Interview with Allister Brimble at Remix64 by Neil Carr
(original
here)
What other composers did you
like?
Rob Hubbard, David Whittaker,
Martin Galway, Fred Gray, Ben Daglish, Jeroen Tel.
What other SIDs
are amongst your favourites?
Flash Gordon, Gery
The Germ, Parallax, Green Beret, Glider Rider, Mutants and Kettle.
Which SUD of your own are you
most pleased with?
I was really an Amiga man and just
got in on the C64 scene at the end of its life.
I didn’t really do anything great on it, but the best is probably “
After your refusal at Elite,
would you have ever guessed that you would ever make it as a musician for the
software industry?
Hmm, how did you know about that?!
I sent them a really dodgy demo made on Ubik’s
music which was basically a rip off of Rob Hubbard “War” Title
tune. I was very young then and didn’t really have the skill to compose
anything truly original. The letter I received back was actually quite positive
and said I showed promise and should keep trying.
I pretty much gave up with the C64 at that point. I knew I had to get much better
and really started to compose again on the Amiga.
Why did you start writing
music on computers?
I just knew the only things I could
do were program and play music. Putting these two together was the obvious choice,
but it took me many years until I wrote anything good!
I really decided to write music after I heard David Whittaker’s
“Glider Rider” tune on the Spectrum 128K. I still think it’s
great to this day.
What were your likes/dislikes
regarding the sid chip?
I liked everything about it. I
especially liked the way you could use hard sync and ring modulation to create
really unusual effects.
The editor that Rob Hubbard
used for his music seems to be mentioned quite a lot, do you think if you had his
editor that this may have helped you earlier in your career?
No, because I was too young then.
Which editor did you use on
the C64, and what were its positives and negatives?
Later on in the 90’s I used
my own editor written by Michael Delaney. This was every bit as good as Rob’s
editor. For me it was positive in every way. You could do anything you wanted
for ADSRs, drum tables, vibratos, filters etc. It was
very flexible. It’s a shame I never got to write anything really good on
it, but that’s because all the C64 games I worked on were small-budget
games for Codemasters.
Before this driver, I used Wally Beben’s driver
(with his permissin). You'll probably notice that my
earlier SIDs use this.
So. How eventually did Allister Brimble make the break through into the games music
industry?
After some success writing Amiga
music for the PD company and 17-Bit, where I made many
conversions of Rob Hubbard music, I sent a demo to Codemasters.
Tim Miller was very impressed with the Aegis Sonix
demos and decided to use me for a game called "Four Soccer Sims",
which was released a few years later as "Italia 1990".
17 bit software also turned into Team 17 Ltd for which I wrote the music to
Alien Breed, Project X, Superfrog etc.
What formats have you worked
on, and which of these formats were your favourites and least favourite?
C64, Amiga, Atari ST, Spectrum
128K, Amstrad, Game Boy, Game Boy Advance, Mega Drive, SNES, PC, CD32, Game Gear,
Jaguar, PSX.
Out of these my favourites are the Amiga & C64. I also like the Game Boy
because most of my work these days is for that.
How do you feel the music
industry has changed since the early days of the C64?
In the old days you could rip off
any old tune and get away with it. Today, that's impossible and everything must
be original unless you pay for the rights.
The other big difference is the amount you get paid for a project. On the C64
it was something like £250.00 (GBP) but today you can get more like £10000.00
for a game with 10 tunes and sound effects. You do have to put in a lot more workm though!
You are now a free-lance
musician. What in your opinion are the positives and negatives comparing to
being in-house?
Positives:
1. You get to stay in bed longer!
2. You are your own boss
Negatives:
1. You have little or no control over how the music/sfx are implemented by the programmer. Sometimes they
completely spoil your work by putting the sounds in wrongly.
2. You don't really feel like you're part of the project and sometimes it's
very hard to get inspiration for something you're not 100% involved with.
Have you ever considered
re-arranging your old work with a more modern sound?
Yes, I have already done this.
Visit http://www.mp3.com/AllisterBrimble and you will be able to download some remixes.
I also made a CD called Sounds Digital with some Amiga mixes on and
another called Bang! Tick… Tick…
I have never remixed any of my C64 tracks because they were not really as good
as the famous C64 musicians.
What was the last project you
worked on, and what are you working on now?
The last big project I can mention
is Driver 2 for the PlayStation.
The others are small Game Boy titles.
Right now I'm working on around 15 Game Boy advance projects and also a sequel
to Jimmy Whites Snooker 2 on the PC.
If there was a tune that you
wish you could claim as your own what would it be, and why?
Martin Galway’s Parallax
title tune because it was just so original and so weird. It was very different
to anything else, especially because of the instruments Martin managed to make.
I loved the sound with the vibrato on that gradually slowed down!
During your many years as a
musician have you ever been unfairly treated by a software company?
Yes, a few times. For "Hunt
for Red October", on the Amiga & C64, the games were published but I
was not paid. I had to take them to court before I received anything at all. A
programmer copied my music from the Amiga to the C64 but the conversion was
quite poor.
More recently, a powerboat game was released on the Dreamcast with my music
included. I havenn't been paid for this either.
What single aspect do you
credit to your success?
Having a good musical ear and
trying very hard! (OK, that's two!)
Arrangers to this very day are
re-arranging old SID music with modern instruments; how surprising is this to you,
and what are your thoughts on this?
Actually, for nostalgic purposes I
prefer to keep most of the original C64 instruments and just replace the drums
& arpeggios. I did this on my Lightforce remix
which you can hear at www.mp3.com/AllisterBrimble
Some of the other remixes I hear do not bring back
memories of the C64.
Did you ever release a piece
of music to a software house that you knew was sub-standard?
Not really. I always try hard.
However, some of the Codemasters tunes were quite
short and I should have made them much longer!
How did you feel when you
wrote a great tune, only to find the game was poor?
It is obviously quite disapointing when you've put all that work in. The worse
examples of this are on the Game Boy. Many of the GB games I write music for
are terrible, and yet the music driver sounds great (C64 type sounds!). You can
hear my GB tunes at http://www.gameboyaudio.com, [by the way].
Lastly. What would you like to say to the C64 scene?
The early C64 musicians set the standard
by which others such as myself had to follow. Without
C64 music I would not be doing the same job!