Amiga Music Preservation -

Interview

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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.

,NN' `b. · i n t e r v i e w · ___________

______dP _____________ \ /

\ ,N'\____ _____________. _____ \ \_____. ____\ /

\___P___/ .\--\__ __/__ |--\____)---\ _____/__ |--\_ \ _/

| | | \ | | \__| | _ \ / | \__| | /\ |

| _| | | _l_ | | \ / _l_ | ___|

l___/=l___|====l____/===\______|==l______|\ /l___/===\______l____/

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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?

I got interested in computers because my father brought home a computer for
his work. This was a commodore PET, the year was 1981. On this machine I
could play 'Space Invaders' and when I got the chance to learn some basic
(on a Philips P2000) in 1982 I did. My main reason the learn programming
was the creation of games. Back in those days you could not buy games in
the shops like you can today, so I decided to expand my game database by
writing some of my own.

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

Chronological order (more or less):
Commodore PET : only for playing games
Philips P2000T : Learning how to program (basic & Z80 asembler)
Apple II : playing & coding games, learning 6502 assembler
Commodore VIC-20 : playing & coding games
Commodore C64 : playing games, coding games & demos, some music composing.
IBM PC (one of the first 4.77 Mhz 8088's, 2 screens attached MDA & CGA)
: Not much, hating MS-DOS.
Apple Macintosh (classic, SE and LC later on)
: Used for school, some Pascal programming.
Commodore Amiga 500 : Coding demos and other useless stuff, some music composing.
Commodore Amiga 2000 : Coding demos and others, some music composing.
Atari ST : Coding of a multitasking OS (for the ST, it worked).
Several PC's: 386/486/Cyrix/AMD etc..
: Work, coding demos (on the 386) and some other stuff.

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

I don't think this is valid for me.... Since most of the time I was coding.
I only did a few music pieces (which usually were crap).

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

The 1st one was 'soundmonitor' on the Commodore C64. I got this program for
the German "64'er" magazine. It was displayed in the magazine as some 20
pages of hexcodes, I typed 'em all over (which I'll never do again). After
this I changed the 'soundmonitor' program so I could add drumsamples to
the songs, I used 2 bit drumsamples created with my own home-made sampler.
When I got the amiga and the first soundtracker versions I thought they
lacked the ease-of-use of the C64 soundmonitor (I specially missed the
transpose options) and decided to write my own. This 'soundmon' is the
one I used most.

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

I don't think I ever did. There must still be a chance for improvement.

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

Not really, I try to forget about most of them ;)

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

Very important. It's the same like watching a movie without sound, which
gets quite boring. Music can be used to accentuate aspects of the
demo/game just like in movies. Scary music can make a scene were
noting happens scary and vice-versa.

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

Not really. Only small things for demonstration purposes. Coding I
still do however, but more on a professional level.

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

I think 'tracking' is a lost art. Nowadays in games nobody uses modules,
etc, anymore (even midis are on their way out). With games being put on 1
or more CD-Rom's there is no need to save on memory consumption and
therefore it is so easy to just sample a synthesizer soundtrack and put it
as a 'wav' or 'mp3' song on the CD. The biggest problem with this approach
is that you need a full-blown synthesizer to do so. Therefore, beginning
artists that don't have to equipment (or the money to buy it) will not be
able to produce quality sound. This takes away a lot of possibilities for
starting musicians.

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

occ-san-geen (uncle tom)
game music from Hybris and Battle squadron (Ron Klaren)
Yeah and Gork (Sebastiaan Lentfert)
Turrican II (Chris Huelsbeck)

and a lot of classic C64 tunes (arkanoid, skate or die, ghosts'n goblins
and others) from Martin Galway, Rob Hubbard, Tim Follin and other
C64 musicians.

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

Nope.

12-What bands are you currently listenning to?

I'm in to the alternative music. Bands like: Tool, Butthole Surfers, Coil
and others (Tool is my favourite).

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

In the past: A whole lot of fun, in the early scene days (1986-1992) I
visited a lot of computer/copy parties and I got to meet a lot of people
from the scene, basically I had a very good time.

Currently: Things have eased down, I have a daytime job and have grown
somewhat responsible (but only somewhat :). The scene gives me the
motivation to do some things I normally probably wouldn't have done
(like creating the soundmon player for linux and others).

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

Only a little. But currently I have more time than I did 1 year ago. So
I might be able to pick it up again.

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

Hi to:

Martyn Brown (From Team17, formerly 17Bit software).
Allister Brimble
Softrunner
Bio
Dean, Jurgen, Roy & Roy
And a lot of the old Amiga folks.....

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