An Interview with Søren Jeff
Lund
When did you get your first c64?
I think I got my first c64 around 1985, my dad bought it for me. 😊 Talk about having a nice dad, eh? ;o)
Who are your favourite sid composers?
I have many favourite sid composers to name the most important ones:
Rob Hubbard, Martin Galway, Laxity, Drax, Metal, Charles Deenen, Jeroen Tel, JCH, Johannes Bjerregaard, Fred Gray,Matt Gray, Tim Follin, Jesper Olsen, Geir Tjelta, Deek, Martin Walker, Link, PRI, Chris Huelsbeck, Ramiro Vaca and more which I just can't remember right now.
What were your favourite sids of the 80s?
Composer | SIDs |
Martin Walker | Armalyte |
Jeroen Tel | Cubernoid I II, Eliminator song #1, F-14 Tomcat song #3, Hawkeye song #3, Myth, Navy moves song #3, Savage, That's the way it is song#1,Turbo Outrun, |
Geir Tjelta/Mozicart | Luminous |
Link | Skyway 89, Visage |
Laxity | Musique, Nefarious, Something, Star_Dream |
Oliver Kläwer | Emerald_Mine |
Jesper Olsen | Piece of mind, Sex_n_Crime_11, Warball |
JCH | Batman_Long, Beatbassie, Ending, Glider Pilot, Hard on, Hawaii song #2, Hollow_plus, introzak, Jewels, Michelle, Narrow Plus, Need you tonight v2, Ode to JO, Oswald song #1, Secret Land, She's just a maniac, Short_n_Sad, Training, Volvulus, Wizax Intro |
Chris Hülsbeck | Dance_At_night, Danger Freak song #1, Down at the trolls intro, Grand Monster Slam song#1 and #5, The Great Giana Sisters soundtrack, Hollywood poker pro song#1, Katakis soundtrack, One night more, R-type soundtrack, Spherical soundtrack, Starball soundtrack, To be on top soundtrack |
Rob Hubbard | Ace II, Arcade classics, Auf wiedersehen Monty soundtrack, BMX kids, Chain reaction, Chimera song#1, Commando soundtrack, Crazy Comets song#1, Delta soundtrack, Dragons Lair II soundtrack, Gerry the germ song#1, The human race, I-ball, IK plus, International karate, Knucklebusters song#1, Lightforce, Master of Magic song#1, Mega Apocalypse, Monty on the run, Nemesis the warlock, nineteen, Ninja, Saboteur, Sanxion song#2, Sigma seven, Skate or die, Spellbound soundtrack, Thanatos, Thing on a spring, Warhawk soundtrack |
Matt Gray | Bangkok knights loader, Deliverance soundtrack, Dominator soundtrack, Driller, Hunters Moon song#3, Jukebox, Last Ninja 2 soundtrack, Professional BMX simulator soundtrack |
Fred Gray | Batman the caped crusader soundtrack, Break Thru, G.U.T.Z. soundtrack, Implosion song#2, Legend of Kage, Madballs soundtrack, Mutants song#1 and #3, N.O.M.A.D., Nodes of Yesod, Transformers |
Martin Galway | Arkanoid soundtrack, Athena soundtrack, Combat School soundtrack, Game Over song # 1, Green Beret soundtrack, Miami Vice soundtrack, Mikie soundtrack, Never Ending Story, Rambo first blood part1 soundtrack, Rastan soundtrack, Short Circuit soundtrack, Terra Cresta, Times of Lore soundtrack, Wiaball soundtrack, Ye Ar Kung-Fu soundtrack |
Follin Brothers | Agent X II soundtrack, Aiginas Prophecy soundtrack, Black Lamp soundtrack, Gauntlet III soundtrack, Ghouls_n_Ghosts soundtrack, L.E.D. Storm soudntrack, Qix soundtrack (most of it), Raw Recruit soundtrack |
FAME | Baby Jack, Beyond, Fame(1), MCG intromusic, Skateball song#1, Strike Force Intromusic, X-Out soundtrack (most of it) |
