Scene Zine Monthly for April 16th, 2003 [Issue #1]

Published By Scene Rep
Download as Word Document

The Monthly Ramble
By Patrick Groove

As much as I love to write and as much as you like to read, this zine is over 10,000 words in total length which means if you’re not a speed reader we have you for the next hour and a half of your life. Enjoy our plethora of scene information, the likes of which the community has never seen before.

The Mod Ring: Community Fire Starter
By Christofori

Prologue: I was asked some weeks ago by Lonnie (Patrick Groove) to come up with some history on the Mod Ring. I had been presented with some leads as a starting point, and then was off on my own to see how much I could dig up on the subject. What I was able to find, though not much, was enough to show me some interesting things about the Mod Ring, and the concept of web rings in general.

My goals are to show how the Mod Ring came about, how it grew, and what caused it to decline. Furthermore, I intend to continue this work by asking you, the readers and fellow sceners, to submit your thoughts and experiences in regard to the Mod Ring -- many of you were around to watch it grow into a huge entity, and still many were around to see its decline. I want to know your take on the whole issue. Lastly, I want to collect new ideas - thoughts on a better system to supplement the aging web rings. Some sort of interactive scene-wide directory? A new and better web ring concept? Any thoughts or ideas on that subject, and ways that we can create these new concepts.

So, where to now? To put it lightly, this feature really will require a lot of user feedback. We need your input if we're to find better ways to get exposure to scene sites and resources. This segment is the first installment of the multi-part feature on the Mod Ring. The next installment will include your takes on the Mod Ring, and I've also planned some interviews with prominent Mod Ring personalities. The final segment will focus on new ways scene sites can represent themselves. The future segments will rely heavily on your feedback to make them work, so get those creative juices flowing!

Part I: What Is the Mod Ring?

The Mod Ring is (yes, it still exists!) one of those infamous web-rings, which came about at the onset of the Internet's invasion into the arena of the personal computer. Web rings were formed to unite various sites with similar content or ideas. In this way, sites that specialized in similar things could be linked together, often times allowing people who were browsing by to find exactly what they were looking for -- if not on one site, then on another participating site in the web ring.

The whole idea really started to take off in the mid 1990's when the Internet and the World-Wide Web were industry buzzwords. People everywhere were getting connected. The Internet allowed people to sit at home and begin to find a wealth of information that they had never had before; and it would only get bigger and better. Web Rings came about at that time, too, when site administrators realized that they could all get more traffic if they would be willing to unite under one banner (the Web Ring).

The Mod Ring was founded on September 17, 1996, and it contained (at first) only five sites on the web. The scene, which previously had only had "online" exposure through online bulletin boards, began to expand significantly. Tracking and demo groups soon formed web sites, and other entrepreneurial enthusiasts formed entire directories and archives dedicated to the scene. Before long, there were hobbyists posting their own pages with mod-related content as well. The Mod Ring was designed to encompass everything about MOD's and tracking, and unite them by allowing people to surf around the web until they found the tracking content they were looking for. The web-based tracking community started to become a much larger place -- and, it seemed the world was becoming a smaller place with each passing day; web sites were popping up from any nations and localities.

At its peak, the Mod Ring encompassed well over 1400 individual tracking-related sites. That's enough content for users to browse that it would take weeks, or possibly even months, to read it all; and that's not counting the changes and updates which would take place at the larger communities. Part of the success of Mod Ring at the time has been attributed to Jordan Peot, who organized and administered the ring for some time. An interview with Mr. Peot has been planned, but (as of yet) I've not been able to track down his proper E-Mail address.

As the old adage goes, however, all good things must come to an end (or, at least, they will at some point show a decline). The Mod Ring, and several other web rings, were taken over by the web-giant Yahoo. Many of the things I've been seeing in regard to this point to this being the beginning of the end for Mod Ring. You see, Yahoo (in it's infinite wisdom) began requiring everyone to submit to their Terms of Service, and also create a new ID and password to continue using the newly acquired Web Ring services. By this time, many users were evidently so tired of juggling all of their ID's and passwords, that creating yet another new one was too much of a hassle. Or, possibly, many of the sites, which were no longer regularly updated, were left out of the loop when Yahoo took over the Web Ring's.

Either way you slice it, the Mod Ring has seen better days since those times. There has been a steady decline in participating/member sites of the Mod Ring ever since the "Yahoo incident." Today, there are only 184 active sites remaining in the ring; and many of those have broken or missing links to the Mod Ring home page. The most recent action (addition or deletion) for the Mod Ring took place on October 3, 2002. The site currently listed as the "Home" site for the Mod Ring has no content related to the Mod Ring whatsoever (or if there is any, it's so hidden that my browsing of the site content could not reveal any evidence of the Mod Ring).

Currently, Web Ring, Inc. (which apparently acquired Mod Ring and many others from Yahoo) hosts Mod Ring, as well as 58,979 other rings with 981,800 active sites. It's hard to say that the Web Ring concept is dead; for many rings, it is still a completely viable solution that’s still being used to tie related sites together. As for the Mod Ring and the tracking scene, however, there are several mixed feelings on how effective the Mod Ring is. Many people feel like the Mod Ring is dying, or perhaps even dead already (despite the fact that there are still several functioning members using active Mod Ring links). What, then, caused Mod Ring to fail, and better yet, what (if anything) should take its place?

A theory on the demise of Mod Ring is this: Mod Ring began to destabilize because people began to refuse to update their content. As far as I understand it, Mod Ring members were asked to add the Mod Ring HTML code to their sites. Some members, perhaps, decided not to add the code; but perhaps the real problem is that, when the administrator of Mod Ring was changed, many participating sites did not update their links to reflect the changes in address. This undoubtedly caused some broken or dead links after some time, after which many Mod Ring members decided to remove the defective Ring code from their pages. Perhaps, if things had been a bit different, the administration would have been able to pass the word along to the member sites better so that many more of them would have known to update their ring code.

