Interview of BSC / SymbiosiS (December 2014)
Oliver Mayer is a programmer / musician that is most famous for his work as an audio programmer on Amstrad CPC. He is the author of several demos as also the Soundtrakker (1991). I was curious to know more about him, so I asked for an interview and he kindly accepted ! How lucky we are :)
Olivier in 2014
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1. Hi Oliver ! Please can you present yourself ? What do you do for a living? Etc.Hello! My name is Oliver, I am 42 years old (yay), married and father of a wonderful little boy.
I have been workin as a software developer for the last 15 years now and went freelance a few years ago. I have been doing stuff on the CPC between 1985 and 1994 (I suppose, but I am not completely sure when I retired) and re-emerged around 2 years ago to work on a SID player/tracker. |
2. Was Amstrad CPC the first computer you ever got? When did you first acquired a CPC?
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No.
My first computer was a Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48k which I shared with one of my brothers. I remember loading game after game from a huge suitcase of tapes that we borrowed from a guy we just briefly met. I think we got it somewhere in 1984 and I had to wait around 1 year before I got my CPC 464. There were so many cool games on the Speccy: Tranz Am, Pssst!, Jetpac and more. We used to play a lot of games these days. I got in touch with the CPC somewhere in 1985 I think. I used to hang out in some local department stores back in the days - Kaufhof, Quelle, Hertie. They were showcasing all current machines: VIC20 and the C64 and C128, ZX Spectrum, Apple II, Atari XL etc. and of course some Amstrad / Schneider CPCs. I remember that I wanted a VIC20 in the first place but dropped that idea after I played around with the CPC 464 next to it. At xmas 1985, I finally got my own CPC 464 with green screen - yay! :D I had to wait for the floppy disk drive for quite a while. That's why it came naturally for me to fall in love with Breaking Baud :) |
A Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48k computer
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3. Do you consider yourself as a programmer, or a musician ?
Both I would say. I liked both a lot and I would not be able to pick one over the other. I think it came somewhat naturally that I ended up as a musician on the CPC after spending so much time with different trackers on different platforms. And sometimes, democoding was just not as rewarding as composing or arranging a nice tune :)
I also like to play the guitar and one of my dreams is to have a computer and video games cover band with other nerds - Final Fantasy, Street Fighter and other SNES games, classical C64 tunes and so on. That would be just so great *hint hint*
Most of the kids back then probably started with programming in Basic, then maybe assembly and this was the case for me as well. But I was interested in computer music right from the start. I actually hacked a lot of game music before I slowly got into making music myself.
I also like to play the guitar and one of my dreams is to have a computer and video games cover band with other nerds - Final Fantasy, Street Fighter and other SNES games, classical C64 tunes and so on. That would be just so great *hint hint*
Most of the kids back then probably started with programming in Basic, then maybe assembly and this was the case for me as well. But I was interested in computer music right from the start. I actually hacked a lot of game music before I slowly got into making music myself.
Advanced Music Sampler (Volume 2) by BSC
4. According to cpcwiki, you were member of the GCS group - that also includes EGS (Elmsoft), Weee! and DJH as members. GCS stands for "Godless Cracking Service" . Does it mean your first CPC activities were cracking games ?
Kind of.
Even though that was way before I got a member of GCS, who, as far as I know, never cracked anything or released any cracks. That's how godless we were! BTW I always thought GCS meant something else but never dared to ask. Anyway, I think my first non-Basic related activities on the CPC were actually cracking games.
Even though that was way before I got a member of GCS, who, as far as I know, never cracked anything or released any cracks. That's how godless we were! BTW I always thought GCS meant something else but never dared to ask. Anyway, I think my first non-Basic related activities on the CPC were actually cracking games.
Speedlock 7 (TAPE) - Copyright Notice
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I used to have a 464 with no disk drive in the beginning and everyone else I knew (like the folks that used to hang out at the department stores I mentioned before) had disk drives or were at least carrying around piles of 3" disks with them all the time. So in order to get my hands on any games, I had to transfer them from disk to tape which sometimes included some kind of cracking. I got so used to it that we started to talk the store staff into lending us their games for "testing" during which I tried to crack those games and also got a fresh copy on one of the tapes that I was carrying around with me all the time :) I did some more cracking later on but never really created branded loaders or intros. I used to write all my loaders in opcodes at that time and adding more than the basic CAS IN loading sequence would have probably been way too painful - even for me.
And I still remember how I felt that Speedlock was one of the hardest to get by copy protections ever. |
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I also had some fellow cracker friends and with one of them (hey LCC!) I engaged in a competition to see who was the first one to get a working cracked version of the newest game we got hold of. Ah! That were the days.. My cracking activities actually also led to my pseudo. LCC and I used to poke around games at random to see if that changed a conveyor belt in Aligata Blagger or so.