Jonathan Dunn | Dragon Ninja soundtrack, New Zealand Story soundtrack, Ocean Loader 5, Platoon song#1, Red Heat soundtrack, Renegade 3 soundtrack, Robocop soundtrack, Run The Gauntlet song#1, WEC Le Mans end |
DRAX | Batfunk, Bones III, Church, Cool Food, Destroyer, Intro Zak, Intro Zax, Jesus Christensen, Jyde Funk, King Tut, Livercool, Old Zax, Osteria, Overlame, Pladumec, Snickers (3 tunes), Thaw, Why me, X-Factor |
Charles Deenen | Ala Gal (3 tunes), Astro Marina Corps, Ding van Charles, Double Dragon soundtrack, F1 Simulator song#1, Mantalos soundtrack, Mr.Heli soundtrack, RWE intro, Satan soundtrack, Smooth Criminal, Soldier of light soundtrack, That's the way it is (intro), Zamzara soundtrack |
Ben Daglish | Ben's Music Selector II song#1,2 and 5, Blood Valley, Bulldog, Cobra, Deflektor, Firelord soundtrack, Footballer of the year song#1, Gobots, Hades Nebula song#1, Jack the Nipper soundtrack, Kettle soundtrack, Krakout soundtrack, The Last Ninja soundtrack, Mounty Mick's Deathride, The Munsters, Real Stunt Experts, Supersports, Trap soundtrack, The Vikings soundtrack |
Antony Crowther | Fernandez must die!, Gryphon soundtrack |
Chris Cox | Caverns of Eriban, Spirit of the stones |
Mark Cooksey | 1942 soundtrack, Ghost'n'goblins soundtrack, Paperboy soundtrack |
Peter Clarke | Double Take soundtrack, Ocean Loader v3.0 |
Matthew Cannon | Untouchables soundtrack |
Neil Brennan | Way of the exploding fist soundtrack |
Johannes Bjerregaard | Chase, DMC demo IV song#2 and 4, Domino Dancing, Fourth Dimension, Mixerplot, Nightdawn soundtrack, Omega Force One, Pimple Squeezer 6 (part3), Stormlord soundtrack, Street Cred Boxing soundtrack, Sweet, Tiger Mission soundtrack, Tiny Symphony |
Wally Beben | Octapolis soundtrack |
Neil Baldwin | Ala soundtrack, Demonic part 1, Garfield soundtrack, Snowflakes in summer |
20CC | Big Fun |
What were your favourite sids of the 90s?
Composer | SIDs |
Jeroen Tel | Golden Axe song#1 3, Invest Intro, Robocop 3 song#1, Rubicon song#1, Supremecy, Tintin on the moon song #1 |
Steve Rowlands | the tunes from those Creatures games ;O) |
Reyn Ouwehand | Blackmail song#1, Cosmail-08, Dutch Breeze flip the flop, Dutch Breeze Kramer, Flimbo's quest song#1 #3, Last Ninja 3 song#3, X98 tune |
Geir Tjelta/Mozicart | Bended wave, Fame style, flamboyant, Geir Tjelta-02, Geir Tjelta-10, Geir Tjelta 11, Lazy fast, Melodious, Mid July |
Metal | Ashtira, Bezerk, Camel funk, Diane, Fusion, Geologic, Groovin high, Jensemand, Koeleskab (his best sid!), Plastic t., Please me, Pornstar, Sayonara, Swinging, telefax, Tjuhej, Trip 2 jupiter, Trip 2 mars, Trip 2 pluto, Vommit, What now |
Link | American, Dwarf fly, Hi-t soul, jazz max, Jazz time, Piano wamp |
Laxity | Alibi, Arabian, Beginning, Bossa_Nova, Eastend, Happy hour (it's called Squampon the disc I have ;o), Highscore, it's funky, Laxace, Pocket Freeze, S_Intro, S2 Xerxes, Sax nuddle, Sejle op, Sunshine, Syncopated, Their Song, Waste_III, Why die, Wisdom, Wood_Worne song #2, Wow reggae, Zimx_USA |
JCH | Buhuu, Chimerang, Chordian, Coops_ups, Guldkornekspressen soundtrack, Heavy hit, Hugo, Hurricane, Knackdick, Scanliner, Su Sweet soundtrack, Tjords |
Chris Hülsbeck | VW-title |
Heatwave | Fontastic, Intromusic |
Jonathan Dunn | Total Recall soundtrack |
