Skyhigh 20 The JCH story - part 1

The JCH story




Hello and welcome to what should have been an in-
terview with the music master himself.

Actually it should have been, as mentioned above, an
interview with no-one else than the wellknown JCH.
You know questions and answers; a perfectly, nor-
mally interview, but nooo! This guy simply haven't got
a clue about limiting his answers, so I had to think it
all over once more. See the problem is that when he
first gets started it is almost impossible to stop him.
So what could I do!?! Jens has this ability to talk like
a waterfall; he just keep going. Not that this is bad,
but quite hard to do a socalled 'normal' interview with
him. The solution had to be this: I simply turn the en-
tire thing into a kind of story! A portrait, if you want!

So this is how it's going to be. I ask a question, let
the tape run, go for a bath, have my dinner, take a
nap and then return to the tape recorder, put in a
new tape and perhaps ask him another question. (He
will most likely still talk about the first one!!!)

You should by the way know that this whole thing is
made over the phone, recorded on tape, in Danish!!,
and finally translated by me. Fuck what a job!! But as
he said:
You want the interview? An interview it will be!! You
asked for it!!!!

Ok, now you have been informed about how this will
work out, so I guess it's about time to get started.



* JCH, I guess everybody has heard about these 3
letters, could you please start introducing yourself.

- Well before I will start my introduction I would like
to ask if the name JCH is a name that people still re-
cognize when it is mentioned. Even after so many new
persons has entered?

* Later Jens, later! I will ask you about this later,
but yes they do know it. Even the new ones!

- Well, introduce myself.. Hmmm, well my name is Jens
and I am to celebrate my 30th birthday this year; it
is depressing, terrible. (At this place he shouts to a
person in the back how to control a game on the PC.
I think it's Rebel Assault 2.)
Hmmm, what can I say more, which haven't been said
in other interviews. I could ofcourse rattle off the
entire story once more. What do you want me to tell?

* Well you know, a bit about yourself, when did you
start and so on!

- It all began as I saw a ZX81 by one of my friends in
1981 - 82. I thought it looked like a pocket calcula-
tor!!!, but he showed me that you could go up and
down editing in the list; writing goto and gosub and
such things. This was VERY interesting to me!.
Later on another friend of mine, named Aksel, got a
Vic 20, on which I sat down and coded small games!
But before the Vic20 he (Aksel) also got a ZX81. So
now I had much better opportunities to sit down and
make small programs and games on it, than at my
'first friends', whom I never really visited anymore,
as he was a really strange person.
Well as said then Aksel bought his ZX81 through 'Den
bl] avis' (Translated it would be: 'The blue paper', a
paper where you can buy and sell things, via a free
advertisements, here in Denmark!), at a very high pri-
ce. Prices where high back then! Well he hadn't got
any taperecorder for it. So every time I had made
a basiclist for several pages I sat down and wrote
the entire list down to paper with a pen!, and the we
turned off the computer. Next time we had to use the
program we turned the computer back on and tipped
the entire thing once more! He he, doesn't that sound
cool!! (I would love to find one of these old basic
listings!!! But I guess they are long gone).
Well he got the Vic20 and it went a lot better. The
keyboard was eminent compared to the ZX81. Well it
was the same as on the old C64.

Well I finally got my own couputer. It was a Texas
Instruments 994a (Is that the right name??? I could
not hear what he said on the tape - bk!!). Ok I became
quite good at this computer. I got a basicmodule, and
I even made 4-5 games which took up all the memory.
Entire 16k, which at that time was quite a lot! Actual-
ly it wasn't that bad. This computer could have up to
32 sprites at the time. Only bad thing was if you had
more than 4 on a line the others would fade out! Just
too bad!!

