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?

I am not sure about the exact year, but I think it was something like 1983 or
so. I went to my friend's house like many times before.. and there it was - A
brand new Commodore 64 connected to a black&white television. Sometimes the
connection was bad and the picture would vanish, heh. My friend showed me how
to write with 'encryption' (by writing with shift lock pressed down :)) and
then showed me how to reveal what it says (by pressing C= and shift together)..
my mind was completely blown, I had never felt such a rush of excitement flow
through me! Then he said we could play games with it .. and for many years
computer games WERE my life.. To me, everything else was just chores to get
to play them. I pitied the people who didn't play computer games - how BORING
their lives must be! I had a picture in my mind of an old woman just sitting
in a chair and listening to an old grandfather clock and staring at the wall..
brrrr! Not for me - I wanted to lead an EXCITING life! And the most exciting
thing I could imagine was computer games.. they were so omnipotent in
entertaining me that any physical activity or things like playing football
felt so LIMITED when I could explore space or wiggle the joystick like crazy
in Decathlon or when I could be a small worm and eat butts in Serpentine. My
friend actually got quite annoyed with me ALWAYS calling him and asking if we
could play .. so I tried to make up these cunning plans in order to 'accidentally'
end up like playing.. I tried to 'lure him' by making him think we were going
to do something completely else.. and after that, we could perhaps play just a
LITTE BIT .. hehe..

Back then the cassette games could be easily copied and my friend got new games
every week .. a LOT of new games! Those were the days of Wizard of Wor, Spy
Hunter, Dino Eggs and such. The game-worlds seemed always so much more
interesting than boring and chore-filled 'real life'.. especially when I first
saw those games in a -- COLOR TV!

This happened when my other friend who I often visited as he lived in the same
building didn't come answer the door but instead her mom answered it.. and I
heard some odd noises coming from his room .. I wondered what that was.. and
his mom let me in and I could breath for a few seconds as my eyes witnessed
what my ears had already let my brain doubt for awhile -- HE ALSO GOT A
COMMODORE 64! And a color TV! And games I have never seen before! Oooh!
Flip&Flop, Rambo, Bruce Lee, all original cassette tape games .. wow.. I had
never even SEEN an original game.. heh .. it was an amazing moment.. and I
spent every possible second I ever could in his house now.. and witnessed
games like Impossible Mission and Paradroid.. boy, the laughter when we first
heard the AARRRRGGGGH from the agent falling in Impossible Mission.. I am
almost still laughing about it.. it was just so surprising thing! :)

Of course I realized I had to get my own computer, I wanted to play those games
all the time and maybe there was other thing I could also do with the computer,
although I didn't really have any idea what what would be. So I started saving
money.. and I saved, and saved.. months it took .. but finally I had a few
hundred finnish marks (about 50 Euros) and I went to computer stores.. I had
already visited many of them and drooled at Salora Fellow and Spectrum and I
really couldn't decide on what computer I really wanted.. of course I thought
every game could be played with every computer, I had no idea they weren't
compatible with each other :)

So I realized that kind of money wasn't gonna buy me a Commodore 64 . .they
cost a LOT back then.. but then a friendly salesman showed me a Commodore 16!
Hey, it looked about the same, although a lot c00ler since it was BLACK and
all! So .. he let me buy it with just that money .. and my eyes shone like
little stars when I carried the big box home and my mom assisted with the
rest of the stuff ..

I read the manual and got everything working .. and boy .. when the first game
I had, Mr. Puniverse, had loaded after a long wait .. I was in heaven! My own
computer! My own games, yehey!! I felt like some kind of deity now with the
power to do ANYTHING! And I thought this would change my life into one big
adventure with no limits whatsoever! After realizing Mr. Puniverse was way too
difficult for me, I started wondering how I could get enough money to buy MORE
games...

... but as I didn't have a lot of money in my disposal, I couldn't buy all the
games I wanted so I just settled for trying to do other things with the computer
too. I typed some programs from the manual and started learning that it was
quite fun to use it for other things than playing also ..