DRAX | Advanced, Avenge, Baboon, Ballfever soundtrack, Billig Oel, Black Jack, Bombastic, Boneless, Botanical, Bubbers badekar, Busy Nosa, Check it, Conical, Depressed, Disco Arm, Dope Out, Drizzle, Drudgery, End Sax, End Sequence, Exercise, Fashionable Fusion, Faxophone, Fluff, Fondness, Funk, Faarhud, Gloomy, Grillette, Hass, Heartware, Info Tune, Introduce, Jazz solo, Junk Zakk, Loading, Monky Blonky, Mr Satan, Nutriment, Nymphoman, Outro, Peppis Pop, Pianoodle, Porky Pig went to Wolly, Priapos, Profile, Pubhorny, Raccoon, Rolling, Scarlet, Skinflint, Smaask, Tadpole (2 tunes), Thymos, Tristesse, Universal, Universe, Walter, Wendy, Ypsilon, Zynaps |
Thomas Detert | Dynamoid soundtrack, Game on Issue 11_90 |
Charles Deenen | B.A.T. soundtrack |
Deek | Crimson, Dead tunes, Deadtunes Version2, Demo tune 9, Explosion, Follin's Folly, Funkish, Get the Witness, Googachild, Hairy Toes, Hairy Toes v2, Infinity, Kwik 4 TDM, Kwik41, Lazity, Load Jingle, Memories, Military, Oole timin, Paradize 91 intro, Propaganda, Puzzlenoid soundtrack, Rhumba, Slapshit, Thief he eats beef, Tiger in a Dress, Treasure, Weebles, Who's the man in the corner, Winzer |
Thomas Danko | Censor_Introtune, Elementary, Groove, Ground, Intro_999, Introtune 2, Kik it, Nailed, Planetary, Relax Magazine, Shock Magazine, Shock Magazine introtune, Shock Magazine schizomix, Shuffler, Siestas gone, Singalong, Streaming, Waveform we miss you, Whizkid, Wonderland X introtune |
Johannes Bjerregaard | French Fries, Jazz 1, Kamikaze song#1, Shape |
20CC | A Trip into E-V-Space, Edwin's Dream, Learn it the hard way, Paradise |
I only ran through the main-dir in the HVSC, but would also mention that there are some really great tunes in VARIOUS directory. It just would take me much more time to go through those ;o)
Which of your own sids are you most pleased with?
Difficult question… some of those I like are: 12-speed tune, 8th frame, anal'o'gue, Beyond (co-op with Drax), careless, Cave of Rave, Cyberworld (has some elements from a pc tune done by Metal, called Trip to Mars), Donald dick-duck, endtune, Fiskeaande, Funky tune, Funky-Tonk man, Gang i den, Gloomy tune, House, Haard bae-sex, Kumla-man, La samba del pasta bolognese, Le Pissoir, Lover Charlie, Hard Track, pat-kasser, Soft-Ice 2, Spring-pop, Paradise.
Why and when did you start making music on the c64?
It must have been around 1988, I had heard so much good music on the c64 until then and would like to try to do something myself, also I got tired of playing games, so instead I started getting creative.
Were you inspired by any other sid composers?
I've always loved the stuff MON and Vibrants did, it was kinda more like real music and the sound was usually better in general than in other peoples music. However I never really managed to make anything similar to what they did. Well except for a new tune I did together with Drax, called Beyond
but it was also based on one of his pc worktunes, so I can't take too much credit for that arrangement myself, even though I did most of the editing on c64. We decided to not use hard restart to get this special good old c64 sound, which we know from MON and others. Also the sound of different people's players has interested me a lot, they just don't sound the same ;o)
Generally, where do you get your inspiration from when making music?
