+-------------+ | MUSIC FORUM | +--------------------+-------------+--------------------+ | Your regular look at the Amiga Music Scene.. | +-------------------------------------------------------+ Well, yet another quiet month passes by on the music scene. Personal highlights for me were the great scores by Seb Lentfert on Newsflash 10, Voyage and Galaxian Cloud - I really enjoyed those pieces - full marks and congratulations to Sebastian for them! Congrats for Allisters superb internal instruments, who knows we may even hear a score using them soon.. eh Al? (grin). Musicians should take a look at "Sontracker" my little utility which should prove to be useful to quite a substantial amount of people, if you could find a use for a program that converts sonix (smus) files into 'tracker compatable files then you're going to be a happy person! it even lets me create tracker stuff whereas before I was totally useless now I'm just plain old useless :-) The program is a little slow and it is only the first version.. any ideas for improvements and enhancements are welcome - just send them to the Newsflash Uk address.. Demo-wise there was of course a some great scores, Chris Korte's track in the CeBit Demo was very good as was the music by "Uncle Tom" in the terrific 'Scoopex Mental Hangover' demo. The crusaders 'Bacteria' disk also contained a substantial amount of nice work by Bjorn Lynne and Fleshbrain (a finnish musician) - nice work on that disk includes Bridge to the end of the Universe 2, No-One Home and Move. Otherwise it's been a quiet time for music over here apart from a tape full of 'Random' - Bjorn Lynnes group! Also on there were Bjorn's latest Roland U110 stuff, which were as usual, excellent. I listend to a disk by The Acoustic Revolution using 8 channels (octalyser) which was ok but nothing tremendous I think, the fact that 8 channels were in operation was the most 'exciting' thing about the music - it seems just too noisy and tinny for my liking. I also listened to the scores on a level-4 music disk and found these to be ok, but reading the scrolltext I saw yet another musician putting his views across somewhat forcefully about who was good and who was not. To be honest we ALL have different tastes and if someone likes other people's music style and not yours then that's no reason to grumble. I would say that there are perhaps 10-12 TOP musicians on the Amiga (I'm not going to name or rank them - there is no one who is BEST) each has his own style and uses different methods to achieve his results. In fact, if I get some response, we could have a music competition, we could put the top 4 (in OUR opinion) on the support disk and let you, the READER vote on it?? What do you think... If you think that this could be a fun idea and if you're interested in entering, drop me a line and I'll organise something... Newsflash Uk Po Box 13 Ossett West Yorks WF5 OXA England I`ve received a personal music chart from Rick Lemon (who tends to write more than anyone else!) so I`m pleased to print his top 5 tunes and his top 5 music disks on the Amiga.. so here goes.. BEST EVER MUSIC --------------- [1] GONE FOR GOOD (Bjorn Lynne) [Featured on Newsflash 6] [2] DELTA IN-GAME (Rob Hubbard) [C-64] [3] CREATION Nr 4 (Al. Brimble) [Featured on Newsflash 7] [4] SANXION LOADER (Rob Hubbard) [C-64] [5] SKATE OR DIE (Rob Hubbard) [C-64] TOP 5 MUSIC DISKS ON AMIGA -------------------------- [1] NFLASH S5 (Bjorn Lynne) [Dr Awesome Compilation!] [2] NFLASH 6 (Bjorn Lynne) [Cos it`s got [1] above!] [3] DEXION LATEST (Dexion) [Inc Silents/Wfalcons.. ] [4] AUDIO X (Crusaders) [More Bjorn Lynne stuff!] [5] NFLASH S4 (Al. Brimble) [Excellent compilation. ] Well