An Interview with Michiel Soede (www.soedesoft.com)

Like lot’s of other guys back then, Rob Hubbard was my favorite, when we started using our own music routine, copying his famous drum sounds was one of the first things I did. I also liked Ben Daglish, and David Whittaker.

I think it’s Nemesis the Warlock, Commando, Crazy Comets, The Last Ninja.

What I didn’t like is that you were limited to using 3 voices, and the limited amount of waveforms it could produce. I also didn’t like that you only had one controllable filter. What I loved is all the crazy effects like ring-modulation, synchronisation, which could be triggered by another voice channel. When I look back, even the limitations made the chip fun to use. When we (me and my brother Jeroen) switched to the Amiga, and later to the PC making music everything sounds more professional, and everything is possible. Though the music sounds more realistic, I sometimes miss programming one chip to the limit.

Today I am still programming computers, and making music (though I only make money with the first thing 😉. The thing I liked about the C64 was that you had the idea that you were totally in control. We also liked to make demos, like Trailmix, or Hammer & Jarre.

There’s a difference between my brother and me. My brother mostly focused on melodies (he also is the person who made most of SoedeSoft’s musics), while I liked more experimenting with strange sounds. Nowadays, I am experimenting a lot with house music, and my brother makes some music using his electric guitar. In the c64 days, we just made funny, or funky sounding tunes that (at least) we liked ourselves.

My favourite music band is Live, Guano Apes, Limp Bizkit. For house music I don’t really have a favourite band, maybe Sash, as he makes good melodic house music.

I think it was something like 8 years ago, when we still used the amiga with one synthesiser only (kawai K4), that I started making the cover. I tried to make a note-by-note cover of the original, and to program the sounds on the K4 as perfect as possible, trying to get everything out of this synth as possible. The only bad thing about this synth, is that the drums were lousy. I didn’t do anything with it for years, but one day, a friend of mine told me to send my StarPaws cover to Chris Abbot. After that I got into contact with some other remixers, and then I liked the idea to get this old cover from the closet and add some new effects, and sounds to it with my more up-to-date synths. I worked on it for weeks (not fulltime ofcourse 😉, and posted it on the egroups c64 remix list. Though it wasn’t perfect (drums could be better) I thought it was good enough.

I’d like to do a remix again, but at the moment I am not working on anything. Right now, I am trying to learn how to play a bassgitar, so maybe I’ll do some rock cover with my brother (who plays the lead guitar), later. This will take a while though.

My favourite music band is Live, Guano Apes, Limp Bizkit. For house music I don’t really have a favourite band, maybe Sash, as he makes good melodic house music.

We started programming games on the C64, of course a game without music is boring, so we had to include music, and because we didn’t like ripping music of others, we wanted to include our own. Later this evolved into making music for demo’s (it turned out that making games is too much work), and making music for games created by friend of us. We started making music more seriously when Chris Huelsbeck released his Soundmonitor. Though I liked the concept of his tool, I thought the creation of sounds was too limited and the size of the music was too much. Therefore my brother and I started programming ourselves, my brother created the routine, and I created an editor (everything from scratch, nothing was ripped 😉.

Why not? But not exact covers. A remix could be a hit, if you create a modern house music, based on a C64 music, it could be a hit.

I didn’t know this band really, so I just downloaded an mp3. I heard this tune before, sounds cool! So I guess it confirms my previous answer, and also proves that you can include (parts of) original SID music in your covers! Maybe I should try this, in a couple of months I’ll hit the dutch charts! (..I wish 😉

Very different, as I mentioned before. Making music on the C64 you are always realising that you’re doing it on this (*great*) SID-chip, and trying to get everything out of it. Switching to the Amiga the focus was more on creating good sound samples. Using synthesisers, music becomes professional, and it becomes more difficult to make a difference.

My personal favorite is a tune called ‘Vinnie’ (named after one sound of my Yamaha AN1x synth). (I put a short sample of it on my soedesoft.com site).

My last project was a (fast) cover of a C64 game called ‘Fifth Axis’. I started making this tune without listening to the original sid again, and made a house version of it. When I finished it a friend of mine found the original game again. Though some stupid guy on the c64rmx mailing list accused me of ‘raping’ Gilles Soulet’s masterpiece (come on, the tune isn’t really that great, just listen to the original 😉, I like my cover.

I think both is OK. I think it’s harder to make a good cover, because you want to catch the original spirit of the tune. Very often a cover sounds better than the original, but when you listen without being a C64 fan, it might sound poor. I do not really like remixes that simply add some beats on top of the original sid-tune, making a remix (like the zombie nation) is a better option, and also gives you more creative freedom.

I also made music on the Amiga, again using our own music routine – called SoundMaster II, which was based on our C64 routine. I also used MIDI on the Amiga (Bars ‘n Pipes).

We’ll see, I’d still like to make some music for games, or anything, although I am not really trying. Maybe I’ll start playing in some band or something.

I love to bike, both on a road bike (racing), and a mountainbike. I also like to watch movies, going out etc. And of course, don’t forget the music!

It’s great! I was really surprised that so many people are still involved in this. I didn’t do anything with it anymore, until some guys (like Neil, from Remix64) tracked me down. Especially I thank Peter Sanden from HVSC, who did so much for collecting SoedeSoft’s old c64 tunes, and Wilfred Bos, who was the first guy who found me on the internet, and dragged me in the c64 scene again!