Interview with Chromag

The late-summer release of Chromagic was one of the most popular musicdisks in 1993. We visit the main man behind it.


	

		
Name:
		
Timm Albers
	
	

		
Handle:
		
Chromag
	
	

		
Group:
		
Dual Crew - Shining
	
	

		
Former groups:
		
Ecstasy, Exult, Megaforce, Royal Amiga Force, Proton Ltd., End of Century 1999, Cult, Addonic, Platin, Dual Crew, Essence
	
	

		
Function:
		
Musician
	
	

		
Age:
		
19
	
	

		
In the scene since:
		
1989
	
	

		
Occupation:
		
German gymnasium
	
	

		
Resident:
		
Nordhorn/Germany
	
	

		
Intruments:
		
Roland U-20
	


The cooperation between Dual Crew and Shining started in April 1993. Many people were quite amazed when they noticed a huge amount of freaks wearing DCS t-shirts at the Gathering, not knowing anything about this group. Dual Crew and Shining members had always been in a very good connection and mainly the Swedes were the ones to start to think about a fusion. Chromag entered Dual Crew in autumn '92 right after Tron, MCM and E.Toball had left the German section for Anarchy.

- Still this was not that bad for me, Chromag says, because I wanted to work together with foreigners anyway and it was a good chance to build up the German section again. A very good friend of mine, Desto, joined at about the same time and he took over a big part of the organizing here.
As almost every member has his own modem, it's easy to enter the private DCS sections on our boards where you can up- and download previews of forthcoming productions, pictures, modules etc. Many members know each other via mail and there are DCS member meetings throughout the year. All these things make DCS a very friendly team, not a bunch of independent sections that don't know anything about the others. There are about 50 members in Sweden, Finland, Great Britain, Germany, Norway and the States with a country organizer each and Red Devil as world organizer.

But for Chromag it is also important to have members nearby.
- A good reason for me to be in DCS is the fact that our country organizer Exciter lives in my town. We often meet each other and go to a bar or disco, which makes us real friends. As he also owns a modem, I can just go to him and get the things I want to have, or just call our board in Berlin to check out the internal section.

Apart from Chromagic, DCS has only released small productions like intros and trainers apart from a bit cracks.
- DCS has quite a potential to become one of the best groups, if only our coders would finish their projects... But I see no group, which is worth to leave DCS for.
My musicdisk was released under the DCS label, which was quite a success, because we entered the Eurochart (5th in issue 23) and The Ram Jam charts issue 7 (5th at normal, 2nd at actual charts) and it was the first time I could read my name in the musicians-charts (18th at TJ, 16th in EC). Through the release of Chromagic, my music reached a lot of people who have finally heard about someone called Chromag.

Chromagic
- I planned to release a musicdisk, when I was in Cult, but it never got out somehow. After two years (in early 1993), our graphician Ninja called me up because he wanted to design a musicdisk for me and I gladly said yes.
The coder Heinsen really needed a LOT of time so Chromagic was quite delayed afterall and I had time to exchange older modules with recently made ones because the quality of my tunes had developed during that half year. Since I didn't want the musicdisk to be based on one certain style only, I included a Metallica-like heavy metal tune along with slow ballads.

Chromag is one of the musicians who has been able to release a lot of music through 1993 but not in many DCS productions.
- Apart from the modules for Chromagic and Humphy a 20 kb tune was used in an intro by Tycoon and Iridon. I've composed something for various magazines, like TRSI's Suicid, Damian's The Jungle issue 5, Ram Jam's Charts issue 8 and Talent's Satanic Rites.
I'm quite happy with the release of Chromagic. The fact that only one tune was used in another DCS production is probably caused by the big amount of excellent musicians in the group.

Chromag has as most other people a funny explaination to how he got his handle.

- My first handle was Animalogic, so this is probably the reason why I had to change it! In 1988 I wrote to a group to buy demos and their name was The Cromag Crew. At that time I was badly looking for a handle (you know why!) and I just took Cromag.

I was very proud to know someone who was a member of Spreadpoint and he greeted me in one of their intros, but he misspelled my name... "Chromag"! I thought that I had now become VERY famous and believed that noone knows Cromag, but everyone has heard of Chromag, so I changed my handle again and kept this little "h".
Recently I looked in a CD-catalogue and found a group called Cromag Crew again but I haven't bought their album!

