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--=--=--
--=--=------=--=------=--=----
  Table Of Contents
--=--=------=--=------=--=----
     Opening:
        Message From the Editor
     Features:
        Party Report -- Evoke '03
        Party Report -- Pilgrimage '03
        Key Signatures
     Reviews:
        Music:
           In Tune -- "Trickster" and "Mirrorpeople"
           On The Sideline -- "Ninth" by Polygon Ring
           The Lineup -- Monthly Music Listings
        Demo:
           Screen Lit Vertigo -- "El Bourrrinas" and "Red Line"
     Opinion / Commentary:
        Coplan's Eyes -- Keep It Simple Stupid
     Link List: Get Somewhere in the Scene
     Closing: Staff and Contact Information


--=--=--
--=--=------=--=------=--=----
  Message From the Editor
--=--=------=--=------=--=----

  Greetings, and welcome to the September issue.  Ciaran is still on
  vacation, so I will be your editor for this issue.  It has been another
  eventful month.  The bad news is that Cloud beat Sephiroth on the
  gamefaqs.com 2003 character battle.  The good news is that we have a great
  issue this month.

  Seven went to three parties in the last four weeks, so he has been a bit
  swamped for time.  This month we are including some unpublished demo
  reviews that were done some time ago.  Seven gives his apologies that this
  month's reviews are not the latest and greatest.  The great part is that
  after all that partying, he had enough energy to write reports.  This
  month we'll report on Evoke, and next month we plan to report on Buenzli.

  We're also including Secnuop's Pilgrimage party report, my review of
  "Ninth" by Polygon Ring, and an article by Dilvie about musical key
  signatures.  On the same tone, Coplan wrote commentary about keeping
  things simple while composing songs.

  One last thing.. Vince says he hasn't been getting much feedback on The
  Lineup.  The Lineup is a great resource, and it's great to have someone
  like Vince scouring the net for good modules.  Consider dropping him a
  line, a little bit goes a long way.

  Enjoy,

                 --Ben Collver


--=--=--
--=--=------=--=------=--=----
  Party Report
    Evoke '03
  By:  Seven
--=--=------=--=------=--=----

  I had actually planned not to go to Evoke, as I would be going to Buenzli
  the next week with Djefke, and three demo parties in one month is a bit
  too much of a good thing.  But a friend of Djefke was going to marry
  during the Buenzli weekend, so he decided to go to Evoke instead, and
  invited me along.  After hesitating a day, I thought "Why not? What good
  are money, sleep and sanity if you can't recklessly abandon them for a
  good party?" :)

  -=- Friday 22 August -=-
  DJefke picked me up at the Berchem train station with the car from his
  work (free transportation! Yeah!) The trip to Cologne, Germany was
  uneventful, except that we almost missed the right exit due to babbling
  too much.  We illegally parked the car near the entrance after driving
  around the block three times without finding a better place, and went
  inside the party building to find some empty seats.

  21:02:
  I've installed myself temporarily next to SCA, on half an empty place at
  the corner of a table.  The party place is packed, there are hardly any
  seats left, let alone two next to each other.  Djefke went to the orgos to
  ask for extra tables.  We've already met Fred/Calodox, Steeler/BP orgos
  and Unlock/Pain who were enjoying a beer outside, and Steeler who is also
  an Evoke organizer and told us we could enter now and pay later, when the
  party would open officially.

  That happens a tad later: everyone has to go back outside, and stand in a
  queue to get a ticket and (more importantly) a vote key.  There's a
  combination ticket deal for Buenzli which is 5 Euro cheaper than separate
  tickets, so I decide to get one of those.  The orgos have been quite
  thoughtful, they have provided flyers with a plan of the party place and
  its surroundings, with shops, bars and fast food joints marked on it, and
  the local bus schedule is shown at the entrance so even people without
  cars can easily go on a shopping/drinking spree.

  I move my stuff to the small hall connecting the main hall and the
  entrance, where the orgos have installed some extra tables.  Djefke went
  moving his car to the parking space, which is no less than 2.5 km way from
  the party place :( Outside, I get to know some new people, such as Leia
  and Wayfinder/Farbrausch.  I've recently found a web site with his old
  Azure stuff, which I really liked since I discovered it at Nectarine, so
  it was great to meet the man in person.  :) He tells me Farbrausch may
  release something at Evoke, otherwise they'll wait till State Of The Art
  (in December in France), in which case it will be much better finished.
  :)

  22:15:
  The opening ceremony is over: it started with a theme song with cheezy
  vocals about Evoke Z003 (pronounced Zoo-thousand-and-three), everyones
  favorite monkey meeting.  The main orgo enumerated all the special extras
  at Evoke, such as 2 music workshops, a barbecue compo, a remix compo etc.
  He also asked to sit with 3 people at each table, in order to alleviate
  the lack of seats a little.  That will probably make the overheated room
  even more hot, a problem we don't have in our cozy little hall.  :)

  23:35:
  Since the improvised tables had no switches, I went to the orgos to get
  one.  This was more complicated than I expected, I had to sign a rental
  agreement and they asked me to give them my ID card, but in the end my
  social security card was acceptable as well.  They claimed this is the
  usual way of getting switches at major parties, but most parties I've been
  to had switches pre-installed :-/ Anyway, the small hall has access to the
  party net now, which is nice because the dutch sceners Shifter/TPB, Warp,
  Skrebbel/Green and Turismo have just arrived and sit here as well.

  -=- Saturday 23 August -=-
  00:26:
  We've been barbecuing on the roof of the party place, but this is less
  outlandish than it seems.  :) A short description of the party place is in
  order: Evoke takes place in an old fort in the middle of a park.  The
  entrance hall is connected to the small hall (more like a room) where
  maybe 10 people are sitting.  It's connected with a T-corridor, if you
  turn right you're in the dark sleeping hall, which is probably used by
  schools as a gym because it has lots of equipment installed.  If you turn
  left, you're in the main party hall, which looks rather cave-like without
  any windows and a rounded ceiling.  The (rather small) big screen is on
  the far end, and on the left and right are the organizer rooms and the
  toilets respectively.  There are couches here and there, and even a soccer
  table and pinball machine in our room.  If you go outside and around the
  building, there is a huge staircase to the roof, which has the form of a
  cross, with a statue of an eagle on a pillar in the middle.  Around this
  pillar, several groups of sceners are boozing, barbecuing and generally
  having a good time.  Djefke is discussing the various kinds of Belgian
  beer with the dutch Lowres orgos.  As usual, Djefke has brought an ample
  supply of Jupiler with him, plus some Rodenbach, while I've chipped in
  some Kriek and Hoegaarden.

  Inside, Crest is running his classic demo show, at the moment The Good,
  The Bad & The Ugly/Surprise!Productions is playing.  Shifter is showing
  the winners of Assembly'03 to Leia and an organizer on his laptop, and for
  every demo in the top-3 there is someone who doesn't like that demo! Well,
  I guess tastes differ, also in demos.  :)

  3:09: DJefke, Skrebbel and Warp have decided to make a bad demo.  :) In
  case this surprises you, the dutch scene has a long and proud tradition of
  making the most horrible demos, preferably with bad techno music (Check
  the Soepkip series sometimes).  Djefke asks if I can do some code, which I
  decline at first as I don't have my tools with me, but then I realize I
  copied my code directory to my laptop for Assembly, including fmod and SDL
  etc, so maybe I can lend a hand.

  3:58:
  I've converted some old software-rendered effects to SDL, and they run
  mightily fast on my P4 2.6GHz (originally written for a P2 450 :) ).
  Unfortunately, even though they are several years old and not very
  original, Skrebbel considers them too good for the demo he envisions.  I
  suppose the demo will really redefine "bad" if that's true.  :)

  5:22:
  People are sleeping everywhere, Shifter has found himself a quiet place
  under the pinball table but others are using the couches, or the floor
  with or without mattresses.  I think I'll do the same, yawn.

  9:49:
  I'm back awake.  A bad point for this party: there ae only 2 toilets and 2
  urinals for over 200 people, so you've to wait often :( I went outside for
  some fresh air, people are still sleeping outside in the park and on the
  roof.

  11:24:
  I'm not claiming that the sanitary provisions at Evoke are primitive in
  any way, but here's a copy-pasted news entry form the evoke.net web site:
  "Shower" at the entrance
  ------------------------
  Sat, 10:32: If you have the desire to take a shower, there is a garden
  hose in front of the entrance which you can use.

  12:56:
  I missed half of the ANSI/ASCII compo, either my clock must be off or the
  compo started too soon.  There were 7 PC entries, followed by 8 Amiga
  ones.  I don't know enough about it to judge the quality, though.

