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By lazerbeat, on June 17th, 2010 
This week TCTD talks to Yerzmyey, organizer of AY Riders, producer of awesome tunes, lover of the z80 and generally all round amazing guy. So thanks very much to Yerz for being so generous with his time and lets get down to business!
Lazerbeat – Where are you from?
Yerzmyey – Ah, well. I come from Rubber Planet. ;) A place where all computers have rubber keyboards. ;) Well, actually that’s not exactly true. :) ZX Spectrum was highly popular in PL, in 80s and early 90s, however, somehow it stopped suddenly and now literally only a few people support the machine here. Cry, cry! As for geography matters ;) , my mother’s family came here from Czech and Austria (in that time it was connected with Hungary) and my father came here from Lithuania.
LB – It looks like you have been active in the Demo scene for for over 20 years. How old were you when you founded H-PRG? Why did you start it?
Y – First programs we made with Mr Hangman about 1987. We were 12 years old or so, in those days. :) We were only making games (just occasionally some simple pseudo-demos, haha). The games were not that bad actually :) – ugly but playable. Sadly in those times the only thing we had for saving the progs – was a tape-recorder, so the games didn’t survive to the present day, heh. Our the earliest programs that have survived come from 1989, so I took the date as a beginning of the HOOY-PROGRAM group. :)
And what is funny, it wasn’t me who started all of this, it was my younger brother (who isn’t very interested in 8-bit nowadays, after all) who met Mr Hangman – and HE started making ZX games with him. :) I only joined them. But then my brother lost interest (well, not in playing games but in making them :) ), and I stayed. In this way we founded a team. ;)
They were funny times. :) I remember that we had to be very careful and save our programs very often because every time Mr Hangman’s refrigerator/fridge turned on – then ZX Spectrum got reset, hahaha. :)
Also, while loading (from tape of course) everybody was forced to leave to room, so as not to disturb the loading process. Continue reading TCTD Interview with AY-Riders’ Yerzmyey
By lazerbeat, on March 31st, 2010  TCTD has interviewed some pretty amazing people in the past and today we continue that tradition with one of the true titans of Chip Music. Prodigy of Malcom Mclaren, licking the ankles of Crystal Castles and stepping on the groin of Timbaland, Ladies and Gentlemen, hot off his tour of the Asian Sub Continent and his release of his sprawling masterpiece “MKE or BRK”
We give you, Ten Thousand Free Men and Their Families.
LB: Who are your influences?
10k: Well David, my number one influence was, is and ever more shall be, Malcolm McLaren. He is the master of exploiting underground sounds. After reading the article that he wrote for Wired, I started making chipmusic. The way he presented the chipmusic ideal in that masterful piece set my sights on Game Boy music and I simply could not turn back. He was the reason that I got in on the ground floor of the sound – he was there right at the beginning, really on the money, like he always has been and I was mere seconds behind him. I was really keen to be a hacker, a bender, a softpunker and a buffalo pirate and to use illegal software, because that is the way to be truly punk. I mean, what is more punk than using ripped software on a janked up consumer toy to create music? I have an answer for you: doing exactly that, then screaming your lungs out over the top of it. I think Malcolm would be proud of me, I stepped up his game to the next level. In the scene, I am really liking some of the tracks TV Death Squad had up on his myspace a while back – I hear he is killer live, too.
LB: Were you really kicking yourself when you realised you had spelled “friends” wrong on the song title?
10k: Mate! Are you suggesting I spelt it wrong? We do things different here Down Under and I guess this is one of those things we do differently. If I spelt it the ‘correct’ way, it would have really have increased the length of the EP drastically and that is something that obviously could not happen. Anything more than eight minutes is not punk enough. Next question.
LB: You mentioned you’re from Australia, what is the scene like down there?
10k: I find it really hard here sometimes, not having anyone else in the scene. I’d like to think that me putting myself out like I have will encourage others to get into it all. Maybe people down here should start some blogs, put on some regular chip parties, maybe even develop some ways of creatively interfacing with consoles? Who knows? Out of my hands. Continue reading Lazerbeat VS Ten Thousand Free Men and Their Families.
By lazerbeat, on June 29th, 2009  Picture : Karl Isakson Ed: Lazerbeat provides another interview with musican/organizer/chiptheologian Goto80. Part I talks about Goto80’s background, his setup, and the futurepast of trackersoft.
LB – On your blog you mention your first release was “HARDCORETECHNO3” under the name “Polaxe” for the “Mayday – a Day in May” Demo which you wrote aged 12 on the Amiga. The release is dated on Pouet as 1993. How long had you been writing for at that time?
GT80 – Not for long, maybe a year or so.
LB – Do you recall the tracker you used? Was the Amiga your first machine?
GT80 – Me and my brother bought a Commodore 64 first, for gaming, and then got the Amiga500 and my brother showed me Noisetracker and gone were the days of gaming! Rather soon I moved on to Protracker and had a go with Startrekker and Audiosculpture as well as OctaMed to sequence my brother’s synthesizers. So my start was pretty much about samples and hardcore techno!
LB – Did you have any formal music training before this?
GT80 – Nope!
Continue reading Goto 80 interview pt 1
By lazerbeat, on March 10th, 2009  This is the conclusion of Monday’s interview with LGPT dev Marc Nostromo. We talk about the history of Piggy Tracker’s development, possible future features and some information on the excellent netlabel/band of hooligans Hexawe
LB: So how did the idea for Piggy come about?
Marc: well, I had been using LSDJ for a while and even tho I was in love with the program, I longed to have the same flexibility with another type of sound generation. No matter how you like the Gameboy sound, there is a moment where you get tired of it, especially if, like me, you do your tracks without mixing techniques, synths and so on. I wanted to have something similar for samples and midi. I remember having a few chats with Starpause and Firestarter about it and we all got very excited about the perspective. So I went for it.
LB: Did you plan to work on the GP32 from the outset or were you deving on PC without a particular platform in mind?
Marc: It’s always been the main goal to do a hand-held program and to stick with the LSDJ interface. I was looking at a couple of options possible at the time: DS, PSP and GP32. The home-brew scene on DS & PSP was already pretty strong but it was constantly moving, so rather than trying to base myself on moving ground, I decided to go for the GP32. Especially that the idea of a company distributing an open platform like Gamepark did was great so I was happy to jump on that boat
Continue reading Interview with LGPT creator Marc Nostromo pt2
By lazerbeat, on February 11th, 2009 In part 2 of yesterday’s interview, We discussed the PSPSEQ developer, Ethan Bordeaux, background. Today we get more into the meat of the program, how its varied methods of synthesis works, and where the project is heading.
LB: Moving on a little then, were there any specific interesting parts of the port to a hand-held device?
ECB: Not really. The development environment on the PSP is pretty good so I can have a version that runs on my PC and one that runs on my PSP that share 95%+ of the same code. Made debugging a whole lot easier. The one thing I had to figure out early on was whether or not the C compiler would be good enough to allow for the level of polyphony required to make music. I wish the PSP had enough power that it could run any 16 generator and effect tracks and not have to worry about overloading the system, but I think the level of polyphony and complexity of music you can make on the PSP is pretty impressive. Generally speaking you can get between 12-16 tracks going at the same time, which is definitely good enough to make some cool tunes.
LB: I agree, I was really surprised at how complex PSPseq is, could you give us a quick run-down of the available synths?
Continue reading Interview with PSPSEQ Dev Ethan Bordeaux pt2
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