So, where do we go from here? That is an excellent question, and it's one that many are seeking an answer to. Perhaps a new, better designed Mod Ring concept could be realized (or, even a renovation of the current Mod Ring). Banner Exchanges have been popping up everywhere recently it seems; is this another alternative? What about some sort of a directory, or perhaps even a scene Search Engine? This is where I'm asking the entire scene for input. Please take a moment to email me and let me know what your thoughts and ideas are on this topic. The next segment, entitled "The Mod Ring: Why It Failed" will contain your theories on why Mod Ring failed (if you think it did), and will also attempt to explore the contrasting views on Mod Ring. The final segment, called "Mod Ring: What Is to Come" will deal with all of the suggestions and ideas that are received through this process. I invite and implore you all to express yourselves on this issue. The scene can only get better through constructive discussion like this. Thanks for reading, and I hope you're looking forward to the future segments, where we'll find out what everyone thinks, as much as I am!

Email Christofori about this article

Resources:
Web Ring, Inc.
Mod Ring's Hub page
Mod Ring's Ringmaster home site
The Mod FAQ

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The Altered Perception Revived Project
By Gargoyle

The AP Blues

Altered Perception was a five gigabyte song archive with a great community of musicians. It was a relatively small site when relative to Scene.org or the former Trax in Space, but nonetheless remarkable. The site was equipped with a very advanced backend system which allowed charts of just every kind, full download stats, email notification and more. The community had everything you could wish for as well: Pros and newbie’s, ranter’s, philosophers, and a few people who cheated with the voting system so others could complain about them on the message board.

Our scene is mostly consisting of a non-commercial influence and since our music is free, most people are unable to pay for hosting their songs on web servers. Therefore we rely on free services such as Mod Archive or Scene.org. Altered Perception was such a free service. It was run by a single person who was interested in the scene. His name is Josh Deltener a.k.a. Hecktarzuli and Altered Perception was his part-time hobby while he worked on other projects in a commercial capacity at the same time. He provided the web space, coded the scripts on the server, and had many more plans with the site. However one day in 2000, Altered Perception shut down.

Hecktarzuli had told the community that he had been considering this step for a quite some time. His reason for discontinuing Altered Perception was the huge costs it generated. The user traffic for providing five gigabytes of music and software added up to about $2,000 US per month. That was certainly too much for a hobby. The users were very understanding, and respected his decision since they knew discontinuing AP hurt Hecktarzuli just as much as it hurt them. Altered Perception was then stripped of everything it had except for the message board, which continues to be active still today. This allows the former members of the community to keep in touch with each other and has made reorientation within the scene easier.

Naturally, the activity on the site has faded away slowly. The former members have looked for a new playground on Mod Plug, Nectarine, Mod Archive and other sites, while a few die-hard veterans continue organizing AP music competitions on IRC or just frequenting the message board. From time to time there is a comment on a random forum stating that Altered Perception is missed dearly.

Resurrecting the Community

This is why I thought there should be an attempt to revive the old times a bit. Enter: the Altered Perception Revived project. I want to make things clear right from the beginning: I am not planning to build up the whole site again. I have neither the money nor the time. Besides, Altered Perception was Hecktarzuli's personal contribution to the scene, not mine. I thought I could try something which doesn't consume any money and can be kept working with a minimum amount of my spare time. At the same time, it should be an effective way of reestablishing the integrity that Altered Perception had once had in its glory days. The simplest way of doing this is to start a modest web page with links to each and every former member who had registered up until the time the site was discontinued. I have been gathering many links over the past few weeks and I thank to Modulez who has decided to host the project.

To begin I acquired a list of 462 artist handles. This was a number I can cope with, so I will add all the missing links to these artists if available, and occasionally update them. It’s not a big deal and I am happy to do it. Additionally people have started to send me links to pages of musicians they knew and still know, and I have approximately ten percent of the list. Yero of Modulez and I launched the page in March this of this year.

Though many people from back then might have long retired from the scene, or don't have a homepage at all, APR could still be an artist directory for everybody's reference. It’s another useful bookmark when trying to contact sceners.

The developments so far and how you can contribute

When Hecktarzuli noticed the project’s existence he kindly sent me a more complete list with 989 names on it which is more than double the number of people I had first in mind. This means that the now 60+ links to sceners' pages now looks even more lost in the huge listings which has yet to be linked. However this will change. APR is a small project to which you can contribute. Whenever I have the time I try to update the page. With your help there will soon be a large amount of links.

All I ask for is this: Please visit the APR page, read the member list, and if you happen to know the web site of an artist's page which has not yet been included, let me know by simply sending me email with the URL and the Altered Perception artist handle. If you would even like to actively search for such pages on the web it would be more than helpful. In this fashion APR will be completed.

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Finding a Host
By Network19

Every person has different needs when it comes to finding somewhere to host your web site and/or files. For example if you just want somewhere to store files online you need little else than a hosting company that provides web space and ftp access. But if you plan to make a brilliant looking web site with extended features such as message boards, guest book’s, or feedback forms you also need some kind of scripting support whether it be PHP, CGI, ASP, or the other alternatives. Also you may possibly need some kind of database support like MySQL to run your message board or guest book.

