SIDin #15 — Matt Gray interview (technical questions during Reformation, 2015)

The most technical of the matt-gray interviews: why his tunes are tuned to A4 ≈ 424 Hz, when he started using filters, how the matt-gray-player took shape and what he borrowed from Hubbard, the Serpent Demo samples, and the state of the Reformation Kickstarter and driver competition in 2015. Tognon's follow-up analysis of the sample engine is s-sidin15-serpent-demo-player.

Key claims#

• Now: "a producer and composer for both games and pop … pretty much full time since 1987", UK. After the C64 market slowed he did not move to the Amiga — "I was more interested in the emerging sampler and affordable synth revolution"; a DJ with white-label dance tracks 1990–93; co-formed Motiv 8; joined Xenomania in 1996, co-producing Dannii Minogue's All I Wanna Do (entered at 4), then Cher's Believe and Girls Aloud's Christmas number 1 Sound of the Underground; on and off with Xenomania for 18 years, left in 2014 for Reformation "once I realised what a following I seemed to have from SID days"; "already working on several games tracks for release later this year".
• Companies: System 3 "such a talented team", Codemasters (David and Richard Darling), Paul Cooper at Thalamus; Stavros Fasoulas and Paul Cooper showing him Quedex on his bedroom C64 in 1987; the call from Mark Cale for the Bangkok Knights loader "instead of my hero Rob Hubbard" and the in-house job for last-ninja-2. On LN2's popularity: "I just did what felt right to me and System 3 gave me a lot free reign … If there was a formula I'd have bottled it by now."
• Kickstarter: "75K and more than 1300 backers" (Tognon), all stretch goals reached; the opening day "one of the most surreal days I can remember"; the Sanxion loader remake made "in just a few days" (sanxion); rewards still available through c64audio.com/reformation.html.
• The competition (dominator driver): "probably finished for entries by now … there are so many other players and trackers out there now that it didn't appeal to enough people in the end. There haven't really been many entries so far, but what there has been has been good listening."
• The player: "I always had to fit in with the games programmers. Luckily my routine didn't take much memory or raster time, no more than any of my rivals anyway"; his first tracks were recoded by others without the "mod routines", which "forced me to learn 6502 and code my own personal player. It took about 4-6 months to do that and then I refined it over the next 18 months". "Created from scratch, but there were fundamental things that mine and say Rob Hubbards also did. I did borrow his idea of drum tables but it was always coded from scratch … My vibrato routine was very different to his and Martin Galway's" (rob-hubbard, martin-galway, wavetable-programming, vibrato).
• Tuning: Tognon observed that his note table gives A4 = 424 Hz on PAL (440 on NTSC). Gray: "That was just an accident. I was sure I got the frequencies from the back of the C64 Reference manual. I only realized this once I started to remake them. So I've had to tune them up by 30%. Some of Galway's tracks were the same, Green Beret for instance was at 424hz." For the remakes he converts the SID sounds to samples and retunes with the fine-tune, "because using sound shifter or melodyne introduces some horrible frequencies to SID sounds" (c64-programmers-reference-guide, detune).
• Filters: no filter code in the Dominator player — "I only started using them post Dominator on Vendetta and other tracks. Up until then I was well aware of the filter inconsistencies and wanted to avoid using them, but eventually I needed the extra palette of sounds" (filter-programming). ADSR bug: "I was aware of it, but just kind of lived with it" (adsr-envelope).
• Samples: Serpent Demo was "my first attempt at using samples and unfortunately the levels on the drums are too loud, but it was done using tables to change the volume setting very quickly to produce the sound. It was 4 bit sampling using just 16 values so real low level, but it sounded not bad" (chip-samples). Features that came late: "The filter routines came later as did the sample routine, but I didn't get to use them too much in the end."
• Tools then and now: "The trackers out there now would have been mana from heaven to me back in the day. I started on Electro Sound and then moved on to Soundmonitor and Rockmonitor which were both excellent. But to get your own sound you need to write your own routines I feel" (soundmonitor, rockmonitor, goattracker, sid-wizard).
• SID: best feature "its unique-ness … Today's emulators are close but not exactly the same"; missing: "another half dozen channels". 6581 vs 8580: "It's what people do with what they have at their disposal." Worst own tunes: Mean Streak or Yogi Bear; best: one of the Central Park tracks of LN2 — "in the zone" tracks that "came so easily it didn't feel like work". Best authors: Hubbard and Galway "in almost equal amount" — Galway's "lead melodies were so flawless", Hubbard "had a huge range of influence to draw from". Best SIDs: the Sanxion loader ("Thalamusik … pretty much flawless"), One Man & His Droid, Phantom of the Asteroids, WAR, Knucklebusters; Galway's Rambo loader and Green Beret title; Wizball, Parallax.
• "I was incredibly fortunate to go from a bedroom wannabe to a recognized C64 SID games musician within 18 months and doing a job that just a handful of people in Europe were actually getting paid for."

Practical takeaways#

• Check the tuning of any 1980s note table before sampling or remixing it: Gray's and some of Galway's sit around 424 Hz on PAL because they were copied from the Reference Guide (sid-player-routine has Walleij's warning that those numbers are wrong).
• Retune SID material as samples with fine-tune rather than with pitch-shifting plug-ins.
• The 1987 filter policy: avoid the filter until the palette demands it; Gray's filter tunes are the post-Dominator ones (Vendetta onward).

Notable quotes#

"But to get your own sound you need to write your own routines I feel."

"The missing feature was another half dozen channels. That would have been awesome."

Relevance to the wiki#

New facts for matt-gray (tuning, filters from Vendetta, the 4–6 months + 18 months of player work, Hubbard's drum-table idea, the Kickstarter numbers, the Xenomania credits, Electro Sound); for matt-gray-player and dominator (the competition's outcome); for chip-samples (the Serpent Demo drums).

Pages touched#

matt-gray · matt-gray-player · dominator · chip-samples · filter-programming · vibrato · wavetable-programming · detune · last-ninja-2 · sanxion · rob-hubbard · martin-galway · soundmonitor · rockmonitor · system-3 · codemasters · sidin