  Downside to small hall: cannot see when the compo starts, but seems to
  follow schedule more or less.

  14:52:
  A big downside to sitting in this small hall is that we cannot hear the
  compos start.  :( Often we don't notice a compo is running until a very
  good entry draws a loud applause.  And waiting in the main hall is not an
  option, as the schedule isn't being followed very much.  All this to say
  that I missed most of the tracked music compo.  :/ It's a good thing we
  can get them from the FTP server when the compo is over.

  I just went shopping for food and drinks, when I came back I saw there are
  still new people arriving!  One of them asks if he can attach his wireless
  base station to our switch, which is no problem.  You can see more and
  more of those little boxes with their twin antennas at demo parties, soon
  UTP cables will be really oldskool.  :)

  16:02:
  The 4k intro compo is over, a mere 2 hours behind schedule.  :) None of
  the 6 entries were really spectacular, but overall they were OK.  Calodox
  had one that looked really great, with lots of transparent orange
  particles, but it had no sound.  Instead, the introduction shown on the
  big screen before the entry said "First interactive intro: add your own
  music".  And one of the orgos gladly obliged, adding an a capella sound
  track that was quite good, and got a big applause from the audience.

  17:09:
  The barbecue compo is about to start, Shifter is doubting wether he'll
  compete but it turns out that the orgos will "judge" (read: eat) the
  results, not the competitors.  So Shifter decides he'll fill his stomach
  some other way.  :)

  18:20:
  The multichannel compo is being played right now, but Djefke, Warp &
  Skrebbel are still working on their low-fi joke demo.  About the only
  effect they have morphs particles from one line-art picture to another, so
  they need some pictures made from 23 straight line with the last one
  connecting to the first.

  Using my extremely limited graphic talents, I drew a cow-head and a
  giraffe on paper for them, then go back to the music compo.  Skrebbel is
  proud on his idea to use an uncompressed wave-file for the music, because
  "compression causes quality loss" and also a bit to enrage the people on
  Pouet who have to download it by modem.

  19:35:
  The demo deadline is in 25 minutes, Skrebbel is frantically debugging his
  particle effect.  He forgot the intro compo was only one hour before the
  deadline, so he lost some time there.  :) There were 3 64K entries, the
  ones from Razor 1911 and Cubalid7 were about equally good.

  20:45:
  6 Wild demos were shown, and seldom has the winner been clearer
  beforehand.  The last entry, "Egon + Doenci"by Aenima was an incredibly
  professionally animated story about a guy and his cat visiting Mars.  It
  reminds me a lot of the clay-animation of Wallace & Grommit, except that
  Egon + Doenci doesn't uses spoken words.

  22:32:
  Djefke and I went for a pizza, and thus missed the graphics compo.  :(

  I meet Kojote/Sueno again, who was at Assembly as well.  He has the bad
  luck that his music entry was the only one that wasn't preselected, and
  the orgos didn't warn him at all.  He's obviously in a bad mood due to
  that, and goes on enumerating the bad points of Evoke.  I agree he has a
  point with some of them (parking space too far away, not enough room to
  watch the compos, sleeping hall too small and noisy,...)

  There's a party outside in the park, and the Dutch and Swiss sceners are
  trying to crash it.  :) The organizers of it say it's a private party, but
  Shifter argues it's in a public location, so anyone should be allowed to
  it.

  -=- Sunday 24 August -=-
  0:11:
  The OGG Vorbis compo is still busy (MP3s are still allowed, but it's nice
  to see people recognize the superior (and free) format).  The Farbrausch
  guys are still working on their demo (waaay after the deadline), and I'm
  fascinated by the amazing tool Chaos demonstrated at his Assembly seminar.

  1:07:
  The console demo compo is over, I'm sure that "Green Cheese"/Haujobb &
  Kolor & Park was the best of the 3 entries.  Everyone is waiting for the
  demo compo, but the orgos warn it is 1 hour delayed...

  2:42:
  To fill the time, the Breakpoint video "Boozed over the limits" is shown,
  it consists mostly of Bronix puking (yuck), on the "Oh fortuna" sound
  track.  Leia thinks it's hilarious, especially since Bronix himself
  directed the video!

  No less than 11 demos were shown, without preselections.  Tpolm made a
  stylish ninja demo, I heard it was actually entered at the Assembly but it
  wasn't selected, a shame.  Smash design made another 3d camera flight,
  this time of an entire neighborhood.  Shops, parks, office buildings,...
  everything is modeled really detailed, but there's no-one walking around
  in it, which makes it feel very empty.  At the start they added a joke
  about Elitegroups Kasparov, see if you get it.  Farbrausch demo is less
  good than I expected, and not all scenes I saw them working on are in it
  (I remember a bomber plane that would have supplemented the submarine
  nicely).

  Since there are no preselections, even the joke-demo is shown (Hete
  Dansactie II/Groen, watch it at your own risk), and they even managed to
  submit the original Hete Dansactie demo, which is over 4 years old and has
  been "released" on 6 parties so far.  :)

  Various people are using my laptop to vote, before they go to sleep.  You
  could in fact vote right after each compo, but an annoying point is that
  you need to re-enter your vote key every time.

  8:30:
  I can't find my backpack when I wake up, but it turns out someone moved it
  to the other side of the room and everything is still in it.  Phew, that
  was a bit of a panic.  :/

  9:59:
  The voting deadline is extended to 11:00.  I've talked a bit with
  Wayfinder about MP3 players, and how it would be nice if OGG Vorbis
  support became more mainstream.  He burned me a CD with some of his songs,
  including the normal version of Record Royale, which I have been looking
  for after getting the short version from the Azure releases.  Thanks a
  lot, Wayfinder!

  11:54:
  I got the last XL Evoke T-shirt, first it seemed only small sizes were
  left but the orgos found one more hidden somewhere.  XXX also gave me an
  coffee mug for the Kriek beers I stored in Scamps fridge for him.

  12:30:
  There's still no prize ceremony, it has been delayed till 13:00 (and the
  voting was extended once more till 12:10).  Skrebbel is showcasing his
  collection of bad demos, and I'm giving the remaining beers away.

  15:02:
  The prize ceremony is finally over! The results were a bit surprising here
  and there, Tpolm placed only second with Smash Design getting first.  Egon
  + Doenci got more point than all the other wild demos combined.  Cubalid7
  got 7 points more than Razor 1911, and thus walked away with one of the
  high-end PCs Intel had sponsored for the demo and 64K compos (hyper-
  threading P4 3GHz, 1 GB DDR RAM, 200 GB HD, Radeon 9800 etc etc).  IMHO
  The pocketPC demo (Green Cheese) had a higher quality than the first 64K
  intro, so the 2nd PC should have gone to that compo.  On the other hand,
  their prize fitted better with the "console" category: a modded XBox with
  a 80GB HD, with an Amiga emulator and a large archive of Amiga demos
  preinstalled.

  Shameless name-voting causes Hete Dansactie II to reach the 7th place,
  which only shows the makers of the demos that ended lower were fair enough
  not to vote on their own productions.

  The results were shown using the Breakpoint system, with rising bars for
  each production, with one refinement: for the top 3, the bars paused a
  while whenever one ran out of points, so you had some time to see which
  productions remained in the running.

  There was also a special newcomer award, given by Digitale Kultur.  This
  is an organization set up by some German sceners to promote and help the
  demo scene.  It went to Cubalid7, they got 100 Euro and Tobi said this
  money should enable them to quit their school and jobs and go make demos
  full-time.  :)

  Next were the usual thank-yous, to the sponsors and everyone who helped.
  The sponsors were very positive to Evoke, the Intel guy was surprised
  something like the demo scene existed, and they would sponsor Evoke again.
  And the Native Instruments guy who did the music seminars (about Native
  Instruments software) had learned what a tracker was and how Buzz worked
  :)

  Everyone is packing, I have to wait for Djefke to get the car.  After
  stuffing our possessions back into the car, we hang out a little longer
  outside in the sun, with the dutch guys and Leia and her friends,
  reluctant for the party to stop.  The ride back home went without a hitch,
  as far as I know as I was sleeping.

  I think Evoke was a nice party, although it had its share of problems,
  most of which were caused by the location.  There were far more people
  than expected, but the orgos promised they would find a larger location
  for next year.  The schedule wasn't kept very well, and I missed quite a
  few compos but I could get them from the FTP server before voting, which
  is nice.  But the best part of Evoke for me were the people, I saw more
  old friends again at Evoke then at Assembly which was 20 times its size.
  Greets to everyone I met there, see you again on another party!