As broadband is becoming more popular some people are taking the option of hosting there own sites but unless your quite tech savvy this can be more hassle than it's worth and quite a chore. Not to mention that your ISP probably states somewhere in the small print that this kind of thing is prohibited. So what options have you got? There are two obvious ones. Free hosting provided by many sites out there on the net or paying for reliable, fast hosting. What are the advantages and disadvantages of each of these options? Free hosting is usually not as fast as paid hosting and the main disadvantage is you will most likely be forced to have either popup banners or advertisements on your web site. Paid hosting is generally faster, no forced advertising, you will get a nice domain name of your choice and usually you will get much better support for things like PHP and MySQL.

There is another option and in my opinion probably the best way to go. Within the scene whether it be the tracking/demo or one of the many gaming scenes there are usually people or groups providing free hosting without all the disadvantages of most free web space as long as the web site or hosted files are directly related to the scene in question. The most well known one is the tracking/demo scene is of course Scene.org and is well known in the scene for it's file hosting, but there are others you may not be aware of. Lysis Factor is a relatively new addition and has fantastic PHP and CGI support but is a home run system and can be prone to downtime. The other new addition is 32k which is part of the Webworks company. 32k has good support for most needs including support for PHP, CGI, ASP and also MySQL upon request.

So what kind of hosting should you go with? Well in the end if you have the money and don't mind spending it then paying for dedicated hosting will always be the best option. After all 'you get what you pay for' as the saying goes. The next best option would be the specific type of free hosting which is relevant to the subject of the site you want hosting. The other kind of free hosting should only really be used as a last resort.

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Demo Music for 64 Kilobyte Intros
By Kaneel

When making music for a demo you're not obliged to write it in a tracker. After all when it's for a demo most of the songs will be encoded as an MP3. However, when it's a 64K or 4K intro it’s a different story. Generally, the format for a 64K tune is Fast Tracker 2. Why not Impulse Tracker? There isn’t a chip replayer for Impulse Tracker format that can be used. Depending on the techniques used by your group some coders will ask the musician to make a track that is less than 64K that they could zip, some will ask for less than 200K so they can compress the WAV samples as OGG, or some will simply code their own sample packer. It's all a matter what the coders want and can do. Musicians will only have to ask about the size the music should be then cut, edit, and optimize.

There's other techniques often related to your coders needs. Some groups will have motivated coders who will code their own softsynth. With that you can create the samples, render them as WAV while also saving them in their native format, compose the track in Fast Tracker 2 with the rendered samples, and then you give the tune and the native format samples to your coders. The coder then finalizes the process by removing the WAV’s in the song and ad the code of his softsynth in its place. This softsynth technique is often used when it's a 4K intro tune.

It's very difficult to deal with this limitation when you're a musician. Some musicians will work by "coding" a MIDI song using GM sound, some will use the softsynth their nice coder friends made, some will make a song and the coders will add effects to it, and some will write math and physics formula to create samples (which I think is boring). For the length of the tune it depends of the techniques used as well. If you create it in Fast Tracker 2 coders will generally ask for five to six patterns. If you create it as a MIDI song it’s all about you.

One interesting thing I should bring up about syncs is that in a 64K song (for example) they can be made by asking the musician to put "tags" in the song. Tags are an effect command that the musician will put in his track which and that will trigger a visual effect during the playing of the whole intro. The coders will modify the replayer to "tell" them to "play this visual when this effect is played". If the song is made as an MP3 syncs are made via timelines generally.

So where does the music go when you're done? Send it to the coders and pretend you did your best. Generally coders will always have something to say about your music and may ask you to change certain aspects of it.

In closing I would like to add my personal rant. Kill your coders. Only a few seem to like original music, and fewer dare using it. Musicians for demos are jailed into clichés such as re triggered hats with dark pads which aspire to sound like the oh-so-famous musicians (I won't name names because most of us know them). We hear too many the same ambient tracks and the same IDM progressions. Go now and motivate your coders because they all need a huge kick in the ass. Perhaps they have to start learning code in a creative way so that the scene can deviate from repetition.

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How to Kill Your Compo in Ten Weeks
By Novus

Have you ever wondered why monthly compos don’t get any respect? You take 1st place in March's round of the UbErNiFtY c0mp0, post it on your web site, brag about it on #trax, and trumpet the news on message boards across the scene. The odds are after that you'll be met with one big yawn and maybe a slight burp in your user downloads. That’s because UbErNiFtY c0mp0 will be closed and forgotten by next month.

Sad, isn’t it? There are way too many monthly compos nowadays that shut down after absurdly short times. It’s not just a recent phenomenon either. It's a pattern that stretches all the way to my first exposure to the web-based tracking scene 1996 and perhaps even earlier. When monthly compos come and go so quickly it's no wonder that so few people take them seriously. The problem is that while there are so many monthly compos out there this seems to be the entirety of the planning that goes into them:

"Hmm... I need to draw more visitors to my web site so more people will download my music.. Hey, I know! I'll run a compo! I'll get a couple of my friends to be judges, slap together a web site, set a deadline, and that's it! It really can't be that hard, now can it?”

Yes. Yes it can be that hard! Compos are time-consuming, especially when dealing with judged compos. Go ahead and do the math. Let us say that you open a judged compo and get ten entries. I'm guessing here, but the average length of most tracks seems to be about five minutes. So right away you're talking fifty minutes to hear all the entries. That is if you play each song once. However to be fair you really need to listen to each entry three or four times. Those fifty minutes just turned into two hundred minutes. Then you have to write some comments about each entry which could be another fifteen minutes per song, multiplied by ten songs which gives you another one-hundred and fifty for a total of six hours approximately. Anyone who has ever opened a compo and has done a semi-decent job of promoting it knows that ten entries is a low number. You're going to get more.

Assuming that you plan ahead and leave yourself plenty of time, it's still possible to pull it all off. Unfortunately too many compo-organizers don't plan ahead. Instead, they open their compo, give people a month to enter their tunes, and announce that the results will be up a week after the entry deadline. Then Real Life attacks. They can't spare six hours to judge the songs, they miss the results date, and then often make yet another critical mistake: they don't even bother to let their visitors know what's going on.

