Amiga Music Preservation -

Interview

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TLb. ,dMP' all rite, now you get the chance to read

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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..

dNP `Yb.

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

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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?

it was pretty early, shortly after i came to school. around 1984 i'd say. i have to add that i'm from eastern berlin and
computers weren't really a household item around here. we had some arcade machines installed at the local funfairs and we
had computerclubs at the youth clubs where i had to pay a few bucks to play clones of more known games on a kc85/2 or a
robotron machine. after the wall broke down, things got more serious for me.

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

between 1990 and 2002 i had some game consoles, those beeing atari2600, nes, n64 and 3 gameboys. only the gameboys stayed
until now.
on to the more interesting part: in 1991 i got a c64, an amiga500 in 1992, an amiga cdtv in 1993, a pc in late 1994 and
3 more c64s and another amiga500 in 2001.

on c64 i started playing games, discovered intros infront of the games, got diskboxes worth of demos and that was basically
what got me all interested in the whole matter. i got ahold of 'advanced music programmer' by andrew miller and diflex in 1991 and
started fiddling with the demotunes and the preset sounds that came along with that. sadly, those tunes only exist on audio
tape as i lost/gave away all my disks. for some strange reason i went over to doing tunes in plain basic lateron and
eventually stopped doing musick on c64 alltogether at one point, as i actually played the keyboard at that time. simply put,
i lacked any kind of knowledge in doing musick on c64.
what got me over to amiga was actually a classmate who harassed me and my c64 tunage, he always told me amiga was the real
thing to do musick on, so i submitted once and for all. i got oktalyzer (which was believed to be a cracked version from hardsequencer,
who should be better known as hardy hard these days) and spent more than a year doing stuff in it until i got protracker.
getting down from 8 to 4 channels was kinda weird, but for some reason i liked protracker better. only very few of my actual
pt-tunes do excist these days, the rest was all done in ft2 lateron and proved to be somewhat incompatible on amiga.

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

coding has to do with maths, which i totally lack comprehension for.
graphics were somewhat interesting for me, but i never had the skills of doing anything that would be near good looking and i
gave up on doing that pretty soon.
musick has always been my passion, as i fiddled around on the keyboard for years. i guess it was just a logical step.

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

quite a few, i hope i list them in the right order:
- advanced music programmer (c64)
- oktalyzer (amiga)
- protracker (amiga)
- thx/ahx (amiga)
- screamtracker (pc)
- surprise adlib tracker (pc)
- reality adlib tracker (pc)
- edlib (pc)
- amusic (pc)
- fasttracker 2 (pc)
- buzz (pc)
- goattracker (pc/c64)
- john player (c64)

nowadays it's:
- jch (c64)
- madtracker (pc)
- and still a bit of buzz (pc)

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

i don't think i ever reached my goal yet, whatever my goal might be.

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

it's not that i totally hate any of my work, but seeing where i'm now and what i did back then makes me wish that i didn't
release all of what i did. so, take everything i brought up between 1992-1995 and you get an impressive list of things that
would fit in as an answer. =)

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

i'd give it a very high value in both.
musick is a very essential part in any demo, game, movie, you name it. things can very easily be spoiled once the soundtrack
is bad.

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

i'm usually composing for leisure purposes, as i never had any professional training. even though i did musick for smaller
movies and games, i'd never throw myself in the pro corner, i'll leave that for people who think that they know what they're
doing.

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

plain midi sucks. and it's as old, if not even older than the mod-format. mpeg and alike things are nice, cause they're
a way of giving non mod-musicians their fair share of compression and spreading on the web. nothing wrong with that.

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

hard to tell, here's a random selection:
- drax / gone + crooner (c64)
- rob hubbard / lightforce (c64)
- jeroen tel / supremacy (c64)
- kjell nordboe / still 13 inside + use my fire (c64)
- random voice / monday (amiga)
- revisq / evviva l'arte (amiga)
- xtd / little joke 3 + shaky (amiga)
- lizardking / wild mcarthur (amiga)
- dizzy / banana split (amiga)
- dune / arsa bamk (pc)

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

i already did. got my first release out in 1999 and for some reason i'm still getting things out cd/vinly on a
not-so-regular basis. =)

12-What bands are you currently listenning to?

My playlists changes pretty often.

Right now it's: janis joplin, japanische kampfhörspiele, paul hardcastle, jeff
beck, .. (might be cindy lauper, duran duran, celtic frost and altern8 tomorrow)

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

lots of experience, friends, maniac mansion and a hilarious beer belly.

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

yes.

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

demo or die. don't drop your beer. 8 bit fr alle.

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please note: this interview is ©opyrighted in 2005 by crown of cryptoburners
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