Scarzix (Carsten Berggreen)
SID composer and 6510 coder, born 1972, active around 1989–90 in the jch-editor (CombatZone, Galactix for Triangle) and again from 2013 in Offence, where he became the public face of the cheesecutter editor — its Facebook community and YouTube tutorials — and won the CSDb Ambient SID compo with a 12-minute 2SID tune (source: s-sidin14-scarzix-interview).
Facts#
- 1980s: BASIC on a VIC-20 and C64, then machine code; music learned at a youth club; tried soundmonitor (to see how Hülsbeck's tunes were made) and future-composer, designed an own player/editor "SOUNDIX", and settled on JCH's editor and player (chordian), which reached him by mail through Martin Lassen (Stranger); years of phone feedback to JCH on new player versions (source: s-sidin14-scarzix-interview).
- Works then: BOING! (1989, cancelled); CombatZone (first BattleZone; title tune 6 minutes, loader Waiting; the game got a filter on/off menu option because his own 6581 had a light filter); Galactix in Triangle's trackmo Road of Excess; Future Composer tunes in Demo of the Year 88; New Wave Part 1 and 2. The publisher paid each of the three developers one Amiga 500; the share promised to JCH was paid in 2014 (source: s-sidin14-scarzix-interview).
- Gap: left the C64 when his second 1541 died, then the Amiga (68000 coding, no way to "program sounds" in trackers); declined JCH's invitation to PC/Adlib work; IT career, own web company from 2002 (source: s-sidin14-scarzix-interview).
- Return: 2013, via SlayRadio, Remix.Kwed.Org and a Facebook poll of his old tunes; invited into Offence by Pål; first new tune Back2Basic; then Connected, Electrosphere Part 1 (~7 min), Forgotten Times, Starhiker (in SCROLLWARS), an INXS cover for Vandalism, Greatest Pal, and Singularity — the Ambient SID compo winner, 12 minutes, six voices, made in two days on Timo's 2SID beta of CheeseCutter with a new 2SID player by Cruzer (source: s-sidin14-scarzix-interview).
- Method: self-taught and "very visual" — play-with-follow in a stacked sequencer, loop a pattern and move notes until the timing and key fit; covers built by sampling the original and reconstructing tempo, bass and chords; likes the pulse waveform and oscillator sync (ring-modulation-and-sync); composes in emulators, Offence targets the 8580 (source: s-sidin14-scarzix-interview; see tracking-workflow).
- Opinions: favourites Galway, Hubbard, Tel; also JCH, laxity, FutureFreak, johannes-bjerregaard, Drax; help from Timo (CheeseCutter) and Søren Lund (JEFF) on vibrato and filters; CSDb voting is "too much strategy" (compos); wants more channels and a filter per voice; a 6-channel MP3/FLAC album planned for 2015/16 (source: s-sidin14-scarzix-interview).
- Corroborated from JCH's side: his 2017 memoir names Scarzix among the editor's "most noteworthy" first users by spring 1989 (with Link and Scorpio), each copy stamped with a personal byte code — the paper user list survives in JCH's scans (sources: s-chordian-my-computer-chronicles, s-chordian-player-editor-notes).
- CheeseCutter evangelism, dated: the tutorial series is four videos (2014-09: Galactix Intro, Pulse programs, Basic GUI tricks + Drums, Wavetable + Ringmod), announced on chipmusic.org by tempest; three of his tunes ship as examples in the CheeseCutter v2.9 zip (cheese-around-the-clock, KnightsAndDames, visualbrothers) (sources: s-chipmusic-cheesecutter-tutorial-thread, s-cheesecutter-repo-and-releases).
Related#
cheesecutter · chordian · future-composer · soundmonitor · sidin · compos · ring-modulation-and-sync · filter-programming
Sources#
s-sidin14-scarzix-interview · s-chordian-my-computer-chronicles · s-chordian-player-editor-notes · s-chipmusic-cheesecutter-tutorial-thread · s-cheesecutter-repo-and-releases