Chordian — SID Musicians (JCH's verdicts on the game composers, 2018)

chordian — a coder-composer who wrote his own editor in the 1980s — rates the famous game composers "absolutely not overrated" or "indeed very overrated", judging instruments and player as much as tunes. Opinion, but expert opinion, and it names what he listened for.

Key claims#

• Method: "I was a coder and musician myself on the C64 and often paying attention to other composers, both to the technical side of things as well as the music itself. It was important to keep track of the competition to see if there were new tricks, styles, sounds or techniques to pick up on."
• Not overrated: rob-hubbard — "one of the first game composers on the C64 to introduce the idea of a freelance resource … He coded his own music player and delivered a block containing both the player and the sound data, typically with several tunes and jingles as well as an array of sound effects"; "revolutionary because of the way the capabilities of the SID chip was utilized extensively, combining its output with vibrato and arpeggio effects calculated by the music player"; more than 75 games 1985–89 (sid-player-routine). martin-galway — "the clean pulsating with the instantaneously triggered notes (a trademark of his) and the slow guitar solos"; "a pioneer of programmed pulsating, years before anyone else. Want evidence? Load up the old game Rambo and play for a while until you get to the hiscore table … Note how it changes several times on the long notes"; avoided "thunky drums" (pulse-width-modulation). Tim Follin — Ghouls'n Ghosts' "lifelike harmonica and an old electronic organ"; JCH copied the harmonica. jeroen-tel — "an amazing harmony and vivid melodies, topped of with the most delicious and polished instruments you can imagine". Fred Gray — "jumping pulsating settings for subsequent note triggers". Neil Brennan and David Dunn — early filtering and portamento slides; Russell Lieblich — "swooshing filtering".
• Overrated (his word): Ben Daglish (fine tunes, "satisfied with the default instruments"); chris-huelsbeck — "He did create one of the first good music editors on the C64, an editor that became very popular and was used in a lot of early demos. That is of course a remarkable feat. But I never really found most of his tunes on the C64 to be that interesting. There are exceptions, such as the early Shades that had an amazing mood, but I actually thought he was better on the Amiga"; matt-gray — "I have always found his songs to be downright boring. The sounds were absolutely not amazing, and for me it's important that the whole package is good, not just the compositions"; David Whittaker ("musical fast food", except Lazy Jones); Martin Walker ("those long arpeggio chords"); Jonathan Dunn; Mark Cooksey ("edge-breaking pulsating and an exaggerated vibrato").
• Comments: Robert Grasböck defends Hülsbeck by his games; Jammer defends Jonathan Dunn's sounds ("use of $55 for example") and agrees on Gray, Daglish and Hülsbeck.

Relevance to the wiki#

A named listener's criteria — instruments and the player count, not only the tune — and specific observations (Galway's Rambo hiscore pulsating, Fred Gray's per-note pulse jumps, Hubbard's freelance block of player + data + SFX) for pulse-width-modulation, instrument-design and sid-player-routine; the dissenting view of matt-gray and chris-huelsbeck for balance.

Pages touched#

chordian · rob-hubbard · martin-galway · jeroen-tel · chris-huelsbeck · matt-gray · shades · pulse-width-modulation · instrument-design · sid-player-routine · sound-effects