So people stop by for a day or two, don't see the results, get bored, and quit visiting the compo web site. Finally, weeks later, the organizer gets all the results up, announces he's now accepting entries for the next round, and gets two entries because nobody cares about his compo or doesn’t trust it anymore. He shuts it down.

Multiply that scenario by several dozen since 1996. It's no wonder monthly compos have such a crappy reputation.

Folks, if you’re going to run a compo, a little planning go a long way. I hate to use the Complete MOD Compo as an example since it smacks of self-promotion, but alas, it's the only compo that I have any inside knowledge of considering it’s my own. It's been open for 16 months now, so I must be doing something right!

When I started CMC in 2002 I knew that my busy job schedule was going to wreak havoc on my free time. So I nixed the idea of making it a judged compo. When I went with a public-voting compo, which requires less of my time, I also looked for ways to streamline things on the backend so that I could do minor tasks such as counting votes while I had free-time at my job, saving the harder work for when I was at home. For quality purposes I decided to pre-screen all the entries and only let the best ones compete. Then I realized that if too many people entered songs I'd never have enough time to screen them all. Similarly, if CMC didn't have enough voters it would all be meaningless. So I killed two birds with one stone. By requiring all contestants to vote on the current month's crop of songs it guaranteed a consistent supply of voters and keeps me from getting overwhelmed with too many entries.

Please keep in mind that I'm not saying that all compos should be carbon-copies of mine. What I'm trying to stress is the importance of planning ahead. If your compo is going to run smoothly, you need to spend hours ahead of time thinking about the details of how your compo will run, how you'll find the time to run it right, and how you'll head-off potential problems before they can even develop.

Also keep in mind that the main focus of your attention should be your visitors and not the musicians who enter songs. If you run a compo, finding entries will probably not be a problem. Finding visitors will be, and repeat-visitors at that. If nobody's around to download the winning song then winning your compo won't mean much and if you focus on attracting more visitors those increased hits will lead to everything else you're looking for, including more and better entries, high-profile competitors, and a great reputation.

I like monthly compos. They provide a great outlet for trackers to promote their music and get feedback. Plus they can play a valuable role in the music scene. If you want to run a monthly compo, by all means, go for it! But the scene needs one more failed monthly compo like I need an extra hole in my head. Please, plan ahead and run it right.

The Complete MOD Compo

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Interview with Tomcat of Greenroom
By Patrick Groove

I decided to interview Tamás Polgár, aka Tomcat, from Hungary due to his enormous experience in demo work. He has been to over thirty five demo parties, is writing a book about the demoscene entitled “Freax”, and is employed in a related field of work.

Scene Rep: Many of our readers will have at least heard of demos but what is your definition in brief?

Tomcat: A "demo", in my definition, and for the members of the underground computer art community, is a spectacular piece of real-time computer animation, synchronized with music, displaying examples of the creators' programming, composing and artistic abilities. Each of these fields means a different challenge. The coder has to push the limits of the computer to create something that's actually not really possible, or at least technically very hard to achieve. The musician has to work with the limited abilities of a home computer, and the graphics artist needs real talent to impress the viewers. The result of the efforts has to be finely crafted together to form an abstract, video clip-like electronic art piece. Despite of the wide abilities of today's PCs, demo making is still a challenge; however, it's different of what it used to be some 5-10 years ago.

Scene Rep: How long have you been producing demos and on what platforms?

Tomcat: To be honest, I've never participated in a demo that's ever been finished, but I've created a number of conventional animations, graphics, and organized a series of successful demo parties in Hungary. Right now I am working on a book about the history of the demoscene.

Scene Rep: What is the advantage of working with others on demos?

Tomcat: Besides of the obvious answer, that a demo needs a lot of ingredients created by different artists, it's one word: community. A demo group is something to belong to, it is your team, and you're bound to it, just like a sportsman is bound to his team. Those fortunate groups, which have both talent and friendship, are usually known as the greatest.

Scene Rep: What does it take to be a really great coder of a demo?

Tomcat: Besides of knowing this and that about coding in general, it needs a point of view, an attitude that's different from the general everyday programmer's. Every programmer knows how it feels to hunt program errors and get the code working, and finally be satisfied with the result, but demo coders are actually addicted to this challenge, trying to make their difficult code the fastest and smallest possible. It is not enough if the program is simply working; you have to make it exceptionally good, pushing it well beyond the level of commercial applications. Besides, the coder has to be a team player, accepting the suggestions of the graphics artist, the musician and the rest, with a good sense of design. It is not enough to display something that impresses the coder himself; the demo has to impress all the viewers.

Scene Rep: If someone was interested in doing graphics for a demo what would they need to know?

Tomcat: First of all, they have to decide what kind of artist they would like to become: a 2D artist, working with painter software, or a 3D modeler, working with 3D graphics suites, plugin's and models. Some artists are active on both fields. Naturally the artist has try getting as good as possible, creating pictures and animations never seen before. A good sense of visual design is also recommended, as it's usually the graphician - hm, that's a word with no sense in English - who designs the general layout of the production.

Scene Rep: Is there a distinct style for graphics featured in demos?

Tomcat: There have been many styles and schools evolved and disappeared during the history of the scene. They usually depend on the technology being used. For example, in the early 90's, when the Amiga 500 was the standard demo machine, graphician used 32 colors only, and this forced them to develop special techniques to get as much as possible out of this small palette. One of them was dithering: one can not paint a nice, smooth gradient with 3-4 colors, but it is possible to build a gradient pattern using these colors, and still achieve a reasonably smooth effect. The usage of dithering led to a well recognizable style. The current graphics style bears the footprint of true color painter applications, drawing tablets and scanners. Today's graphics look more like oil paintings than computer drawings. Who knows how will we draw thirty years later?