                 --Seven


--=--=--
--=--=------=--=------=--=----
  Party Report
    Pilgrimage '03
  By:  Secnuop (secnuop at yahoo dot com)
--=--=------=--=------=--=----


  -=- Friday 8 August -=-
  My flight arrived into Salt Lake City around 10:30PM.  I had some
  tentative plans to meet up with Sylphin/Suboptical when I arrived, but it
  turned out that it took a while to get a shuttle bus to the hotel so I
  basically just ended up crashing as soon as I got to the hotel.  Not a big
  deal since the hotel I got was way out in the boonies, and I had no
  transportation downtown (no plans to get to the party place either, hrmm).
  It took a while to fall asleep in an unfamiliar environment, plus Utah is
  an hour ahead of California, so I was attempting and failing to fall
  asleep even earlier than normal.  I set my alarm for 7:00AM and got as
  much sleep as I could.

  -=- Saturday 9 August -=-
  Both the first and last day of Pilgrimage!  The party was officially
  supposed to begin at 8:00AM.  I figured I'd be somewhat fashionably late,
  so I was about right on schedule when I left the hotel just before 9:00AM.
  The taxi fare was $15 to get downtown from the hotel.  Mental note for
  next time - pay a couple of extra bucks for a hotel nearer to the party
  place.

  The actual party place was pretty much optimal for the number of people
  that attended.  It was at the Metro Learning Center Campus of the Salt
  Lake Community College, in basically the middle of downtown Salt Lake
  City.  Interestingly I had to convince the taxi driver that there really
  was a part of the community college downtown.  If I didn't write the
  address down I have no idea where we would have ended up!

  On entering the "lobby" of the Metro Learning Center Campus there was a
  sign welcoming Pilgrimage attendees and directing us up to the second
  floor to Salons 3, 4, and 5.  So, I took the elevator up and found a the
  Pilgrimage welcome desk.  The welcome desk had a sign-in sheet and some
  literature about the demo scene (including an original copy of the demo
  scene Wired article).  Sylphin and TFinn/dc5 arrived about exactly when I
  did, and we set up in the salon nearest to the lobby.  Each of the salons
  had a projector, four rows of tables, and enough seating for six people
  comfortably at each row.  I sat down and opened my laptop to check my
  email and we hit the only real major technical difficulty of the party.
  Apparently, even though the Metro Learning Center was equipped for
  wireless Internet you needed to be a student with an account to get on the
  wireless LAN.  Oh well.  Wired it is, I guess...

  I guess now would be as good a time as any to mention that I have been to
  demo parties before.  In 1997 and 1999 I attended the Spring Break demo
  parties in San Diego, California.  The Spring Break demo party in 1997 was
  my introduction to demos.  In 1999 I was convinced that I was going to
  enter a demo into the compo, but I pretty much completely underestimated
  the amount of time it would take to make a demo (even after a bunch of
  rendering routines and effects were already completed).  So this time, I
  resigned to myself a few weeks before the party that a demo just wasn't
  going to happen and decided that I was going to concentrate more on the
  social aspects of the party this time around, since that's what I regret
  not doing so much of in 1999.  If Pilgrimage 2004 happens I've convinced
  myself that I will have a demo to enter, done before the party starts, so
  hopefully in 2004 I'll have the best of both worlds!

  One of the coolest things about Pilgrimage were the various talks that
  were scheduled throughout the morning.  I managed to make it to four of
  them.

  In the first, Russ Christensen gave a talk about a project he worked on in
  school where he designed his own game console (and wrote Tetris and Space
  Invaders clones for it).  It made me wish I was still in school so I had
  time for wacky projects like it.

  The second talk was on programmable shaders by Thant Tessman.  Thant works
  for nVidia in their "tech demo" group.  Even though I knew most of the
  information he presented it was a pretty good talk.  I just wish his
  presentation used non-nVidia specific OpenGL extensions for those of us
  with ATI cards.

  The third talk was given by David Notario, also known as
  mac/xplsv^threepixels.

  David's talk was probably the one I was most interested in, since in it he
  described threepixel's 'Studio' demo framework.  His talk was awesome, and
  gave me a bunch of good ideas to work on in the next few months.  I figure
  if I can do a third of what he's done I'll have a demo that's at least
  competitive for next year.  Very inspiring.

  Somewhere during the morning Dan was interviewing people asking them a few
  questions about their experiences in the demo scene.  I of course was lame
  and couldn't even think up three words that I associate with the demo
  scene.  Can I retroactively say "awesome electronic art"?  Sure beats what
  I said (I think it was something about lack of sleep - how telling).

  After a quick break for lunch at the local 'Crown Burger' (think
  cheeseburger plus pastrami - the ultimate heart attack on a plate) Dan
  from Fusecon gave the final talk of the party.  It was basically a slide
  show and comments on his experience at the Breakpoint demo party in April.
  It was interesting to compare and contrast his experiences with the ones
  were were all having at Pilgrimage.  We clearly have a long way to go
  before we get a European-sized party in North America (not that that's a
  bad thing!).  We'll also probably need to have the party in a different
  state than Utah if we're going to have a beer truck.  <grin>

  Overall all of the talks were excellent and I'm disappointed I couldn't
  make some of the others.

  I spent the rest of the afternoon just hanging out, taking pictures, and
  watching demos.  Sylphin took over one of the salons and played a bunch of
  demos that I hadn't seen in years.  For example, I had almost completely
  forgotten about Replay's 'Fall Equals Winter'.  We also tried to keep a
  connection to AssemblyTV, since the Assembly demo party was going on
  simultaneously in Finland.  We managed to catch a bit of the wild compo,
  but eventually the quality just got too bad and we had to disconnect.

  Next year I'm going to try to bring my oldskool demo machine (DOS + GUS)
  to watch some of the classic old demos.  The Mindcandy DVD does a pretty
  good job representing demos that just can't be run on Windows PCs, but
  there are just too many good 1990s demos to fit onto one side of a DVD.
  Not to mention good intros, which aren't on a DVD at all!  Still, the last
  few major modern demos have been pretty darn impressive.  We watched 'The
  Popular Demo' several times and each time I notice something else that's
  just plain awesome.

  Somewhere along the line we decided to try out the video postcard software
  that had been donated to the party.  The basic plan was to film some
  professional looking video clips, send them over to Assembly, and hope we
  could get on AssemblyTV.  I don't know if we ever actually sent anything
  anywhere, but if nothing else it'll be amusing to see next year.  I
  managed to grab mine on my USB drive before I left as a nifty souvenir
  also.

  Sometime during the afternoon we hit our second technical difficulty of
  the day.  We discovered that it wasn't possible to share files across the
  network.  Though this makes sense in an academic setting (where that last
  thing the community college wants is their students transferring MP3s on
  their network), it makes submitting compo entries somewhat difficult.
  Luckily campus IT didn't block FTP ports, so we were able to set up an FTP
  server to submit compo entries.

  Over the course of the evening I was very impressed with the number of
  entries in all three compo categories.  When the compo deadline was
  reached at 8:00PM there were already four demo entries, four graphics
  entries, and six music entries, and two groups were still frantically
  trying to finish their demo!  To allow the two groups to finish the compo
  deadline was extended by an hour.  After all, it wouldn't be a party if
  the compos all started on time, would it?

  Finally around 10:00PM the judges had screened each of the entries and it
  was time to vote!  The organizers used a pretty unique voting system, but
  I think it worked out pretty well.  Basically, each attendee had a total
  of ten points to distribute in each compo, and judges had a total of fifty
  points.  The points could be distributed however the voter wished them to
  - all ten points could be given to one entry, or they could be distributed
  among several (or even all) entries.

  First up was the graphics compo.  All four entries were pretty good, and I
  think I gave points to each entry.  Next up was the music compo.  Again,
  each of the entries were pretty good.  Last was the demo compo, which was
  the compo I was most interested in.

  I don't think I remember the demo order exactly, but one of the first
  demos was 'Fastmade', by 'Tres Beats'.  I really liked this demo in a
  party setting.  The sound track was upbeat and the demo was entertaining.
  About all I didn't like was the color scheme.  Second was 'Charged', by
  'OTM'.  This was one of the two demos that were being worked on right up
  to the last minute, and unfortunately it crashed midway through the demo.
  Still, it was pretty neat, and I'll definitely download the final version.
  Next was 'K-Wak' by 'k-rad' and 'dc5'.  Another very cool demo.  It was
  pretty obvious that either this or 'Fastmade' was going to win.  Next was
  a 16 byte (that's right, no typo) demo from the Northern Dragons, and a
  4Kb intro also from the Northern Dragons.  The 4K intro was technically
  very impressive, but it's difficult to judge a technical feat like it in
  the same context as a full-blown demo production.  I guess the only
  solution is to have enough entries such that intros can have a category of
  their own.  Last was 'CursesDemo' by 'dc5'.  It's a NetBSD demo, though I
  assume it'll compile on any OS that has the curses library.  The music was
  played through a separate computer.  Overall it brought back fond memories
  of the dc5 Spring Break 99 demo, where they hummed the music.

