Amiga Music Preservation -

Interview

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Date of birth:

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

In 1983, with a Vic 20. You could programme it, do all sorts of things. I wrote a few games in BASIC for it, and sold them at high school - til the next year, when I got my C64! The Amiga came on board in 1988.

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

Not really sure what happened to the old Commodores. I suspect that my parents gave them away.

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

I recall with amazement the tunes of Rob Hubbard on the C64 - revolutionary for their time. I did get some simple music making software for my C64, and did some experimenting, but when ProTracker came on the scene I started experimenting with that in a major way - which I think was around 1989. I did a bit of simple coding in 6502 for the Vic20 and 6510 for the C64, but just don't think I had "the gift" - the same applies to gfx, so I stuck to playing with ProTracker.

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

I used Octamed briefly on the Amiga, but when I traded up to a PC in 1994 - sensing the end was nigh for the Amiga - I started playing around with HTML instead. Both music composing and web site designing were simply hobbies, a means to an end.

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

I was very gratified to see that your amazing site had tunes of mine I hadn't seen for 14-15 years! My favourite is "Breakdown", which had a number of different versions - I can't recall how many, but at least a decent one survives. Most of the others, I'm terminally embarrassed about.

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

Any of the "experimental" tunes I put together - you have a few on your site, prefixed with "exp". Oh pretty much everything other than "Breakdown", really.

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

In my (clearly mis-spent) youth, it was almost the main thing. In my years of expanding girth, I'd have to admit that visuals are crucial to me now. In the days of the early 8-bit machines, you just couldn't squeeze that much from the visuals, but you could with sound - so I think people became much more adept at pushing sonic limits on those early machines than they did with graphics - the few tricks you did with graphics were multiplexing sprites, playing with interrupts to get sprites in the borders, etc - they did a bit for the visuals, but did not expand things the way that, say, Hubbard's SID music did for the C64.

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

Not at all - for all concerned, that's probably a good thing. I realised where my talent was - and it was nothing to do with music, or computers! Much of the composing I did occurred during medical school, and I have since specialised and ended up in neurobiological research - which means I use PCs a lot to look at magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans, and allows me to indulge my computer fetish in a socially acceptable, tax-deductable way. I had a bash at computer music again 5 or so years ago but the amount of time required to get to grips with new programmes, ways of laying out music, etc - I just didn't have the time to give to it as a hobby. As with most people, as work and family commitments increase, all that isn't necessary on a day to day basis falls by the wayside, as it has to and should.

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

It's interesting, I'm not massively enamoured by it - it's the converse that has fascinated, and at times annoyed me: as the electropop movement gathered some momentum four or five years ago, I saw people commercially releasing tunes that were less complex, and probably less aurally satisfying, than what was on the scene in the early 90s! I avoided it like the plague that it was.

Beyond that, I can't say I have much of an opinion.

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

I don't remember too much from the Amiga days. I do remember my favourite C64 SID tunes, which were what got me really interested - Crazy Comets, Thing on a Spring, Zoids... my god this brings me back (by a good two decades or so). Sometimes I'd load the games just to listen to them rather than play them, to try and work out how they put the score together on such a basic music chip.

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

I'll be utilitarian here: It'd be best for all concerned if we just forgot you asked that question.

12-What bands are you currently listenning to?

Cripes. A mix of modern rock - Radiohead, the Strokes, Foo Fighters, Arctic Monkeys - and good house, particularly the deep house of the Naked Music label (Miguel Migs, etc) and french house - Bob Sinclar, Dimitri from Paris.

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

My deeply autistic, excessively nerdy personality. And my excellent typing skills.

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

Not at all. I use my PC for work, for research, for downloading my favourite TV shows - I've regressed to the mean! But not everyone in the scene stays in it - the less talented of us just fell away, appropriately enough.

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

They were great, if somewhat self-absorbed, times for me: sitting away at the Amiga, trying to get those drumloops right. It illustrated to me at the time the beauty of computers - they facilitated creativity in a unique way, something I express now in digital photography, putting basic web sites together, and writing scientific papers (which is what I use them for most now). That they still exist out there in "cyberspace", and that I stumbled across them after 15 years, simply stuns me. You guys have done amazing work to hoard all these "lost treasures", and to permit me a half hour of narcissistic reverie.

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please note: this interview is ©opyrighted in 2007 by crown of cryptoburners

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