Later we found out that we could modify in-game texts by poking at the right places and on one of those days I was trying out Bruce Lee and started to modify the loading screen, which had a huge "Datasoft" logo in it which I somehow turned into "Betasoft". |
Bruce Lee's loading screen
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5. You made several demos, from 1988 to 1993. Could you (briefly !) sum up those activities ? Do you have memories to share ?
Absolutely! As everyone knows, my first 8 demos (ingeniously titled BSC DEMO 1 to 8), were milestones of the art of demo coding and I think I invented most of the important techniques like scrolling, rupture (which was later stolen by the frenchies!) and so on ..
Joking aside, I was still more of a cracker when I made BSC DEMO 1 and I was always wondering who all those guys were that were greeted in the cracker intros that came with some of the games which I got hold on. As I had never seen any real demos on the CPC at that time I was convinced that I must have been the only one who actually produced something like demos on the CPC.
Joking aside, I was still more of a cracker when I made BSC DEMO 1 and I was always wondering who all those guys were that were greeted in the cracker intros that came with some of the games which I got hold on. As I had never seen any real demos on the CPC at that time I was convinced that I must have been the only one who actually produced something like demos on the CPC.
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Now that I come to think of it: I think I got the idea of trying to make a demo on the CPC because I had seen a lot of demos on the C64s and Amigas that were so popular in Kaufhof and co. Anyway, seeing no demos from all those guys that were greeted all the time made me wonder if they really existed and I decided: no, just some crackers sending greetings to their lamer friends :)
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BSC Megademo came much later - I think all of my first 8 demos were made in 87 and 88 and the Megademo was made in 91 if I remember correctly. I had finally met the german CPC scene in the meantime (Hey Pluton and Thriller!) and I remember that seeing KKB First Demo for the first time must have been one of the most humiliating moments of my CPC live. This demo was a revelation to me and I could not believe that stuff like that was possible on the CPC. That's why the main part of BSC Megademo does have some similarities with KKB First. It was THE Demo to me at that time. I also enjoyed collaborating in bigger demos, like the CeBit Party 91 Demo with a lot of Raaaaahhh! :)
KKB First by KKB (1990)
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The Demo by Logon System (1991)
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Raaahh! (CeBit Party 91)
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I went to quite a lot of CPC parties between 1989 and 1994 and which were always great fun, chit chatting all the weekend, swapping games and demos and gossip, drinking beer, eating great food like pizza and really talking a lot of rubbish .. I for one was not amongst the most hardworking party coders.. We often went out to the streets and tagged walls, doors, phone booths with our 80pt permanent markers ;-)
One notably great night I remember was at one occasion at Mickey of TCW where we called Incognito V in the middle of the night and the call went something like this (no joke), loudspeakers turned on so everyone could hear it:
Incognitos Father (aparently): Hello?
BSC: Hello, can I talk to Vince please?
Father: Mhh, he is already sleeping..
BSC: But it's really important! I got flickering raster bars!
Father: Oh, I'll have to wake him up then!
Everyone just cracked up laughing and we could not calm down ourselves for quite a while.. I think Vinces dad really got him to the phone later, but the ensuing talk was quite useless (and my raster bars were working fine anyway) .. :D
One notably great night I remember was at one occasion at Mickey of TCW where we called Incognito V in the middle of the night and the call went something like this (no joke), loudspeakers turned on so everyone could hear it:
Incognitos Father (aparently): Hello?
BSC: Hello, can I talk to Vince please?
Father: Mhh, he is already sleeping..
BSC: But it's really important! I got flickering raster bars!
Father: Oh, I'll have to wake him up then!
Everyone just cracked up laughing and we could not calm down ourselves for quite a while.. I think Vinces dad really got him to the phone later, but the ensuing talk was quite useless (and my raster bars were working fine anyway) .. :D
6. You come from Germany (otherwise your pseudo would not be "BetaSoft Cologne" !). There was kind of (friendly) war (competition..) between French and German scene. Did you feel it at the time?Yes, there was something like a "war" or competition, rather, which was taken quite seriously from both sides. Of course the frenchies were taking things way too serious and were lacking all the fun :D No, they were just damn good demo coders (and much more in numbers as well) and I think we tried hard to keep pace.