  While the votes were being tallied we all congregated in a fourth salon
  where Nullsleep/8bitpeoples was entertaining all party goers with a live
  set of Gameboy tunes.  It fit the mood perfectly and gave everyone a
  chance to hang out for an hour or so.  You can download his live set on
  his web site: http://www.8bitpeoples.com/nullsleep.

  Finally, Legalize announced that the results were tallied and were ready
  to be announced!  First, though, there was a bunch of free stuff that was
  raffled off.  I don't remember the details of all that was given away but
  ATI donated a bunch of stuff, including five Radeon 9800 Pro graphics
  cards (three of which were given as first prize in the compos and two of
  which were raffled away).

  The graphics results were announced first.  Bruce won third place with his
  hilarious 'DemoWoman' picture.  Clarissa won second place with 'Ronnas',
  and Oman won with his 'Wrenchman vs.  Mothman' picture.  This was the one
  compo where my opinion really differed from the results.  I liked the
  fourth place picture, 'In Tolerance We Trust' by Fred.  Oh well.

  The music results were announced second.  Though I had the ordering
  slightly different, my votes went to the three productions that eventually
  won first, second, and third.  Mr.  Moses won first place with his nifty
  island tune 'Ipanema Sands', Nullsleep won second place with 'Her Lazer
  Light Eyes', and ChaoticOne and Troll won third place with 'Embraced'.
  The music talent was pretty good, and I liked a lot of the songs that
  didn't win also.

  Finally, the demo results were announced.  As expected, 'K-wak' won first
  place and 'FastMade' won second.  'CursesDemo', the dc5 text mode demo won
  third place.  Cool.  I was a bit surprised that the Northern Dragons 4Kb
  entry didn't place higher, but I guess that just goes to show that it's
  tough to rank 4Kb intros in the same context as full-blown demos.  It
  didn't help that the demo didn't run on the compo machine, but I still
  thought it was pretty cool.

  Just before midnight Legalize raffled off the final Radeon, thanked all of
  us for attending (though we really should have been thanking him for
  organizing such a successful party), and we left the Metro Learning Center
  and Pilgrimage 2003.

  Before leaving several of us made plans to meet up for a Pilgrimage
  afterparty at Troll and ChaoticOne's hotel room a few blocks from the
  party place.  ChaoticOne and Obsidian went out to try to find some ladies
  while myself, Troll, Dilvie, and Dilvie's girlfriend went out to obtain
  some of the local fermented malt beverages.  I thought that Sylphin and a
  few others were going to meet up with us as well but we never managed to
  cross paths with them again that night.

  At the afterparty Obsidian continued working on a song he began in the
  waning hours of Pilgrimage, and Troll, ChaoticOne, and Dilvie helped out
  to make a four-person collaboration that was, as I quote, a "total mind
  fuck".  Cool.  We even had some plans to do an extremely ghetto post-
  Pilgrimage demo, though the unfortunate realization that Troll's laptop
  had no OpenGL drivers and that my laptop had no sound code put a damper on
  these efforts.  I was also starting to feel the effects of the four hours
  of sleep I had the night before and the realization that I was going to
  need to be at the airport for a flight out early Sunday afternoon.  Man,
  I'm getting old.

  Interestingly we also discovered that Darwin and a few of the other
  Pilgrimage guys were staying in the hotel room next door.  They were
  driving back to Oregon the next day so they weren't too eager to join in
  the festivities, but it did lead us to dub the Sheraton the unofficial
  hotel of Pilgrimage 2003.

  Finally around 4AM we decided to call it a night and I got a ride back to
  my hotel from Dilvie and his girlfriend (Marcy?).  I finally fell asleep
  around 5AM.


  -=- Sunday 10 August -=-
  I woke up just in time to catch the end of the continental breakfast, made
  it to the airport on time, and typed up most of this party report before I
  got back to Sacramento mid afternoon!

  Thanks (in no particular order) to...

  All of the Pilgrimage organizers, especially Rich (Legalize) and Adam for
  their awesome work organizing the party.

  All of the Pilgrimage sponsors, including ATI, Microsoft, FuseCon, and
  Serious Magic for the prizes and giveaways, and XMission for hosting the
  web page and donating money to secure the party space.

  All of the Pilgrimage speakers for their excellent talks.  Thanks
  especially to Mac for giving me ideas and inspiration for next year.

  Troll and ChaoticOne for hosting the unofficial Pilgrimage afterparty.

  Dilvie and Marcy (?) for driving me back to my hotel in the wee hours of
  the morning.  Next year I'll get a hotel downtown!

  I'll see ya at Pilgrimage 2004!

                 --secnuop/Ingenuiti Productions


--=--=--
--=--=------=--=------=--=----
  Key Signatures
  By:  Dilvie
--=--=------=--=------=--=----

  A lot of musicians received formal training in music starting at a very
  young age.  For them, the foundations of written music were probably
  drilled into their heads long ago.  I learned music by ear.  I've had very
  little formal music training.  As a music major, my lack of training has
  been a major handicap in college.  I suspect many trackers and self-
  trained electronic musicians may be in the same boat.

  One of the first obstacles to overcome when you set out to learn music
  theory is the process of memorizing a total of thirty key signatures.  Key
  signatures tell you about the pattern of half steps and whole steps that
  make up the harmonic framework of a passage of music.  This tonal
  framework is technically called a Mode.  There are actually seven
  different modes, but the majority of modern music is centered around only
  two:  Ionic and Aeolian (Major and Minor).

  Like all other aspects of music, key signatures are based on mathematics,
  and where there is math, there's a shortcut.

  Eventually, you will probably memorize all the keys.  Until then, all you
  need to remember is a simple sequence of letters:  B E A D G C F.  This
  sequence represents the order that flats are displayed in the key
  signatures:  Bb, Eb, Ab, Db, and so on.  The reverse represents the order
  that the sharps are displayed in the key signatures:  F#, C#, G#, and so
  on.


              7
  b 2 3 4 5 6 0 1    number of flats in the key
    B E A D G C F
    5 4 3 2 1 0 6 #  number of sharps in the key
              7


  The key of C Major has no sharps or flats.  The key of G has one sharp.
  If you start on the sharp end of the sequence, you'll see that the sharp
  in the key of G is F#.  D has two (F#, C#), A has three (F#, C#, G#), E
  has four (F#, C#, G#, D#), B has five (F#, C#, G#, D#, A#), F# has six
  (F#, C#, G#, D#, A#, E#), and C# has seven (F#, C#, G#, D#, A#, E#, B#).
  All of the flat keys, with the exception of F have flat in the name.  The
  flat keys are F (Bb), Bb (Bb, Eb), Eb (Bb, Eb, Ab), Ab (Bb, Eb, Ab, Db),
  Db (Bb, Eb, Ab, Db, Gb), Gb (Bb, Eb, Ab, Db, Gb, Cb), and Cb (Bb, Eb, Ab,
  Db, Gb, Cb, Fb).

  Don't worry.  You don't have to memorize all of that to know your key
  signatures.  All you have to remember is BEADGCF, or its reverse, FCGDAEB.
  From that simple sequence, some easy math trickery can reveal every one of
  the thirty keys.  Picture a number line from -7 to 7.  Negative numbers
  represent the number of flats in the key.  Positive numbers represent the
  number of sharps in the key.  Remember that C has zero sharps or flats,
  and that F has one flat, and G has one sharp.


  -7 -6 -5 -4 -3 -2 -1  0  1  2  3  4  5  6  7
   Cb                F  C  G  D  A  E  B     C#


  Let's take a closer look at what we have here.  Look at where the C's are:
  Cb has seven flats (-7 on the number line).  C has zero sharps or flats,
  and C# has seven sharps (+7).  This principle can be used to find all of
  the flat and sharp keys.  To find Db, simply subtract seven from 2 (-5).
  Db has five flats.  To find F#, simply add seven to -1 (the key of F has
  one flat).  F# has 6 sharps.

  This same number line can help you find minor keys as well.  To find the
  minor key signature, simply subtract three.  G minor has two flats (G has
  one sharp.  1 - 3 = -2).


