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.

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

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

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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 started with computers at a very young age, maybe 1983? I was able to
read before I entered kindergarten, and around that time a friend of the
family had a VIC 20 he would let me play with. I borrowed it and taught
myself BASIC.

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

the original VIC 20 went back to its owner when he moved.

my mother ran a transcription and typing service from our home, and for
Christmas of 1985 our family bought a Leading Edge Model D, an XT clone.
It had dual 360k floppy drives, (a 30MB HD came a few years later,) 640k
of RAM, and a hercules monochrome graphics adapter. I played a lot of
DOS games, and bought a sound blaster when it first came out in 1989.
things were never the same for me after that. I played a lot of sierra
games, and listened to a lot of adlib ROL musics. sometimes I would
just listen to adlib musics and zone out in the afternoon after school.
I believe this was the machine I discovered MODs on, with trakblaster
1.4. I had no idea how to make them, or even knew that I could.

in 1990, the model D was replaced with a noname 386DX/20. my sound
blaster made its way into this new machine, and I fondly remember
installing Ultima VI on it and being amazed by the graphics and music.
I started tracking with MODedit soon thereafter, and in 1992, started
using whacker tracker.

in the summer of 1992, a friend of mine lent me his amiga 500, and I
wrote a few songs with the original protracker. the interface was
vastly superior to whacker tracker, and I remember really enjoying the
sample editing.

the amiga 500 was given back to my friend in mid '94 after PC programs
like fasttracker and screamtracker coupled with my newly-acquired GUS
finally reached parity with protracker. the 386DX/20 motherboard was
tossed by my father (much to my dismay) when I replaced it with a
386DX/40 in 1997.

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

I've always liked music, in particular electronic music. I could never
draw very well, but I listened to a lot of music. I tried my hand a
coding, but never really got a good feel for the tools. music, and
composing in particular, really made me feel that I was able to "speak"
in a more truthful way about thoughts and feelings about myself and the
world around me.

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

I started with MODedit, went to whacker tracker, spent some time on the
amiga with protracker, then came back to the PC and used fasttracker,
scream tracker 3, and then fasttracker II.

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

my goal of what? writing music I was happy with? I was very happy with
"Accutane"; it sounded like a real song and not just somebody messing
around with a tracker for the first time.

most of my songs are very honest... a lot are downright awkward, but a
lot have a very genuine mood and feel to them, I think. they are still
able to remind and invoke in me the feelings that drove me to write them
in the first place.

of course, I think my latest stuff like "Ixian Dreams" and "Please make
it better!" are the most polished. :)

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

they are all worth remembering. it may be worth remembering that some
are pretty bad, but I wouldn't take any of them back.

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

music sets the mood and the pace of a demo or game. flashy graphics are
neat, but to pull the user into the experience, music is absolutely
required.

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

after a long dry spell and busyness with things like college, I am
finally composing again. as before, I compose primarily for myself, but
I would not mind doing film work if anybody thought I was good enough. ;)

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

MPEG-2 layer III coupled with the internet has really levelled the
playing field for both leisure and professional musicians. in the BBS
days, your files were pretty much spread depending on how much people
liked them, but now anybody with access to a web server and a modest
computer can crank out music on the internet, for better or worse.

16-bit 44.1kHz WAV files and their analogues like AIFF and shorten

provide the ultimate fidelity. but of course most people are content
with the quality of MP3, and for them the bandwidth / quality tradeoff
is worth it. when I release musics again, I will try to provide losslessly
compressed files in addition to Ogg Vorbis and MP3... it doesn't make
sense to put MP3s on an audio CD.

MIDI is great for a sequencing tool, but really doesn't have any bearing
over what the instruments sound like. even things like general MIDI
don't help much -- a $20 soundblaster live's piano sound is going to
suck compared to a $200000 MIDIfied Boesendorfer. I of course use MIDI
in my studio, but it would be rediculous to release these MIDI files
themselves, since I doubt anybody has the same equipment in their studio
as I do.

modules are interesting because they are so limiting in some ways for
the composer, much more so than today's tools. "good engineering
practices" become very important, and I really respect those who can get
good sounds out of such limited formats. now with raw audio formats
(like MP3) more prevalent, it's tougher to tell the difference between a
kid with a tracker and somebody with a full studio.

I believe the method, equipment, and reasoning behind compositions is
almost as important as the music itself, and since with MP3 such things
are hidden, I don't think they're as much fun. and of course if you're
just turning modules into MP3s, why not distribute the modules
themselves? the files will be smaller, and the songs will sound better
since they won't be going through a lossy compression scheme.

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

module-wise? I really like a lot of the early 90s U4IA and KFMF
(inspekdah deck!) modules, and then extending into the mid 90s with mono
and later monotonik.

and of course the modules from the amiga Odyssey demo and "Crystal
Orbit" from original crystal dreams demo on the PC are some of my
all-time favorites.

there's just so much good music...

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

I have thought seriously about it, and how I would go about doing it.
Ideally someone could make a module player / composer with the ability
to slave to either MIDI or SMPTE time codes, that would make the job a
hell of a lot easier...

12-What bands are you currently listenning to?

I still listen to a lot of music from Richie Hawtin's Plastikman
project. other than that, I listen to a lot of MP3s made by people on
Analogue Heaven. some of it is exceptionally good, like puffboy and
bald bastard.

as for general listening, I tend to like stuff coming out on the Tresor
record label from berlin, and of course Warp / Rephlex.

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

I played a lot of c64 games when I was a teenager. I didn't have a c64
until I was 16 or 17, but one of my friends did, and we would play lots
of Mail Order Monsters, M.U.L.E., Hypaball, Hardball, Ultima, Maniac
Mansion, etc... it was loads of fun. It really took console games a
while to catch up to the non-arcade multiplayer gameplay that the c64
had.

I still have my c64, and am in the process of fixing up a corner in my
basement to put all my computers in, including the c64.

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

I'm somewhat of an old-schooler in the PC scene these days, and since I
pretty much stopped running windows when I got to college, I lost track
of the scene for a few years. but now I find myself hanging out on
#trax a little more often, and going to the Canadian coma demoparties...
so I guess I'm getting more active than I was a few years ago.

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

people in the scene are great. it's been really nice to "grow up" in
the scene and see what people are doing now. taking hardware and
pushing its limits in some artistic way really is a beautiful thing.

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