Well, as I listen a lot to different techno and other electronical music that must be my inspiration source, but normally I just get ideas into my head like someone was throwing them at me. Sometimes ideas simply just pop up in my mind, unfortunately I'm often at work when this happens.
The power, complexity and sound of your compositions have hugely impressed me. With some EQ and reverb, it doesn't even sound like sid, but like real phat techno to me. Are there some special techniques or tricks that you use? Would you share them with our readers?
Well first of all I spend quite a lot of time on my sounds, as I want them to fit to the music I'm doing. But there's usually not so much complexity behind my sounds, I use simple techniques. One thing I do is to use more than 1 voice to create a sound, but it's not so easy with only 3 voices available. Forexample you can have a leadsound that uses 2 voices, with almost the same sound, except for that you detune the 2 voices a bit from eachother, this makes the sound much more fat. Pulse and filter are 2 things I spend extra time on as they are very important, I can't really say what I do but often I simply experiment a lot until I have something useful.
Also an old Maniacs Of Noise trick is to do a tune, and the if maybe the filterbass sound is not so clear or fat sounding, simply transpose the whole arrangement a few notes or so. This can make a bass sound much better. About my multispeed sounds, it's mainly a thing about using the wave freq tables right, and again do a lot of experimenting.
I remember when I first heard JT's Invest_intro
I loved those bongolike sounds so much and within a few hours of experimenting I learned how to do similar sounds myself.
One last thing which is very important is to find the right ADSR values for your sounds, that's one thing Charles Deenen did perfectly, also because the ADSR in the SID chip isn't so exact, so it takes some time to find usable values, especially if you use a player with no hardrestart.
What are your likes/dislikes about the sid chip?
I like almost everything about the SID chip, especially as I do my own players, if I need something special I simply add it to my player. I really like the filters in the sid, very nice ones that can be used for creating quite fat sounds. Also the possibility to combine filtertypes is great. I could have used a bit more resonance and more voices that's the only bad
thing about SID.
Is composing on the c64 a different world to composing with real instruments?
Yes definitely, for me it's much harder to do real music, I guess it's the mixing part of it, and usage of effects like reverb, things tend to get messy when I compose real
music. With c64 it is much easier because you do all the effects like delay, reverb and so, yourself.
If there was one tune you wish you could claim as your own, what would it be and why?
That's quite a difficult question… But I think it has to be Mantalos
song #1 by Charles Deenen. The tune is just so perfect everything fits together, the sounds are just so fat. And the melody itself is really nice, really pro' composition.
What are your fondest memories of the c64?
Well, in general I would say that all the people I've known and still know through my time in the c64 scene is something really special. A lot of good friends, and we have this 1 thing we share, the c64 - the best demo-scene computer ever 😊 It has always been really nice meeting c64 people at parties, even though some parties sucked big time.
What non-c64 music do you like? Does it reflect in your compositions?
I like electronic music a lot, especially a lot of different types of techno. You can hear that in some of my newest tunes. But in general I like all types of music, except extreme crap like trash/death-metal.
Have you heard any remakes of your sids which have impressed you?
I can't say that I've heard any impressing remakes of my c64 music, but maybe it's because the tunes the remakes are based on were not too good or kinda miss something. ;o)
You have provided a chillouty remake of Laxity's Beginning
at Remix.Kwed.Org. Will there be more c64 remakes done by you?
Hehe, well that mp3 was just to see if it was possible to make somewhat SID like sound on my old Roland XP-50 synth, but who knows, I might do more remakes of c64 music.
Scortia did the same maybe a year before me, He made a synth version of Laxity's Alibi
and I guess it was because I loved it so much that I wanted to do a similar thing myself. It's funny because now when Scortia and I are to buy a new synth, it is very important that it can do somewhat c64 like sound ;O).
So my next investment will be a Access Virus synth, haven't decided yet, but the new C-series seems quite ok. And this should make it possible to do some more c64 cover tunes ;o). Actually I've started covering Laxity's Star-Dream
, but I've only done around 1-2 minutes of it. Also I would like to make it a bit different from the original.
