SIDin #13 — TSM & Freedom interview (Stefano Tognon, 2010)

Two Italian SID composers who wrote music for the (then unreleased) C64 conversion of the Amiga game Pushover, questioned in parallel: how they came to the SID, why both ended up in goattracker, what they think of duration-based editors, samples, emulators and the two chips.

Key claims#

• tsm: "My name is Carmine Migliaccio and I was born in Napoli, Italia, 30 years ago"; a former programmer looking for a job "that has little or nothing to do with computers". C64 in 1988, Amiga 500 in 1992; BASIC experiments with the SID but no machine code then. "My first serious attempts at making music with the C64 came much later: around 2003! That's why I don't consider myself a scener nor a musician." He turned to the SID because he cannot play an instrument and had grown bored of reusing the same samples in FastTracker II modules: "the sound of the SID is the thing that most amazed me when I got my C64 back in the day".
• freedom: from Italy, "my job deals with mechanics"; a C64 as a birthday present in late 1992, BASIC and small music experiments; "I composed my first tune only in 2005, using Odin Tracker on VICE emulator." Why SID: nostalgia for loading and game tunes, and "the 3 channel limit … You should be able to make the listener believe that there are more than just 3 voices" (channel-interleaving).
• Editors, TSM: earlier editors were "too complicated"; CyberTracker by Cyberbrain was "very similar to FastTracker II", so learning it "was just a matter of understanding how the SID worked" — but its packer "was (and still is) in early beta stage": packed songs "were too big and used too much rastertime" and some would not pack at all, so CyberTracker music "was almost unusable for demos, games". As a machine-language exercise he wrote his own routine — "the simplest routine one could imagine, with no effects whatsoever, no hardrestart routine and no memory optimizations … uses a laughable amount of rastertime" — and made two songs with it (bath.sid, willow.sid) (sid-player-routine, hard-restart). In 2006 Ian Coog, Roberto and Pippo79 asked him for a tune for their game Pick Up Sticks; the CyberTracker version was too big, so he redid it in GoatTracker in about two weeks: "it has mouse support and an interface very similar to that of FastTracker II. It is thought in a very rational way."
• Editors, Freedom: quit Odin Tracker "because of its strange way of handling filters" and because its routines "are not very efficient and so too much rasterlines are required"; "now I always use Goattracker. It is easy, it is powerful, very efficient and it comes with a good documentation."
• Wishes: TSM — GoatTracker's "only flaw is that it's a cross-tool"; he would love an editor for the C128's 80-column mode with 1351 mouse support and a FastTracker-like interface. Freedom — "maybe … a native tracker for C64 like JCH" (JCH).
• Duration-based (DMC) vs tracker-style (JCH) editors: TSM "honestly [doesn't] understand duration based editors"; Freedom "absolutely prefer[s] tracker style editors" (tracker).
• Samples for more than three channels: TSM thought of it, never tried; Freedom prefers "to force the 3 analog channels to create the illusion of more than 3 channels", though he made an unreleased 4-channel tune in Pollytracker.
• Pushover: Pippo79 and Raffox were converting the Amiga game "in a very professional job". TSM made some tunes from scratch and others by conversion — MED originals to MOD with a tool, "preliminary adjustments on the MOD files, then I converted them to GoatTracker and added instruments and final corrections"; the title tune is made this way and is probably his only one in the final game. When he gave up "for personal issues, Freedom took over as musician"; Freedom: "Trying to port those Amiga mods is quite fun".
• Real vs emulator: TSM prefers the real thing and likes to work on the hardware; Freedom uses emulators for lack of space — "for many things, emulator are far more practical", but a demo is best watched on the real machine (vice).
• 6581 vs 8580 (sid): TSM — the 8580 "allows more combined waveforms. It is also very consistent, as every 8580 sounds the same, unlike the 6581", and 6581s "are very fragile. They often fail and sometimes they only work partially" so a listener may "curse the author of a tune for the horrible sounds". Freedom — 8580: "way too open filters but it features cleaner waveforms and it has less noise. For instance, when you change filter type you don't get an unwanted noise as noticeable as the one you hear in 6581. This makes it possible to change filter type on an instrument while a note is being played and you get more sophisticated sounds. Also, I do love $51 waveform on 8580." (filter-programming, wavetable-programming)
• Own worst/best: TSM — Q-Game / perhaps Vieni avanti cretino ("but it's a cover"); Freedom — Exploring New Worlds / Dreamlights, "a cover of a tune by Chris Huelsbeck originally intented to be used in Turrican" (chris-huelsbeck).
• Favourite authors: TSM — Ben Daglish, jeroen-tel, rob-hubbard, Tim Follin, david-whittaker, Chris Huelsbeck; Freedom — Huelsbeck, Tel, Hubbard among game composers, and the sceners Dane, Drax, Jeff, Linus. Best SIDs: TSM — Krakout, the Ghouls'n'Ghosts title; Freedom — Dane's Arctic Circles, Mitch & Dane's Dazzler, Linus's Special Agent Rocco Montefiori, Jeff's Ode to C64, Hubbard's ACE 2, Tel's cybernoid-ii.

Practical takeaways#

• Two independent 2000s composers chose GoatTracker for the same reasons — FastTracker-like interface, mouse, an efficient packed player and good documentation — after native editors failed on packing (CyberTracker) or rastertime and filter handling (Odin Tracker).
• Freedom's 8580 trick: because the 8580 does not click when the filter mode changes, an instrument can switch filter type in the middle of a held note.
• Amiga-to-C64 porting path in 2010: MED → MOD → GoatTracker import, then instruments and corrections by hand.

Notable quotes#

"You should be able to make the listener believe that there are more than just 3 voices... and that's a really interesting challenge which requires quite a different approach of that used in common music." (Freedom)

"It's the simplest routine one could imagine, with no effects whatsoever, no hardrestart routine and no memory optimizations." (TSM on his own player)

Relevance to the wiki#

Creates tsm and freedom; user testimony for goattracker (and against CyberTracker's packer and Odin Tracker's filters); a chip-choice argument for sid and a filter-type trick for filter-programming; more votes for jeroen-tel, chris-huelsbeck and cybernoid-ii.

To verify#

• (unverified) The C64 Pushover by Pippo79 and Raffox was released after 2010; the interview only says "not yet released".

Pages touched#

tsm · freedom · goattracker · sid · filter-programming · vice · chordian · tracker · channel-interleaving · jeroen-tel · chris-huelsbeck · cybernoid-ii · sidin