starshine by Purple Motion, the classic credits music of Second Reality/Skaven,
Blue Shadows(unknown author-the first Amiga music I ever heard,
from an Ikari intro), Donovans Moonbike by Radix, Space Love/Heatbeat,
Time's A Remedy/Mr.Man, Strings In Space & Always/Liquid,
Ministry/JesperKyd(from the demo XPose), several Jogeir Liljedahl
tunes(one of the best),Varanen/Lizardkind,
CrackOfDawn&BoesendorferPSS/RomeoKnight,
the two Crystal Symphonies/Tip&Mantronix, Enigma/Tip&Firefox
.... that's not it, but it's a start.

11-Are you planning to make an audio cd with some of your music remastered?

Not at the moment. If someone wanted it, I'd do it for him/her, since I have
the means to do so. For now, playing the modules is simpler and my other
material isn't enough for a CD that I can be proud of as much as I could
be about the music I created in the MOD days.

12-What bands are you currently listenning to?

Prince, Alanis Morisette,the first Seal album,my Guns&Roses albums, Guano
Apes and the recent Madonna album(musically,aurally&technically first class)

13-What does/did the amiga/c64 scene give you?

If took a big part my waking life and I'm glad it did. Without it I wouldn't
be the sound hacker I am today. Drive,enjoyment,many friends,long train
rides to parties,swap feasts and even a babe or two. Everything you'd want
from a subculture that loves its machines and the people using it.

14-Are you still active in the scene these days?

It's fading a bit. I hand around #trax on irc.scene.org from time to time
and exchange emails with old friends and new. Email has given me the chance
to converse with my most cherished composers from the C64 and Amiga days.
It's a nice feeling to get email from someone like Rob Hubbard.
Sometimes I ask people to join a project, so the scene/demo spirit in me
is never dead, just resting from time to time.

I dont' visit demo parties anymore, if they're not in my city(Berlin).
Phase^D died '99, so that's the last music group I was in. Releasing
music through the group didn't give me much either. People haven't
organized themselves as much as I would have liked either. #trax is my
main contact to the scene. The work on the Qdq Quake movies is my contribution
to the scene right now. You might say I'm in the Qdq group.

15-Anyone to greet? Anything left to say? Feel free...

Yeah there are some. Thanks to all the great coders, gfx artists and
musicians, who made this scene and still do. I got mushy a few times
over music and demos out of the scene. Thinking back, I believe we
are the 'Open Source' movement of the music scene.

My personal greets go out to the Phase^D folks and my good friends on-
and offline. You know who you are.

My sincerest thanks to you for sending these questions.

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please note: this interview is ©opyrighted in 2001 by crown of cryptoburners
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