But I for one was never amongst the best demo coders anyway, so I resorted to badmouthing and other techniques that incorporated spoken (or on-screen scrolling) language. I remember Black Mission Party aka Euromeeting 1 at BMC's place and how afraid we were to meet the Logon team and other frenchies for the 1st time. I was especially scared because I had a hidden part in BSC Megademo which made use of a "stolen" graphic (which was in turn stolen from the Amiga) and the great Cybernoid 2 tune from the Atari ST where I was also making fun of the Logon team :D But everybody was really nice and I found myself sitting at a 6128 plus (my first encounter iirc) with Longshot (Salut Serge!), talking shop about the ASIC. The frenchies were really great guys and incredibly talented demo coders, I must admit :) Click here to see English translation of European Demo Party meeting report (thanks CPCRulez !). |
An article in Amstrad Cent Pour Cent (French magazine) relayed the information of a friendly war between France and Germany
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People from Euromeeting 2 at Reims. Back row: K-OS, Hiroyuki, Alien, Thriller, BSC and Elmsoft
Crittersoap, Excalibur, Odiesoft, Crown and Weee
7. Then your interests shifted to audio programming.. why?
The original Protracker on Amiga platform
I was already into computer music at that time and I always bemoaned the lack of a proper music program like to Soundtracker or Protracker that I already knew from the Amiga. I think I tried some sample playback stuff which failed quite clearly but at that time would never have thought about a native AY tracker for the CPC because I was secretly on the lookout for the Amiga already (please don't print that!) (NoRecess: yes I did! :-))
But then I read an article in Amstrad Action about how the audio drivers of professional music artists worked and this is when I good hooked. I might have made some small experiments but it must have been not very useful because I can't really remember. So for a while I resorted to using Noisetracker from MTI together with a music driver that WEEE! thankfully provided. But as great as the existence of Noisetracker was, it was also quite limited and I still felt the need for something better.
But then I read an article in Amstrad Action about how the audio drivers of professional music artists worked and this is when I good hooked. I might have made some small experiments but it must have been not very useful because I can't really remember. So for a while I resorted to using Noisetracker from MTI together with a music driver that WEEE! thankfully provided. But as great as the existence of Noisetracker was, it was also quite limited and I still felt the need for something better.
8. Soundtrakker is probably the program you are the most famous for. For the first time, there was on CPC an equivalent to popular audio trackers available at the time on other platforms (hello Protracker for the Amiga!). Do you have memories to share? (development tools, 1st people to test the program, advertisement/commercial support, etc).
Soundtracker (ZX Spectrum - 1991)
You forgot BSCDEMO 1 to 8 - but ok, let's leave that for Wikipedia.
As I mentioned, I was used to Noisetracker when I read this article in Amstrad Action and - around the same time, I think - my brother (who became a ZX Spectrum demo coder in the meantime, called DMC) got hold of a proggy called Soundtracker, which looked and worked a lot like the Soundtracker I knew from the Amiga. I was electrified and wanted something like this for the CPC as well!
So I basically started to write a tracker which could read the ZX Spectrum Soundtracker tunes and replay them without any conversion steps (apart from transfering from the speccy of course) and this is what the first version of Soundtrakker came to be. I added some more things that I wanted to have and, in the beginning, was my own best customer :)
As I mentioned, I was used to Noisetracker when I read this article in Amstrad Action and - around the same time, I think - my brother (who became a ZX Spectrum demo coder in the meantime, called DMC) got hold of a proggy called Soundtracker, which looked and worked a lot like the Soundtracker I knew from the Amiga. I was electrified and wanted something like this for the CPC as well!
So I basically started to write a tracker which could read the ZX Spectrum Soundtracker tunes and replay them without any conversion steps (apart from transfering from the speccy of course) and this is what the first version of Soundtrakker came to be. I added some more things that I wanted to have and, in the beginning, was my own best customer :)
I really don't remember who the first people to test it were, but I remember that I presented it at one of the GOS parties in Bad Hersfeld where other CPC people got notice of it.
I used to code this thing (like anything else I made on the CPC btw) using Hisoft Devpac, specifically GENA3 - which had a built in editor that was only line oriented. It was really awkward to use and I should probably have switched to Maxam or something, but somehow that just never happened. And you could not assemble from disk or other fancy stuff so I had to link the parts of Soundtrakker using manual jump tables that glued together the editor with the player and disk op and all other parts.. really fumblesome! |
The Soundtrakker V1.0 (Amstrad CPC - 1992)
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Commercial support for Soundtrakker was done by New Age Software and Weeske (a well known distributor of CPC hardware and software) who did all the packaging and mail order stuff, but after thinking about it for maybe 20 years now, I have to come to the conclusion that I should have done it on my own - as shareware maybe. For a much better price, yet with a bigger margin. And more sold copies of course. I would be soooo rich now! ;-)
The cover artwork for the package was btw also made by DMC - thanks mate! :)
The cover artwork for the package was btw also made by DMC - thanks mate! :)
9. Prodatron created the Digitrakker, which was the sample-based counterpart of the Soundtrakker. What were your opinions about it ?
