The SID Homepage — Interviews with Jeroen Tel (Commodore Zone 1997, 64'er 3/91)

Two reprinted interviews with jeroen-tel on the sid-homepage: a long commodore-zone interview from June 1997 (Warren Pilkington gave permission) and a short one from the German magazine 64'er, issue 3/91. Between them: how he started, the founding of maniacs-of-noise with charles-deenen, his favourite own tune (Turbo Outrun, for its samples), the SID filter problem, his CDs, and his 1991 move to Probe Software in England.

Key claims#

Commodore Zone, June 1997

• Bought a C64 at 12; explored BASIC, "bumped into the SID and I was sold"; wrote "a little BASIC player" and tunes in it he still liked; could not yet program the 6502 — "When I ran into Charles Deenen that problem was over and me and Charles designed our first MoN routine" (sid-player-routine).
• Working with Deenen: at first Charles did the programming and sound effects, Jeroen the music; both worked from home ("communication was sometimes hard" — he "motorbiked" to Charles's house; Charles went to school in his town); later Charles composed and Jeroen programmed and made sound effects too. The name Maniacs of Noise was thought up by the two of them. Eventually Deenen was asked in-house at Interplay and Tel was offered a job at Probe Software Limited: "We took both jobs. Somehow that's too bad." In 1997 Deenen was Audio Director at Interplay and edited sound effects for films; they e-mailed regularly.
• Most pleased with: Turbo Outrun — "Having samples (and my own voice) inside a tune, that was awesome" (chip-samples).
• Influences: "In the beginning, Rob Hubbard and Martin Galway. But I tried to do my own thing most of the time. Copying someone is boring." Favourite tunes: rob-hubbard's Thing on a Spring, The Last V8, Crazy Comets, Tarzan, Zoids ("I was 13 years old when I first heard Rob Hubbard's music, so my impression was huge!"); martin-galway's Arkanoid; Tim Follin's Ghouls 'n Ghosts and Bionic Commando; Ben Daglish's Hades Nebula; Johannes Bjerregaard's Nightdawn, Special Agent and Tele 64 ("his conversions of pop songs and … his funky style compositions"); Paul Norman's Forbidden Forest.
• Last C64 work: the music for Psygnosis' Lemmings; still composing on the C64 for fun; planned a demo "Noise Of Maniacs" with all unreleased tunes from 1986–1997.
• CDs: Vivid Video – Music For Home Video (library music in many styles "and a real Maniacs of Noise style tune"); Maniacs of Noise – Original Video Game Sound Effects (284 digitally created effects, used by BBC, NBC, Discovery, RTL4); Maniacs of Noise – The Video Game Soundmakers (1993; studio versions of Nintendo/Sega game tracks — RoboCop III, Lethal Weapon III, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Technocop, Alien 3 — plus original techno-ish tracks; a rushed final mix in which "the MIDI did not sync with my sampler (S3000)"; sold through Nintendo in the Netherlands and Belgium); the 1992 CD single X-Mess-House. Web: home.worldonline.nl/~mon. He was planning a three-disc remix album with Hubbard, Follin, Galway and Bjerregaard, and "some remixes of my C64 music quite soon … Not the music, just the beats and grooves."
• Listening: Red Hot Chili Peppers' funky tunes, some Toto and Michael Jackson, Jerry Goldsmith (Rambo II and III), Tower of Power ("their brass section is the best!"), Beethoven — "funk, melodic classical jazz, soul".
• Platforms: Amiga, NES, SNES, Game Boy, Master System / Game Gear, Mega Drive, Saturn, 3DO, PlayStation (others by conversion). "I wish the manufacturers of computers would build a SID inside every computer. I loved composing SID music the most." The PC "can easily mix 64 digital channels"; he hoped for software FM "(like the SID)", samples and reverb/chorus, and for 'shareware music' at "1 dollarcent per module" so composers could live from modules (commercial-tracking).
• Chip vs studio: "Programming a soundchip (like the SID, or SNES soundchip) is more fulfilling. The limits of the soundchip makes me wanna push it to its maximum (and I think I often managed, IMHO)." Pay: "Even the best pay wasn't big."
• Agony (Amiga): samples had to be stripped "to a very low sample-rate, since the programmers had left me very little memory", hence the 'noisy' sound; CU Amiga, February 1992, gave the sound 90 %.
• The filter (filter-programming): "It was a real bugger when it came down to using the SID-filter so that it would sound good on every C64. There were several versions of the SID-chip around, which varied a lot. But in the end I got hold of all C64 versions and could do some 'average' filter settings. But it remained different.." The question notes that Galway called the filter one of his worst memories in Commodore Zone issues 6 and 7.
• Sign-off: "I think the C64 should be taken into production again!"

64'er 3/91

• Intro: one of the best-known C64 musicians, did "the wonderful tune from Cybernoid"; had been a member of Maniacs of Noise with Charles Deenen "but because he wants to be independent and creative, he decided to become a solo artist".
• Aged 18; "Six years ago, when the scene was bigger, it was more interesting … The scene creates nearly all coding tricks"; rated Tim Follin, dismissed Jens-Christian Huus; the C64GS might prolong the machine, but he was "already working on the Amiga"; upcoming: OutRun Europa, Super Monaco Grand Prix, Supremacy; "i'm moving to England, because i'm working at Probe Software now".

Practical takeaways#

• The realistic answer to the 6581/8580 filter problem in 1988–90: collect every C64 revision you can and choose "average" cutoff settings — the same advice the wiki gives for testing on both chips (sid, filter-programming).
• Samples with a shouted vocal (Turbo Outrun) as a signature moment; and a warning from Agony that memory limits, not the composer, set sample quality.
• "Copying someone is boring" — study Hubbard and Galway, then do your own thing.

Notable quotes#

"I bumped into the SID and I was sold."

"The limits of the soundchip makes me wanna push it to its maximum."

Relevance to the wiki#

The founding story of Maniacs of Noise from one founder, the filter-variation problem from a working composer, and the dates for jeroen-tel's C64 career (BASIC player at 12, Probe Software in 1991, Lemmings as the last C64 job).

Pages touched#

jeroen-tel · maniacs-of-noise · charles-deenen · commodore-zone · sid-homepage · rob-hubbard · martin-galway · sid · filter-programming · chip-samples · sid-player-routine · commercial-tracking