This week we speak with Marc Nostromo, the creator of the excellent Little Gamepark Tracker, a LSDJ style sequencer for various handhelds like the PSP and OS’s. He also records music under the name M-.-n, and blogs about electronic music at NoisePages. Today is part I of a two part interview, where we get into Marc’s background, his LSDJ based music, and what it was like playing the Blip Festival.
LB: First off thanks very much for agreeing to the interview
Marc: My pleasure.
LB: Were you a programmer first then a musician or the other way around?
Marc: I actually have still some trouble to consider myself as a musician.
LB: I will talk about this a little later but I think most people would say you manage to do both pretty well. What sort of computers were about when you became interested in programming?
Marc: My first programmable unit was a TI-98. Not really anything fancy but it got me hooked. Then I went Sinclair ZX-81 (my first assembly code), Vic 20, C64, Amiga and finally PC. I got really sad at the time to drop the Amiga since it took ages for the pc to even reach the level of sound flexibility of the Amiga but I had to keep with times I guess.
LB: Why did you switch to the Vic20 after the ZX81 rather than staying with Sinclair?
Marc: I don’t think there was a specific reason. Either it came out before or it looked more sturdy. The Sinclair experience was good but to be properly set-up the ZX-81 looked like a cobweb of wires and extensions all over the place. Compared to that, the all-in-one and proper keyboard of the VIC looked like heaven sent. I think I said to my mum at the time ‘this is the computer I well ever need’.. which was a little naive I guess
LB: The ZX81 PSU got REALLY hot if I remember rightly too.
Marc: yeah, and if you wiggled the extension a little too much you would easily loose everything
LB: I had that happen a time or two myself. Which model Amiga did you have?
Marc: A simple A500. I loved that machine. It’s been the playground of a lot of my first explorations.. sound, 3D.. multi-process environment. It was a truly amazing machine for the times
Continue reading Interview with LGPT creator Marc Nostromo pt1
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