Hardest module to compose
- This is probably the music I did for this game called Humphy. Mount forced me to change it for a dozen times and it took me some months (!) to finish it finally. Normally it takes me about a week to finish a module, so this time it really was a new record for me, but then again I was very pleased with the result, because the first version sounded rather awful... I also had to fill patterns for about 8 minutes and had only 250 kilobytes to do so, which seemed to be impossible to realise at the first moment, but after all I got along with it.
From the musical point of view, the Humphy Main Theme (as it's called) is quite varied, for there are different heavy-, ballad- and piano-parts each of which took quite a lot of time to finish and when I look at the sample quality nowadays, I have to admit that the guitar and pianosamples sounded like old st-01 instruments.

Best module
- My most successful module was Just A Blues, because many people at the Sun'n'Fun conference and other parties asked me to copy it to them. But actually I don't think it's my best, because blues is so easy to do on Amiga, it only needs 3 different chords. Probably also because of the strong beginning (which was partly sampled!) it was liked by so many people and I heard that it was even played on a dutch radiostation, along with tunes by Audiomonster and Moby.
The best module I made in my opinion was the module called Charming but Drunk, because it really reflected my mood when I composed it. Also the melody is quite catchy and I noticed someone at the Analog party, who whistled it.

Chromag is one of the people you might call addicted to the scene.

- The scene actually takes a major part of my life, as I'm sitting almost every day in front of the computer, composing music or writing letters to my friends. Also I'm going to every party or meeting I can, so that I'm also involved in the scene on weekends and holidays.
I have about 30 contacts, about 10 of which are quite good friends, who write long letters and talk about things only friends would talk about. It's always nice to meet these people at parties or visit, because you really get to know someone by meeting him, not by "just" writting letters.
Some of the contacts inflict my life because they are friends. Some of my contacts are musicians like I am so they share the same interests. You can exchange your knowledge about chords etc., listen to each others modules, criticise them or just swap samples. And then there's Chorus who for my birthday sent me used underwear!

Highlight of Chromag's "career".
- The best thing that happened to me was when I won the third prize at the Sun'n'Fun musiccompetition because it actually was the first time I made money with my hobby. Even if it was not more than just 100 DM I was really happy with it.
Actually this module deserved the first prize, because some people voted something like "???/Shining", but there wasn't other musicians from Dual Crew-Shining present except me. Anyway, with these seven points I would have won the competition. Too bad that Arise didn't find out. (After this interview was made, Chromag was placed 11th at The Party 3, -ed.)

Earlier Chromag was known for, or maybe not so known since he mainly composed pop-tunes. This is very different today.
- Actually I think that I still haven't found my own style after quite a few years of composing. I don't think that anyone could notice that a tune was written by me if they didn't know it for sure. As I'm really sick of all these brass-synth-pop musicians, I'm trying to convert styles like blues, heavy metal or also indian folk music to be more original. I don't think that I'm going to use synth-brasses again, since it's boring.
When it comes to chords, I try to avoid normal ones like c-major/minor, because they have been used by 5000 musicians before me. The use of more complex -7/-9 etc. chords enlarges your musical skills in an enormous way and it probably helps you to find an own style.

As most other musicians, Chromag has an opinion about sample-ripping partly influenced by the fact that he earlier didn't have a keyboard as sample source himself.
- It takes a lot of time and work to find samples which perfectly fit your tune, so it's quite depressing if you notice someone stealing your work by just using the clear-song option. Quite ridiculous if you forget to clear the old samplenames... I think it's okay to use one or two ripped samples if you give credits for it since I can understand people who don't want to buy synthesizers.

Chromag's five stars:
- Heatbeat, because his style is unique, often influenced by jazz. Noone's solos are so impressive as the ones in "Nowhere whenever" and "Scrambled Mind". Also his working with the volume (or "dynamic" as musicians would call it) is just brilliant.

- Groo is one of the few musicians with a personal style. He's well-known for his powerful basses and drums, but he actually has a musical knowledge too, probably because he's still going to the music academy. The balance of melody and chords is perfectly worked out.

- Moby has brought different styles like rock and blues into the Amiga music, which influenced a lot of musicians (including me). His experience and great instruments make him a real living legend.

- Bruno's musicbox III still is the best musicdisk I've seen so far. I really miss his original musics like the one which was used again in the Kid demo by Movement.

- Jogeir Liljedahl has made the best tune I've ever heard on Amiga, although it doesn't actually sound like it: "Guitar Slinger". His first musicdisk shows that he knows a lot about chords and solos, but I didn't really like the instruments he used at that time, but after listening to his guitar module I think he's one of the best musicians.

