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?

uhm.. 1984/85 or something. I was a little kid and my father took me with to
his work, where I played beast and shuttlelander on the computer at his
workplace. When I started primary school in 1987 a kid in my class had a
computer and we played games on it for hours. In 1988 I visited my cousins
which both had atari sts, and me and my brother spent a lot of time playing
games and watching the scrollers in the menus on the compact disks with games.

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

I got my first computer in 1990, and it was an Atari STfm 520. I played games,
made small animations and worthless demoeffects with STOS (the atari equivalent
to AMOS), textbased adventure games with STAC and even tried to program
something in GFA Basic. That never turned into anything though, and anyway my
real interest was music. I got hold of Noisetracker1.5 for the Atari and
started tracking music, which were my main occupation for many years.

In 1994 I got my first PC, a 486. I spent 2000 NOK (about 240 Euro) on a GUS
MAX and started working in FastTracker II, which I've been using ever since.
Later I bought a pentium, and have had a couple of Pentium based machines.
Right now I have an AMD-based computer running windows 2000 and Reason2.0. I
still have a pentium-based computer which I run dos6.22 and win98 on for
tracking business and watching old demos (thnx to gloom^excess for supplying
me with a GUS-card when my GUS Max died in 2001).

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

I've always been interested in music, and even if I study computer programming
and systems design I don't see myself as a demoscene coder ever (even if I've
been doing code for some nifty textmodes demos with kvasigen). GFX is nothing
for me, I have absolutely no talent for it what so ever :)

Music is what I love and what I'm good at, so that's what I'm doing.

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

As earlier mentioned I started out with Noisetracker on the Atari, where I also
used various versions of Protracker and a ST only (afaik) tracker named
Zynctracker, made by a swedish demogroup called Zync.

On the PC I've always used Fasttracker II, never liked the interface of
Screamtracker/Impulse Tracker. Right now I'm using Propellerheads Reason 2.0,
and make all my music with it. I don't track that much anymore, except for
compos at parties and the odd Amiga-demo soundtrack for Slummy/Spaceballs now
and then (nothing released yet though, as we are both lazy people :)

I hope to move on to Cubase SX soon, but I'm a bit too lazy to learn a new
sequencer, and I don't really have any musical hardware motivating me to do it
either (see the earlier part on being lazy)

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

Uhm.. a bit hard to say, I never really set any goals. But when I won the
hi-quality (mp3) compo at The Gathering 2002 with a tracked tune that was
kinda cool (lug00ber vs Liz T - these walls) I guess.

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

There are plenty, and luckily for me they are all placed on floppy disks for
the ST, any my father threw those disks away some years ago.

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

In a demo it's the same value as what I see on the screen. Good visuals with
bad music makes the demo uninteresting for me. I also prefer demos with tight
synching, and fast paced. One of my favorite newer demos is Edge of Forever by
greek group ASD, in which I love the pace, the sync and the transitions.
I'm also quite fond of FR-020, Variform by Kewlers, A deepness in the sky by
mfx and.. we'll you probably got the point by now. All demos have great music
and tight synch. And oh.. Technological Death by the Mad Elks on the amiga.
Great demo!

In games I see music basically for moodsetting. These days I play C&C Generals
a lot, and the music there is awesome. However, one gets bored by ingame music
after a while, so I turned it off. But I've extracted the data files, and
listen to the GLA-tracks in winamp quite a lot.

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

I'm still composing, both for semi-professional and leisure purposes. I hope
to release my first 12" soon, and I'll still be doing music for demos. The
last year or so I've been doing a lot of drum and bass, which is the genre I'm
most into these days. I'm also doing some techno tracks, and of course a whole
lot of less serious projects in various genres. Both for demoscene and
non-demoscene music I work closely with OptimizE^kvasigen, who is a friend of
mine since prehistorical days :)

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

I don't care about the format as long as the music is cool. Musicians would be
stupid not to embrace the new opportunities technology gives them. Those
claiming that tracked music is the only true scene music are total retards,
but luckily I haven't seen such opinions stated for a while now. You use
whatever tool you find appropriate to do your job, and that's all there's to it.
It's the music that matters, not the format.

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

Scenewise: About every track by Keith303, the favorites being Amphetamine (XM)
and Into the Unknown (XM). I also love the soundtrack from DOPE by Complex
(DOS), and the soundtracks from Desert Dream (Amiga) and Second Reality (DOS),
together with the soundtracks from the newer demos I mentioned earlier on.

On the atari there are a lot of tunes I love, mostly made by Mad Max^TEX (doh!).
There are tons of great music produced by sceners, and when I read this
interview later I will probably go "damn, I forget..." a lot of times :) But I
think my personal favorite is Darkhalo's Stratosphere Sniper, released under
the Monotonik netlabel [mtw022]. That track is absolutely mindblowing.

From the commercial scene there are equally amounts of music I love, but I
think the music that has inspired me most throught the years must be the
works of Prodigy. Nowadays I listen a lot to drum and bass, and my favorite
artists in that genre is Raiden, Technical Itch and norwegian producers
Rawthang. But as I said, tons of great stuff.. it's impossible to pick out
only a few tracks.

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

No, I don't see any reason for that. I've made a couple of cds for parties
with (non-scene) friends, but that's about it. I don't think that anyone
will be interested in buying such a cd anyways. I do however get mails from
time to time from people who wants me to send them music I've made, and I try
to fulfill their requests if possible (thanks for the mails :)

12-What bands are you currently listenning to?

Right now I'm actually listening to the DOPE soundtrack again, but usually
I listen to a lot of drum and bass (artists mentioned earlier), some hiphop
(M.O.P. and some scandinavian acts), some metal, some trance, some techno,
some house... I listen to a lot of music, ok? :)

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

Noisetracker, the atari and PC-scenes and loud, arrogant, cool and friendly
people to drink beer with (KINDERGARDEN POSSE!!)

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

Yup, both with my groups kvasigen and the silents, and also with every other
group asking me to do something (I sleep with anyone)

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

Need to greet the norwegian scene and hangarounds, oldskoolers and newskoolers.
Also I'd like to thank barock^the silents for letting me get to know a lot of
cool people when I got into tsl. The oldskool network those guys have is
awesome, giving me a reminder that the scene not necessarily is about
productions and skills, but about friendship and having fun.

I think I'll stop there, not getting in to greeting a lot of groups/people.
I'll just forget someone anyway, so it's better not to go there ;) Keep
having fun!

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please note: this interview is ©opyrighted in 2003 by crown of cryptoburners
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