SIDin #14 — Scarzix interview (Carsten Berggreen: JCH's editor, CombatZone, the return with CheeseCutter, 2015)

Tognon interviews scarzix (Carsten Berggreen), a composer of the 1989–90 JCH-editor generation who came back in 2013, joined Offence, and made himself the public voice of the cheesecutter editor — the interview is the wiki's first-hand account of what a JCH-style "stacked" sequencer means to a composer, and of how the SID scene of 2013–15 worked (Facebook groups, YouTube tutorials, 2SID compos).

Key claims#

Who — Carsten Berggreen (Scarzix), "from 1972", "a SID-composer and 6510 coder", programming since 13–14; ran his own web-development company from 2002, put on hold in 2014 for a regular job after the birth of his son; hopes to finish some games for the AppStore.

The 1980s — BASIC on a friend's VIC-20, then his own C64; school-class competitions for the "most cool game-idea/effect" among C64/C128 owners; then monitors and disassembly ("I can still recall doing an IRQ and making a raster-split for the first time"). No keyboard until a youth club's music room; his brother's Jarre records; "I knew where the key C was on a keyboard, but had no clue about chords".

Editors, in order — an own BASIC/machine-code sound player for game effects; soundmonitor, which let him open "Chris' tunes" (chris-huelsbeck) and see how they were made, but its tunes were "too heavy regarding memory as they weren't compressed and way too slow … for rastertiming"; future-composer — "a whole new sound and much better drums"; then JCH's editor and player (chordian), offered by Martin Lassen (Stranger) for a Barbarian-style scroller. He had been designing his own player/editor, "SOUNDIX" — "oohh the hours I had spend on designing a UI for that". JCH's "magic disk" came by mail; hours of phone calls about new players and their features (his mother made him pay half the phone bill); he posted tunes and "got new players and other worktunes back as feedback".

Games and demos — BOING! (1989, title tune on Soundcloud) cancelled over three-player collisions; then BattleZone, renamed CombatZone when a publisher pointed at the existing game — "the first big assignment I have ever completed regarding composing"; the publisher paid the three of them one Amiga 500 each, so the percentage he had promised JCH went unpaid until 2014 ("the LAST YEAR he was finally able to pay JCH back", Tognon's postscript). Galactix for Triangle's trackmo Road of Excess (CSDb release 2493) was his "big entry" into the demoscene; Future Composer tunes in Triangle's Demo of the Year 88 ("I invented these three volumeters for the triggers"); New Wave Part 1 and 2. "A lot of tunes came to reality in those few years around 1989-1990".

Why he left — his second 1541 died; he chose Amiga floppies and memory over a third drive; Amiga trackers "didn't work as JCH editor, I couldn't program sounds", and samples "sounded so noisy and crappy compared to the clean SID sound"; 68000 assembly ("it was like coding BASIC again. 16 long registers"); JCH later invited him to the PC with Edlib, declined — "I hated the AdLib PC sound even more than samples on Amiga".

The return (2013) — SlayRadio and Remix.Kwed.Org; posted the CombatZone tunes to a Facebook sceners' group asking for a 0–10 rating "where 10 is Galway, JT, Hubbard, Follin" and got "8–9'ish"; Galactix was recognised ("I have been listening to your tune for hours when I was 18"). Pål (Norway) invited him into Offence — "one of the biggest and most active groups on the C64 scene here in 2013"; first new tune Back2Basic, dedicated to PAL/Offence.

CheeseCutter — he could not recall the "encryption key" of his JCH-editor work disks; tried the editor in vice, then goattracker and others, "but none of them had that stacked trackview and overview as I had in JCH editor"; someone pointed him to CheeseCutter, which "was able to open old JCH editor work files and the player was also NewPlayer". Its developer, Timo (Abaddon/Triad), "the developer AND a musician himself", "told me ALL the tricks and shortcuts" — "JCH editor anno 2013"; the 2.x generation "broke with the old NewPlayer standards as he wanted to evolve the player further". Timo: "I am not much of a talker, I prefer to focus on my coding", so Scarzix founded the CheeseCutter Community on Facebook (180 members in January 2015) and made YouTube video tutorials. What he values: open source ("anyone willing can begin implementing a better UI"), 800×600 instead of 320×200, saving to a hard drive instead of D64 images, pulse/filter programs "like I recall it to work", and above all the stacked track-sequencer "that I believe JCH was the first to invent. Instead of a pattern/sequence flipping once you reach the end of it, it shows/scrolls the next pattern in below or above it". SHIFT+F2 = "PLAY WITH FOLLOW": "I can SEE where the tones OUGHT to be instead of having to know the theory of music"; he loops a pattern and moves notes "up and down until I am satisfied with the timing and sound/key". Warning: "the instrument part of CheeseCutter is a really nasty killer if you don't know anything about SID programming". Covers as training: the INXS cover for Vandalism — sampled the song, then tempo, bass, chords "one step at a time".

