Commodore Remix

I wonder if anyone knows anything about Wally Beben
It seems strange to me that nothing about him can be found on the web, let alone an interview.
Is he from England? What's he doing nowadays?
We know so much about Rob & Martin but this guy has been fallen into oblivion, although he should be a star (imho).

I agree. He has done some really good and impressive work.

What I could find was this:

http://noname.c64.org/csdb/scener/?id=8133 (right-click and open in new window, otherwise you lose this page).

Seems he's from the U.K. and also use tha alias "hagar". This, for some reason, gave me a vibe from the IRC. Isn't there a Hagar hanging around on the SLAY channel from time to time? Is this the same person? If so, very nicely covered through the years. =)

/
Sonic

Always liked the work of Wally - A much underestimated musician. Moons ago I tried to track him down and failed. Although bizarrely on my mission i found other sneaky musicians in that process. Neil Brennen was one who sadly i never got the chance to speak to in the end. Sonic did cover Foundations waste by him on Revival ST very creditably so that makes up for it

Yeah, Hagar, and sometimes he is credited as "Wal Beban" which sounded not classically english to me, therefore the question...

I read somewhere that he used to compose with the Ariston Editor on the C64, which was also used by Steve Barrett and I tend to think you can hear that by their music. It has a somehow specifical sound...

<OT>
By the way, I found a nice ad of the 80s when I searched for Ariston. Oviously it's for some washing machine manufacturer called Ariston and uses the Robocop music by Jonathan Dunn (Gameboy-version).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUVs7vXNZiw
</OT>

Apparently Wally Beben did some track-verifications for the HVSC-crew, so he seems to care to a certain degree.
Plus, he wrote to the producers of the Tetris rave-reggae mix some words of appreciation...
http://www.gratissaugen.de/erbsen/download.html

But that's all, he seems to stay a mystery to a large extend...

Seems there was Biographical info on him on Wiki but it was deleted.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk: ... dentaly.3F

SHAME!!

wow... I'm just still very surprised that people still remember!

Yes I'm very much around, although not into the commercial music scene anymore. Basically spent many years in program and system development and administration, one failed marriage and businesses in UK, the US and Canada - apart from that, I still take time to have nostalgic thoughts about the "good times"

Before anyone asks, no, I have none of my old code left of the music I did, or of the ariston player that I helped to write (and actually converted to use on the 16-bit machines for the games there such as R-Type on the ST and Hammerfist on the Amiga) - many system crashes and lack of backups have lost a lot of valuable data, I'm afraid...

But I still track a little bit using the PC trackers that are available, just for the fun of it I actually ran a BBS in the early 90's called "Sounds Digital" that had a lot of Mods and Midi files on it - some of you may remember that one

Anyway I'm flattered that people still think of the stuff that I did... thanks; it brings a warm glow to the heart But there are so many realy great composers out there, musical talents that far outstrip the efforts I and my peers managed to do in the early, heady days of the home micro - they're the ones that should be receiving the attention, and deservedly so.

Take care guys And thanks for making an old guy happy

OMG!! It's HIM!!!

Great to see you alive & kicking, Wally!
You know, I worship your works, especially "Dark Side", which is my favourite C64-tune of all time. And of course "Tetris" and "Hammerfist" coming close.

And outstripped or not, you're a hero, at least for me.
I still play your tunes in my car at times and I'm always pitying the guys in the other cars who can't hear them

Any "production notes" you can give away concerning Dark Side?
I mean when you finished it you must have thought by yourself "Wow, what have I done? This is huge!" or something like that...

Anyway, thank you for the music & keep on rocking!

Monty

Forum magic does it again... welcome Wally

And indeed Monty's cover of Dark Side does rock. Tetris is just wow... also loved the music for RISK (The Edge) as well. And to be fair, the C64 had lots of great musicians for it, just some get more attention than others

hagar wrote:wow... I'm just still very surprised that people still remember!

Sir, your work has been on my To Remix-list for ages. I did do a Starforce Fighter remixa long long time ago, but there's a lot of treasure that deserves a dusting off in your backcatalog.

Since you're still tracking, why not do some remixing of your SIDs yourself?

Hey Wally! Nice to read something from the "master himself" here in the forum!

I'm a big fan of your Tetris tune, as you can see here:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=4592&p=59906#p59906

Back then I always wondered how you managed to squeeze those 25+ minutes of music including sampled sounds into that limited amount of RAM.

Ever heard the full-length remix by Darren Izzard & Chris Abbott? It's absolutely fabulous!

Welcome Hagar

Now he has joined, shouldn't we try and talk him into writing some new song/remixes?

again... wow don't know what to say, really...

As far as Dark Side goes, that was influenced greatly by two pieces of music that kept running thru my head at the time... the James Bond theme (!) and the entire B-side of 'Umma Gumma' by Pink Floyd - I think I managed to capture the suspense from both of these in the track (which, I think was around 10 minutes before wrapping).

I did not receive the best of treatment from Edge software at the time (as many others also found out to their cost) but the music for the games were always fun to do

Tetris was a strange one... I'd just managed to talk to Phil (known as Gilbert on Compunet) and Ian (the original author of the base ariston) about adding a 4th channel using synthesized samples through the NMIs, and they were writing the C64 version of Tetris at the time, so it was kinda assumed that I'd do the music for it Anyway it took about a week to write, and I had great fun tweaking as much of the code as I could to get it to sound the way it did. It was odd that many people thought that the sampled sound were the "tom-toms' - actually they were pure SID, the sample was the low end guitar chord that could be heard all the way throughout!

I wasn't too happy with the percussion sounds that the player was producing, and at the time I spoke to Charles and Jeroen of the Maniacs of Noise; they wanted to know how I did the 'phasing' effect of the SID, so I sent them the code for the player, they returned it after getting what they wanted from it, and also they had redone a section of the code that gave some great drum effects! I think the first time I used the new drums was for "Ball Game" and then for "Scuba Kidz".

I'd added and changed a lot of the player code since its original incarnation, and the conversion of the player from C64 to 16 bit (both Amiga and ST) I managed with the help of a very good friend who lived locally - Chris from Bury St. Edmunds. He was probably the best programmer I had ever worked with, and wrote some great games

I may go through some of the C64 pieces I did on the tracker one of these days, if time and inclination permits... if so I'll be sure of letting you guys know, so you can tell me how bad I've gotten now I'm approaching senility! hehehe....

Anyways it was great to chat with you guys, and the reminiscing works wonders for the old ego

Take care

Cool, always fun to read stories from the old days at first hand.
The Pink Floyd influence on Dark Side (of the moon ) is not the greatest surprise, but I would have never thought of the James Bond theme playing a part in the creation process...

Thanks for squeezing out your memory for us and writing down those interesting stories. Highly appreciated!

All the best,
Monty (Now in waiting-mode for new Wally Beben tunes)

I must say that "Foundation's Waste" is one of the best gamemusics ever imho, the Atari ST version that is as the Amiga version sounded a bit faint wich was odd as it's usually the other way around