TITLE:THE MEANING OF CHIP TUNES IN SLEDGEHAMMER (Abnormalia 4) PALETTE:0223 0778 0898 0b89 3 A SCENOLOGY RESEARCH 3 THE MEANING OF CHIP TUNES IN THE DISKMAGAZINE SLEDGEHAMMER Few attentive and clever sceners should have already noticed that the diskmagazine 2Sledgehammer1, published by 2Absolute!1, uses to host, among various articles of uncertain interest, a whole section dedicated to Chip Tunes. The very curious phenomenon has catched attention and interest from more than one scenologysts as a suitable esemplification of the well known recent redifinition of roles and scopes in scene's productions. Examples of demo packs that have turned in utility packs, message centers, advertisments sites, news stations, half music disks and micro diskmags are common. Nowadays, as the most witty scenologists have realized, the simple demo pack is extinct. It doesn't exists anymore in the classical shape, demos or intros, in demo packs, are an optional. The situation with diskmags is more fluid and still undefined. There are always normal diskmags that do just the diskmags, but new species are coming up, from diskmags similar to books (2Grapevine1), to diskmags that seem slideshows (2Top 2Secret1), demos (2The Jungle1, old issues) and musicdisks (2Sledgehammer1). Sledgehammer is the main subject of our research because somehow it also tries to make the 2slideshow1, the 2videogame1 and the 2demo1 at the same time. It features infact also a pictures section, a scene game and a lousy scene trivia. Not to mention its same intro, which according to some evil commenters is the best part of the mag. So, what's the point with Sledgehammer? Why its chip tunes are so important for the Scenology community? They're important because their use has given glimpses about a common desease found in many diskmags. The absence of articles. It's useless to relate all the studies made about this common problem, we can just reccomend some basic books in the final bibliography, we just have to underline how the Sledgehammer case has provided important datas for our scenologists and has provoked an interesting debate which, of course, we can just try to sum up in this divulging article. Many of the informations here published come from the conference held in Milan, Italy, the 30th of December 1993 entitled: 2"The Sledgehammer case: analysys and projections for future risks". The audience was enormous for the simple fact that the introduction of the same conference was held by 3Beppe1 himself, who, as you know, doesn't show himself often. The Scenology founder has been brief and precise and for obvious reasons we couldn't not publish the complete text of his speech. It's a marvellous example of scenology methods and dialectic, it will surely become a classic, so don't miss any single emlghtening word and deep meaning of it. 3"1Dear Colleagues and humble audience, you have the honour of hosting Beppe in this conference for the simple fact that he has given much time to this important scenology study. As you know, our sciemce is still young and I've really much work to do in order to organize and define it, nevertheless sometimes I like to take some minutes of relax and dedicate myself to lesser fields of study, which still have interesting points and aspects. The Sledgehammer case is a marvellous example of a common trend in nowadays diskmagazines: the use of fillers to give the illusion of a bigger and better mag. As we know, the SH guys have gone further, inventing non-Ascii fillers. It's up to you, in this conference, to discuss and find out the complete impact and meaning of the use of chip tunes, I trust in you and I'm sure you'll make a competent work. Good bye.3" After Such words there wasn't much more to say. The discussions started and the conclusions have been quite similar to the ones expected from Beppe. Sledgehammer's editors have had a brilliant idea and they have even enhanced it. Some 2statistics1 have been showed in order to give evidences to the conclusions. The issue 11E had 21101 articles, which is not bad for a mag. Of these 271 were for credits and various introductions, 261 for news, 2131 for humouristic pictures (plus 211 for their introduction), 261 were horrendous recycled short stories funnily similar to the ones you can find in Abnormalia (plus 211 for their introduction), 2101 were articles of various non-scene topics (one of them, 10001 bytes long featured the first 10000 decimals of PI), 231 were games or trivias, 2121 were advertismensts (always excellent fillers), 271 were for letters and messages and 2111 were for chip tunes! (plus 221 for their introduction plus 22 for the official, non chip, mag modules). The remaining 2291 articles were the actual scene articles (excluded news): interviews, party reports, reviews, opinions roundups and conventional fillers. The issue 12E had instead a total of 2931 articles, of which 27+11 were ads, 210+1+2 chip tunes and modules, 231 games, 281 regulars (credits and so on), 26+11 bad stories, 2131 various and 2411 scene texts. In this issue there wasn't space for humouristic pictures. From these stats all the scenology conveyed at the conference agreeded that Sledgehammer's editors have proved to find new and exciting ways to fill articles. Their creativity in the field is unrivalled and has reached results much better than the ones of the average mags (who just fill without coscience). The choice of Sledgehammer's fillers is wide and interesting, comprehending not only chip tunes but also pictures, games, short stories which nobody read and a wide range of interesting scene articles of new conception, always accompanied by a good introduction filler which may explain and fill. The influence of Sledgehammer on the diskmags' community has had some effect in 2Visual Intensity1 by 2Dual Format1 which has introduced a modules corner and which, worst of all, is going to imitate 2Grapevine1's lard tendencies: the next issue could be on 3 issues. All in all everybody confirmed that the fillers fever is probably going to expand, finding new entertaining and odd solutions (like chip tunes) and bringing diskmags to previously unknown fields. Among these there'll be revolutionary and totally new kinds of scene articles. The future will just reveal what Scenology has foreseen: diskmags' articles will change and improve in unexpected ways, under the influence of a growing 2Journalistite1 and of other deseases (Scenologite?). An interesting conclusion of the debate has been that also the scenology article who had to report its conclusions had many chances to be a perfect filler.