Gareth Morris (United Kingdom)
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RockABIT: Why making music on Soundchips?
Thats an interesting question I sometimes ask myself. I started making music not with soundchips. When I started with the YM2149 (nearly 15 years ago now) I just liked it, it felt very comfortable to me. I can do everything I want and I don't miss other ways of making music at all. 99% of my music is now done on maxYMiser.
RockABIT: Describe your way of creating an YM2149 chiptune…
I nearly always start these days with my chiptracker maxYMiser. Occasionally I'll do a size limited tune where I program directly in assembler without maxYMiser. With maxYmiser theres not exactly a set way, but there are some common approaches. If I don't have any ideas I'll start with the drum sounds and patterns. Sometimes though I have a certain YM effect I want to use, or a bassline. Then I'll start with those things. Its pretty easy to come up with the first four bar pattern, but then things get more difficult. Adding words and lyrics can make things easier at this stage.
If its an instrumental I'll come up with some different patterns and use the maxYMiser live mode to see what sounds good together. Then I will know how the first part of the song will go. So I write the introduction and melody for what I figured out so far. Sometimes its good to have a break about that point and come back fresh with more ideas to finish it. When it seems like the song is totally finished I spend alot of time with the arrangement and adding extra sounds and effects to smooth out the song. Very often when I play the song live for the first time the audience has a different idea about it, and then I go back and change alot of stuff very often. Everything is done on an emulator running on a netbook. Nothing sees a real ST until I play live.
RockABIT: Your greatest achievement in Sound programming on the ST?
I would say the SID effect in maxYMiser. It was quite tricky to have a multistep software waveform, with user configurable steps, but with 100% efficient interrupt routines. In older SID routines the number of steps was fixed to give a certain waveform, either a squarewave or perhaps a sine wave. maxYMiser uses self modifying macros to allow this on normal ST. And theres a second code path offering the same thing for 030/060 machines but with cache compatibility. It wasn't so tricky from the programming side, but I also like the flexible detuning functions in maxYMiser. They were available in other trackers before, but I wanted them to be realtime adjustable. It means you can go to town with acid and syncbuzzer effects.
RockABIT: Which chiptune (any system) is special for you and why?
For sure 'Visitors From Dreams' by Dma-Sc. It shows a great depth of emotion on such a dry electronic platform, its a genuinely touching piece of music. I always enjoy Dma-Sc's music, he has a completely different style to me which gives mystery, and everything he does is high quality. I'd love to pull off something like 'Visitors'. 'Primus' by Scavenger is also very good.
RockABIT: Where did your musical Influences came from?
A lot of it comes from first three Prodigy albums and other 90s rave. I also like alot of drum'n'bass and certain happy hardcore songs. Heavy Metal-wise Judas Priest, Black Sabbath and Uli Jon Roth have taught me a lot. Soundchip-wise, 505, Dma-Sc and Tao are my favorites. I listened to a lot of music over the years and it all has some affect I think!
RockABIT: Life with 80s Homecomputer was…
...an adventure!
RockABIT: Does your Demoscene experience have an effect on your Life today?
It surely does. Demoscene is based around gift economy which I think is very important to the way I try to live my life. It also teaches you a lot about code optimisation and how computers actually work, which I can use all the time in my job! As I say, practically all my music is done on maxYMiser these days which has given me some amazing opportunities for gigs over the world. Without going to the Outline demoparties, I doubt I would have had the motivation for maxYMiser. Finally, all the good friends I met though the demoscene have been amazing. Some very talented people on our scene.
RockABIT: What do you think about the actual retro-phenomenon?
Thats an interesting question. Even when I was a kid, retro was cool. Now I'm older retro is even cooler, because I can get the references ;) As far as my own music is concerned it has nothing to do with retro anymore, I just really like composing on Atari now. I am past thinking its somehow cool, but the first wave of songs released on the micromusic.net community got me interested in the demoscene in the first place all those years ago. If people get into chiptunes because the retro touch makes it cool then thats a good thing, if they put the effort in to make good stuff then great. No one likes a fashion victim poseur, but in truth I don't think theres any people like that actually around. New people coming on to the scene have new ideas and new takes on it and do their own thing.
