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.

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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?

Well, in 1984 when I was thirteen years old, my brother bought a C64.
I liked the idea of creating something myself that I could watch on
television, so I learned to programm this great computer. First Basic,
then Assembler. I would not give up until I had what I wanted on my
television. And my brother could never use his computer...

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

A C64 - which I gave away because the keyboard was totally fucked up -
you had to be Arnold Schwarzenegger to type at a reasonable speed.
And I hate myself for giving it away... :-(
An Amiga 2000 that never got upgraded because I was affraid of hard
disks. This one is still standing in my garage wayting to spin its fan again.
An several PCs, but PCs are crap they do not have any personality.

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

Well, I did graphics and coding... I did music, because I need music for
my demos and nobody else I knew was capable of making music, so I had to do
it all by myself. I play guitar since I was seven and I had composed
several pieces of music before I started making music on the C64, so I
was familiar with making music. The only shitty thing was that there
were no music editors available and I was so happy when Chris Huelsbeck's
Sound Monitor was released and I typed every byte of it from a german
Computer magazine called "64'er". That enabled me to make some music
that sounded a little more decent than the attempts with self-written
sound routines.
I stopped making grafix and coding, when our group moved to the Amiga,
because I was too lazy to learn to programm the 680x0 and there were
people in our group that were better at making graphix than I was.

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

Sound Monitor on the C64
Some music playing routine the name of which i cannot remember... all i
know is that I did not have a propper editor for it and that I used a hex
dump monitor to compose the music (silly...)
Sound Tracker on the Amiga (different versions, starting with the initial
version)
Pro Tracker on the Amiga(different versions)
Oktalyzer on the Amiga
Scream Tracker PC (only for test purposes, because I think it's crap)
Fast Tracker 2.06 on the PC (currently still in use)

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

"Reaching the goal" is not what I would call it. There's some I like more
than the others. The "Breathalyzer" tune propalby is one of those. This
is the one I made for the Invitation for The Party back in I-do-not-know-when.
And I like my tune for the Rampage Trackmo although nobody else seems to
like it.
A good module always has to have a homogen sound, that's all.

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

There are tons of them - luckily i forgot they names, never even saved
them to disk or just did not release them.

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

I personaly think that in music and demos, music has to serve the mood of
the program. It should serve the game or demo. this means that the music
should always be completed after the program so that they fit together
perfectly. A good music can make a good program excelent but a bad music
can ruin a good program.

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

Very rarely. I did a tune for xm-Mod compo at The Party '97, but it didn't
score very much although I like it quite a lot... And I did the music for
the last TEK Amiga demo called "Electrons At Work" that was released at
Mekka/Symposium 1998. Sadly, I do not have the time to make very much
music at the moment and my skills lack a few years of modern mod
composers experiences. I'm just doing a few Ska modules on the Fast
Tracker - just for fun and I seem to be the only person that likes them ;(
I do music striclty for my own (a other people's) entertainment. Just for fun.

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

mpeg is fun, although it is quite tough for me to see the computers used
simply as another kind of CD player (with less of the quality) - and -
everybody can make mpegs. But it's fun to listen to them e.g., during
parties, putting your headphones on to escape the usual techno noise
bombardement. I did not have much to do with wave files exept for
short samples, no oppinion on that. The midi files mostly are crap.
Most of them are of a really bad quality and it very much depends on
the quality of your sound card how shitty they sound.
Sorry for the harsh words.

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

I very much like the (very) old tunes. To my mind, there has not been a
lot of innovation to the mod-scene in the last years. My favourites are:

Commando game music (C64)
Battle of Britain game music (C64)
Zoolook (C64)
Cream of the earth (Amiga)
..out of memory... can't remeber the names sorry...

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

No! I have to save the world from my crap...

12-What bands are you currently listenning to?

Skacore and Ska Punk bands such as the Might Mighty Bosstones,
Reel Big Fish, Save Ferris, 'normal' third wave Ska bands such as
The Busters, The Toasters, Let's Go Bowling... I also like Ben Folds Five
and Barenaked Ladies (that's a music group, man!) very much, but my
favorite Music-Dude still is Billy Bragg, but I cannot tell you why.
I just love him! He's can't sing and he can't play guitar but he does
that very good!

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

Well, a lot of Beer, a lot of sleepless nights, cool dudez, great and
not-so-great parties, the feeling of belonging to something very special
and a lot of buzzing in my ears from the high frequency signals in my
headphones that I sillily always connected to my monitor...
And you get around a lot, meeting very weird guys. That was - and still
is - fun.

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

I happen to attend some of the bigger parties, mostly Mekka/Symposium
and The Party in Denmark, allthough The Party has left a lot of its
spirit in the last years and hardly has any left (but what else should
you do on X-mas ?!?)

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

Anyone who likes my music, all the people who remember me and all TEK
members. To all the contemporary musicians: Try to be a little more
inovative. .xm and .mod competitions turn out to be the most boring
ones at parties and it's up to you to change this. Cut this same old
boring techno crap and think of something yourself.

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