An Interview with Fabian Del Priore

The ones other ppl like too I guess, Hubbard, Galway, Follin, Huelsbeck, Daglish.

Last V8, Forbidden Forest, Aztec Challenge, Scarabeus, Giana Sisters, To Be On Top, Shades, The Final Synth Sampler stuff from Rob, etc. There are many to be mentioned here.

Korg X3, Korg Wavestation, Roland JV1080, Kurzweil K2000, Yamaha ProMix01, Sony DAT, PC, Cubase, Gigastudio among others.

Thomas Boecker, the producer of Merregnon www.merregnon.com contacted Chris Abbott in Late 2000. Soon it was clear that I had the possibility to arrange and perform Last V8 and Armalyte (the latter one together with Chris). Thomas produced the two tracks for Back in Time3.

I think they turned out really fabulous, although I prefer my Last V8 arrangement. I think my first Armalyte version was a bit better than the final version presented on BIT3. You can download the version here: http://www.mndt.de/audio/FDP_Armalyte.mp3

Well, The BiT3 Version of The Last V8 is actually superior to my first draft version. It rocks! But concerning Armalyte, it's my personal taste I think.

I do really hope so, I would greatly appreciate it

Simply because I adore the SID chip and its sound capabilities. By the way, I used SID sounds on Armalyte, too. Both sounds were tracked note by note into Fasttracker. It was quite a hard task to fulfil. But at the end, a studio production came out, not a Fasttracker XM file. 😊

Using the SID chip, you don't have the sounds of real instruments, so you have to rely on your tracking and/or composing talents to create a really good SID tune, I think.

Oh yes! If you take a look at the discussion boards on www.c64audio.com you'll read some very positive comments about Last V8 and Armalyte, which makes me really happy! Being a musician, positive feedback is really an important part. 😊

Great fun. We used to know each other while he was still living in Germany. I've sent a demo tape to him, and soon afterwards we worked together on projects like Menateus (The EXPO2000 Game) and Extreme Assault by Blue Byte. I'm glad to call him a friend. In late 1999, Chris introduced me to Thomas Boecker. Because Tom worked together with Chris as a director I got in contact with him, too , and we became good friends while working on the excellent Merregnon Project. 😊

Yes, I do think that he certainly was an important factor concerning my career in music.

I never put those 78 sid tunes of mine on the web … I don't think they represent the best part of my musical output. They were made from 1985 to 1990, and they actually do not exist as .sid tunes, but as mp3 audio files. I simply transferred the audio to my PC soundcard, and that's it. Maybe one day, I'll put some audio snippets of them on my homepage. 😊 I was 7-12 years old during that time.

Yes, this is my Fasttracker Remix of the first BiT1 track and can actually be found on the web (try my homepage www.rapturemusic.de )… I created it shortly after the purchase of Back in Time 1.

They should drop me a mail at info@rapturemusic.de and we'll see what I can do. There shouldn't be a problem to send the wanted tunes out to the people then. It's simply because I don't own that much webspace. 😊

When I contacted Tom for the first time (we met each other in IRC at that time), we soon became good friends and realised that we had the same kind of dream in our mind: To create a complex fantasy universe and to develop a professional soundtrack on CD simultaneously, which would be composed by famous PC demo scene and game composers from all over the world like Chris Huelsbeck, Rudolf Stember, Allister Brimble and Jogeir Liljedahl, to name just a few. Thomas would be the producer / organiser, I would be the main composer of Merregnon. What happened soon afterwards? Our project became a huge international success with lots of brilliant press reviews! We surely can be very proud of Merregnon.

Yes. There is a follow-up in the works, but I cannot give away much details at this time (sorry, confidential;) I can only tell you that Merregnon is planned as a trilogy.

Absolutely. I was really happy to include the Dragon, named Skar, as one of the main characters (besides Gallahadt, the true protagonist and Selina). It's not your average fairy dragon that we're talking about here, you know. abduct a damsel in distress, only to be slaught by a dragonslaying knight, the hero who is about to rescue his beloved. It is so much more in Merregnon. We are very happy about how the story turned out at the end.

Well, Tom knows about the exact numbers of sold CD's etc, but I think we're doing very fine. I bet Merregnon sells well!😉

The themes of the protagonist Gallahadt and the Dragon Madostror'Skar were made by me. Both appear in many variations in most tunes of the other composers, too. Additionally, Tom and me had to be in permanent contact with the musicians and to verify the quality of the incoming songs, etc.
Furthermore, I made 3 tunes plus Prologue and Epilogue, and some additional music for the website.

The co-operation with Chris Huelsbeck was good. The soundtrack was made within two or three month of constant work in Chris' studio. The musical style resembles Hans Zimmer's The Rock in most tracks, I must say that I always was a Zimmer enthusiast, and when I heard about Chris' plans to make a Zimmerish style, I was quite excited about it. It was fun creating the soundtrack.

I think Inspector Gadget for Playstation (made by Ubisoft) was quite good, too. I composed it during the work on Merregnon, so it was quite a hard time for both Tom and me, but we suceeded. 😊

A lot of projects, but they must be kept as a secret for now…

The inspiration comes from various musicians like Chris Huelsbeck, Robert Miles, Vangelis, Enigma, Jarre, John Williams, Hans Zimmer, James Newton Howard, Randy Edelman, etc. The other part are the positive aspects in life itself, I think, like Good weather, imaginations of the sea, mountains, landscapes etc), nice people, friends/girl-friends, and Dragons. 😊

The reason is the love to compose - the love to be in a world where creativity is everything. On a sunny day, a friend of mine gave me a 3.5'' disk which contained Fasttracker II, one of the most famous tracking programs on the PC. (It was Version 2.02 or something). From one day to another, everything in my life changed - the tracker was born inside of me. And I finally got the chance to present my music to a large audience. After my tracking career, I started to use MIDI and build up a semi-professional studio, which I use nowadays to write music for software companies and so on…

Many thanks to all the people who supported me over the years. I would be nothing without an audience interested in my works. Keep visiting my page for even more music in the future. To you, Neil: Thank you for the great interview, it was great fun! Lastly, don't drink and drive.