The Ambient SID compo (CSDb) — won with a 12-minute stereo tune, Singularity, decided two days before the deadline, on Timo's "2SID beta edition of CheeseCutter"; a "Zynaps inspired" 2SID player by Cruzer was finished for it. Six channels gave "a drum rythm with echo/delay effect … chords that faded slowly … both sides for the huge deep bass" without sacrificing "the ground or pitch" (fake-echo, channel-interleaving); monitored on a Logitech G35 surround headset. Earlier long tunes: the CombatZone title (6 minutes, "still fitted into the memory with the game"), Electrosphere Part 1 (~7 minutes). On CSDb voting: "anonymous downvoters + everyone can see the current result before the voting has ended … Too much strategy involved" (compos). He expected Galway/Hubbard-style entries (Delta, Lightforce, Parallax) and heard "a lot of experimental stuff".

SID opinions — best: "its pulse waveform and the things you can do with sync of a second channel. Used that a lot in Forgotten Times and Electrosphere Part 1" (ring-modulation-and-sync); missing: more channels and "a separate filter pr. channel" — with the caveat that multispeed and multi-channel tunes already eat CPU, and that limits produced Hubbard's arpeggio chords and Tel/Deenen's drums (multispeed, chord-arpeggio). Emulation: composing in emulators since 2013; 6581 revisions differ so much that "everyone will say their own C64 had the right sound"; his breadbox had "a very light filter", so when Martin could not hear the CombatZone leads they added a filter on/off option to the game's menu in 1989/90 (filter-programming); Offence standardises on the 8580. Worst tunes: a period of "tigger tunes" and the leads of Thief, Tecnochip, Noxius, Jingle, Impuls, Blue Sounds; best: Galactix, the CombatZone tunes, Back2Basic, Connected, Electrosphere Part 1, Starhiker (in SCROLLWARS, his first demo in 23 years), the INXS cover, Greatest Pal, Singularity. Favourites: Galway, Hubbard, Tel; JCH, laxity, FutureFreak, johannes-bjerregaard, Drax (an argument with Drax over the notes of Galactix at a party, "JCH was laughing out loud at us"); help since 2013 from Timo and from Søren Lund (JEFF) on vibrato and filters — "most have sort of kept to themselves, like it's really dangerous to tell the secrets of the SID". Best SIDs: Lightforce, Delta, Parallax, Wizball, Thrust, Warhawk, Cybernoid, Myth, Ghouls'n'Ghosts, Cauldron.

Plans — a first album "this year or minimum 2016": new and existing SIDs "upgraded to 6 channeled SIDs", MP3/FLAC only, no SID files. Links: CSDb scener 3304, berggreens.dk, Soundcloud, Facebook, the CheeseCutter community group.

Practical takeaways#

• What a JCH-lineage editor gives a self-taught composer: a continuous stacked view of all three tracks, play-with-follow, and looping a pattern while nudging notes — the workflow cheesecutter preserves on a PC (tracking-workflow, orderlist).
• Learn arrangement by covering: sample the original, then rebuild tempo, bass and chords in that order.
• Stereo SID is a different instrument: with six voices one can afford echo drums and slow chord fades without giving up the bass.
• Test on a "light-filter" 6581 before relying on the filter for a lead — or, as CombatZone did, give the player a filter switch.

Notable quotes#

"The real killer feature that will make me pick CheeseCutter anytime, is that stacked track-sequencer that I believe JCH was the first to invent."

"We don't know if I was suddenly in a plane-crash or car-accident … why not share and document this knowledge."

"COMPOSE A WHILE.... COMPOSE FOREVER..."

Relevance to the wiki#

Creates scarzix and cheesecutter; adds a composer's view of JCH's editor to chordian, a user's account to future-composer and soundmonitor, a 2SID compo story to compos, sync and filter remarks to ring-modulation-and-sync and filter-programming.

Pages touched#

scarzix · cheesecutter · chordian · future-composer · soundmonitor · compos · ring-modulation-and-sync · filter-programming · fake-echo · goattracker · vice · laxity · johannes-bjerregaard · sidin