Amiga Music Preservation -

Interview

.

`n. .rP'

`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.

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

______dP _____________ \ /

\ ,N'\____ _____________. _____ \ \_____. ____\ /

\___P___/ .\--\__ __/__ |--\____)---\ _____/__ |--\_ \ _/

| | | \ | | \__| | _ \ / | \__| | /\ |

| _| | | _l_ | | \ / _l_ | ___|

l___/=l___|====l____/===\______|==l______|\ /l___/===\______l____/

\/

•

Handle:

•

Group:

•

Date of birth:

1-How did your interest for computers start? Which year was that?

Must've been 1984. I used to play games with some guys in the neighborhood
who had C64's, and soon had one myself.

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

1984: C64. I used to play games, later ripped some music from e.g. Rob
Hubbard and used it in selfmade assembler intros. I coded them in a hex
editor, that was really funny... well, annoying, when I think back now...
:)

1986: Atari 1040 STF. Played some more games. Found none who had such a
computer. After all it was crap and I put the C64 back onto my desk (the
Atari ST sound was no good afterall, the C64 sounded much richer).

1987: Amiga 500. Cycled to a friend who had one, too. Heard Aegis Sonix
tunes and immediately fell in love with the outstanding sound capabilites
of the machine. Besides playing games, I was mainly making music now.

1992: Amiga 1200, less games, more music. :)

1993: still the 1200, an A2000 as well for my own BBS.

1995/6: got a cheap A4000, sold the A1200, couldn't sell the A2000. On the
A4000, I run my BBS "Aurora Borealis" and still make music, as well as
some Ansi/Ascii art and some CNet door "coding" in ARexx. The A2000 is
still in my flat... one piece here, one piece there... I think I'll
decorate the wall with the mainboard... :)

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

coding?

At first I was fascinated by the Amigas sound. With further experience in
making music myself, I got more "into" music. You could say my heart
opened to and with music.

Well, I also made some logo gfx back then, but the process of doing pixel
gfx was rather boring for me. When I'm working on a module, the outcome is
not clear, yet what I've done so far is something "finished". Compared to
that, doing gfx was always more like "how do I do that to make it look
like I want to" and not very satisfying for me. I mean: you look at some
unfinished gfx, and you think of all the work that lies in front of you
until it is what you want. An unfinished song however leaves everything
open and unwritten. Freedom.

For me, personally, there is no art form that touches me more than music.
Coding is too cryptic for me (except ARexx, uhhhhm, but is that called
"code", anyway?), gfx don't really move and seldom create an intense
atmosphere as music can do (IMO, of course). I appreciate good coding and
gfx, but it doesn't move and touch me like music does. I mean... you look
at a picture... well yeah... nice technique... nice colors... nice
motive... you can say: "I like this" or "I don't like this" mostly at
once. Music requires more patience. You here a song for the first time and
you think its great. After the fifth time, it bores the hell outta you. Or
the other way around: you hear a song, and you think its very strange. You
hear it again and again... and suddenly, you find so much beauty, skill,
feelings, whatever, hidden in it...

Music picks me up when I'm down. It pushes me when I'm happy. Music calms
me down when I'm nervous. It helps me to relax, cut off the ever flowing
consciousness for a deeper look into myself. Music at times makes me weep,
because of a simple melody, a harmonic change. There's nothing else which
can give me so much. There was a time when I packed my own feelings into
the music I made myself, this often helped me a lot. Nowadays, I try to
move people with my music, as well as others move me with their music.
With a bit of imagination it is possible to interpret a song so that it
fits your mood, and even if I don't know what the author really meant, I
am free to adapt it to my personal situation, feelings, whatever.

Naturally, there will be only a small number of persons who really get what
I'm trying to accomplish after all. But I will always keep on trying. The
number of people who "consume" music is large. People who are actually
"listening" to music are seldom - IMO.

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

I'll try it chronological order (but its pretty hard as it may partially
overlap): Sonix v1.3, v1.4, v2.0. Karsten Obarski's original Soundtracker
(that was one of the best days in my life: Sonix with its notation was so
complicated, trackering is so easy!), followed by its countless clones,
most noticable Mastertracker v1.0 & v3.0, Noisetracker v1.1 and v2.0. Then
Oktalyzer, TFMX, JamCracker, the legendary Protracker 1.1b, Face The Music,
Protracker v2 and v3 series, Octamed Sound Studio, AHX.

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

Well, speaking for the time they were made: every single one (why would I
put a song into public if I weren't absolutely positively sure that is
*great* - well, what else? hehe). Of course, there are songs which really
left me totally satisfied, but its hard to name them now, after all these
years.

I guess you rather mean something like "personal favorites" in the own set
of work. Thats rather difficult. I still like a lot of my older modules,
but often for non-rational reasons (I was never so much into musical theory
and technique, it often just came out of the heart [or belly]), for the
memories they bring back. One module is called "Nereides Seasons", it has
never been released... but everytime I play it, I remember the hardcore
Amiga weekends (wake up in the afternoon, coffee, fastfood, computers
powered
at sundown, all night painting/coding/composing/copying/laughing/FUN!) in
the large living room of Max' parents house... 5 or 6 Amigas, a stereo, a
video, half-full or empty 1.5l coke bottles all over the place, the names
denoted on them with big black crayon, snacks and empty McDonalds bags...
and pizza packs... haha, that was a fucking great time... must've been 1988
or 1989 I think...