Today, you are still very active in the c64 scene. Please tell our readers about these activities.
Well today I'm a member of Crest and Bonzai, so now and then I do music for demos, also I usually do special tunes for people who ask me. That is if I have the time for it. But I prefer just doing what I like.
I'm trying to do more melodic music these days, good old c64 pop as we know it from late 80'ies and so :O) Also I try to make the sounds fit this style. I am working on my new player editor (as I always do!) but I've had a break from it for some time now. The player was actually finished, but I wasn't too fond of my tremolo
routine, so I've deleted it and will implement a new idea of mine. A table that gives you possibility to manipulate ADSR and gate just as wicked as you like.
This routine can do that Tremolo
like effect aswell, which was actually an idea from one of AMJ's tunes. Also I nearly finished a special text-editor to design the screens for my editor. In the future I would like to do smaller demostuff aswell, nothing wild, but just goodlooking. It might mainly be musicdemos ;o)
Do you think the c64 scene in general and its factions could have a limited life span?
For the people who have been in the c64-scene for a long time I think it could mean lifetime for them. But one has to move on, even though we have damn good memories from the past time. I think it also has a lot to do with the people you've known during the golden years of the c64-scene. If people want we can make the c64 scene last many years, and I believe that there are still a lot of things to be done on this magnificent machine. I hope to be able to demonstrate that with some of my music ;o)
Have you ever done any commercial music (i. e. for games or other purposes)?
Yes together with my old friend and groupmate Duck LaRock/Camelot (Anders Daugaard) we made music and soundeffects for a c64 game called Complex
. A few other gameprojects where cancelled unfortunately.
Can you imagine raw sid music hitting the dancefloors?
Yes, for more underground purposes I could. But it would probably take several sid-chips. But maybe it should be external sid-chips to avoid the noise created by the c64.
You have been a member of several groups. Please tell our readers what groups they were/are and about the experiences you made.
The first known group I was in was X-Factor, but the members weren't that much active so I moved on to Camelot which was the group that ment most to me, I got some very good friends from that membership. Today I'm in Crest and Bonzai which are 2 of my favourite groups ever. I hope that we in Bonzai will manage to finish the demo we've been working on for a long time. I can't say that much is happening in Crest these days, but someday I believe that we will release more demos.
You are currently developing a new music editing tool for the c64. What will it feature?
Yes, unfortunately that tool is delayed, but the player is ready atleast. It has quite acceptable rastertime, more features than the JCH editor (using player 20!). A table for doing special glide, detune and vibrato has been added. And of course a quite flexible ADSR handler for creating echos reverb.
The player is based on my current player featured in CZP music editor 2, but I have optimized it further and made additions. To compare it with the jch player v20, mine is better and a test showed a max rastertime of $1C which is the absolute maximum. JCH v. 20 can easily take more than $26 rasterlines.
In general I've got a quite big instrument table and a lot of other tables which are accessible from the instrument and from the tracks.
Will it be available for everyone, if so, will it be easy to use?
It will be available for everyone, I see it as a tribute to the c64 scene of today. The track/sequence editing system will be somewhat like in the JCH editors, so if you find that easy, then that's good ;o) There is a seperate instrument editor, which is far more complex than the one in the JCH editor, but there's a lot of explanation in the editor so I won't find it hard to use. Some of the things might be difficult to use for beginners, but all I can say is that it allows you to experiment a lot and maybe learn new things.
When will it be released?
Have no idea, a lot of boring real-life stuff has come up lately, but I hope to get more spare time soon, so that I can work on the editor.
Lastly, feel free to say anything you want to share with the c64 remixing community.
I like the idea of remixing/remaking c64 tunes. It makes our memories of the c64 last even longer I think. 😊
Jeff took the time to listen to the whole HVSC main directory to tell exactly which tunes he liked, and to miss noone. This, and the fact he still does SID music today, too, shows how much he cares for c64 music. People like him keep the scene alive! Cheers, Jeff! 😊
- LMan