 Octoate's DigiBlaster
I haven't really understood why Digitrakker and Protracker were so popular.
They sounded quite bad unless you had a digiblaster and it was not really useful for anything else than a more or less static screen. |
Digitracker V1.4 by Prodatron
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Nothing that I was very much into at that time. I was just too happy to have a working tracker for AY music to bother dealing with sampled music on the CPC again. Technically those sample trackers were of course impressive, but they just were not for me.
10. Still about soundtrackers, what would be your recommendation to compose musics for the CPC in 2014? The Soundtrakker, Starkos (CPC version), a tracker on ST that generates YM, a PC tracker (ArkosTracker, VortexTracker..)..?
STarKos V1.2
Soundtrakker of course! At least I would still use it, I guess.
I have had my tries with AMC and Starkos and I never really understood (apart from the technical, player speed related implications) why, in Starkos at least, every effect has to be built into the intruments. You can't have independent arpeggios or slides or so, all this has to be part of the instrument itself..
I was so used to the Soundtracker (Amiga) / Protracker way that this was something that I could not get my head around it. And Soundtrakker was so easy to use (for me). But I understand that in the post-Y2K CPC world CPU cycles have become even more of rare gems and the Soundtrakker player does not belong to the fastest.
I was also thinking about a new song compiler which could emit a faster / stable player, but then I stumbled over SID...
I have had my tries with AMC and Starkos and I never really understood (apart from the technical, player speed related implications) why, in Starkos at least, every effect has to be built into the intruments. You can't have independent arpeggios or slides or so, all this has to be part of the instrument itself..
I was so used to the Soundtracker (Amiga) / Protracker way that this was something that I could not get my head around it. And Soundtrakker was so easy to use (for me). But I understand that in the post-Y2K CPC world CPU cycles have become even more of rare gems and the Soundtrakker player does not belong to the fastest.
I was also thinking about a new song compiler which could emit a faster / stable player, but then I stumbled over SID...
11. You published a prototype of a SID-based replay routine on the wiki's discussion forum. Can you tell us more about this project ?
Eklhaft SP2 (ZX Spectrum)
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I got notice of the SID effect on the Atari ST really late. In the mid 2000s I think, and after I read how it was made on the ST (with its sophisticated timers and so on) I thought that it was more or less impossible on the CPC.
A while later several things caught my attention: I saw Backtro by Overflow, so I learnt that it was actually doable on the CPC. Then I saw Eklhaft SP2 on the Speccy and I went: Heck! Even the Speccy can do it! |
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Then I saw Cubase64 and was so impressed that I ate the white paper Pex released with it. Impressive stuff btw - a must read for everyone who's into digital audio creation imho. Finally I met a friendly Oric coder on the defence-force forums who told me how SID and Sync Buzzer and some other effects were made technically. And after mixing and mashing all of this for a while I came up with a first incarnation of a "SID audio lab" which was very very basic compared to AYAY Kaeppttn but I could finally hear a hand made SID effect on my beloved emulated CPC.
At that time I thought that a new tracker with SID and Buzzer and so on which was also able to emit a fast (stable) AY player would be something that the CPC scene was hungry for - boy was I wrong. I could not motivate myself to put all the stuff around which had turned it into a full audio editor, but I published it anyway and now its dead .. I might continue working on it in the future and maybe in 1 or 5 or 10 years there will be a final product. Maybe a bit earlier if I get help from someone - there were people who expressed their interest, but everyone is just so busy with their own projects.. We'll see.. |
Cubase64 by Mahoney (C64)
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12. Your CPC musics were massively ripped during the 92-95 area into several demos. Any thoughts about it ?
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I must say that I was not aware of that (at least the massively part of it) until just recently, when I had a look at a couple of great demos from the 2nd half of the 90s.
I think it's great that those tunes were used in cool productions and most of the time I even was credited, so no problem :) Another thing I remember concerning "stolen" tunes was the fact that someone literally stole (or rather borrowed for a while) my disk box at a party in Wuppertal IIRC. This someone took it from my personal belongings at night, while I was sleeping to copy all my unreleased and partly incomplete tunes. Whoever it was, he must have been a really fucked up bastard. On the other hand, this incident has probably helped my tunes into several demos - at least partly. |
Swab Meeting '93 by Rebels
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13. I guess you still follow Amstrad CPC community at regular intervals. Do you like the productions that got released released those last years ?