.. then years passed by .. and it wasn't until I got a Commodore 64, a friend
who was a programmer genius, a decent Sprite Editor and an example program on
how to move a sprite on the screen that I REALLY got into the non-game-side
of computers also ... I even got "Sound Tracker" for C64 and made a couple of
tunes.. and I made a lot of little sprite-shows.. I called them 'demos' since
I had no idea what demos actually were. I don't remember where I learned the
word from .. :)

It was such a power to be able to create ANYTHING.. from black ninjas cutting
polices in half with their deadly katanas to space ships flying on the screen
and shooting each other .. from little games where you had to shoot a UFO ...
I got a NEOS-mouse and a drawing package called Cheese .. and drew a lot of
pictures.. and learned how to use them in my basic programs..of course my
genius friend helped me a lot with these things.

Of course my musical creations didn't really get born until I got an AMIGA 500 ..
that was the year 1991, in April. It cost 2500 FIM (roughly 420 Euros), and
included two mouses, 1Mb memory and an extra disk drive (which broke pretty
fast :)) and about 70 disks.

I had seen these amazing computers at Jack-All's house before but now I had my
own .. Then I got of course ProTracker too .. and I suppose that's where
everything began.

Uh.. did this answer your question? :-)

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

Commodore 16, Commodore 64, Amiga 500, Amiga 1200 (and a lot of different
expansions during the years), Amiga 4000 (which broke down after a few years :( ),
Amiga CD32. Then I had iMac for awhile and now PC.

I mostly played games and did only little programs with the Commodore 16.
With Commodore 64 I made a lot of my own 'sprite shows', one of them even
included a Neos-drawn picture and Soundtracker-music. With Amiga 500 I moved
to making animations (as I had no idea on how to program with A500 . .AmigaBasic
just didn't do it for me) with DPaint and songs with Protracker. When I got
A1200, I started also doing some 3d rendering (after I got 68030 and 68881 :)),
and moved to OctaMED and later to DigiBooster for making tunes. I tried
MusicLine Editor and although it was amazing sound-wise and technically, I
couldn't compose with it .. it wasn't "trackerish" enough for me. I of course
still played games with all of them, a lot. After all, they all had GREAT
games, which I still play from time to time. I also played a lot of Mac-games
with Shapeshifter. I didn't do much anything with the Amiga CD32 - so I sold
it. I bought it just so I could hook it up to some MPEG-1 decoder module so I
could watch good quality movies with it. But I never had the time to do so.

And with this PC .. Most of the time I don't do much.. but I like to be able
to do about anything you can imagine doing with a computer that can be said
to be entertaining or creative .. I like to still experiment with 3d rendering,
2d drawing, 2d animations, programming with basic (BlitzBasic, a great
programming tool that I bought), making those little sprite-shows.. heh. I like
to communicate with people .. to use IRC and such things. I even bought a poor
quality webcam.. I like to try to compose music, trying to learn how to use a
sequencer so I could use programs like Reason .. I bought also QuadraSID, a
VST-plugin .. but I haven't found a good TRACKER that would actually support
VST-plugins well enough for QuadraSID to fully release it's potential. Freebase
0.002 is the only one the comes close to perfection, if it only saved all the
data when a song is saved. Now it saves the song itself but not the 'structure',
so I have to 'remake' the structure every time I load a song.. a bit annoying.

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

Well, I am a curious thing because I like to try to do EVERYTHING! Which is
probably why I also SUCK at everything ;) Because instead of concentrating
only one area and EVOLVE in it so that I could actually create something nice
in that area eventually, I try to do 2d graphics, 3d graphics, 3d animations, 2d
animations, 2d sprite show-thingies, programs with BlitzBasic, to compose music
with various ways and programs, to learn how to play guitar and keyboard, ..
there are also things that I would like to do .. I would like to be an actor,
and I would like to sing, perhaps in some song that I have composed! .. And I
almost never have energy to do any of this.. so .. it's a really stressing
situation, heh. But I am not complaining.. I think I have SOME talent in all
these areas, but not a lot, and not enough to be able to actually show my
creations to anyone. :)

So.. I don't make music instead of doing other things, but instead I want to do
everything possible. After all, if it's possible to do with the computer I have,
why let the computer just instead waste space and money sitting there .. when
all it's potential could be harnessed instead!