Uhm... it did carry me away a bit! :)

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

Difficult question. There are tunes in which I, as stated above, tried to
put my own feelings in. So, some tunes are a sad reminder of certain things
that did not went the way they should (hmmm, it mostly had to do with
girls, the death of friends, memories, you know?). I don't like to remember
the feelings which caused me to make such songs. But there's no tune itself
which I don't like to remember - some are great fun to listen to nowadays
and think "oh my god, what did I do back then? nonsense!" :) Some old tunes
are still buried somewhere on my HD, and I don't think I'm ever going to
give them away to the public. :)

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

Its one of the most important things to create atmosphere, of course!

Just one game title: "Commando" - what do you think, would it have had that
enourmous impact, if Rob Hubbard's music hadn't pushed so much? We walked
thru that bullshit three different levels 10 or 15 times, we just had to,
Rob Hubbard made us do so! :)

Or talking about demos: had we really sat in a darkened room with 3D
glasses on, the Amiga connected to the biggest TV we could get, watching
CRB's "3rd dimension" demo with the darn slow vectors :) if Rhesus Minus'
music didn't somehow create such a mystic and unique athmosphere, proving
that this thing was something very special? (we even taped the computer's
and TV's LEDs as so they wouldn't disturb the 3D image, haha!).

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

purposes?

Yes, I still do. Only for leisure purposes. I think I'm not the person who
could do music for, when it comes to "professional purposes" games in
particular. I can't make music "on demand", or for a special purpose, eg. a
"happy tune" or a "dungeon" tune. Well, I *could* do that, but it would be
only a mechanic way of working, without feelings. If it happens, it happens
(when the muses kiss me, ahem). Sometimes, months pass without me even
loading a music program. Then, I make some songs in a rush (my first three
AHX tunes "Nautile", "Twintime" and "Warpstar" were made in two or three
days). Or I'm working on a single module all night until I *have* to stop,
to get some distance between me and the song - you know, in the rush of
creation there's the point where you tend to think that everything you do
is simply great. :) Sometimes I'm working on three or four different songs
on one evening, here a pattern, there a pattern, pretty weird.

I'm not a big perfectionist and I believe that a lot of things I've done
could be done better, with a more dense atmosphere and greater impact, if
I'd spend more time on it. Then again, there are songs where I spent hours
and hours on three or four intro patterns. It ain't easy! :)

9-What do you think of today's pieces of music such as

mpeg,wave,midi,etc...?

Hmmmm, the question is a bit vague :) - MPEG is a nice invention, but if
you recently looked into Aminet you've surely seen those mp3 files, too.
Thats bullshit IMO. If one makes music with professional equipment so that
it can be consumed only via mp3 its one thing. Putting it into Aminet is
nonsense for me. Midi, well, yes. If I had the money I'd have plenty of
Midi capable equipment, some synth's, a drumming machine, a bassline
sequencer, some fx and processors, a mixing desk... :)

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

Hmmmm... no! :) Actually, there's to many of them. Maybe some authors and
groups, without ranking and surely only a small potion: Uncle Tom, Whiskas,
Orpheus, Bruno, Captain, Heatbeat, Ron Klaren, David Whittaker, Martin
Galway...

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

No. If I really were in the position to make an Audio CD, I'd rather make
new material for it. To re-work all that old rubbish would bore me to death
(I also hate it to do remixes).

12-What bands are you currently listenning to?

Oh my god, I feared that question would come. :) There's really no music
that I "currently" listen to. It mostly depends on my mood. CDs and tapes
are infinitely floating thru my stereo throughout my whole assembly of
music.

Here are some artists:

Rush, Front 242, Sisters of Mercy, Simon "Hallucinogen, Shpongle" Posford,
Juno Reactor, Hardfloor, X-Dream, Vangelis, Loreena McKennitt, Queensryche,
Lassigue Bendthaus, Olli "Space Tribe" Wisdom, Dire Straits, Depeche Mode,
Fields of the Nephilim, Eternal Basement, Björk... and besides that, lots
of
Goa/Psytrance and Ambient/Ethno/Folk stuff.

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

Friends all over the globe... the power of resistance against the evil MS
empire from hell :) ...the certain feeling that keeps you young at heart.
So many different people all living their own lifes, suddenly connected
just via having the same computer, the same habit, its amazing.

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

Depends on what "active" means. I don't attend computer parties, I think
I'm not really "in" the scene - just as I've always been. It is not and
never was my intention to get "known" or famous. If someone contacts me,
telling me that he likes a certain song I made, or maybe asks for an
interview :) - thats very nice, and good enough for me! I do still call
some BBS, visit friends that live hundreds of km's away ...and release my
songs "to the scene". Thats ok for me.

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

Live your life as best as you can. Don't try to hard but don't just let it
flow, either. And greetings to everyone who knows me.

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

Quick Search

Random link

Database Stats

Interview