RVG Interviews: Matt Gray (2016)

A forum-sourced interview whose value is one answer on technique: matt-gray on the "note or chord plex", pulse-width sweeps on chords, drums by waveform switching, and the fact that "even putting a vibrato on a sound needed a mod routine".

Key claims#

• last-ninja-2 "was just a natural follow on from the loader theme I'd done for Bangkok Knights. Certainly the Central Park tracks, which I did first were inspired by that track." Mark Cale "didn't want endless cliched sounding oriental music … the main idea was to make it dramatic and powerful"; no pressure following Ben Daglish and Anthony Lees; "a very smooth workflow".
• system-3 was "The high point of my C64 career really … like playing for Liverpool"; he worked remotely and "drove up every week or so"; 4 or 5 games in about 16 months; the Bangkok Knights pint that became an exclusive deal.
• Why no 16-bit: dance music, MIDI gear, samplers, DJing; "Coding music on a C64 direct into an assembler was a great way to make a living, but the process get's very restrictive and laborious after a few years"; used Atari STs for sequencing.
• Which tune captured its game: "Probably Driller in that respect, but LN2's Central Park main theme is so associated with that game. You only need to hear the first 3 or 4 bars."
• Favourite musician: "It's Rob Hubbard but Martin Galway is a very close second"; dream collaboration: Tangerine Dream, or Galway on the C64.
• On the SID and technique: "The SID is a very clever bit of hardware and not too difficult to use. It's all the various modulations and fx processes that you have to be able to design and code that can be tricky. There were routines that everyone was using such as the note or chord plex where you go very quickly between 2,3 or even 4 notes to give the impression of a full chord being played. That sound became unique almost to the SID and everyone is using it as a retro sound now. To do that sound, you had to write a routine to perform it. And if you put a pulse width mod on it such as a sweep, the bubbling chord took on a life of it's own. I also had to write routines to emulate drums by switching waveforms in a certain sequence. I think that was originally Rob Hubbard's idea. You had to be able to code everything, even putting a vibrato on a sound needed a mod routine to do it. There was no button to push. You literally had some waveforms to choice from, an ADSR setting and a filter. The rest was up to you." (chord-arpeggio, pulse-width-modulation, wavetable-programming, vibrato)
• Limiting factors: "polyphony on each channel and of course more channels"; the SID's lasting effect on his later work: "mostly in figuring out what works and what doesn't, structure wise and melody wise".
• Hardest: the early games, Mean Streak "was not a great start for me".
• Tools: "I used Ocean's Laser Genius to edit and assemble my code. It was just that, a c64, me and a small keyboard. The only tools I had were the routines I designed to handle everything from sequences to modulation. When I look at the code now, it's amazing it does so much from so few bytes of code. Most of my games tracks were under 4k, often less." (matt-gray-player, sid-player-routine)
• C64 over Spectrum "because it's sound chip changed my life"; ST over Amiga for MIDI. A couple of unreleased tunes "have been found on my disks".

Notable quotes#

"There was no button to push. You literally had some waveforms to choice from, an ADSR setting and a filter. The rest was up to you."

Relevance to the wiki#

The clearest statement by a classic composer that chords, drums and vibrato were all routines, plus the assembler (Laser Genius) and the size of a tune (< 4 KB) for matt-gray-player; the PWM-on-a-chord tip for chord-arpeggio and pulse-width-modulation.

Pages touched#

matt-gray · matt-gray-player · last-ninja-2 · driller · system-3 · chord-arpeggio · pulse-width-modulation · wavetable-programming · vibrato · sid-player-routine · rob-hubbard · martin-galway