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

SoundTracker (C64), Protracker (various versions, Amiga), OctaMED (Amiga) ,
DigiBooster Pro (Amiga), Odintracker (C64), Fast Tracker II (PC), Mad Tracker 2
(PC)

Then I have tried programs like Fruityloops, Dreamstation, Freebase, Buzz,
Reason, MusicLine Editor, AHX.. I probably could never list all .. I can't
simply remember every single one..

In particular I have used Protracker, OctaMED, Digibooster Pro and Fast Tracker
and later OdinTracker, but I have only composed two (2) songs with it.

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

Actually none yet. But there are modules I have made that I am satisfied with
considering the circumstances. Swirl Faster, Almost Ballad, The Historie,
Drift Of Rain, Counters, Deeper to extacy, Gob from nightmare, Pulsating
Feelings, Life Avenue 20 C and Voyance Acquired. Also the two SIDs I am
satisfied with (Flow of Existence and Quasaris).

But some day .. I will..

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

Most of my 'creations' .. they seem like the kind of mutated, degenerated brat
that no mother wants to give birth to.. :) I simply failed in every aspect I
possible could.. although every failure teaches a lot, so therefore I am
probably better composer after 100 crap tunes than without ever making them.

But.. one funny example rises to my mind - The module called Catch This.. I
actually made that song after a lot of anxiety about my group not understanding
anything about music.. I thought "I am going to make such a MASS-song, such a
soulless crap that doesn't have ANYTHING original in it, only overused formulas
and if they say they LIKE it, I am resigning from the group!" .. and that's
how Catch This was born.

Of course they all loved it and completed my frustration. However, I didn't
have heart to quit the group.. :)

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

The demos these days do not seem to understand what power it could have. Some
demos have showed a great usage of music (Lapsuus, Spot, etc.), but mostly
it's just some distorted ear-pearcing mess while something disappointingly
slow, ugly and depressing moves on the screen. And the games these days..
they all seem to have predictable music. Nothing to grasp, nothing original,
no melodies that would blow my mind or clever usage of original sounds and
rhytm.

The game music from the era of Commodore 64 and Amiga, however, is full of
gems, absolutely brilliant examples of how gamemusic is done. By now everyone
must know that Commodore 64 had the greatest game musics of them all - they
had originality, sounds that you couldn't (and still can't) hear anywhere
else, and the usage of rhytms, melodies and just plain richness of aural
world that people probably bought a lot of games just because the music was
so great.

Monty on the run, Rambo, Myth, Comic Bakery, Green Beret, Commando, etc..
how many people really bought these games for the gameplaying value? Even
if so, the music is playing a great deal in the gameplay.. the game is just
so much more enjoyable with good music.

Amigagames like Hybris, Battle Squadron, Gods, Mega-lo-mania, Xenon II
Megablast, etc. also had great musics, great sounds.. and in some cases
a very nice, new kind of atmospheric build in the songs.. I can never forget
Mega-lo-mania, in which the sunset selection picture fits perfectly with
the music creating a thick atmosphere that cannot be left without admiring
it first.

But also in the PC-world with the rise of soundcards .. the games had
energetic and great tunes! For example Budokan, 688 Attack Sub, Dune II,
Wing Commander, One Must Fall 2097, Day Of The Tentacle, The Dig ..

These games really benefit from the great music!

And also the best demos seem to coincidentally have the best musics.. a game
or demo without music or with bad music always seems to lose something
important. Nobody would have played Rambo so much without it's great tune..
and who would even have touched Antiriad?

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

Well.. slowly.. sometimes.. very little.. maybe. I am currently waiting for
new generation of Trackers to rise from the shadows of sequencers so I could
really get into composing again. But I have not completely abandoned composing..
there doesn't ever seem to be enough time or energy for it though.. but I am
confident that one day I will compose a great tune. And it's always with me for
leisure purposes these days.. although if I manage to make some 4-channel
PT-tunes again they might end up in a game.. but I wouldn't hold my breath.

