Amiga Music Preservation -

Interview

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,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..

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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 can´t remember. I think my interest started with the old atari 2600 game
console when i was about 12. So it must be the year 1984. I had seen the
cool games at a friend´s place. We had lots of fun with pacman and friends.

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

I had the atari 2600 (just playing), the c-64 (playing), the amiga 500
(playing / starting composing chip tunes and sample based noisetracker tunes)
atari 1040 st (for venturing with midi and 1st film projects with synths
and samplers) and nowadays i work in my own studio on a pc for
harddiscrecording, samplestreaming (gigastudio 160) and midi
(using steinberg cubase score v3.71). my studio consitsts of different
synths (korg m1, roland jv 1080 with the orchestra expansion, roland mb 33),
an ensoniq asr 10 sampler and i use gigstudio 160 on my pc (this software
converts your pc in a 160 voice sampler using streaming technology for
high end samples. Gigastudio is also used at media ventures / Hans Zimmer).

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

(If you mean - why did you choose composing music the answer is:
Well, I had a good friend in these days, who composed music on the the c64
with the maniacs of noise soundroutines (his name was steel). I never could
imagine the c-64 way of composing music with all those numbers and parameters,
but it was really great listening to all the great c64 tunes. On amiga I got
soundtracker and a few samples from a friend and started composing - it was
awfully difficult to create an pure technokick 4/4 rhytm only. Later i
decided to compose chip music because of lack of samples and instruments and
gave them free for everybody.

Around 1994 I quit composing on amiga because i started using midi with an
old atari 1040 st and started studiing soicialwork. Well, that´s just the
normal way of life. When you become older, it´s just normal, that you´ll
have further interests.

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

I started with soundtracker and then i used the noisetracker, (the first
few versions only). Everytime the modplayer in demos was an old one. Using
newer protracker versions ment to be lack of performance for great demo
effects, so i used just the old protrackers with the short players.
Later i bought an amiga steinberg midi software called somthing like ...24.
When i sold my amiga, i crossgraded to steinberg cubase 3.1 atari. At
the beginning of 2000 i crossgraded my cubase atari to cubase score v3.7r1 pc.

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

There was none, because composing music is something like a neverending
process. If i would have reached my goal, i would have stopped composing
musics.

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

No.

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

It´s meaning takes 50 per cent of the whole performance. In Flashanimations
it´s even more. If you remember, george lucas has found thx in 1980
because he knew of the meaning of music und sound fx. 20 years later some
of the people still can´t imagine this fact.

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

Nowadays I´,m still composing music and doing sounddesign for spots,
advertising films, presentations, 3d animations, VRML - presentations,
interactive presentations, onlinegames and flashanimations. It´s for
professionell use only.

Next to these jobs i have composed a few ambient musics for relaxation.

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

Music has changed in generally. There´s less melody and more sounds making
music. For instance have a look to the media ventures soundtracks. Films
use more the kind of sounds/noises for music senses. The the art of cutting
and filmmaking has changed with this movement. MPEG is a great invention.
It enables you to work across the whole planet. In combination with the
internet there will be new creative cooperations between people across
europe. So there will be more specialized people working in these teams
(doing complete productions like graphics/sound/programming/advertising/films).

MIDI will still be a standard for further years. It´s an absolutely logical
kind of music composing. You have to change something in your mind if you
come from noisetracker or somthing that´s comparable. But if you have
changed, you can easily do everything.

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

It´s a bundle of cd musics i bought the last years. It consists of hans
zimmer filmmusic (rain man, beyond rangoon, crimson tide, prince of egypt
and a few more), some tunes from john williams (hook, schindler´s list),
the healer (john lee hooker) sting, thomas blug, staney clarke and the
famous first track from the album friday night in san fransico by john
mclaughlin, al di meola and paco de lucia.

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

No, I don´t. I guess there are differences on composing with amiga
(remember, my last amiga-tunes were composed in a period of 6-11 years ago)
and midi. In midi the music- style becomes more realistic. If i would
remaster the sounds, i have to use the typical brass sounds and nowadays
this kind of sound is absolutely "out of time". Furthermore compositions
are inspired by the kind of sounds you are using. In my opinion there can´t
be a well done conversion.

12-What bands are you currently listenning to?

I often listen to orchestral film-music. Furthermore i like to listen to
a wide palette of musicstyles.

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

Well, it was lots of fun and experience with computers. I got to know lots
of great people, went to parties and learned speaking english. Also I have
seen the general development of computer technique and learned that a
computer is just a non creative machine.

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

No, left the scene 1994.

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

I like to greet everybody who remembers me, all my friends and especially
the playstation crackers, which used my chip tunes. For well done 3d
animations visit http://www.pixel-trix.de.

Furthermore i like to advice everybody to read the following books:
"creativity" and "finding flow" from the author mihaly csikszentmihalyi.
Thanks for your interest.

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