RockABIT: When you listen to Chipmusic nowadays…
Sadly just when I code the YM Rockerz discs and at chiptune events. I always have time for my favourites on the demoscene, but I prefer to be influenced by other things. I am listening to alot of symphonic metal right now.
RockABIT: Are you still composing? Any plans?
This spring I released my latest album 'Dreamsfake' which is produced 100% on Atari except the vocal parts. This summer I took a rest, but the last days I returned to maxYMiser. I try to do at least a few releases each year. I have an unreleased album of Atari stuff which I'm sitting on for a bit while I decide what to do with it.
Thats an interesting question I sometimes ask myself. I started making music not with soundchips. When I started with the YM2149 (nearly 15 years ago now) I just liked it, it felt very comfortable to me. I can do everything I want and I don't miss other ways of making music at all. 99% of my music is now done on maxYMiser.
RockABIT: Describe your way of creating an YM2149 chiptune…
I nearly always start these days with my chiptracker maxYMiser. Occasionally I'll do a size limited tune where I program directly in assembler without maxYMiser. With maxYmiser theres not exactly a set way, but there are some common approaches. If I don't have any ideas I'll start with the drum sounds and patterns. Sometimes though I have a certain YM effect I want to use, or a bassline. Then I'll start with those things. Its pretty easy to come up with the first four bar pattern, but then things get more difficult. Adding words and lyrics can make things easier at this stage.
If its an instrumental I'll come up with some different patterns and use the maxYMiser live mode to see what sounds good together. Then I will know how the first part of the song will go. So I write the introduction and melody for what I figured out so far. Sometimes its good to have a break about that point and come back fresh with more ideas to finish it. When it seems like the song is totally finished I spend alot of time with the arrangement and adding extra sounds and effects to smooth out the song. Very often when I play the song live for the first time the audience has a different idea about it, and then I go back and change alot of stuff very often. Everything is done on an emulator running on a netbook. Nothing sees a real ST until I play live.
RockABIT: Your greatest achievement in Sound programming on the ST?
I would say the SID effect in maxYMiser. It was quite tricky to have a multistep software waveform, with user configurable steps, but with 100% efficient interrupt routines. In older SID routines the number of steps was fixed to give a certain waveform, either a squarewave or perhaps a sine wave. maxYMiser uses self modifying macros to allow this on normal ST. And theres a second code path offering the same thing for 030/060 machines but with cache compatibility. It wasn't so tricky from the programming side, but I also like the flexible detuning functions in maxYMiser. They were available in other trackers before, but I wanted them to be realtime adjustable. It means you can go to town with acid and syncbuzzer effects.
RockABIT: Which chiptune (any system) is special for you and why?
For sure 'Visitors From Dreams' by Dma-Sc. It shows a great depth of emotion on such a dry electronic platform, its a genuinely touching piece of music. I always enjoy Dma-Sc's music, he has a completely different style to me which gives mystery, and everything he does is high quality. I'd love to pull off something like 'Visitors'. 'Primus' by Scavenger is also very good.
RockABIT: Where did your musical Influences came from?
A lot of it comes from first three Prodigy albums and other 90s rave. I also like alot of drum'n'bass and certain happy hardcore songs. Heavy Metal-wise Judas Priest, Black Sabbath and Uli Jon Roth have taught me a lot. Soundchip-wise, 505, Dma-Sc and Tao are my favorites. I listened to a lot of music over the years and it all has some affect I think!
RockABIT: Life with 80s Homecomputer was…
...an adventure!
RockABIT: Does your Demoscene experience have an effect on your Life today?
It surely does. Demoscene is based around gift economy which I think is very important to the way I try to live my life. It also teaches you a lot about code optimisation and how computers actually work, which I can use all the time in my job! As I say, practically all my music is done on maxYMiser these days which has given me some amazing opportunities for gigs over the world. Without going to the Outline demoparties, I doubt I would have had the motivation for maxYMiser. Finally, all the good friends I met though the demoscene have been amazing. Some very talented people on our scene.