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

I don't really understand the question - there is nothing wrong with different
formats, it's of course always a richness. General Midi doesn't sound very good
to my ears nowadays.. and I really like the SID-sounds played with real C64.

But the musics that people generate these days.. may it be gamemusic, pop-music
(hate the word 'pop' just btw :)), remixes of old C64-tunes.. seems to be
boring.. no innovation, no real energy, no originality and the light of
creation can be heard from them .. there are a few exceptions here and there
of course.. but mostly the music people make is soulless crap. And I am not
interested in hearing such.. maybe that's why I listen to oldskooltunes so much.

Maybe all this will change.. but it seems the more efficient musical tools, the
easier it is to make music, the better the equipment and the more possibilities,
the less great songs people create, the less innovation there is.

back in the days of C64 there was only 3 channels, 1 filter to be shared with
them all and a few basic waveforms. but the things people DID with that!
Nowadays there are soft-synthesizers, hardware synthesizers, rack-models of
synthesizers, effect-equipment in software and hardware form, all kinds of
things and Windows. And look what crap people do with it ;) (no offence to
anyone in person, this is just my opinion)

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

Hmm.. many of Jack-All's songs are such .. he really had energy, talent and
patience while creating those songs! Rob Hubbard's creations are close to my
heart, they are full of genius and spirit. Martin Galway's songs glow technical
genius and notational inspiration. Then there are various songs I like from many
C64 composers, many Amiga composers, many XM-composers etc.. it's really
difficult task to try to remember them all at once .. <:-) .. composers like
Purple Motion, Moby, Lizardking have given me aural pleasure.. and of course
Chris Hülsbeck should not be forgotten, I think the *BEST* computer tune ever
made is Turrican II title.

I also love Hybris and Battle Squadron titles.. the arpeggios and so "computer
like" sound and everything.. just awesome!

Green Beret title tune might also be among the greatest tunes ever.. also Rambo
II loader-tune. Ocean Loader.. Monty On The Run.. ooh, and International Karate!
now THERE is an example of how music is made!

You see - there are just way too many of superb tunes that I feel I am not being
fair to the others if I mention some .. so this doesn't mean these are the only
ones I consider marvellous pieces of aural pleasure.. but these are the ones
that come to my mind and that I really respect..

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

Maybe in my next incarnation.. or the incarnation after that.. or.. ;)

12-What bands are you currently listenning to?

Mahavishnu Orchestra, Sophie Ellis Bextor (for the sounds mainly, ahem. ;) and
she has a nice voice), Jamiroquai (the older ones), Vanessa Mae (the first cd
was great, the rest are not as good imho), Galliano, Gentle Giant, Roxette
(for nostalgy ;)), Mozart (VERY oldskool ;)) etc... not so much bands than
just simple gems of music from many different bands, dead or alive.. I don't
so much listen to 'bands' than 'music' .. hard to explain.

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

Ooh.. it gave me the best memories ever! If I could live it all over again, I
wouldn't hesitate a second to do so! It introduced me to great people, and it
gave me imagination, ideas, energy, LIFE! It gave me laughter, sadness, love,
hate.. it gave me MUSIC and PIXELS .. it taught me so many things .. I would be
a completely different person without Amiga and C64 scene. I don't think I could
be considered being ALIVE! I am just sad it's not like it used to be... but I am
happy for the great memories and the happy childhood it all gave me.. of course
it might have given me a bit bad eyesight and made me a bit nerdy and unsocial
but that's small considering the benefits :)

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

Nope. The modern "scene" doesn't really interest me. All the excitement is gone.

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

Jack-All, Duken, Miiah, Lauruska, Mad Jack, Lion, Massa, Judge, Kiba.. all the
scenedudes that were nice to me in the BBS era.. and all my childhood friends.

In this world.. I really don't have anything to say anymore.. Maybe I am ready
to listen now.

Thank you for this opportunity to answer these questions.. and thanks to everyone
who has helped me, been my friend or enemy, and of course thanks to everyone
that is still in my life.

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please note: this interview is ©opyrighted in 2002 by crown of cryptoburners
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