An Interview with Jarno Beumer (DaTucker)

Hard to answer, there are so many good SID’s. Of course I do have some titles that special to me. Commando is one of them. I remember that I got a copy of the game, started it and… wow, that was something I had never heard before on C64. The music was sounding great! It was the first time I heard a SID with a more advanced routine playing it. After that better routines were developed and the music started sounding even better, but they aren’t as special as Commando is to me.

I always have liked the tunes of Jeroen Tel and Charles Deenen. Rob Hubbard is another favourite obviously. Thomas Mogensen. He’s not so well known I believe, but he did some great tunes.

In no particular order: CZ Tunes, Ferrara, OJ Oscillation, DHS of TSW.

You want a honest answer? 😊 I found remix.kwed.org after I accidentally visited www.remix64.com and read about it. ‘That’s great, ’ I thought, ‘I can get remixes of C64 tunes here! ’ I started to download some tunes at random and listened to them. To be honest, I was a bit dissappointed by the quality of the mixes I picked at that moment. So I thought: ‘I can do that better! ’ and started working on Commando that evening. It turned out to be a big hit (in the scene) : in just a few days I was on #1 and in less than a week the tune was on #1 in the month’s chart. I never thought it would be such a success. Now that I have downloaded and listened some more mixes I found some really good remixes too, like the Headroom remix of DHS of TSW. My first pick was a bit unlucky I guess, but at least it got me into the scene! 😊

I like it! Nice people, nice remixes!

A mix should be right in both a musical and a technical way. A mix can be technical (I mean the mixing part, soundquality etc.) very good, if it is not good in a musical way it still will be a bad mix. The opposite is possible too: a mix can be very good from a musical view, but if the technical part is done bad it is not fun listening to it. Therefore I would ask the remixers, who are doing great things from a musical view, to put some more effort in mixing the tune. It can really help to spice up the songs.

I think remix.kwed.org is giving it a big boost because it’s a one-stop place to get most C64-remixes. I think it would be great if this site could be combined with the www.remix64.com site because then people have everything about C64-remixes on one place.

I like a lot of music styles. Classical (Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Copeland, but not Schoenberg) jazz, dance (almost everything from acid house to techno, except the gabber-‘music’ - which I don’t regard as music -) early electronic music like Kraftwerk and Jean Michel Jarre in his best days (I think his music is not as good as it was anymore. He was at his best in the 70’s and 80’s) I don’t listen rock music a lot. There are only few rock titles I like.

Being new to the scene I don’t know exactly what SID’s are remixed and what not. And there are 15000 SIDs. Hard to make a choice of that. I know there is a tune from Chris Huelsbeck with samples in it saying ‘Digital technology’. I don’t know if it is remixed yet, but I think that would be a nice one to remix.

The C64 time was great! I remember I got it for ‘Sinterklaas’ from my parents (which is the Dutch tradition that was the origin for the American Santa Claus) I was so happy to get it, after all it was promised me as Christmas and then I got it totally unexpected a few weeks earlier. I remember swapping the disks and tapes on the schoolyard. My first intro that I programmed in assembly… I was not really in the scene but some sort of a ‘local hero’ I guess. I now do still have some friends who I met in that period because they had seen a program with my intro put in it. Funny to look back and see that at that time from these friends I was the best in C64-programming, but another guy (which still is a good friend) is now a professional programmer while I am finishing my law study at the moment.

I think we’ve seen with Zombie Nation that it can become commercial. All good melodies can end up in commercial tunes and I will not wonder if some time another commercial song using a theme from a SID is released.

Sure. If I have the time I sure will be doing some more stuff. Actually I started a remix of the Last Ninja tune and I want to use the typical SID-sound from that in it, but I am not happy with the result yet. Furthermore I think I will remix the Chipwar (?) tune from Chris Huelsbeck, using the samples from the tune in it.

I think a bit Jean Michel Jarre with modern dance influences. In my Cybernoid II remix you can hear the Jean Michel Jarre style. The Commando-remix is more like modern Dance, maybe with a touch of R’n’B. Besides I did some quite weird breakbeat-stuff of songs I composed. That is more experimental.

Cybernoid II. It is pretty complex and a lot of things happen in that tune. For non SID tunes I think that would be Also sprach Zarathustra. For those who don’t know that: it’s the Star Wars-like orchestral music by Strauss.

I do own a Roland JV-1080 expanded with a SR-JV80-11 expansionboard and Roland D-10. I didn’t use these for the remixes yet, not for the final mix. I did the remix in Propellerhead’s Reason. I like that software: great flexibility and sound. Besides I do use Cubase 5 with various VST-plugins and Soundforge 5. 0 with different plugins too for sample editing.

A complete studio equipped with a decent mixing desk and lots of synths, samplers and fx-processors would be cool. But I would be pleased with a decent sampler too, for this time 😊

It depends. For the two mixes I did so far, I’ve been tweaking a lot to find the sounds I thought that would fit in the mix. Actually I spent more time on the Cybernoid II-remix because that song is more complex and using more voices so I had to find sounds that are ‘compatible’ with eachother. Finding individual cool sounds is not a problem, but they have to fit in the mix as complete piece of music.

As said in the answer to Q7: a cooperation of Remix64 and RKO would be great.

The people are really nice, I got some very enthusiastic responses. That is really encouraging me to do more stuff in future. I didn’t find any negative in the scene so far. Maybe more people could participate in an active way. I saw quite high download figures on RKO, but in Remix64 the forums are not overcrowded (using an understatement)

What I would like to share is what I already posted in the forum: don’t think you can’t make great music because you don’t have sophisticated studio equipment. First of all a lot can be achieved by using software. Propellerhead’s Reason is a great low budget tool I think. Second: a fully equipped studio doesn’t give you more talent. Even the worst musician will not produce a good piece in a great studio but on the other hand talented people can make great music with little equipment. Best evidence of that is the SID!