  [Flat -7] <-- [Natural] --> [Sharp +7]
                    |
                    |
                    v
                [minor -3]


  In addition to these simple calculation methods, there are a couple of
  neat tricks that will help you to identify written key signatures.  To
  identify a written flat key, the key name (if it is major) will be the
  second to last flat in the signature.  For example, the key of Bb has two
  flats.  The second to last flat in that signature is Bb (Bb, Eb).  The key
  of Ab has 4 flats.  The second to last flat in that signature is Ab (Bb,
  Eb <Ab>, Db).

  To identify a written sharp key, look at the note represented by the last
  sharp, and raise it one step.  For example, in the key of C#, the last
  sharp represents B#.  One step above B# is C#.

  Now that you know the tricks of the trade, how about a little practice?
  The best way to learn key signatures is to drill.  If you don't,
  everything you've just read will fade out of your memory very quickly.
  Head on over to <http://www.musictheory.net/> and take a look at the
  trainers.  You'll find one called the key trainer.  Start by configuring
  the keys you want to practice.  You can select major or minor, 4 different
  clefs, and the keys you want to work on.  Start with three, and add two
  more when those three start to get too easy.

  Switch off major and minor, and rotate through the various clefs until
  you've become the king of key signatures.  If you're a serious musician,
  you'll be glad you did.  One day you will need to communicate with other
  musicians in writing.  The language for doing just that has evolved over
  thousands of years.  Today, written music is an elegant way to record your
  musical ideas for future generations.  It's also the best way to let other
  people take a crack at playing the music you write.

                 --Dilvie


--=--=--
--=--=------=--=------=--=----
  On The Sideline
    "Ninth" by Polygon Ring
  By:  Ben
--=--=------=--=------=--=----

  This month I am going to introduce "Ninth" by Polygon Ring.  The comments
  in the instrument list classify this song as experimental/intelligent drum
  music, released in December 2000.  It is unsurprising that the first notes
  in this song are drums, and a smooth pad begins the progression that
  carries the song at a leisurely pace.

  I like the relaxed tone of this song, it isn't too demanding to listen to.
  Since there is no given story behind this song, it's easy to make one up.
  I could imagine a solitary VW bug weaving along a 2-way highway that
  follows a small river through a coastal mountain range in June.  It could
  be just after a brief rain storm, and the sun could occasionally sparkle
  off blooming plants.  In this scenario the song's title could be taken
  from the milepost the car was seen driving past.  But that's enough
  fantasy for now.

  The drums are crisp, but remain fairly static in about 3 variations of the
  a single theme, with a couple well timed percussive pauses.  The melody is
  formed mainly by pads and echoing staccato instruments that sound somewhat
  like a harp with a stereo delay.  Taken as a whole I found it a full and
  mildly upbeat sound.  The ending could be improved, it is only a little
  better than cutting abruptly into silence.  The drums stop, then the tempo
  winds down and the pads pitch bend into fading dissonant tones.

  There is a lot of music circulating called experimental or intelligent
  drum music.  Though some IDM lacks structure, "Ninth" is pleasantly
  melodic and lighthearted.  The person(s) behind Polygon Ring know better
  than to take their music too seriously, and found good results.

  Song Information:

  Title:       Ninth
  Author:      Polygon Ring
  Length:      7:06
  File Size:   871k
  Source:      http://polygonring.hypermart.net/music/ninth.zip

                 --Ben Collver



--=--=--
--=--=------=--=------=--=----
  In Tune
    Music from Nightbeat
  By:  Coplan
--=--=------=--=------=--=----

  -=- "Trickster" by Nightbeat -=-
  There's an old mod by Jogeir called "Guitar Slinger".  Nightbeat's song
  reminded me of this song.  There's just as much skill demonstrated in
  Nightbeat's talent.  And being compared to Jogeir, I would imagine, is
  nothing to be ashamed of.

  "Trickster" is an acoustic guitar and flute piece.  It's got a bit of a
  folk music feel to it.  It's basically only got four instruments:  An
  acoustic guitar, an acoustic base guitar, drums and the flute.  But it's
  simplicity is what draws me to Nightbeat's music in the first place.

  I must point out that this is a true Impulse Tracker module.  This is
  important for two reasons.  First is the fact that all the guitar riffs
  are sampled, and pieced together much in the same way that the classic
  trackers, like Jogeir and Necros, did.  It's a very difficult style to
  perfect, and it can be very limiting at times.  Not limiting to the sound,
  but limiting to what you can do with the song.  So it's very common that
  this technique results in a broken sound, or a poorly written song.  This
  is not the case with "Trickster", and I admire the song for that reason.
  Second of importance is the fact that with a module, there is no post-
  mixing as you might find in an MP3.  Any echos or room noise that you
  would hear in this song were written right into the song.  Every detail
  has been accounted for, and this song sounds like a bunch of guys in a
  studio.  It sounds that good!

  So all technical observations aside, lets get down to the music.
  Throughout most of the song, the flute takes the spotlight.  It's the lead
  instrument, and Nightbeat has presented us with quite a good tune.  That
  is not to say that the guitars are forgotten.  They are as essential to
  the song as the flute.  They're the first and last instruments that you
  hear.  The opening is clean and simple.  The song itself provides a very
  warm feeling.  Unfortunately, I was not 100% happy with the closing.  I
  thought it a bit too abrupt.  However, with the live performance feel of
  the song, this would likely be a very appropriate ending.  This is a great
  song, and I recommend a download for some easy listening.

  Song Information:

  Title:          Trickster
  Author:         Nightbeat
  Release date:   7/27/03
  File Size:      2.7 MB / 3.2
  Source:         http://w1.314.telia.com/~u31445974/mods/nb_trickster.zip


  -=- "Mirror People" by Rain -=-
  I picked up this track on recommendation from Novus.  It's a guitar rock
  song, so you already know my admiration for the skill required to do such
  a song.  Throw on top of that the fact that Rain uses a distorted guitar
  as his lead.  That makes things even more difficult.  But as I just went
  through discussing why guitar modules are difficult to work with in the
  "Trickster" review, I won't drag that horse out again.

  Rain seems to have a very good ear for some FX in his songs.  He's thrown
  in a couple of FX samples like blips, a car starting and Rain (which I'm
  curious if he put it in there because of his alias).  These bits are not
  essential to the song.  I think the song stands on itself.  But they
  definately add to the song.  The rain, in fact, even changes the feeling
  of the song a bit.  Up until the rain came in, I figured this song for a
  happy song.  But I'm thinking it's a bit more of a blues song with a bit
  of a modern edge.

  As I said, I was really impressed with the guitars.  I think the lead
  guitars (both the distorted guitar and the clean guitar lead) are well
  written.  The leads are catchy and fun.  I imagine they'd be fun to play
  if you were a guitarist.  But nevermind that.  The rhythm guitar's role
  wasn't overlooked, either.  The guy isn't playing the same damn thing
  throughout the song.  The rhythm guitarist (I say this figuratively...it
  is a module, after all) changes things up every once in a while.  He ebbs
  and flows with the leads.  The percussion is simple, but very appropriate.
  There are a couple of really good riffs, but otherwise the drums never get
  any splotlight.  As I said, this is appropriate, and I don't mean this to
  sound like a negative comment.  Rock tunes typically require the drummer
  to be a bit more subdued.  The percussion style in this song is very
  similar to what you'd find from Mick Fleetwood, of the mainstream band
  Fleetwood Mac.  The percussion in this song lends its hand in creating the
  overall mellow feeling of the song.

  After hearing this song, I'll be adding this to one of my playlists.  I
  realize that this song isn't for everyone.  But if you're a tracker, you
  can definately learn a lot from this song.  As mellow rock songs go, this
  should be classified as one of the better tunes.  Especially in the world
  of the demoscene.  The song file isn't that large, all things considered,
  and it would be worth a download.


  Song Information:

  Title:          Mirror People
  Author:         Rain
  Release date:   8/25/03
  File Size:      1.5 MB / 2.9 MB
  Source:         ftp://ftp.scene.org/pub/music/groups/sands/rain/rn-mpp.zip

                 --Coplan

  "In Tune" is a regular column dedicated to the review of original and
  singular works by fellow trackers.  It is to be used as a tool to expand
  your listening and writing horizons, but should not be used as a general
  rating system.  Coplan's opinions are not the opinions of the Static Line
  Staff.

  If you have heard a song you would like to recommend (either your own, or
  another person's), We can be contacted through e-mail using the addresses
  found in the closing notes.  Please do not send files attached to e-mail
  without first contacting us.  Thank you!


