An Interview with Mark Cooksey

Rob Hubbard, Martin Galway

Thing On A Spring was the 1st Rob Hubbard tune I heard and it really impressed me at the time. Others I liked were Wizball, Sanxion and Crazy Comets.

By chance! I'll explain fully in question 12

The sid was a great sound chip for the time. I liked the fact that you could assign different waveforms to different channels, and that the square wave had a variable pulse width register that you could change to create modulated type sounds. On the down side the filters were a bit dodgy on some of the C64s and a tune that sounded good on a normal C64 sounded totally different on one of the dodgy ones. Of course an extra channel would have been great, and a better implementation of ring modulation would have been useful.

There were some real characters at Elite, its a wonder any work ever got done. I remember and incident where one chap was restrained by the others, a red crash helmet was put on his head and then he was locked up in a filing cabinet, this was then turned upside down much to the amusement of everyone else. Another time, a chap who had long hair and resembled the general appearance of Jesus was pseudo crucified on a hastily errected wooden cross. These are just a couple the many incidents that occured, we did do some work in between…..honest!

I think I would have preferred to compose my own music most of the time, however the programmers reigned supreme when it came to many of the decisions especially where it concerned the lowly musician. A lot of the games were arcade conversions or licensed titles and hence the music was copied from the original source, when an original product was produced the programmer would often want some of their favourite music in the game (such as J.M.Jarre). At the time the copyright law was a bit of a grey area as far as computer music was concerned and we got a way with doing cover versions.

Yes the snippit is a slightly altered version of Tubular Bells. I liked the tune and thought it was quite atmospheric, so I thought I'd use it in one of my tunes.

The loading tunes were implemented using a proprietary fast loader called Novaload. The data format was somewhat bulky and time consuming to enter into the package, and I think we were on a tight time schedule. I think one of the loading tunes was a cover of Living on Video which the programmer of one of the games had heard and liked.

I think because the main tune is a version of one of J.M. Jarres's tunes. I think it was one of the equinox tunes, and the game was quite addictive of course, which could have brain washed people into liking the music as well.

I think G&G was my best implemented tune up to that point. I think some of the later tunes were more complex and had more variety of sounds. Felix is one of my favourites because its got a bizzare melody and sound to it. I also like Storm Warrior which has a classical type tune and a tune which uses the filters to good effect (on a proper C64). G&G has to be up there in the favourites list of course, as this is the tune most people remember and mention when they meet me.

Oh yes, quite a few! But given the amount of money being paid (a pitance) I wasn't too bothered.

I did'nt deliberately set out to write games music it happened more or less by accident. When I first left school I was looking for a job in electronics or something affiliated with physics, which was my favourite subject at school, after many rejected application letters I decided to go to the local job centre and see what they had on offer. Elite were advertising for programmers in the job centre and I thought 'thats quite close to electronics'. When I got home I wrote a letter to them applying for a job as a trainee games programmer. The next day I got a phone call asking me to go in for an interview with the boss, Brian Wilcox. I turned up for the interview and went through the normal sequence of events. At the end of the interview, to prove that I could do rudimentary assembler programming, I was asked to go away and write some music on my own home computer (an Oric Atmos). The tune that they wanted was the theme to Airwolf, and when I went back with the music, they gave me a job more or less on the spot. I thought I was going to be a trainee programmer but the first thing they gave me to do was to recreate the Airwolf music on the C64. From that point onwards I was roped in to doing the music!

After the C64 I worked on music for Gameboy, SNES, PC and Playstation both self employed and working for a company called NMS which has since been liquidated.

Yes indeed, for my sins, I still am writing music for computer games. I do music for the PC, Gameboy (Colour), Gameboy Advance. Also I am getting into Digital Video editing, titling and fx using a real time PC based video editor that I bought.

I worked as an employee twice for Elite, the 1st time 1985-1986 and the 2nd time around 1989-1990. The 1st time I was removed as an employee and taken on as a freelance musician earning a fixed fee per project, this cost them less but gave me the freedom to work for other people as well. I was taken on again in 1989 or there abouts, and things were much better, they got me some decent kit including an AKAI S950 sampler and a Korg M1 keyboard a long with Notator on the Atari ST. I produced music for Amiga, PC, Atari ST and NES machines. Later on Elite decided they were going to start publishing their own games and this required a lot of money. To this end they streamlined the company and made redundant a large portion of the staff, including me.

Not a lot really. I've composed quite a few tunes for my own pleasure, and even sent off some demos to music publishers and other companies. However there are so many people out there wanting to get into TV and film music that the market is swamped. A lot of these people are really talented but there are so many of them that only a minority make it.

I was contacted by Chris Abott who asked me if I was interested in doing a remixed version of the Ghost N Goblins music.

I've done a version of the Storm Warrior Music which I have passed on to Chris. He is hopefully going to use his vast array of synths and equipment to make it sound really good. Whether it will appear on future Bit CD's is up to Chris as I know he's got more than enough material to fill several CD's.

Composing on the Gameboy is similar to composing for the C64 except that it is more limited in its range of sounds. Composing tunes on PC CD Rom allows the composer to use his full complement of synths and sound modules, this is good in one respect because it allows the user to create full range CD type tracks. On the down side sometimes the sounds used become more important than the music itself and even a poor composer can create something that sounds (superficially) good. Not due to the expressive melody or excellent arrangement but due to the exotic sounds on their sound module(s).

Oric Atmos: Average Amstrad CPC: Poor Spectrum: Very Poor Spectrum : Poor NES: Average SNES: Quite Good PlayStation: Quite Good Gameboy: Average Advance Gameboy: Quite Good PC CD-Rom: Only limited by the composer and his sound sources. PC Sound Card GM: Good

1) The fact that some turbo tape loaders were faster than the disk drive at loading games. 2) My power supply that used to buzz quietely at first then get louder and louder and LOUDER the longer it was swithced on. 3) Staring at a low resolution TV screen with light blue writing on an intense royal blue background until my eyes popped and my head exploded.

I met Rob Hubbard when he came to Elite to do the Commando music. He worked overnight and got the whole lot completed in less than 24 hours. I think he got paid about £200 pounds and maybe his train fare as well. I've also met Martin Walker, I may have met others but I can't remember as time has jaded my memory.

Should be good. I'd like to hear the re-mixes played on a loud and massive PA in the night club. I'm not sure whether it should be a one off event or perhaps repeated every couple of years or so. I suppose it depends on how the acutal night goes.

An in-game tune for a gameboy version of Gremlins.

Yes. I am currently working on a couple of Advance Gameboy projects.

I don't like to look too far ahead. Most of the consoles that I work on have a limited life span and when the work stops coming in then I'll consider moving on to something else. But I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

Quite suprised really considering its been a considerable time since the C64 was at its peak. However a lot of the tunes were really well composed and arranged and lend themselves to being redone using modern tech stuff.

Go for it. If somone can make the tunes sound half decent by using modern synths etc and actually get some enjoyment out of it then who am I to object.

I suppose so in a way, if I knew the game was going to be so crap I would have spent even less time creating the music.

Keep buying those BIT CDs and perhaps I'll be able to arrange another tune for one of the next releases, thereby getting me a bit of extra dosh to pay for my bad habits.