Batman Forever by Batman Group (2011)
Absolutely! There were a lot of impressive demo released recently.
First of all Batman Forever of course. Another revelation and one of the coolest CPC productions ever! I couldn't understand the ensuing discussions about the techniques that were used, though. For me, demo making was always about doing things that were thought to be impossible. Something that Rhino has made like a boss!
I also enjoyed Breaking Baud, Still Rising, From Scratch, Yet Another Plasma! and the Stuff by NoRecess, of course :) There were also some quite impressive games like Super Edge Grinder. And it was really great to see that the CPC as a platform managed to attract people from other scenes over the last couple of years. Seems like the times of hardcode platform wars are finaly over :)
And even though it's also quite impressive to see many new hardware add ons, I would prefer if people put more of their energy into software products rather, because everyone with a CPC can use them.
First of all Batman Forever of course. Another revelation and one of the coolest CPC productions ever! I couldn't understand the ensuing discussions about the techniques that were used, though. For me, demo making was always about doing things that were thought to be impossible. Something that Rhino has made like a boss!
I also enjoyed Breaking Baud, Still Rising, From Scratch, Yet Another Plasma! and the Stuff by NoRecess, of course :) There were also some quite impressive games like Super Edge Grinder. And it was really great to see that the CPC as a platform managed to attract people from other scenes over the last couple of years. Seems like the times of hardcode platform wars are finaly over :)
And even though it's also quite impressive to see many new hardware add ons, I would prefer if people put more of their energy into software products rather, because everyone with a CPC can use them.
14. Are you still in contact with other members of the scene ? With your old friends of the time ?
It's actually quite a lot of guys. Even more quite recently, mainly due to AYAY Kaeppttn. But I was in touch with Prodatron all the time (we even worked in the same company for some years) and I meet Face Hugger, Odiesoft and Fraggle regularly to practice video games playing and beer drinking. I also exchange mails with some guys like Thriller and Pluton and I have had a lot of contact with some guys from the CPC wiki forum and pushnpop recently.
My favourite newcomers to the CPC musical wise are Ultrasyd and McKlain, which I also am in touch with since a while. And one thing which made me really happy to hear was that Ultrasyd got interested in chiptunes after hearing a CPC tune made by me - the best story I ever heard concerning my music :)
My favourite newcomers to the CPC musical wise are Ultrasyd and McKlain, which I also am in touch with since a while. And one thing which made me really happy to hear was that Ultrasyd got interested in chiptunes after hearing a CPC tune made by me - the best story I ever heard concerning my music :)
Digital Orgasm by Symbiosis (1994)
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15. Do you still consider yourself as a member of SymbiosiS ?Let me think...
I think the group is actually dead, but I was a member when I retired and I never filled out my emergence form, so I guess, yes, kind of. But to me that group was made up of Alien, Prodatron, Made and me. Prodatron kept ingesting other people at will - when he was really bored, probably ;-) |
16. As a chiptune lover, what kind of music do you like to listen on a daily basis in the real-life ?
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Not on a daily basis :D
But I am still very much into chip music and there was a period some years ago where I was a really regular listener of nectarine demoscene radio and I still peek into soundcloud every now and then. Oh! I just saw I misread the question :D :D Well, I like a lot of musical styles, but currenty I do not listen to a lot of music on a regular basis. Apart from that I am a huge fan of Pink Floyd and Muse, Jason Mraz, RHCP, Dire Straits, Steve Vai and a lot more. By the way! I got in touch with a lot of great bands while listening to Radio Paradise. The best online radio in the world imho. You should check it out at http://radioparadise.com. |
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17. The interview is already over. Would you have something else to add?
Evoke 2014 held in Cologne/Germany
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I would really like to meet more active CPC people in real life, that's why I tried to promote the Evoke demo party which takes place in Cologne/germany every year in august. So - come on, CPC folks! It's a nice party, great atmosphere, the city has a lot of additional offerings and you can meet BSC :D
And I want to shout a big "thank you, you rock!" to all the guys and girls that still produce stuff on their CPCs and by doing so help keeping the memory of Arnold alive :) |
Thanks Oliver !! Let me take the opportunity here to publicly thank you for the fantastic Soundtrakker. This program was clearly a daily companion program for almost 3 years when I was a teenager ! Ah, memories :)
Thanks also to CPCRulez, CPC-Power, Octoate and Pouet for screenshots.
Thanks also to CPCRulez, CPC-Power, Octoate and Pouet for screenshots.
Below is a video of the Digital Orgasm demo: second part contained one of the best music ever composed for the CPC by BSC (adapted from Space Debris music on Amiga).
