VGMPF wiki: Maniacs of Noise, Jeroen Tel, Charles Deenen (+ the C64-Wiki roster)
Fan-wiki pages (secondary, but dated and footnoted to disk-mag interviews) that say plainly how maniacs-of-noise worked: one driver, written by charles-deenen, into which jeroen-tel and the others typed hex in Turbo Assembler.
Key claims#
Founding and business (MoN page)
- Founded 1987 by Dutch teenagers Deenen, Tel and Marcel Donné; Deenen and Donné met at the monthly Venlo meetings, Deenen went to school in Tel's town; "All three had already arranged music on their Commodore 64 computers using soundmonitor. When Deenen saw Tel arrange a song in about 10 minutes, he created a music driver for Donné and Tel." In September 1987 Deenen and Tel went to the PCW show at Earl's Court, invented the name in the hotel room, and hewson gave them their first job, Battle Valley.
- "Deenen managed the business from home and did sound design, preferring to leave composing and arranging music to everyone else", but took so many orders that he composed too and kept looking for help. Registered trademark claimed December 1988; registry number 1991.
- Commodore 64: "Deenen programmed a music driver ('Musicfile') and a sound effects driver in Turbo Ass. Deenen, Donné, Tel and Ouwehand arranged by typing hexadecimal numbers and labels into the driver's source code. After splitting from Deenen, Tel programmed himself." Deenen sent Johannes Bjerregaard a disk with Turbo Ass, the driver and 4-bit samples, but Bjerregaard and Thomas Petersen (Laxity) kept their own drivers. "Per game, MoN took two to six days and got £100 to £1000." The C64 driver was officially converted to the ZX Spectrum 128K; on Amiga Deenen used the JT and MON (Frederic Hahn) formats. (musicfile, turbo-assembler)
- Personnel with dates: Deenen Sept 1987–late 1990/91; Tel Sept 1987–1990 and 1992/93–present; Donné Sept 1987–1988/89 (fired "for being uninspired" per C=Lehti 4/89, or off to the army); Bjerregaard from October 1988 (first non-founder); reyn-ouwehand late 1989?–1990 (joined by 1990-03-15, "left by May 12 to join System 3"); Petersen (Laxity) from December 1989/early 1990; Vibrants (Jens-Christian Huus, Klaus Grøngaard) and Amok as freelancers 1989–90; Frederic Hahn c. 1989; Øistein Eide left in charge late 1990/January 1991 when Deenen went to Interplay; Tel left between 1990-03-28 and 1990-06-23 amid mutual resentment reported by three diskmags, and "went on to work full-time in England"; returned 1992 or 1993 "meanwhile a programmer himself"; Thomas Mogensen (DRAX) from 1996. C64-Wiki adds later members: Søren Lund (Jeff) 2013, Markus Klein (LMan) 2017, Jochen Feldkötter (Virgill) 2018, Geir Tjelta 2009, Dávid Halmi (Nagz).
- Markus Schneider recalled that "Deenen defined the best composers as being capable of jazz" and that Deenen "still resented Schneider for using his music driver without permission in 1988".
- Gameography (C64, VGMPF dates): Battle Valley 1988-02, Starball 1988-02, Scout 1988-03, cybernoid 1988-03, Hawkeye 1988-08, Scorpion 1988-09, cybernoid-ii 1988-10, Savage 1988-11, Double Dragon 1988-11, Eliminator, Tomcat, Combat Crazy 1989-03, Zamzara 1989-04, Stormlord 1989, Dominator 1989-07 (System 3 — the MoN entry, see dominator), Turbo Outrun 1989-11, Flimbo's Quest 1990-02, Vendetta 1990, BAT 1990-12, Rubicon (Amiga 1992-01) and many unreleased titles.
Jeroen Tel (person page)
- Born 1972-05-19 (VGMPF says Eindhoven; the Hugi biography says Helmond — s-hugi38-interview-jeroen-tel). Wrote for hewson from 1987 "until he left in July 1990"; Probe Software from January 1988 (NES, Master System …) until July 1993; Funcom 1994–96; Backbone 2004–09.
- "Jeroen programmed his own sound drivers in the assembly language of the respective consoles (mainly Z80 and 6502.) He would write the music in assembly utilizing hexadecimal values for note frequencies, lengths, and various effects."
- On three channels (from a Dutch video interview with Rob Hubbard, translated): "You could only use three channels, which isn't a lot. If you would compose one chord, you run out of channels. So you have to be creative. By quickly switching between three notes on one channel, you saved two channels. For example: you would have a bassline and a drum both on one channel. … And so you left room for a melody. And then you also tried to put in some extra rhythm parts of fill-ins." (channel-interleaving, chord-arpeggio)
- RoboCop 3: the NES version was done "one night at Probe's headquarters in 1991", the C64 version later. C64 list includes Cybernoid and Cybernoid II (1988), Hawkeye, Eliminator, Savage, Starball; Myth, Turbo OutRun (1989); Supremacy, Dan Dare III, Iron Lord, Turrican ("Sample driver", 1990); Rubicon (1991, with Reyn Ouwehand), OutRun Europa, Smash T.V.; Lemmings and RoboCop 3 (1992).
Charles Deenen (person page)
- Born 1970-01-15 in Holthees; programming since 1983 on a PET; "Around 1985 he wrote a C64 sound-driver, which gave him the tools necessary to form an audio company with Jeroen Tel"; taught Tel to write music on the NES; Interplay audio director from 1991, Shiny 2002, EA Canada 2003.
- Contradiction to note: this page says "When Deenen was a member composer of Maniacs of Noise, he used Jeroen Tel's sound driver", while the group page and Deenen himself (s-charles-deenen-interviews) say Tel used Deenen's driver. C64 credits: Hawkeye (music, Mix-E-Load and SFX), Battle Valley and Stormlord (with Tel), Golden Axe and Inve$t (SFX), Back to the Future Part III (1991, with Tel). NES: own driver, used only in M.C. Kids.
Practical takeaways#
- One shared driver plus a fast composer is a whole business: 2–6 days per game, typed as hex tables — the working model behind the musicfile source in s-realdmx-sid-players.
- Tel's channel arithmetic — a chord costs all three voices, so fake it by fast switching and share bass and drums on one voice — is the standard C64 answer the wiki collects under channel-interleaving.
Relevance to the wiki#
Founding story, driver facts and dated roster for maniacs-of-noise; career dates and the three-channel quote for jeroen-tel; a fuller charles-deenen; new cybernoid, cybernoid-ii, reyn-ouwehand, hewson.
Pages touched#
maniacs-of-noise · jeroen-tel · charles-deenen · musicfile · turbo-assembler · soundmonitor · reyn-ouwehand · hewson · cybernoid · cybernoid-ii · dominator · channel-interleaving · chord-arpeggio · chip-samples · melody-writing · sound-effects