there`s Rick`s top-tunes, interesting only 2 Amiga scores made his personal top 5... anyway if you don`t agree with his (personal) views then why not let us know YOUR top music favourites and we`ll print them in here, if we get enough votes then I`ll do a chart each month.. also include a list of your favourite musicians. It looks like old Bjorn Lynne is a particular idol of young Rick, goodness knows what the guy will do if he happens to bump into him at the ECES later this year... In fact, I`ll give you my personal rankings of music.. so you can disagree with that too.. NUK AMIGA ALL-TIME FAVOURITES! ------------------------------ Creation 2 [Al Brimble ] Creation 3 [Al Brimble ] The Last Sun [Fred Hahn ] Voyage [S. Lentfert] Ivory Towers II [The DJ ] Gone For Good [Bjorn Lynne] Axel-F Conversion [Ron Klaren ] Oxygene 2 Conversion [Al Brimble ] BattleSquadron High [Ron Klaren ] Italian Speziale [Bjorn Lynne] Ghouls & Ghosts Main [Tim Follin ] Bionic Commandos (ALL)[Tim Follin ] Led Storm (ALL) [Tim Follin ] Mental Hangover [Uncle Tom ] R-Type Main [C.Huelsbeck] Various IT MusicDisks [Tor Gausen ] Shadow Of The Beast [D.Whittaker] Hybris Music [Dunno! ] Galaxian Clouds [S. Lentfert] Move [Bjorn Lynne] Red Sector Megademo [SCS ] Tied Up [Bjorn Lynne] Outrun Conversion [Fred Hahn ] Green Beret Conversion[Al Brimble ] Actually I could go on and on, but I think that just about covers my personal Amiga favourites... I think the best we`ve featured on Newsflash has to be amongst the following.. Gone For Good [Issue 6 - Bjorn Lynne] Creation 4 [Issue 7 - Al. Brimble] Voyage [Issue 10- S. Lentfert] Lost Dreams [Issue 9 - The D.J. ] No One Home [Issue 9 - Bjorn Lynne] Move [Issue 9 - Bjorn Lynne] Toccata [Issue 9 - Al. Brimble] Galaxian Clouds [Issue 10- S. Lentfert] Mind you, thats only a small proportion of the music we`ve featured!! Just look at the quality of it too... I wonder if anyone will vote for my little music scores?? Just dreaming methinks.. all my mates know I`m about as musical as a small fridge that just happened to lose it`s drumsticks.. Well.. yet again as I just pack this file and finish it off for the next issue the postie arrives carrying more musical info for me to feature, so it meant me having to unpack it yet again and add the info.. Niall McGowan, a 21yr old from Derry City, Northern Ireland sent me a nice letter, some of his soundtracker music and his personal music favourite listings on the Amiga and in general... The details of his letter will be somewhere else (try the letter section of my mega-editorial this issue) but here are his favourite scores etc.. TOP 5 SYNTH SCORES [Commercial] TOP 5 AMIGA SCORES ------------------ ------------------ [1] Computer Weekend [J.M.Jarre] [1] Star [DJ, Fashiondemo] [2] Chung Kuo [Vangelis ] [2] Bitarts [RSI Return Demo] [3] Equinoxe 4 [J.M.Jarre] [3] Shadow Of Beast [David Whittaker] [4] Oxygene 4 [J.M.Jarre] [4] Gone For Good [Bjorn Lynne ] [5] Crockett`s Theme [J.Hammer ] [5] Obliterator [David Whittaker] TOP 5 AMIGA COMPOSERS AMIGA BEST CONVERSIONS --------------------- ---------------------- [1] The DJ (Richard V.Der Veen) [1] Al Brimble - Commando Hi Score [2] Dave Whittaker [2] " " - Toccata [3] Suntronic (Felix Schmidt) [3] " " - Never Ending Story [4] Mark II [4] " " - Crocketts Theme [5] Dr Awesome (Bjorn Lynne) [5] " " - Oxygene 2 Well, there`s Nialls selections - DO YOU AGREE ? (I don`t! but that`s what a lot of people cannot get their head round, we ALL have different tastes.. let us know what YOU think is best.. and we`ll do an OVERALL chart..) Time to get off the stave once more.. seeya next time, same tune - different notes... Martyn/Newsflash UK.