As most other musicians, Chromag has favorites among those who aren't high on the charts.
- Besides these five there are a lot more musicians worth to be listed here, like Dizzy, Strobo, Mr. Man and Dean, who all have their own personal style and should be ranked higher instead of certain other musicians, who don't actually have this musical knowledge.

Nearly all of Chromag's favorite musicians are from Finand so we asked him to explain what is so special about music from the far north.
- Finland is the country with the best musicians and they all have their own style. You always notice that a tune comes from a member of Carillon & Cyberiad, because they all are very original and of a high quality. Also groups like Stellar and Sonic have very talented musicians, who are able to do strange and weird music, which noone has heard before.
Germany is the country with the, according to the Eurocharts, best musician, but because many musicians follow the style of Jester, Germany is lacking original musicians who do music from their hearts.

This inevitably leads to the question about Chromag's opinion about Jester, something he has been discussing with many other musicians.
- Jester really knows how to impress the audience with his pop music which has made him the most popular musician.

Chromag is not exactly impressed of Jester's chords since they aren't so complex.
- I would advice him to convert other styles of music and try to use e.g. -7, -9 chords since it allows him to use more than just the normal notes (c,d#,f,g,a#).

If Jester, according to musicians, isn't technically good, is the popularity of a musician then more depending on quantity?
- When a musician releases a high amount of fairly good tunes, he's certainly well known to loads of people, probably even more than if a musician has released one brilliant tune (like Jogeir's Guitar Slinger). Quantity plays an important role, not quality as it actually should be.

But high ranking in the charts is not always nice.
- I think that musicians have to differ between the most popular and the best. So there's no point at being curious about Jester's position in the charts because he might not necessarily be the best. But honestly I think that there wouldn't be a discussion about him at all, if he wasn't ranked that high, although his music would have had the same "faults", but then noone would actually care about him.
I wouldn't like to be in Jester's position, because people always complain about someone so popular. This has happened to 4-Mat and Tip & Mantronix before, who were all slagged off. There's really no point in saying that Jester, 4-mat and others are "shit", as long as you don't give any reasons or say how they can improve.

Musical theory is needed to make Amiga music but....
- Actually there are a few examples showing that it's possible to be successful without knowing anything about it, but I think having this theoretical knowledge makes your tunes much more interesting. It's so boring to hear chords which have been used in almost any synth-pop module before, because you're fixed to a small amount of notes only. Knowledge about the right use of dynamic (volume, speed etc.), helps you to make your tunes more expressive. The best example of this is Heatbeat.

It's a fact that most of the people on the charts don't vote themselves.
- Normally I have been voting for the Eurocharts and I also for the European Top 20 and Ram Jam's Charts so I'm really trying to support the idea of a chart because they are a big motivation for everyone. It's a common knowledge that mostly swappers are the ones to vote but actually I'd like to see the opinions of musicians, graphicians etc., too, so I vote. A chart where musicians vote for musicians would probably be the best one, because musicians know what it takes to make a module, while they certainly don't know what a good picture is about. It's really hard to say who's the best in each category.
I don't really think that there's someone who doesn't like to see the name of his group, member or production there. I have been at a few parties and only voted at the Sun'n'Fun conference because I didn't see the competitions at all the other parties I've visitted. Anyway, I'd certainly vote if I had the chance to do so.

The tricky stream
Musicians are individuals but we gave Chromag the hard choice of saying who he would prefer to work together with if he was to compose a module together with another musician where both's quality should be combined in the best way.
- I'd like to do a tune together with Mount, because he's one of the most talented musicians with ideas I always dreamed of (remember Humphy!)... Not quite... Hmm, Jogeir Liljedahl has made the perfect competition-tune and he would be the one to make money with, but I really like to do ballads myself, so I think I could add a few good patterns by myself, if he supports me with his perfect chords and samples. His style fits my ideas perfectly so he should be the one to do a cooperation tune with.

Music trends
- The development of the Amiga modules have during the last few years been strongly affected by the quality of samples. You immediately notice if a module is more than two years old, because of all the original soundtracker samples everyone had to use. Many musicians have bought an own keyboard or digitizer, because they want to use own samples and chords.
Because of this, the musicians-scene has become more and more professional since musicians have their own music-studios and write music commercially. A recent trend is that musicians try to do something extraordinary, especially trying to do guitar-based songs (especially to win money at competitions it seems). This is in my opinion really refreshing the music-scene, but it also could get a bit boring if everyone's doing it. Other musicians try to do funk and blues and I really like it. I'm really waiting for the first one to convert German folkmusic...