--=--=--
--=--=------=--=------=--=----
  The Lineup
  By:  Novus
--=--=------=--=------=--=----

  Welcome to The Lineup! Every month, I scour through the hundreds of new
  releases on the scene's major archive sites to find the best new music,
  saving you the trouble of having to download 20 instant-delete songs to
  find 1 that's worth keeping.

  The feedback has dried up in the past few months, and my ego is feeling
  neglected.  C'mon people! Tell me what a great job I'm doing! (Or what a
  lousy job I'm doing too.  My ego may be inflated, but it's also honest.)
  Whether it's positive or negative, send all feedback on The Lineup to
  vince_young@hotmail.com.

  In the meantime, you may consider the following 16 tunes to be the best
  tracks of August 2003:


  -=- THE BEST OF THE BEST -=-
  "World #204" - Graff - light rock
  ftp://ftp.scene.org/pub/parties/2001/addictanniversary01/mmul/world204.zip

  -=- THE REST OF THE BEST -=-
  "Acid Maintenance" - Keith303 - dance
  ftp://ftp.scene.org/pub/music/artists/keith303/k303main.zip

  "Checksum Error" - Breakthru - pop
  http://www.users.ch/portela/breakthru/xm/brk_chk.zip

  "Discovery" - Temezo & T-Tracker - dance
  http://www.modarchive.com/cgi-bin/download.cgi/D/discovery_fk.xm

  "GravTune" - Robert Gravener - pop
  http://www.modarchive.com/cgi-bin/download.cgi/G/gravener1.it

  "Ice Peak" - Turkanen - pop
  http://www.mbnet.fi/~eska/t-ice2k3.it

  "Idolatry" - Gargoyle - pop
  http://www.tunestore.de/songs/idolatry.zip

  "Kjelsaas By Night" - Neon - trance
  http://home.no.net/zoolmods/ne-kbn.zip

  "L'envol" - Xenon - fantasy
  http://www.novusmusic.org/songs/envol_8.zip

  "Mirror People" - Rain - light rock
  ftp://ftp.scene.org/pub/music/groups/sands/rain/rn-mpp.zip

  "Mystified" - Aitrus - ambient
  http://www.modplug.com/mods/nrdetail.php3?session=&detailno=10798

  "No Surrender, No Retreat" - Speci - trance
  http://www.mbnet.fi/~special1/files2001/spc-nsnr.zip

  "Road To Sunset" - Butch - pop
  ftp://ftp.scene.org/pub/music/artists/butch/b_sunset.zip

  "Trickster" - Nightbeat - fantasy
  http://w1.314.telia.com/~u31445974/mods/nb_trickster.zip

  "West Song" - Butch - fantasy
  ftp://ftp.scene.org/pub/music/artists/butch/b_west.zip

  "You Are My Sky" - Speci - dance
  http://www.mbnet.fi/~special1/files2001/spc-yams.zip

  Latez!

                 --Novus


--=--=--
--=--=------=--=------=--=----
  Screen Lit Vertigo
    "El Bourrrinas" and "Red Line"
  By:  Seven
--=--=------=--=------=--=----

  -=- "El Bourrrinos" by Marshals -=-

  (party-version)

  Found at www.scene.org
  1st place at the Synthesis party 2003.

  System requirements:

  CPU: P4 1.6GHz prefered (may work on P3/Athlon @ 500Mhz)

  3D: NVidia GeForce4 ti prefered (may work on GeForce2/3 ti, ATI Radeon 8500+
    (tested on GeForce 32 mx with few loss of speed)

  Mem: 256Mb RAM prefered (may work with 64Mb)

  Soundcard external or integrated SB compatible

  Windows, 5MB HD

  Test Machine: P3 900 640MB, Gamesurround III, Radeon 8500 LE 64MB, Win98

  The credits:
    code: Woid
    music: Celsius
    graphics: Isobel, Zone, Yannus Stark

  The demo:
  The category this demo belongs to is clear from the very first second: El
  Bourrrinos is a house/techno type demo, with all visuals synchronized to
  the pumping bass of the soundtrack.  I don't like extremely repetitive
  music, but at less than 4 minutes and with some variation here and there,
  it's bearable :) Now, the visuals: imagine a white dice floating in the
  air, with disconnected red feet and hands (think Rayman), and a huge grin
  on its face.  Take four of these and you have the inhabitants of this
  demo, whose sole purpose in life seems to be to dance to the music, and to
  run around in a landscape filled with simple houses, a few clouds and many
  booming speakers.  For the rest there are no graphics, and almost no
  effects: some zooming, a horizontal blur suggesting speed, and the blue
  fog that is too dense in the second part of the demo.  The syncing is
  precise but simplistic: every movement and camera switch is synced to the
  main beat.

  Overall:
  Very simple, but not bad if you like this kind of music.  The little cube-
  men are kinda funny, and the design of their world is very consistent:
  rounded cubes, and low-poly versions of everything else.  The animation is
  quite good, although there are a few places where it is noticable that
  sprites are used (ugly difference, IMHO).  So if you like techno music,
  make sure you you get this one.


  -=- "Red Line" by Condence & Mandarine -=-

  (party-version)

  Found at www.scene.org
  2nd place at the Equinox 2003 democompo.

  System requirements: Nothing listed, so these are the obvious ones: Windows,
    7MB HD, a 3D card.

  Test Machine: P3 900 640MB, Gamesurround III, Radeon 8500 LE 64MB, Win98

  The credits:
    Code: Norecess, Jylam
    Gfx: Mikl, Fra
    Music: Med, Redribbon

  The demo:
  If you expect the next cooperation between Condence and Mandarine to be
  similar to the funny Superjam Superheroes, you'll be disappointed.  Red
  Line is a short 3D-demo without a real story, although the visuals follow
  a theme: small cities in eastern and western style, in a uniform grey and
  blue colorscheme overlayed with a noise-effect.  The only other color is
  the bright red from a strange rocket and a giant blimp, plus some
  twitching red lines in the sky (that remind me of the Intense Pattern
  demo).  I first assumed it was an anti-war demo, but then I became
  confused by the presence of a alien robot, something that looks like a
  flying taxi and a futuristic restaurant with an evil-looking micky mouse
  balloon.  There's a small but annoying visual bug, maybe only on Radeon
  cards: the two triangles of the noise-effect don't always connect
  perfectly, leaving a black diagonal line over the whole screen.  The
  credits are staggered over the whole demo, always accompagnied by a low-
  color retro science-fiction image: an astronaut firing a gun, or a brain
  with tentacles in a bowl.

  According to its ID3 tag, the genre of the MP3 soundtrack is blues, but it
  sounds more like pop to me: energetic, fast percussion, a couple of vocals
  that are repeated ("Oh Baby", "Cant't get my lover") etc.  Granted, my
  musical knowledge is very very limited :) The speed of the music is
  reflected in the fast camera movements and changes of the 3D scenes.

  Overall:
  Red Line is quite a strange beast.  It has consistent design, simple 3D
  objects, nice graphics and a soundtrack that doesn't quite fit, except for
  the rhythm.  It is less than 2 minutes long, but it left me wondering
  about its meaning for much longer.  Recommended if you like weird demos.

                 --Seven


--=--=--
--=--=------=--=------=--=----
  Coplan's Eyes
    Keep it Simple, Stupid!
  By:  Coplan
--=--=------=--=------=--=----

  A very strange thing happened the other day.  I woke up, and had a song
  idea.  Now you wouldn't appreciate me for a true artist of any medium if I
  didn't first tell you the details.  It was 4:30am.  I was dead tired.  I
  was still a bit hung-over from the night before (forgot to drink my water
  before bed).  It was dark, and there was nothing more I wanted then to
  fall back asleep.  I went to the bathroom, grabbed a drink of water and
  some medication for the headache, and wandered back into my bedroom.  And
  it hit me -- a song idea.  That need for sleep was now secondary to my
  need to complete a song, and I think this was it.

  So I slapped on my headphones so as not to wake anyone.  I turned on my
  computer and my synths and starting diddling on the MIDI controller.
  Before I knew it, I had a very rough sketch for a song laid out complete
  with some chorus and some background instruments.  I even had some
  percussion mapped out.  And wouldn't you know it, it was then....11:30am?
  I had been working on this damn thing for 7 hours?  Talk about losing
  track of time.  Thank goodness it was a Saturday.  So I let myself fall to
  sleep and I'd wake in the early evening.  I ate something, and then sat
  down at my computer.  Now any wise musician knows that he can't hack
  together a song (including the final mix-down) in one day.  It's good to
  listen to it over and over again.  But before I do that, I like to listen
  to other music to get in the frame of mind.  Considering the type of song
  I had sketched out, I decided to listen to some old 'scene music.  After
  about a dozen or so songs, I went back on a nostalgia trip through my own
  music collection.

