Clef (Phil Sweeney)
Australian pianist, coder and chiptune specialist: twice a 20-minute-chip-compo winner, author of the menu chips on the epinicion disks, winner of the 16k music compo at OZ'96, and an impulse-tracker convert from scream-tracker-3. The single source is his April 1996 traxweekly interview by zinc (source: s-tw055-interview-clef); he also interviewed jase for #22 (source: s-tw022-interview-jase).
Facts#
- Phil Sweeney, 17 in April 1996; year 11 at school, a fast-food job, "I also code a lot". Groups: Catch 22, a small Australian demo group, a second one forming, and Epinicion "until it ended" (source: s-tw055-interview-clef).
- Training: organ with a teacher from about 5, then piano to AMEB grade 7, some drums; writes many songs or fragments on the piano and jots melodies as note names or spaced dots in schoolbooks during class (source: s-tw055-interview-clef; see tracking-workflow).
- Path: a relative's home-built D/A converter and ModPlay (Blood Money, Echoing), his own D/A and a modem, ModEdit, then Epinicion, where psibelius and Ior encouraged him (source: s-tw055-interview-clef).
- Chiptunes because "you don't have to worry so much about samples", they are small, and "I like optimizing stuff like code, and the same with chip tunes"; only chip tunes and 20mc entries get finished in one sitting (source: s-tw055-interview-clef; see chiptune, chip-samples).
- Tools: ST3 "as soon as it came out"; refused fasttracker-2's mouse interface and new keys; by 1996 Impulse Tracker, "just like ST3 but better" and better-sounding on his Sound Blaster 16; a GUS PnP on order to start making his own samples (source: s-tw055-interview-clef).
- Results: two 20mc wins; the 16k music compo at OZ'96 in Sydney; 6th in Music Contest 3 rookie; a Music Contest 4 entry with guitar sounds in progress (source: s-tw055-interview-clef; see compos).
- Predictions of April 1996: MIDI or an "AI Tracker" takes over, chip tunes give way to "4096 channel songs", and — the worst case — "Someone will make a Win95 tracker!" (source: s-tw055-interview-clef).
- As interviewer: the jase interview of #22 (9 August 1995), signed "Clef [EPiNiCioN]" (clef@shell.break.com.au), done "after NetSplits, Capture problems, and Time limits" (source: s-tw022-interview-jase).
Related#
chiptune · chip-samples · 20-minute-chip-compo · epinicion · impulse-tracker · scream-tracker-3 · compos · psibelius · daedalus · jase · traxweekly