Scene Rep: Music seems to hold a piece together. What makes a really great demo tune?

Tomcat: It's been wisely said that "music makes the demo". Hence the musician has perhaps the greatest responsibility in achieving the final result. His work usually begins before the coder and the graphics artist would do anything. He's expected to compose something unique that impresses the audience, but is also technically excellent.

Scene Rep: You have a really great portfolio from web sites, graphic work, and of course demo production. Is this your career?

Tomcat: Yes, I am a 3D graphics artist, with some web design relations.

Scene Rep: What is the future of demo production?

Tomcat: That's a hard question. Nobody can predict the future. Some voices say that the scene is dead, and what we have now, is just a shadow of the old glory. I can tell you that it's been said a million times during the history of the scene. Old C-64 crackers complained, when demo making took over the scene, and software piracy declined. Some claimed the scene is dead, when the Amiga 1200 was introduced, and the Amiga 500 was abandoned. The same happened, when 3D accelerators appeared, and PC users switched from MS-DOS to Windows. Probably what we know as 'scene' will evolve to something very different in some years.

Scene Rep: What was the best party you ever went to and why?

Tomcat: Mekka-Symposium parties in Germany, because they were plain cool.

Scene Rep: Thank you very much for your time in answering these questions in detail.

Go to Tomcat's Site

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An Introduction to the Demoscene
By Amoivikos

There they sit, the preschooler class encircling their mentor, the substitute teacher. "Now class, today we will talk about what you want to be when you grow up. Isn't that fun?" The teacher looks around and spots the child, silent, apart from the others and deep in thought. "Johnny, why don't you start?" she encourages him.

Johnny looks around, confused, his train of thought disrupted. He collects himself, and stares at the teacher with a steady eye.

"I want to code demos," he says. His words are becoming stronger and more confidant as he speaks.

"I want to write something that will change people's perception of reality. I want them to walk away from the computer dazed, unsure of their footing and eyesight. I want to write something that will reach out of the screen and grab them, making heartbeats and breathing slow to almost a halt. I want to write something that, when it is finished, they are reluctant to leave, knowing that nothing they experience that day will be quite as real, as insightful, as good. I want to write demos."

Silence. The class and the teacher stare at Johnny, stunned. It is the teachers turn to be confused. Johnny blushes, feeling that something more is required. "Either that or I want to be a fireman."

- Grant Smith, a.k.a. Denthor of Asphyxia
14:32,
11/21/93

These words by Denthor are the one thing you will most probably first come across when looking for an introduction to demos and the demoscene.

Demo is the short for demonstration, a show-off, an exhibition. Upon hearing the term in a computer related (or otherwise) context, most people would ask "a demo of what?".

Well, in our case it is the demonstration of creative skill. Programming, musical composition, and visual arts all woven together in a tight fabric of interdependency to produce what in many cases is a stunning audiovisual display of the abilities of the people involved in the process.

The catch is of course that it all (or most of it anyway) has to happen in real time and without any user interaction at all. Demos are beyond games, beyond pre-rendered animations or videos. What you experience is calculated and produced on screen by your computer at the exact moment you see it and intended to carry you off to its virtual world in its own fashion. Many recognize demos as a form of art.

Reading an introduction to demos, you will also come across the story that demos are derived from the cracking scene in the early 80s, when people would add a "signature" to the hack they'd performed on the latest game or application for their home micro, so that everyone would know they did it. These signatures, soon became small programs showing off graphics and music on the screen and with time they would get more and more complex. They were called intros because they would also serve as an introduction to the -now cracked and made ready for exploitation- program. People would strive to show off their knowledge of the system's inner workings and their own technical ability. And because it is illegal to tamper with copyrighted software. These people would use nicknames (one reason for this being that it's virtually impossible to pronounce or remember people's names especially if you come from a different country).

It wasn't long before the competition amongst programmers and artists gave "demo making" a life of its own. Groups would start to form with the sole purpose of producing these intros. The programs became larger and longer. The goal was to push to the machine to the limit and to do things the machine was thought incapable of in most people's perception, and to beat the competition at that.

Competition plays a very important part in the scene. It's always been the key element of motivation. But distribution of demos through the Bulletin Board Systems and traditional mail was not enough. What better way to compete than get together and let the audience be the judge? Yes, demo parties! Sceners from everyplace gather in a hall for three to four days of round-the-clock competitions and fun. Having your production (be it a demo, graphics, or music) presented to a large audience, played on a huge projection screen, and witnessing their reaction is one of a form of satisfaction and reward. That's as far as you'll get as far as payoff's. Respect among your peers is what it's all about. That's one thing money could can never buy.

This brings us to another point. The demoscene is non-commercial. Demos belong to the public domain. However there have been instances where demo groups have been commissioned by a third party for a custom made production. But that's not what demo making is about and you can't expect to make money out of it. Instead, you get to share your productions and expertise with other fellow enthusiasts, be inspired and become a source of inspiration, make a name for yourself and hopefully make friends along the way.

Good things of course come to those who wait, and in the case of the demoscene, those who make an effort as well. It's true that newcomers to the scene tend to be frowned upon, often labeled "lamer's", or made fun of. They are expected to prove their knowledge and worth through their work and won't get a pat on the back until they probably don't need it anymore. But it's all part of the process. Most sceners have had a taste of it and unless one is very talented and proficient in their field of choice, they are likely to come across such behaviors. Do not be discouraged!

