Amiga Music Preservation -

Interview

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,nmm`XXMPX musicians. read about their history in

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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 would say it all started around Aumtun/Christmas 1983 - The time when consumer focus switched
from typical Videogames (I Ioved to play Intellivision's "Triple Action", the one with the planes)
to Home Computers. Hooked on the new possibilities of what the new devices revealed a few kids
(me included) spent every single day of their autumn holidays in a corner of a Shopping Center
to type some Basic commands into a grey box (the Commodore 64) to see its result on the screen.
One day a new guy came along who had a 5 1/4" floppy disk in his hands and loaded a real BASIC
game from it into the C64. The game was about a parachuter that you had to stear to a specific
spot on the bottom of the screen. After begging him he gave each of us a copy and on that same
night I went to bed with that (my very first) floppy disk under my pillow - My treasure.

When Christmas came closer there was only one item on the wishlist so my mother bought me -
accidentally - a Commodore VC20. Then only a few days later (teaching my mother that she had
bought the wrong item) it was replaced by a proper Commodore 64. After that I disappeared in my
room and could spend a whole day typing in code from printed listings to see the working program
only for a few hours before the computer was switched off again for bedtime - I simply didn't
have the money to buy a storage device. Months later the income of a holiday job was invested
into a 1541 Floppy drive. From then on new friendships were usually built on the exchange of a
5 1/4" floppy disk. PEEK and POKE commands was the gateway drug, with the 6502 assembler followed
the addiction. I just loved it and I'm grateful that I was part of that heydays.

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

Commodore VC20 (2 weeks), Commodore 64, MSX (only to be able to play Metal Gear), Amiga 1000,
Amiga 500, Amiga 3000. In the beginning I was busy enough just to play the games. Later I used
to learn 6502 and 68'000 assembler to analyze other peoples code and then to work on my own
projects. I always liked to be active in all the worlds, say code, graphics and music. I used to
work a lot with Deluxe Paint and the Cygnus Ed.

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

A good friend of mine - Ruedi Hugentobler - who also wrote the score to Traps'n'Treasures, opened
me the door to the music world. He had all the synthesizers, vocoders and effect devices and used
his talent to create this professional music. No techno stuff - just nice music written from his
heart into steinbergs cubase. He was a great inspiration and mentor to me.

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

Soundtracker, Octamed and Linel's SoundFX. The last one was developed by Chris Haller, a coworker
in the swiss game developer scene. Therefore most of my songs I composed with SoundFX because I
liked the ease of use and I've also had all the support I needed to embed the final score into
our self-made games.

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

Out of my commercial products I quite like the Clown-O-Mania tune. Generally I prefer tunes that
have a distinctive character and clear concept of melody. Unfortunately the quality of the used
samples was never of a high standard. Bascially I used the few better quality instrument samples
again and again in my songs.

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

Well, the circumstances to create the title song for Hewson's Eliminator were not that easy. When
the Atari ST version of Eliminator was converted to Amiga, Linel needed a title song for it. Just
one day before mastering I was asked to provide the missing element. Unfortunately I said yes,
worked the whole night through and delivered a rather disappointing piece of music the next
morning. But nevertheless it made it onto the disk.

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

The game is the body and the music is the heartbeat to bring it all alive. It makes a game
interesting and brings the emotion, tension and thrill of a visual scene across, something that
a picture on its own can't.

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

Every now and then for fun. I actually bought a version of a tracker called Renoise and I really
like it. I'm just short on time to be all that creative but I still much rather use a
soundtracker to write music than with a sequencer program.

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

Midi was always a handicapp because you never knew what someone else's soundcard was cappable of.
Therefore the invention of MP3 is a real benefit for all musicians.

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

I really like most of Ben Dalglish Tunes. He uses a lot of harmony changes and it really made you
play a game because of his music. Shades by Hülsbeck was of course a real enabler and made you
want to also create electronic music.

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

No plans so far. Nobody that I know likes to listen to my songs. ;-)

12-What bands are you currently listenning to?

David Benoit, David Foster - mostly background music while programming insurance applications.

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

The power of team spirit and many nice memories.

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

nope.

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

I would like to thank these very special fellows: Chris Weber, René Straub, Chris Haller,
Roland Petermann - Had a great time with you in the Starbyte days.

Jürgen Kraft for his own way to motivate people to keep the deadline.

Ruedi Hugentobler for his friendship, inspiration and inexhaustable motivation to work on those
longlasting sessions of level design.

My final statement: "Try not to copy other ideas but try to form your own style - Do things your
way. If not now then for sure some day people will turn towards you if you can delever the one
limited resource: Originality!"

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