Amiga Music Preservation -

Interview

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Group:

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Date of birth:

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

I remember playing cabinet gaming consoles in my local ice-cream shop but actual home computers came later. I'm not entirely sure of the year, but it was way, way back when Atari had released their cartridge gaming consoles which allowed you to plug a couple of controllers in and play PacMan or Pong. Some time around then a friend of mine had a Spectrum and was able to play games on it and program too. At school we had BBC's, which were generally used for educational purposes but at lunchtime and after school we'd install games and play them instead.

The first machine I got was a Vic-20 with a whopping 3.5k of RAM which would allow you to play Jet Set Willy and also let me spend a summer trying to write an branching adventure game in Basic before I ran out of memory.

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

BBC B, Vic-20, C-64, Atari ST, Amiga, PC, Macintosh

First machines were primarily gaming machines, although I did try to convince my maths teacher that writing vector graphics drivers in assembly language was a justified alternative to my algebra homework. Later, games, coding, music making, demo creation and online activities, bulletin boards and MUGs.

These days I use Macintosh computers in my post-production and film-making work.

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

I suppose someone had to do it. I actually started out as a coder - that was how I met Jose (Phantom) - but in the end he and Martin (Griff) were just so talented and it became tedious listening to the same ripped music that everyone else used, so I thought I'd try writing a chip driver.

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

When I was making music, there were no composing programs, so I had to write my own. Nearly all of my early chip tunes were written as hexadecimal includes in the assembler. Later, trackers were available and I played with a few of them.

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

Does anyone every reach their goal?

When I started getting letters from strangers complementing me on my music, that was nice. And there was a great exhibition we went to where, suddenly, the Decade Demo was being shown on dozens of machines.

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

Some of the commercial Atari conversions from Amiga (Killing Game Show, for example) will never sound as good as the originals - but I think they have been duly lambasted on the internet in various places.

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

In a game, the music provides atmosphere, as with a film. These days games are stretching towards the narrative and atmospheric qualities of films and so the music is becoming much more like cinematic scoring. Back then a lot of the music worked more as a signature tune for the game's identity.

Demos were a completely different genre. The idea was to push the machine, find something new and exciting to do, both visually and musically. When people were writing their own chip drivers particularly, half of the fun was listening out for a completely new sound and wondering how someone managed to squeeze it out of the chip.

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

Occasionally, and almost purely for leisure, although once in a while I'll put something together for a film project. However now I work with many talented musicians who score my work.

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

I think the music is one thing, and the format is another. Whether it's MP3, WAV, MIDI is immaterial. The one thing MP3 (or more open source OGG VORBIS) formats have given us is a means for everyone to listen to the same thing, regardless of their hardware platform.

However, occasionally I'll hear the timbre and styles of modern techno music that started in the late 80's and through the 90's and get a sense that the musicians in the demo scene contributed to that whole genre.

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

Wow. It's been a while. The usual suspects. Jochen, AN Cool, Rob Hubbard etc all impressed me.

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

I doubt it. Half of the fun of the music, at the time I made it, was pushing the limited abilities of the chips. The music itself might sound a little thin if it were rewritten with full samples and synth patches.

12-What bands are you currently listenning to?

Too many to list.

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

New friends, new skills, probably an entirely new career but more than anything the sense of doing something for the fun of it. Also, the ability to stay up 24 hours in a row staring into a monitor.

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

No. I am concentrating much more on my writing and film work now.

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

Just to reiterate something I mentioned before. The whole ethos of the demo scene was one of creativity in the public domain. Certainly there were a few battles between various groups with accusations of 'theft of code' and so on but that came much more from a sense that if you had to steal it, you were too lame to code it yourself. Whereas in order to spread the actual demos themselves, we encouraged people to copy them; for free. I even placed some markers in my chip mods to make it easier for people to rip them and reuse them in other works.

These days there is a great wave of legally enforced copyright protection, with the MPAA and the RIAA at the vanguard of visual and musical copyright, and the US patent office 'protecting' patents for clicking on a button in a web browser. I think it's important to protect the sense of sharing and freedom that still exists in the demo scene, which was and still is shared by hip-hop artists and DJ's in the way they mix and share their creations to spawn new and original creativity.

So hang on to that ethos of sharing.

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please note: this interview is ©opyrighted in 2006 by crown of cryptoburners
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