  Back when I was a young tracker, maybe only 15 years old with only a year
  or so experience, I would write songs as fast as I could think of them.
  Even today, I'm still very nimble when I'm jumping around in Impulse
  Tracker.  I can map out a whole song without even hitting play once.
  Rough, but I know the way the tracker works THAT well.  Almost all my
  songs were using the same speed/BPM, and I grew to a point where I was not
  limited by the program.  I was only limited by my ideas.  And back then, I
  had a lot of time to think of new ideas.  I would release a song every
  week or two.  I would start a new song almost every day.  Last count on my
  hard drive, I have over 240 incomplete songs.  Some are two or three
  patterns long.  Others are nearly finished, although these are far less
  common.  These days, I'm lucky to complete 4 or 5 songs a year or start
  one every other week.  Time, as always, is an issue.  I don't have as much
  time for my music as I used to.  But I think the problem now is that I've
  sort of become so engrossed in the details and the quality of the sounds
  in my song that I have often failed at completing a song idea before I
  start concerning myself with how the piano sounds.  But I'm not upset with
  myself for that.  Some of my friends are, as they'd like to see me release
  more often.  But I have a lot of fun messing with the details.  If its
  only for me, so be it.  But the fact is, there are less songs coming out
  of my computer over the last couple of years.

  I'm not concerned.

  So with this thought in mind, I decided that the other song could wait.
  It's roughed out in Cubase.  All I really had to do was some tweaking and
  some mixing and post-mixing.  The idea, once written down, will never be
  forgotten.  So I loaded up my old legacy application:  Impulse Tracker.  I
  pulled out some of my old favorite samples, and started doodling with my
  ears.  I forgot all that I had learned the past couple of years about
  sound quality, and just let my mind free.  And wouldn't you know it?
  Another song just popped out of nowhere.  So that's how I used to do it.

  And when I returned to Cubase to listen to that ditty I had written
  earlier, I didn't like it anymore.  Yes, the instruments were beautiful,
  and the sound quality was about 300 notches higher than anything I
  could've gotten out of IT (even with good samples).  But the song...it
  sucked!  I'll probably release it some day.  I've put a lot of work into
  it, and it is mixed well.  It's not the most terrible thing I've written,
  and I haven't released anything in a while.  But I will likely keep things
  simple the next time I have a song idea.  I've learned from my recent
  observations in Impulse Tracker that the tune is sometimes more important
  than the sound quality.  And within the world of MIDI, it's easy to fix
  the sound quality later.

  How stupid I was!  I should have been thinking about the song all along.

                 --Coplan


--=--=--
--=--=------=--=------=--=----
  Link List
--=--=------=--=------=--=----

    Portals:

        SceneSpot (Home of Static Line).......http://www.scenespot.org
        CFXweb.......................................http://cfxweb.net
        Czech Scene................................http://www.scene.cz
        Danish Scene..............................http://demo-scene.dk
        Demoscene.org.........................http://www.demoscene.org
        Demo.org...................................http://www.demo.org
        Diskmag.de...................................http://diskmag.de
        Greek Scene............................http://www.demoscene.gr
        Hungarian Scene........................http://www.demoscene.hu
        Italian Scene...........................http://run.to/la_scena
    <*> Kahvi.....................................http://www.kahvi.org
        ModPlug Central Resources..........http://www.castlex.com/mods
        Noerror.................................http://www.noerror.org
        Norwegian Scene........................http://www.demoscene.no
        Orange Juice.............................http://www.ojuice.net
        Planet Zeus..........................http://www.planetzeus.net
        Polish Scene...........................http://www.demoscena.pl
        Pouet.net.................................http://www.pouet.net
        Russian Scene..........................http://www.demoscene.ru
        Scene.org.................................http://www.scene.org
        Scenergy on-line (8bit)............http://www.scenergy.natm.ru
        Scenet....................................http://www.scenet.de
        Spanish Scene............................http://www.escena.org
        Swiss Scene..............................http://www.chscene.ch
        United Trackers.................http://www.united-trackers.org

    Archives:

        Acid2.....................................ftp://acid2.stack.nl
        Amber.......................................ftp://amber.bti.pl
        Aminet.....................http://wuarchive.wustl.edu/~aminet/
        Cyberbox.....................................ftp://cyberbox.de
        Hornet (1992-1996)........................ftp://ftp.hornet.org
        MOD Archive..........................http://www.modarchive.com
        Scene.org..................................ftp://ftp.scene.org
        Scene.org Austra........................ftp://ftp.au.scene.org
        Scene.org Netherlands...................ftp://ftp.nl.scene.org
        Swiss Scene FTP...........................ftp://ftp.chscene.ch

    Demo Groups:

        3g Design..............................http://3gdesign.cjb.net
        3State...................................http://threestate.com
        7 Gods.........................................http://7gods.sk
        Aardbei.....................................http://aardbei.com
        Acid Rain..............................http://surf.to/acidrain
        Addict..................................http://addict.scene.pl
        Agravedict........................http://www.agravedict.art.pl
        Alien Prophets.....................http://www.alienprophets.dk
        Anakata..............................http://www.anakata.art.pl
        ASD....................................http://asd.demoscene.gr
        Astral..............................http://astral.scene-hu.com
        Astroidea........................http://astroidea.scene-hu.com
        BlaBla..............................http://blabla.planet-d.net
        Blasphemy..............................http://www.blasphemy.dk
        Bomb..................................http://bomb.planet-d.net
        Broncs..................................http://broncs.scene.cz
        Byterapers.....................http://www.byterapers.scene.org
        Bypass.................................http://bypass.scene.org
        Calodox.................................http://www.calodox.org
        Cocoon..............................http://cocoon.planet-d.net
        Confine.................................http://www.confine.org
        Damage...................................http://come.to/damage
        Dc5.........................................http://www.dc5.org
        Delirium..............................http://delirium.scene.pl
        Eclipse............................http://www.eclipse-game.com
        Elitegroup..........................http://elitegroup.demo.org
        Exceed...........................http://www.inf.bme.hu/~exceed
        Fairlight.............................http://www.fairlight.com
        Fobia Design...........................http://www.fd.scene.org
        Freestyle............................http://www.freestylas.org
        Fresh! Mindworks...................http://kac.poliod.hu/~fresh
        Future Crew..........................http://www.futurecrew.org
        Fuzzion.................................http://www.fuzzion.org
        GODS...................................http://www.idf.net/gods
        Halcyon...........................http://www.halcyon.scene.org
        Haujobb..................................http://www.haujobb.de
        Hellcore............................http://www.hellcore.art.pl
        Infuse...................................http://www.infuse.org
        Inquisition....................http://inquisition.demoscene.hu
        Kilobite...............................http://kilobite.cjb.net
        Kolor................................http://www.kaoz.org/kolor
        Komplex.................................http://www.komplex.org
        Kooma.....................................http://www.kooma.com
        Mandula.........................http://www.inf.bme.hu/~mandula
        Maturefurk...........................http://www.maturefurk.com
        Monar................ftp://amber.bti.pl/pub/scene/distro/monar
        MOVSD....................................http://movsd.scene.cz
        Nextempire...........................http://www.nextempire.com
        Noice.....................................http://www.noice.org
        Orange.................................http://orange.scene.org
        Orion................................http://orion.planet-d.net
        Outbreak................................http://www.outbreak.nu
        Popsy Team............................http://popsyteam.rtel.fr
        Prone................................http://www.prone.ninja.dk
        Purple....................................http://www.purple.dk
        Rage........................................http://www.rage.nu
        Replay.......................http://www.shine.scene.org/replay
        Retro A.C...........................http://www.retroac.cjb.net
        Sista Vip..........................http://www.sistavip.exit.de
        Skytech team............................http://www.skytech.org
        Skrju.....................................http://www.skrju.org
        Spinning Kids......................http://www.spinningkids.org
        Sunflower.......................http://sunflower.opengl.org.pl
        Talent.............................http://talent.eurochart.org
        The Black Lotus.............................http://www.tbl.org
        The Digital Artists Wired Nation.http://digitalartists.cjb.net
        The Lost Souls...............................http://www.tls.no
        TPOLM.....................................http://www.tpolm.com
        Trauma.................................http://sauna.net/trauma
        T-Rex.....................................http://www.t-rex.org
        Unik........................................http://www.unik.de
        Universe..........................http://universe.planet-d.net
        Vantage..................................http://www.vantage.ch
        Wipe....................................http://www.wipe-fr.org

