Editorial - June 2002

It's coming…. It's so very close…. It's the most anticipated event of the year. yeah, Bitlive 3 is just weeks away, and it promises to be by far the best yet. Registrations are now over the 300 mark which is double than that of last year. A whole host of personalities and celebraties will be there. But there's more than just that. Live performances from Machinae Supremacy, PPOT, Seth Sternberger, Octave Sounds and much more. Also The three CD's are set to be lauched, Reyn's Galway Remixed, Instant Remedy and there's another one i can't remember for the moment. Oh yes, thats it… Remix64 😊 We'll be taking pictures at the event and writing a full report for the guys who cannot make it.

At this point i'd like to welcome Makke to remix64, at this page every month we will now find a special dedicated area for his views and opinions. We always need to spark this page up a little and now we have. He's opinionated, he's passionate, he's sometimes contriversial but he's always has something interesting to say, so i'll pass you on to Makke and his collumn.
See ya next month

Neil (Editor)

Turbulent month turning out fine!

Well, the start of May did bring us one of the most hot threads ever in the forums. Luckily, in the end, not much harm was done. Even though the thread was deleted, which I think was the best move to put it behind and carrying on, it'll probably be remembered as the the day the scene went bonkers. A lot of upsetting things were said and were happening, and for me it was a bit too much. But as said before, not much harm was done in the end. At least not from my point of view.

Our beloved R:K:O got a spring cleaning. In my opinion also a good move. A couple of years back C64 remixes as we know it were scares. (Not counting old Amiga remixes and XM remixes, because let's face it. C64 remixing is nothing new!) When only c64audio.com and the Triad Archive were the ones offering a wide selection of C64 remix MP3's to download you were quite happy with anything you got. The BlueNine Module archive had since long pretty much closed, and updates of C64 remix modules were as good as gone.

The launch of R:K:O became a new turning point and a center for the new C64 remix scene. Together with the now half-dead c64rmx-mailinglist R:K:O were the significant parts of it all. As interest grew new arrangers, and old ones, began to create a vast amount of remixes, constantly increasing the average quality. Interesting times, but also a bit disturbing for me personally as I was on a modem and totally incapable of downloading everything that was released (I would probably not be a very frequent visitor to r64, and most probably wouldn't be writing this if I didn't get a broadband connection last August). So I for one missed a lot of good (and most likely a few bad) remixes between the last months of 2000 and late summer 2001, and there were so many of them I couldn't be arsed to download them all when the broadband connection was installed.

What I'm getting at is that there's no need to publish all C64 remixes ever made. Quality has increased so much that some remixes are either obsolete or simply so much below average that no one (part from the arranger perhaps) would mind them being deleted. If you can get five top quality remixes of Sanxion in various styles, you probably wont mind missing out on two which are of lower quality than the other five. I know I don't.

You might argue that there's some historical value to some remixes, and I agree. For the ones that has been around since the beginning there might be some value in the old remixes. But most of us oldies probably already have them. Though I doubt a newcomer to R:KO would miss them as he/she would compare them to a newly released Detert remix. And let's face it, they'd think the old one sucked and nothing more.

Then you might say: What about a newbie, releasing his first remix? Shouldn't he/she get the chance to be heard? Absolutely. But there's a place for everything. R:K:O is not, in my opinion. The first thing to learn as a newbie is where you're at. Which quality can you achieve? You need to learn where the standard is at. As a newbie you of course need to be encouraged to find the will and power to carry on improving. Question is though is everyone prepared to listen to a newbies first remix if it stinks really bad?

If you find a low quality dance remix of Max Headroom at R:K:O and compare it to let's say the SoundWavers remix of the same track. Would you still keep it on your harddrive? I doubt it. Then what good is it to keep it at R:K:O? When the same newbie a year later has done great improvements (some never do though) and his new tracks are getting good, do you think he would want his name to be associated with that old crappy remix from a year ago? I think not. He'll probably mail Jan and ask for it to be removed.

I've nothing against newbies, we've all been there, but I've had enough of ChEcK oUt My NeW lEeT trAx! It rOXx! in my days.

As I hope you all noticed summer is coming up, and I will spend a lot of time off line. Going to be living with my parents for the better part of the summer. This means I wont be able to check out all new releases. On the other hand I'll be close to the beach, get hot meals every day, drink my dads beer and work on my CD. I think I can keep my mind off the new releases for a while.

Till next time folks.

Makke