An Interview with Putzi
Who were your favourite c64 composers?
Jeroen Tel, Markus Schneider & LOS, Chris Huelsbeck, Kris Hatlelid, Matt Gray, Reyn Ouwehand, Chris Ammermueller (Beat Machine), Stefan Hartwig, Michael Hendriks (FAME). All of them made the modern
kind of C64 music, not like the childish noise we know from Summer Games
.
What are your favourite sids?
Grand Prix Circuit/Test Drive 2 (Kris Hatlelid), Danger Freak, Last Ninja 2, To be on top, R-Type, Flimbos Quest, HVSC: Fame/FAME_1. sid, the Turrican 1 2 soundtrack, Giana Sisters, Suburbia89 mix (Chris Ammermueller), No Mercy, theme/S-Express, Savage, Bad Cat, Turbo OutRun… to name just a few! 😉
What equipment do you use?
RBF Software's MED Soundstudio 1.4 and its cool Companion Sample CD 1
by Allister Brimble & Steve Blenkinsopp, which is the best sample CD-ROM I ever heard. Soundcards/Synths: TerraTec EWX24/96 & TerraTec EWS64 (GM & Waldorf microwavePC) The microwave wasn't featured up to now (the Decton-cover was MED-only)… everything takes place using Mr Athlon Powers from AMD and some RAM 😆
What equipment that you don't own, would you like to own?
E-MU Extreme Lead Turbo and also some of the collegues it has 😉
What other arrangers do you like?
In alphabetical order: Acarid (make more!), Axel Melzener, CZ Tunes (close to the original but very good), DHS of TSW (Cybernoid2 (Pede Cyber RMX)
and the BIT Live Anthem are so over the top!), DjLizard, Frank Veeltmann (only two crazy remixes, mad like the original SIDs), Glyn R Brown, Instant Remedy, Kent Trace
Walden, LMan, o2, Oedipus, Peter Mörck, Puffy64, Taxim, Trauma (also only two mixes: come on!); and all not mentioned here but whose remixes I used in the SixtyFour-megamix. Some other guys have made a cool mix each, but ONLY ONE, so I don't mention them.
What do you look at within a sid when remixing it?
Bass line and filter sound on the synth
part.
How best would you describe your musical style?
Darkwave meets Trance and Italodance ; that's how it should sound like, but I haven't reached this goal in any remix.
Where/who do you get your inspiration?
Browsing through my sample collection and HVSC. Rainy and cold weather is also good!
What non c64 music do you listen to, and does this reflect in your music?
My all-time favourites are : Pet Shop Boys, New Order, The KLF, Apoptygma Berzerk, Sash! I like the clear melodies of PSB, the bass of New Order, the myth of KLF, the power of APB and the full synth sound of Sash! , but it is very hard to actually see a reflection of these things in my remixes.
Why do you remix c64 sids?
I can make some kind of dance music without having to think of a new melody and bass line, it is all already done. I can use more time on effects and sounds before I get bored of the track. Additionally, I think that many SIDs (hey, the unstable distribution of Debian GNU/Linux is also called sid
😉 would have been dance tracks if the SID also had a drum machine.
What are your likes/dislikes about the scene?
I like it that there are quite a lot of electronic dance music fans among the remixers. It is my fave style of music. I dislike that some of these guys ruin their tracks by using some bad MP3-encoder and/or low bit rate for encoding. I had to use many EQs on these bad encoded tracks to make them somehow suitable for the megamix. I seem to be among the few people on this planet who are very aware of the alias-effects that some bad MP3-encoders add to the music. I can hear it, and it is awful.
What are your fondest memories of the c64?
Playing The Last Ninja 1 2/Turrican 1 2/To be on top/Giana Sisters/Danger Freak/The Train/Gunship, watching Crest demos, making my first good song on the Advanced Music Programmer (AMP), soldering the parallel cable into the 1541-II for Burst Nibbler, replacing the 8580 in my C64-II with a 6581, getting cash for some of my programs released on Magic Disk 64. And oh yes, freezing everything and looking at the code was fun.
Who do you think gives the scene the biggest boost?
RKO is the biggest boost, as it is somehow a permanent competition to release better remixes each time. The feedback in C64RMX is cool, although some people behave childish, sometimes. After all, this is not the charts
. WE are BETTER than the commercial trash-makers!
If there was a tune that you wish you could claim as your own what would it be and why?
DjLizard's remix of ZakMcKracken sounds like the allready mentioned mix of Apoptygma Berzerk and Sash!
. That would be cool to sound like for myself.
How did you come to be part of the scene?
In 1999, I searched just for fun for TRIAD
on Altavista and came across Linus' MP3-collection of C64-remixes on the Triad-site. So I sent my first remix (Layla '98) to Linus for putting it up. (I had done the remix before I knew the site…).
What is the best advice you could give to a new arranger wanting to be apart of the c64 remixing scene?
Don't sound like Soundblaster GM (General MIDI). Don't remix the stuff we all have heard a thousand times remixed before, there are so many cool tunes never used before in a 64-remix. If you cannot add that much creative stuff to the track to make it worth being called a cover but a SID-remix, be good in sound quality and make a dance track 😉 If you have some friends who like the SID-sound, have them listen first to your track before uploading.
Should c64 music become commercial or should it stay underground?
I hate the idea of some stupid blonde girls collection dancing to a simple SID cover, pretending some chalalala
-singing and some pseudo-rap idiot shouting put your hands up in the air
; everything ofcourse at Top of the Flops
😉 I like it more like it is now, where RKO is the Free Software server with contributors around the planet. And me with the SixtyFour megamix doing some kind of Linux distribution/package
in a musical way, with a GUI-based installation tool 😊)) If you want to make C64-music chart-compatible, you have to remove the difficult
parts in it the Britney
-fan cannot understand, but then it is not C64-music anymore.
What remix of your own are you most pleased with?
R-Type. It sounds addictive, especially with headphones.
What is the most difficult part of remixing c64 sids?
Defining the part that has to be original SID sound. Not every arpeggio should make it into a remix, but in some moments they are essential and you need them.
Lastly, What would you like to say to the scene?
It's all about music at $d400 and up…
The main thing that stands out in this interview is the absence of the big early c64 composers in the question regarding his favourite c64 composers, Rob Hubbard and Martin Galway in particular. So it shows that even the not so famous had their following, and why not!
- Neil