But wait a second. Fields of choice? We already talked about how demos include code, graphics and music. Demo groups usually have these tasks specifically assigned to different people. Not that it is uncommon for a person to have more than one function. It all depends on the way each demo group is built and you're also likely to come across a supportive infrastructure of people such as organizers, web designers or system administrators and even individuals responsible for public relations alongside coders, 2d and 3d artists, and musicians. The internet has made other functions such as BBS sysop's and swappers obsolete.

Because of the diversity of function and skill the demoscene is subdivided into the music scene, the graphics scene, and so on. People of similar expertise will compete and compare with each other and on their own while not having to depend on others for a combined effort.

So now you know what demos are, and hopefully you've got an idea about how they came to be and what is involved in the process. And a simple search on the web will get you much more and better presented information than I could provide. So all this is not what you really need to know.

Upon starting out in Greece in 1992 after having watched a demo for the first time I did not know any of these things. I was shocked and amazed. Along with a few friends we set out to do similar things without any awareness of the demoscene as a community or the existence of any other demo groups. It was a year later when we we found out other groups had been formed in our country. Since then I have grown up and matured into adulthood with the demoscene being an indispensable part of my life and it has reached me in ways that go beyond an average hobby.

So what this article is really about, is my invitation to you to get to know the scene and become familiar with its ways. Be involved and be inspired in your everyday life by the practice. You will make it your own and the memories will bring a smile on your face when you've reached the winter of your life.

An appendix

Let's move on to see some of the things that can be expected of you and the resources at your disposal. I will be discussing the PC as it is the mainstream platform today and it's the one I'm most familiar with. We'll be taking a short walk through coding, graphics, and music.

It used to happen in assembler language. ASM was the fastest way to access the machine and its resources bypassing useless code generated from higher lever languages and saving valuable processor power. Nowadays with Windows running on most PC's it's not worth going into the extra trouble to code in a similar manner. The diversity of machine configurations needs you to use device drivers instead of instructing the hardware what to do without any intermediate stages. So if one were to start coding graphical effects today, they would be advised to use some higher level programming language. The weapon of choice for most is C/C++. If you wish to use today's 3D hardware accelerators, you should also use an API on top of things. Choose OpenGL or Direct3D. I must insist on a good theoretical background. A good knowledge of linear algebra will serve you as a strong foundation. Differential and applied mathematics would also come in handy in more advanced issues. Don't be discouraged though. Things are much simpler than they sound and you will be picking up knowledge as you go along. I should also mention that a very important part of demo coding besides the real time graphics is the music system. It's the part of your demo-engine that takes care of loading and reproducing the soundtrack that accompanies the demo. You could either write your own, or use a ready-made one, such as fmod.

Some good places to visit on the net if you wish to know more about demo coding are CFXweb and Flipcode. NeHe Productions is good place to look for a fast and easy introduction to OpenGL. Coders tend to hang out at #coders on any IRCNet server.

If you are a graphics artist you can either do 2D graphics or 3D graphics, or both. It's most commonplace for 2D graphics to be bitmaps rather than vectors. That is, you'll be doing your work using a package such as Adobe Photoshop, Corel Painter, or Pixel32. Before Windows most people would use Deluxe Paint which had many features and was available for most 16-bit platforms. Graphics artists would draw the images pixel by pixel to achieve perfection. Many artists still work in the same way. Whatever graphics package you choose it is important to know that ripping and scanning are strictly forbidden. Your images must be of your own making. Therefore, at graphics competitions you will be asked to provide the organizers with work-in-progress snapshots of your image to prove the originality of your work.

As far as 3D graphics are concerned you have to do your own modeling in a modeling application. Stay away from "borrowing" ready-made 3D models or textures. 3D Modeling is crucial to demo making nowadays, as it is much easier to reproduce and manipulate 3D objects in demos than it was a few years ago.

A great place to get some ideas of what scene graphics are all about is GFXZone. You can also check out some great digital artists over at GFX Artist where you'll also come across a plethora of tutorials on digital painting and 3D modeling.

If music is your cup of tea you could either make a module or an MP3 of your music. Modules play music in tracks or channels. They store the samples that make up your instruments and instructions on how these samples will be played such as note, pitch, sound volume and effects. To compose modules you'll need a tracker such as Impulse Tracker or Fast Tracker. You can also check out Skale which is windows based. As for composing MP3 files the work is done in a music package such as Cubase, Reason, or Fruity Loops. It's not my intention to go any into any further detail regarding this matter. You can get plenty of info on scene music by visiting United Trackers or No Error.

Last but not least I should mention a few scene portals you can visit and check out what other sceners say and do. There's Orange Juice where you can get news. Scene.org is the largest demoscene archive available and you'll be sure to find most productions released ever than any other place. Be sure to also check out the disk magazines such as PAiN and Hugi.

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Revolution History in Brief
By Libris

Please note that this is not meant to be a completely comprehensive account of the evolution of electronic music, it is a short and selective look at some of the people and inventions that shaped the medium throughout the 20th Century. Because this is a Scene publication, emphasis is also placed on where Tracking comes into this, an element which would be overlooked in most historical accounts. I have left a lot out of this write up, instead focusing on only one or two aspects of each timeframe, this is due to time constraints and my "real" study responsibilities, but I may expand on this significantly in the future. For now, its purpose is as an introduction to the history of electronic music, and also a marker of where and how the tracking scene fits into it all.

The Build Up

Alexander Graham Bell's invention of the Telephone in 1876 sparked the discovery that sounds can be converted into electrical signals and back again. It was this discovery (though many didn't realize it at the time) which contributed to the later research into the theory and application of electronic music. The invention of the gramophone shortly afterwards established the possibility of storing and altering sounds. These primitive devices were not immediately seen as tools for composition, but they paved the way for things to come.