Well the Vic20 lost its popularity, probably becouse
you couldn't do machine-code (erhm!! - bk) on it!
So I got my first C64 in 1983 or 84! And until 1986 I
didn't do jackshit on it, besides lamin' around and
getting a crack now and then! That wasn't too exci-
ting.
Well then in 1986. A friend of mine, Mark, was tired of
me never getting any new games or cracks. So he
bought 'Den bl] avis' and searched the advertisemnts.
Back then there were no laws against selling these
cracked games, so there were plenty of 'em; severaU
pages actually! He skimmed the advertisements and
found a guy nearby. His name was LCA or Lars Chris-
tian Andersen, and we bought some games from him.
Mark didn't like him much, but I found him quite friend
ly and ok, so I went to him some more times! He later
introduced me to another person named Klaus Klemme
sen. They knew some other guys who wasn't known,
and never became known. But they formed a group
called NEWMAIN, and asked me if I would join! "Well,
yeah, why not. That's ok with me" was the answer. I
thought it was a strange thing though, coz I didn't
really know much about groups at that time. But I
joined and made them an intro. This was quite new for
me, but also very inspiring, so I got hooked! Time went
and I started to hang around with Klaus Klemmesen
more than with LCA. The reason was that Klaus got
more new games and demos than LCA, and I was ofcoz
very interested in that. Soon the demos and intros
became much more interessting than the games. (Yep
I remember that too!! -bk!). Well I collected a lot of
games with music by Rob Hubbard and Martin Galway
in 1986-87 and liked it a lot. So I started in 1987 to
do my own music routines. At that time there was no
such thing as Turbo assembler, so I used another one
called Fast assembler which I had got through the
magazine Compute!
In the beginning the routine was absolutely terrible.
Everybody was using the sound monitor at the time.
Just having your own sound routine was a huge pri-
vilege. So that was enough for me being able to pro-
gramme in my own music routine, eventhough it used
11 - 12 charlines of rastertime. There were no arpeg-
gio tables at all and the code were rather lousy, but
you have to start somewhere, right! At that time I
had also got an Amiga, and tried to make some music
in a program called ??sonix (Erhm, what did he say??)
Here you used notes, and I discovered that could
even put things together. This I had never tried be-
fore.
So I threw some notes into the Amiga program and
made a tune. And to convert it to the C64 I wrote all
the notes down on PAPER. Note by note, you know like
C4 - D4 and so on! I then made a basic-loader at the
C64 - he he! (It's going to be much worse !!! hehe), and
with this I could tip in all the notes one by one, and
convert then in to the music routine! The worst thing
about all this was if I made a small error. This could
cause dislocations, so I had to control it all from
the beginning and correct it. When all this was done
and everything was correct I would have to make the
instruments, because otherwise it sounded terrible!
There were no defined instruments in the routine, so
I had to define them afterwards. This is VERY untra-
ditional.. Nowadays you are doing the instruments be-
fore you start to do the tune itself. Now you are de-
fining an instruments and make a few notes; listening
to it and perhaps change the instrument before you
continue. I made it the other way around, with the
tune first and then the instruments.
This is what you can find in the zip-file under old-
players. (This is the package spread on the PC!! - I
will try to get a grab at this package and perhaps
cable some of it to C64 - BK!). This is not the most
exciting music I must say, it is terrible to be honest!

But I started to put this in my intros for Newmain.

Then later at Klaus' place I met some more people
from the scene, who he had got in contact with. A guy
named EXCELL started to hang around there aswell.
This showed out to be Excell of JOULE; the same guy
who later founded IKARI. Another one was ROOZE (I
hope this is spelled right - bk!). He has been into a
lot of groups, but probably most known from DOMINA-
TORS. He, Rooze, showed me the way into the cracker
world, and they started to use my awful music in their
intros. They found it very cool to have their own
player in their demos, and apperently the liked the
music aswell!
Eventually I got very fed up with doing music in this
way. But at the same time a new musician entered the
scene. He was 14 -15 years of age at that time, and
was in WIZAX. His name was LAXITY. He had made his
own music routine aswell. It only took about 1-2 char
lines, with flips up to 6-7 char lines, but still much
better than mine. Furthermore I heard through some
persons that knew him, that he was doing music in a
machine-code monitor. A MACHINE CODE monitor!!, un-
beliveable, how could that be. It is impossible to do
music in a monitor!! How could he do that?
I was very jealous and enviable at him, and his music
was much better than mine. He had a great style and
also his instruments were much better. So I did the
most dreadful I could do; I used a resourcer and re-
sourced one of his routines, so I could load it into
turbo assembler. Well yes, now the truth is being re-
vealed!! After a while I had it all sorted out, with the
labels correct. Things like Vibrato and Arpeggio were
working and so on. I discovered that he had invented
an arpeggio system, which I found quite genious. It
was a system of tables where he was able to change
frequencies and waveforms. A way I would never had
thought of!
It later turned out that his routine was VERY inspired
by Rob Hubbards routine. So in a way you can indirect
ly say I took some of Rob's techniques!