    Music Labels, Music Sites:

        Aisth.....................................http://www.aisth.com
        Aural Planet........................http://www.auralplanet.com
        Azure...................................http://azure-music.com
        Blacktron Music Production...........http://www.d-zign.com/bmp
        BrothomStates.............http://www.katastro.fi/brothomstates
        Chill..........................http://www.chillproductions.com
        Chippendales......................http://www.sunpoint.net/~cnd
        Chiptune...............................http://www.chiptune.com
        Da Jormas................................http://www.jormas.com
        Fabtrax......http://www.cyberverse.com/~boris/fabtrax/home.htm
        Fairlight Music.....................http://fairlight.scene.org
        Five Musicians.........................http://www.fm.scene.org
        Fusion Music Crew.................http://members.home.nl/cyrex
        Goodstuff..........................http://artloop.de/goodstuff
        Hellven.................................http://www.hellven.org
        Ignorance.............................http://www.ignorance.org
        Immortal Coil.............................http://www.ic.l7.net
        Intense...........................http://intense.ignorance.org
        Jecoute.................................http://jecoute.cjb.net
        Kosmic Free Music Foundation.............http://www.kosmic.org
        Lackluster.....................http://www.m3rck.net/lackluster
        Level-D.................................http://www.level-d.com
        Mah Music.............................http://come.to/mah.music
        Maniacs of noise...............http://home.worldonline.nl/~mon
        MAZ's sound homepage..................http://www.maz-sound.com
        Med.......................................http://www.med.fr.fm
        Miasmah.............................http://www.miasmah.cjb.net
        Milk.......................................http://milk.sgic.fi
        Mo'playaz..........................http://ssmedion.de/moplayaz
        Mono211.................................http://www.mono211.com
        Morbid Minds..............http://www.raveordie.com/morbidminds
        Moods..............................http://www.moodymusic.de.vu
        Mstation.....................http://mstation.org/software.html
        Nectarine Demoscene Radio................http://scenemusic.net
        Noise................................http://www.noisemusic.org
        One Touch Records......................http://otr.planet-d.net
        Park..................................http://park.planet-d.net
        pHluid..................................http://phluid.acid.org
        Radical Rhythms.....http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/merrelli/rr
        RBi Music.............................http://www.rbi-music.com
        Ruff Engine................http://members.xoom.com/ruff_engine
        SHR8M......................................http://1st.to/shr8m
        Sound Devotion................http://sugarbomb.x2o.net/soundev
        Soundstate.........................http://listen.to/soundstate
        Sunlikamelo-D.....................http://www.sunlikamelo-d.com
        Suspect Records........................http://www.tande.com/sr
        Tequila........................http://www.defacto2.net/tequila
        Tempo................................http://tempomusic.cjb.net
        Tetris....................................http://msg.sk/tetris
        Theralite...........................http://theralite.avalon.hr
        Tokyo Dawn Records........................http://tokyodawn.org
        Triad's C64 music archive.............http://www.triad.c64.org
        UltraBeat.........................http://www.innerverse.com/ub
        Vibrants................................http://www.vibrants.dk
        Zen of Tracking.........................http://surf.to/the-imm

    Programming:

        3D engines..........http://cg.cs.tu-berlin.de/~ki/engines.html
        3D programming portal.................http://www.3dgamedev.com
        Documents...............http://www.neutralzone.org/home/faqsys
        File format collection...................http://www.wotsit.org
        Game programming portal...............http://www.gamasutra.com
        LCC (free C compiler).........http://www.remcomp.com/lcc-win32
        NASM (free Assembly compiler)......http://www.cryogen.com/nasm
        Programming portal......................http://www.gamedev.net
        Programming portal.....................http://www.flipcode.com
        Programming portal......................http://www.exaflop.org
        Programming portal............http://www.programmersheaven.com
        Programming portal.....................http://www.freecode.com
        PTC video engine.........................http://www.gaffer.org

    Magazines:

        Amber...............................http://amber.bti.pl/di_mag
        Amnesia...............http://amnesia-dist.future.easyspace.com
        Demojournal....................http://demojournal.planet-d.net
        Eurochart.............................http://www.eurochart.org
        Heroin...................................http://www.heroin.net
        Hugi........................................http://www.hugi.de
        Music Massage......................http://www.scene.cz/massage
        Jurassic Pack...........................www.jurassicpack.de.vu
        Pain..................................http://pain.planet-d.net
        Scenial...........................http://www.scenial.scene.org
        Shine...............................http://www.shine.scene.org
        Static Line................http://www.scenespot.org/staticline
        Sunray..............................http://sunray.planet-d.net
        TUHB.......................................http://www.tuhb.org
        WildMag..................................http://www.wildmag.de

    Parties:

        Assembly (Finland).....................http://www.assembly.org
        Ambience (The Netherlands)..............http://www.ambience.nl
        Buenzli (Switzerland)......................http://www.buenz.li
        Dreamhack (Sweden)....................http://www.dreamhack.org
        Gravity (Poland)............http://www.demoscena.cp.pl/gravity
        Mekka-Symposium (Germany)...................http://ms.demo.org
        Pilgrimage (Utah, US)..............http://pilgrimage.scene.org
        ReAct (Greece).............................http://www.react.gr
        Takeover (The Netherlands).............,http://www.takeover.nl
        The Party (Denmark).....................http://www.theparty.dk

    Others:

        Demo secret parts....http://www.inf.bme.hu/~mandula/secret.txt
        Textmode Demo Archive.................http://tmda.planet-d.net
        Arf!Studios..........................http://www.arfstudios.org
        #coders..................................http://coderz.cjb.net
        Csound-tekno e-mail list......................................
           ............http://plot.bek.no/mailman/listinfo/csoundtekno
        Demonews Express.........http://www.teeselink.demon.nl/express
        Demo fanclub........................http://jerware.org/fanclub
        Digital Undergrounds.....................http://dug.iscool.net
        Everything tracking..http://zolaweb.com/Zola/trax/tracking.htm
        Freax.....................................http://www.freax.hu/
        GfxZone............................http://gfxzone.planet-d.net
        Mod-Radio.....................http://www.back2roots.org/Radio/
        PC-demos explained.....http://www.oldskool.org/demos/explained
        Pixel...................................http://pixel.scene.org
        #trax e-mail list.............................................
           .............http://www.scenespot.org/mailman/listinfo/trax
        Underground Mine.............http://www.spinningkids.org/umine

    IRC Channels:

        Graphics.........................................ircnet #pixel
        Graphics (French)..............................ircnet #pixelfr
        Music......................................irc.scene.org #trax
        Music.............................................ircnet #trax
        Programming.....................................ircnet #coders
        Programming....................................efnet #flipcode
        Programming (French)............................ircnet #codefr
        Programming (German)........................ircnet #coders.ger
        Programming (Hungarian)......................ircnet #coders.hu
        Scene.........................................ircnet #thescene
        Scene (French)..................................ircnet #demofr
        Scene (Hungarian)............................ircnet #demoscene
        Zx-spectrum scene..................................ircnet #z80

--=--=--
----=--=------=--=------=--=------=--=------=--=------=--=------=--=------


  -=- Staff -=-

    Editors:         Ciaran / Ciaran Hamilton / staticline@theblob.org
                     Ben / Ben Collver / collver1@comcast.net
    Staff Writers:   Coplan / D. Travis North / coplan@scenespot.org
                      Dilvie / Eric Hamilton / dilvie@dilvie.com
                      Novus / Vince Young / vince_young@hotmail.com
                      Psitron / Tim Soderstrom / tigerhawk@stic.net
                      Setec / Jesper Pederson / jesped@post.tele.dk
                      Seven / Stefaan VanNieuwenhuyze/ seven7@pandora.be
                      Tryhuk / Tryhuk Vojtech / vojtech.tryhuk@worldonline.cz
                      Vill / Brian Frank / darkvill@yahoo.com
                      The Watcher / Paul-Jan Pauptit / sprout@zonnet.nl

  The current issue of Static Line can always be found on the Web at:
    http://staticline.scenespot.org/issues/current_issue

  Static Line Subscription Management:
    http://www.scenespot.org/mailman/listinfo/static_line

  If you would like to contribute an article to Static Line, be aware that
  we will format your article to 76 columns with two columns at the
  beginning of each line.  Please avoid foul language and high ASCII
  characters.  Contributions (Plain Text) should be e-mailed to
  (static_line-owner@scenespot.org) by the last Friday of each month.  New
  issues are released on a monthly basis.

  See you next month!
-eof---=------=--=------=--=--
