Vandalism News #63 — Interview with Matt Gray (Jazzcat, 2014)

The longest matt-gray interview: how he learnt 6502 to build his player, what he thinks a player is, why System 3 let him go, the Sanxion trick behind his Bangkok Knights bass, and his 1990s pop career (Motiv8, Xenomania, a writing credit on Cher's Believe).

Key claims#

• Music from age 3 through his father's record collection; Blondie, Tubeway Army, Kraftwerk's Computer World, film scores (Carpenter, Italian horror, Blade Runner); "it wasn't until I heard Ghostbusters on the 64 that I became interested in the SID. And when I heard the music Hubbard and Galway were doing I was hooked."
• Learnt to code only for music; programmed a BBC at school to play Galway's Rambo loader; "about 3 years later … I made a big concerted effort to write a SID player in 6502."
• Building the player: "I had to learn 6502 fast and the only way for me was by reading books and disassembling others code. Piece by piece things fell into place and I built up my player and revised it quite a few times before I was happy with it. Initially, like others I didn't use the filters because they often sounded very different on another machine, but eventually I simply had to just to move the sound on." He wrote code "out with pen and paper, planning it before I even had an assembler". The Darlings at codemasters told him "I simply wouldn't get very far in the industry without that string to my bow." (matt-gray-player, filter-programming)
• "A SID composer's player is like a brand of guitar. It will basically be the same as other guitars, but it will have its own character." New SIDs for the Kickstarter: "I'm digging out my old source code to carry on where I left off."
• Favourites: his own — Central Park in-game ("the calling card for that game") and the Sewers track of last-ninja-2; Galway's Rambo loader ("Martin obviously sacrificed drums for more channels, but it didn't matter because he knew the power was in the melody, chords and sounds rather than the beat"); Hubbard's Sanxion loader, "10/10 on the SID for me" — "I think that one track had the biggest influence on my sound for LN2, certainly I referenced it for Bangkok Knights loader. They had asked me to do my best Rob impression … so I emulated that style of fast bass line with a small hat on each note. That was all one channel, but it was a good way to get some extra rhythmical or drum element in without taking a whole channel up." (channel-interleaving, wavetable-programming)
• Spoke to rob-hubbard on the phone several times in 1987; "I was interested in licensing his player but he didn't seem that keen."
• Inspiration: LN2 has "a dance music influence … because it was early 88 and sample tracks were becoming big news"; he sometimes borrowed melodies (Tusker's 2:48–3:19 is from Fulci's Zombie Flesheaters, "I had the 12ths rhythm track for Tusker and that melody fitted perfectly").
• Leaving the C64: hewson went into liquidation owing him for Deliverance (or Maze Mania); "System 3 effectively dropped me in favour of Maniacs Of Noise, who by the way I thought were very good"; a shift job as an operator, freelance for Codemasters on days off (they wanted him in-house in Banbury), then samplers, synths and dance music. Output: "about 40 SID tunes maybe 50. It was quite a short period of time really late 86 until early 91. The longest time on one track was Driller."
• Working day in 1988: nights — "come 11.15 I'd be home ready to work often until 3 or 4am … about 75% of the time I worked at night."
• system-3: the Hampstead offices, Mark Cale's Ferrari on a tow truck, the development house in Watford (John Twiddy, Hugh Riley, Tim Best; "C64's in every room bar the toilet and kitchen"), later the business park in Pinner; the contract offered over one drink with his mother present — "from office clerk to professional games musician just a year or so into trying. There was only a handful of guys in the country doing this full time and I was now one of them."
• Compunet "was like a training camp for future games developers" (Graham Hunter, Paul Docherty, Cory Kin).
• LN2 sub-tune 3 vs Anastacia's I'm Outta Love: "the same chord progression, but I wouldn't call it a rip off."
• Later: Westworld, Motiv8 with Steve Rodway (Mission, Rockin' For Myself), Balearico and Xenomania with Brian Higgins from early 1996; co-writer of Cher's Believe (1998); work with Pet Shop Boys, Girls Aloud, Kylie, Sugababes.
• On the SID's endurance: "a proper synth that you could buy for £150 and it had 3 channels to play with … It was our thing."

Notable quotes#

"A SID composer's player is like a brand of guitar."

"…a fast bass line with a small hat on each note. That was all one channel, but it was a good way to get some extra rhythmical or drum element in without taking a whole channel up."

Relevance to the wiki#

The origin story of the matt-gray-player (disassembling others, pen and paper, filters last), the one-channel bass+hat trick for channel-interleaving, and the business end — Hewson's liquidation, System 3 switching to maniacs-of-noise — for matt-gray, system-3, hewson, codemasters.

Pages touched#

matt-gray · matt-gray-player · last-ninja-2 · driller · system-3 · hewson · codemasters · compunet · rob-hubbard · martin-galway · maniacs-of-noise · channel-interleaving · filter-programming · wavetable-programming · melody-writing