From the late 19th Century to the early 20th Century experimentation began. In 1908 a composer by the name of Arnold Schönberg made the breakthrough into atonality, which suggested that music could have any combination of pitches and that there was no need to favor the tonal harmonies which had been Western music's foundation since the Renaissance (Griffiths, P). This musical revolution was extremely important because it both encouraged experimentation amongst composers and challenged the way people actually perceived music.

First Steps

The first well-known instrument to make music by electrical means was Thaddeus Cahill's "Teleharmonium", which apparently weighed 200 tones and transmitted sounds over the New York telephone wire system. The Teleharmonium emerged in 1902 but was eventually dumped into the ocean as it interfered too much with the telephone system. Nevertheless the Teleharmonium anticipated later inventions such as the electric organ and the synthesizer.

The next step in the development of electronic music came with the gradual evolution of the valve oscillator, which was perfected by the inventor Lee De Forest around 1915. The oscillator remains even today as a basic device in electronic sound generating equipment, its conception made it possible to produce pitched tones from electrical signals allowing for the construction of more manageable electronic instruments (Griffiths, P).

Russian scientist Leon Termen created the first of these in 1919-20 (with further refinements during the 20's) which he called the theremin (initially called the "Therminovox" among other things). Termen's instrument is among some of the more intriguing early electronic instruments as it used two high frequency oscillators which were remotely controlled by the motions of the performer's hands around a vertical aerial, making it probably the first instrument that a musician didn't actually have to touch to play. Other instruments from a range of inventors followed, more sophisticated than the original theremin they enabled the performer to control timbre as well as pitch and volume, a good example of this was the first electric organ, which was created by Lorens Hammond in 1929. The electronic instruments of the 20's and 30's, while novel, still didn't come anywhere near providing all of the benefits that composers expected of the new technology their range of sounds were still fairly limited and useful to only a handful of composers of the time (mainly the Avant-Garde).

Musique Concrète

Musique Concrète (Literally translated as Concrete Music) was helped along by the invention of the tape recorder in 1935 (though not widely available until about 1950). The tape recorder gave experimenters far more freedom then they had previously had in playing with sound. Sounds could be superimposed over each other (mixed), altered in timbre by means of filters or reverberated. By creating tape loops sounds were able to be repeated and tape splicing was used to rearrange the attack or decay of a sound. Sound could now also be sped up, slowed down or reversed. With the advent of the tape recorder, composers were able to exercise precise control over every aspect of their original sound material.

The work of composer Pierre Schaffer is associated with pushing the development of Musique Concrète (also referred to as 'tape music'), a term which Schaffer and his associates chose because it emphasized their choice of a variety of natural sounds as raw material. Schaffer and his collaborator Pierre Henry were responsible for what is regarded as one of the milestones of Musique Concrète with their piece "The Symphonie pour Un Homme Seul" ("The Symphony for One Man Only"), which laid down many of the technical and aesthetic foundations for much of the later tape music (Griffiths, P).

Electronische Musik

In the early 1950's a handful of German composers were using many of the same techniques of tape manipulation as the likes of Pierre Schaffer. The difference here however was that they favored electronically generated sound sources (e.g.: sine waves) rather than the natural sound sources that Schaffer and his associates used. The composers called this "Electronische Musik"; this early electronic sound is well illustrated by the works of Karlheinz Stockhousen, who too many is regarded as the father of electronic music. Stockhousen's "Elektronische Studie I" (1953) was the first musical piece to be composed entirely from sine wave sounds, while his "Elektronische Studie II" was the first work of electronic music to be notated and published. Soon afterwards electronic sound studios were set up around various parts of Europe and America, one of the most famous being the BBC's Radiophonic Workshop, which was in operation until only a few years ago. Early means of electronic production were by no means effective: Stockhousen's "Kontakte" for example took two years to prepare, and some of Radiophonic Workshop composer Delia Derbyshire's works reportedly took up whole corridors of the workshop building while in the process of arranging tape.

The Synthesizer

The introduction of high quality/low cost transistors in the early 1960's had a huge impact on the production of electronic music and instruments, and paved the way for the synthesizer. In 1959, the RCA synthesizer was launched. Originally constructed for the creation of artificial speech, it was capable of creating and altering a wide range of sounds using its oscillators and noise generators. The synth was given its instructions through the use of a paper roll in which holes were punched and the composer/engineer was given a high degree of control over pitch, volume, duration, timbre etc. The RCA synthesizer was an important development, but of greater importance was the creation and launch of Robert Moog's synthesizer, commercially launched in 1966. The success of Moog's synthesizer was due to a number of factors; the creation of the voltage controlled oscillator/amplifier, and the miniaturization of electronics at the time being some of the most important.

The release of Walter (now Wendy) Carlos' "Switched on Bach" in 1968 brought the instrument worldwide attention, showing the masses that serious musical pieces could be composed or performed with an electronic instrument. Within a couple of years bands of the time such as Pink Floyd, The Grateful Dead and Frank Zappa (among many others) were incorporating synthesizers into their acts.

Computer and Digital Music

Experiments with the use of computers as both a compositional aide (and in some cases as a composer!) were being carried out from the late 1950's to the 70's, however the computer didn't receive widespread recognition as a serious compositional tool until the early 1980's with the creation of the Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI). Essentially, MIDI allowed electronic instruments to be interconnected, to work in conjunction with a computer, in turn allowing for versatile modular systems to be created. By the end of the 1980's MIDI systems were popular with both amateur and professional musicians with MIDI-equipped instruments capable of performing as a system similar to larger workstations.