Chromag listens to various styles of music, from rock of the seventies to grunge bands or gothic. Following bands are to be found in his CD & cassette collection: The Cure, Metallica, Faith No More, Rage Against The Machine, Die Aerzte, Rolling Stones, The Doors, Pearl Jam, R.E.M., Dead Can Dance, Das Ich, Classical Compilations, Jimi Hendrix, Stone Temple Pilots etc. But how does this music influence his own music?
- If I find a great beginning on one of my CDs, I sample it and use it for Amiga music. I have done this three times; Love and Pain uses Van Morrison chords, an old tune uses the beginning of a Dead can Dance track and Just a Blues' beginning is a rip off of an old 70's hit by Rainbow. Using real music for Amiga modules might improve the whole tune, just imagine Just a Blues without the guitars. I can't really say that my personal taste doesn't affect my Amiga modules because it's really impossible to convert The Cure or Pearl Jam. At least I haven't done a techno module because I hate this style.

For most musicians it is a dream to have their music in a game however most of them wait for the big contract in vain.
- I have been involved into a project of the world famous Cultural Productions (Humphy), but actually we didn't make any money with it so far. I also submitted two of my previously used tunes for PD-series and some others for a CD to be released on PC but I unfortunately won't get any money for it.
I would really like to be involved in a game project, because making money with ones hobby is the best way to do. However I haven't contacted a software firm and I haven't been asked either. 

Bjørn A. Lynne is probably THE musician when people think of succes but Chromag thinks that others could succeed aswell.
- Lynne definately is something special, because he made so much money with his CDs and AM/FM and he owes a lot of it to the scene as I guess that most people who bought his CD are members of the scene. If you want to be as successful as he is you have to be quite famous and he really is a legend.
I believe that people like Jester, TDK and Audiomonster could make it if they really wanted to (it's a difference between releasing a tape and a professionally recorded CD). The difference between today's musicians and him is that Bjørn has some kind of cult-status, because he has released so many brilliant tunes on Amiga for a very long period and people who liked his Amiga modules also bought his CDs.

For the freaky musician it's natural to think about making music to get a career in the real life, for e.g. theatres and films. But Chromag is quite honest about those possibilities.
- I don't think that there's a chance for me to make a living out of music and I'll probably start to work like any other normal would do. Recently a professional videomaker, who films marriages, birthday parties etc. asked me to do some music for his short films, which will be a good chance for me to earn a bit with my tunes. I'll probably give him some of my older tunes and we'll see what he pays for them.
As I'm also playing in an ordinary rockband called Elysium (yes, I invented the name some years ago!), I'm doing a bit of composing too, but it's just a hobby, nothing to be paid for.

But when you spend so much time on a hobby it's obvious to ask if the demoscene can be seen as some kind of music education.
- On the one hand you can learn a lot about chords if you haven't had any education at school or music academy. Normally someone who plays an instrument knows about musical theory and he uses his knowledge for Amiga music. Someone who doesn't even know what a c-major chord is not worth to be called musician.


CONTRAST - Other people's opinions about Chromag

Mr. Man/Andromeda:
Chromag makes nice sounding tunes in a polished wrapping. He stays within his style throughout the song, straight and stylish.
The musicdisk has got good slow tunes and are the kind of music that you can listen to without consentrating to much.

Chorus:
I have swapped with him for some time now so I have about 14 of his modules which are of quite a different quality. Some of his tunes are quite average I think. But some of latest unreleased stuff is really good. I like for example his Party III compo tune, "Fuck The Norm", a LOT!!!
He has started to do some quite "heavy rock" modules. His force are for the most the drums if you should hear my opinion. His weak side is perhaps that he doesn't play the guitar samples by himself. Sometimes it can be very difficult if the guitarist on the CD you sampled from didn't played the exact cord, note or whatever that you wanted.
Overall he is a very nice guy and skilled musician.

Jester/Sanity:
I really cannot say too much about him simply because I can't remember too many of his modules. From what I've heard I think I can rightfully say that he's a rather talented guy who is willing to experiment with various styles (which quite a lot of people are these days) and is also able to do it properly (which not quite as many people are these days).
I sort of liked "Chromagic" even though I can't name a tune that really grabbed my attention right now.
To my mind he belongs to the unfortunate type of musicians who only needed an opportunity to prove to the scene what they are actually able to do but never get it. Nevertheless, someone to have an eye (or rather: an ear) on.