RockABIT: What do you think about the actual retro-phenomenon?
Thats an interesting question. Even when I was a kid, retro was cool. Now I'm older retro is even cooler, because I can get the references ;) As far as my own music is concerned it has nothing to do with retro anymore, I just really like composing on Atari now. I am past thinking its somehow cool, but the first wave of songs released on the micromusic.net community got me interested in the demoscene in the first place all those years ago. If people get into chiptunes because the retro touch makes it cool then thats a good thing, if they put the effort in to make good stuff then great. No one likes a fashion victim poseur, but in truth I don't think theres any people like that actually around. New people coming on to the scene have new ideas and new takes on it and do their own thing.
RockABIT: When you listen to Chipmusic nowadays…
Sadly just when I code the YM Rockerz discs and at chiptune events. I always have time for my favourites on the demoscene, but I prefer to be influenced by other things. I am listening to alot of symphonic metal right now.
RockABIT: Are you still composing? Any plans?
This spring I released my latest album 'Dreamsfake' which is produced 100% on Atari except the vocal parts. This summer I took a rest, but the last days I returned to maxYMiser. I try to do at least a few releases each year. I have an unreleased album of Atari stuff which I'm sitting on for a bit while I decide what to do with it.
RockABIT: You are the creator of todays most advanced Chiptracker on Ataris 16/32 bit systems, called maxYMiser. What was your special motivation to do that?
I read an interview with Tao about his techniques and got interested in doing my own tracker. There was many good trackers available on Atari, but none with all the effects put into one program. No one else seemed motivated to do it, so I taught myself 68k assembler and started.
RockABIT: Which extended capabilities (tools) are built into maxYMiser?
Far too many to list!! All your favourite YM effects in one tracker:
RockABIT: Is there a piece of music you want to mention, which uses one or more of the new maxYMiser techniques in a particularly creative way?
The Phatt Demo which I released just before maxYMiser was made public has examples of the new techniques. Its hard to put them all into a single song! I don't so much think of these techniques as being new any longer, they are so integrated in to the way I write music today. It would be possible to write a song on maxYMiser that was not identifiable as an Atari chiptune.
RockABIT: Will you go on improving maxYMiser someday or is anything achieved?
I still have plans for maxYMiser and improve it nearly every time I use it. I prefer to wait for a few features to be added though, before a release.
RockABIT: Gareth, thank you very much for your in-deep-answers and good luck for your upcoming projects!
I read an interview with Tao about his techniques and got interested in doing my own tracker. There was many good trackers available on Atari, but none with all the effects put into one program. No one else seemed motivated to do it, so I taught myself 68k assembler and started.
RockABIT: Which extended capabilities (tools) are built into maxYMiser?
Far too many to list!! All your favourite YM effects in one tracker:
- Two effects columns per tracker
- Realtime control of any instrument parameter
- Separated YM voice components
- Completely flexible detuning
- Full FastTracker II editing suite, extended a little.
- Three modes combining DMA with STe DMA voices
- Full MIDI in/out capabilities
- Demo synchronisation
- Live performance mode
- User configurable SID waveforms
- Roland sync24 support
- Scroll on/off
- Online help
- Realtime timer allocation/deallocation
- User configurable colours.....
- etc...
RockABIT: Is there a piece of music you want to mention, which uses one or more of the new maxYMiser techniques in a particularly creative way?
The Phatt Demo which I released just before maxYMiser was made public has examples of the new techniques. Its hard to put them all into a single song! I don't so much think of these techniques as being new any longer, they are so integrated in to the way I write music today. It would be possible to write a song on maxYMiser that was not identifiable as an Atari chiptune.
RockABIT: Will you go on improving maxYMiser someday or is anything achieved?
I still have plans for maxYMiser and improve it nearly every time I use it. I prefer to wait for a few features to be added though, before a release.
RockABIT: Gareth, thank you very much for your in-deep-answers and good luck for your upcoming projects!