But I tried to make some music in it. At that time I
knew a guy called SCORTIA from 2000AD, which also
made demos. He sat next to me the first time I tried to
make some music in it, and he told me that it sounded
pretty good, eventhough, I at the first attempt used
Laxity's bassline and put on my own lead & accords.
But he liked it a lot, and that naturally inspired me
to continue. The second tune I made in it was called:
"Can't stop" and was used extremely much in Ameri-
can intros.

* What year was that?

- That was 1988.
Well after that I made 2 or 3 more for Joules, and
then there came this copyparty by DEXION, where I
went to.
I brought my SX64, (I had a SX64 at that time), and
sat down and made some music in Laxity's routine. On
the party there was this stage. On the stage Laxity
and Future Freak were sitting and composing their
music. Future Freak had his own routine, which proba-
bly originally was RED's routine. He had an editor for
his routine, and Laxity had also made an interessting
editor for his routine. I hadn't either an editor nor a
player, so I was all black and blue of envy. But I sat
there and made music. At that time I wasn't that high-
ly respected, scenewise.
Well Laxity and Future Freak, whom I didn't really
knew at the time, we had only exchanged a few words
to eachother, were composing at the stage, at a al-
most competitive level against me. And they succeded
quite well!! Later they came down to me and started
to chat a little, and then suddenly Laxity said to me:
"Jens I don't really appriciate that you are using my
music-routine, can't you please use something else!".
Well I could ofcourse see where this were going, and
as he was asking me in this gentle way, I should bet-
ter stop. And I did.
That wasn't good, coz then I would have to return to
my old routine, and I didn't really want that!
Paradoxial, the Future Composer where released at
the same party for the first time. A Finnish group had
made an editor for CHARLES DEENEN routine. I took a
look at it, and made a single tune which I dedicated
to a German friend of mine. But I didn't really like the
editor. You couldn't edit your instruments properly,
and you couldn't edit the drums at all. So I decided
that I would not use that one anymore.
As I returned to home I sat down and started all over
in Future Composer, but I still didn't like it. I missed
the way of editing the notes by assembling the dates
like I had learned in Laxity's routine. This was much
more easy than Future Composer, ss I started all
over again and began to code a new routine, without
squinting to Laxity's routine this time.

I started on my player, and naturally started with
version 0.0. This was immidiately much better. I could
feel that I really was on to something this time. I did
a lot of music and it went all up to player 20, which
was the last one I did. I had changed a lot of diffe-
rent things, and I became quite good at doing music
routines at last.
Time went and I got my music in many different demos,
suddenly I revolutionized everything, and got pretty
known, but I never really reached the top. This was,
and always have been, my dream. To be mentioned in
Zzap 64 like Rob Hubbard and so on.
The problem with Zzap was that in the beginning they
wrote a lot of the different composers to throw them
into relief. You know : Wauh on this game there is zak
by Rob Hubbard or so. But after the games got more
sophisticated and there became more of them this
disappered. This is the way it is today; the sound is
no longer mentioned in the magazines. The only time
music is mentioned in games nowadays is when it's bad
If the music is good, it is as it has to be, but if it is
bad the composer is stabbed down. Music is just some
thing which has to be there.

* Ok, I guess it's about time that I may say something
again. If I may!!



But caused by the lenght of this 'interview' I had to
split into two chapters. So I guess the only way to
see the next question, and the answer, is to load the
second part of the JCH story...


So what are you waiting for ???

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