While MIDI was undoubtedly the biggest breakthrough for electronic music in the 1980's, it was by no means the only one. In 1982, slightly before the conception of MIDI, the SID chip was created. The SID chip was a three-voice synthesizer (3 sound channels 1 noise channel), which was bundled with the Commodore 64 personal computer. At the time and was certainly a giant leap forward, its sound was unique, and well ahead of it's time as far as sound chips in cheap personal computers were concerned. The SID chip allowed for the layperson to compose music on his/her computer with no external equipment, the Chiptune was born!

A few years later, in 1987 the first sample-based tracker Soundtracker appeared on the Amiga platform. Many SID composers had migrated to the Amiga and the new MOD format sparked a lot of interest because it could use samples in all four channels, rather than just the sounds limited to the SID generator. In some ways, the creation of sample-based computer music can be likened to tape music; the idea is the same, but the process more effective. Instead of manipulating their sounds on reels of magnetic tape, MOD composers had the luxury of editing their sounds in an effective Graphical User Interface.*

Over the course of the 1990's computers became increasingly more powerful, and so did the software for creating music, in some cases the worlds of MOD and MIDI attempted to merge together, but it's debatable as to how effective these mergers actually were. Due to the massive increase of processing power in the 1990's Software Synthesizers (Softsynth) emerged. Unlike the earlier SID chips which used hardware to generate their sound, Softsynth's emulated it. The arrival of VST and VSTi (Virtual Studio Technology, Virtual Studio Instruments) from software company Steinberg revolutionized software composition in much of the same way as MIDI revolutionized hardware in the 1980's. The VST format allows for developers to create their own plug-ins which will in turn be compatible with any piece of software with VST compatibility. Nowadays there are trackers which support samples, MIDI and VST/VSTi. With the ever-increasing power of computers, many say the future of electronic music lies in software, and while this looks like the direction that electronic music is going, we never really know what innovations could be around the corner that could further change and enhance this exciting medium.

*It should be noted that Soundtracker was not necessarily the first program capable of sequencing and manipulating samples, it is however considered to be the first tracker to do so.

Glossary of Terms

Atonality: The breakthrough made by Arnold Schönberg in the early 20th Century which changed conventional views on musical tones, and music itself.
Avant-Garde: A term used to describe movements which are unusual, original or ahead of their time.
Chiptune: Affectionate nickname given to music created with the SID chip. The chip tune tradition carries on even today, not only with SID composers but MOD composers who emulate the original SID sound with samples.
Commodore 64 (C64): Popular computer launched in the early 1980s, affordable with good sound and graphics for the time, the C64 still has a cult following and an active scene.
De Forest, Lee: American inventor who perfected the valve oscillator.
Derbyshire, Delia: Underrated composer who worked for the BBC's Radiophonic workshop during the early 1960's. Her most famous achievement is the realization of Ron Grainer's Dr WHO television theme.
Electronische Musik: (Electronic Music) the term coined in the early 1950's by Karlheinz Stockhousen and associates to distinguish electronically synthesized music from conventional Musique Concrète.
MIDI: Musical Instrument Digital Interface, a system devised in the early 1980's which allowed electronic instruments to "communicate" with each other.
MOD: (Music Module) a digital music format developed in 1987 which used samples as its source of sounds. Many of the more popular variations and improvements of the original MOD format include: XM, IT, S3M, MT2 etc.
Moog, Robert: (Moog is pronounced "Mogue") The man responsible for bringing small, affordable synthesizers to the masses.
Musique Concrète: (Concrete Music, also called "Tape Music") Term coined by Pierre Schaffer and associates to describe tape music created from recordings of natural sounds.
Pitch: The degree of elevation or depression of a sound.
Schaffer, Pierre: Probably the best known advocate for Musique Concrète during the latter half of the 20th Century, after the tape recorder became more accessible.
Schönberg, Arnold: Composer who in the early 20th Century, made the breakthrough into atonality, changing perceptions of music.
Sequencer: A device (or piece of software) which captures the positions and notes of a musical composition. Note that a sequencer doesn't "record" the sounds being played, merely remembers where they should be.
SID: Sound Interface Device, the famous sound chip for the C64 computer.
SoundTracker: The first tracker on the Amiga computer, coded by Karsten Obarski in 1987.
Splice: To split or cut up.
Stockhousen, Karlheinz: Innovative composer who is responsible for pushing for, and shaping electronic music in the second half of the 20th Century.
Synthesizer: A machine (or piece of software) which can generate sound without acoustic means.
Tape Music: See Musique Concrète.
Teleharmonium: The Teleharmonium or Dynamophone, a 200 tone monstrosity created in 1902 that played music over the New York telephone system.
Theremin: The characteristic quality of a sound, e.g.: a 'violin timbre' is different to an 'oboe timbre'. Differences in timbre are due to differences in the spectra of frequency components in sounds (Griffiths, P).
Timbre: The characteristic quality of a sound, e.g.: a 'violin timbre' is different to an 'oboe timbre'. Differences in timbre are due to differences in the spectra of frequency components in sounds (Griffiths, P).
Tracker: A kind of sequencer, music is read and input from top to bottom rather than left to right.
Voltage Controlled Amplifier (VCA): An oscillator which uses DC voltage to manipulate its volume.
Voltage Controlled Oscillator (VCO): An oscillator which uses DC voltage to manipulate its frequency.
VST: Virtual Studio Technology.
VSTi: Virtual Studio Instrument.

Works Cited

Griffiths, Paul. Electronic Music. Thames and Hudson, 1979
Encyclopedia Britannica, 2001.

Useful Links

Babbit, Milton
Cage, John
Derbyshire, Delia
Henry, Pierre
Pink Floyd
Schaffer, Pierre
Schönberg, Arnold
Stockhousen, Karlheinz
Verise, Edgard
Zivoneiff, Peter

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