
 Interview with Ben Daglish
 --------------------------

If Rob Hubbard is The Guru of Games Music, then he has a very close second
in the shape of the effervescent Ben Daglish, Gremlin's in-house music
writer. Ben has a lot in common with Rob Hubbard, both in terms of musical
background and basic approach to music. He's also a great admirer of Rob,
and they chat together fairly frequently about life in general and the
intricate aspects of music programming. Ben was up to his neck in work
when we met, a problem made worse by a recent two-week lay-off thanks to
appendicitis. Now he's back in the office, he has more games to write for
than ever. Working at frantic speed, his words tumble out like a fluent
datastream...


Ben began his musical career in the time-honoured tradition: recorder
lessons at an early age. His parents were very keen music fans, and
counted running a folk club amongst their musical interests. Ben was going
to study music seriously but decided to do maths and physics 'A' levels,
gaining a place at university. Within a year, he decided that university
wasn't really what he was cut out for, and so returned to Sheffield.


Ben has played orchestral percussion for some years, gaining a very wide
background knowledge of music in the process. Like Rob, Ben began with
educational software-setting up a company while still at school with Tony
Crowther. After dropping out from university he renewed his contact with
Tony and formed a specialist music company - We MUSIC - which he ran from
home. Finding that the business side detracted from musicmaking Ben was
more than pleased when Gremlin offered him a staff job...



 WELL-EQUIPPED
 -------------

Ben's office-come-workroom is well equipped with a couple of synths and
synth modules, an eight-track recorder, Atari 1040 ST and Commodore 64.
The walls have sheets of manuscript paper tacked to them along with the
brief for the games he is working on. Bounding around with great
enthusiasm, Ben loads several examples of his work, some of it using a MIDI
sequencer, and leaps around the room, grabbing guitars and keyboards to
fill out the sound even more.


So what's the Daglish approach to creating a game soundtrack?


"I normally work things out first on the keyboard, developing the bass,
tune, and harmony, while working out the general mood and style. I might
even use a drum machine to get the rhythm pattern." Everything is written
initially for the SID chip in the 64 as this offers more sound
possibilities, but written on the Atari St..

The ST is used as a master controller running player software written in
PASCAL. Gremlin's system is the musical equivalent of a word processor:
whole lists of numbers flash up on the ST screen - the datacodes for the
notes and their sounds. The Atari crunches away using a cross-macro
assembler to transfer the data to the 64. This way of working is very
flexible... "I play a piece through, decide that particular sounds aren't
right, go back to the player, reformat the tune with the corrections and
repeat the whole process again. often I get a quarter of the way through
programming a piece and realise that I really hate it.. This usually means
if I have time I'll start all over again."

When the final version of a tune has been approved for inclusion in a game,
the Atari can be used to recode it so that it will run on the AY chip
common to the Amstrad, BBC, Atari, and Spectrum 128. Clever Stuff! Ben
stresses that he does not write his own player routines, rather he defines
what they should be and Gremlin's inhouse programmers create the software.

"The nice thing about the player routine I'm using now is that I can
designate repeats anywhere I want - and hardly use up any more memory, so
it's possible to get quite lengthy, interesting tunes out of a small core
of material."



 RESTRICTIONS
 ------------

As we talk, a fax comes through from the game programmers working on the
current project and further limits are put on the way that the music must
be spaced in order that the TV scan line will run. Unflustered by these
new restrictions, Ben continues... "I wish I could play the keyboard more
fluently (he seemed pretty fluent anyway!).. Often I find I have to work
things out note for note as opposed to just doing it.. Another one of the
problems with music for games is that it's nearly always going to be heard
through the horrible speakers on the monitor or on-board the micro. This
means after I've programmed the music through big stereo speakers, I have
to play around with volume levels and treble and bass otherwise it sounds
really funny when the game is played by the purchaser."

When I met him, Ben was working on 'The Alternative Olympic Games' (a
spoof on the Epyx sports genre<! - for further details check out the
Gremlin feature earlier this issue>). Theme tunes for all the competing
nations were ordered and Ben had just finished a very catchy little number.

Before starting work on 'Alternative Olympics' Ben had his first brush
with writing for the ST, working on 'Galax'. "I was disappointed with
the ST's sound capabilities", he observes. He's also disappointed by a lot
of what he hears through the computer monitor speaker.....

"It annoys me that there is a lack of tunes and imagination on most games
although, I admit I am a great musical snob!" and then proceeds to
illustrate, by hamming up some very repetetive games tunes on a nearby
keyboard.

"With some games you think, my God they're not really trying at all! It's
just a bland soundtrack, noise as opposed to a piece of music. Much of
this type of music relies on cliches and sound effects, both of which I try
to avoid. I think the only person who really knows how to use sounds is
Rob and that's because he's been a synthesiser man for a good many years
and he knows how to use sound effectively. Too many people discover a
weird sound effect and decide that it will dominate their soundtrack...

"The development of music for the C64 has been very interesting though.
When it came out nobody realized that you could do pulsed fades and things
like that - or if they had, no-one was using it effectively."



It is obvious talking to both Ben and Rob that the era of the
musician/programmer is nigh. Music for games, just like the graphics, is
coming of age and the public are voting with their wallets. Rob, Ben and a
few others have shown the way for both inventive and imaginative music that
is catchy and will stand on its own; music that can last for several
minutes but doesn't follow the boring old pattern of repetition. The chips
used on 8-bit machines are being pushed to the limit. It will be very
interesting to see what they will be doing when new, super sound chips
become more commonly available. My guess is that they will move towards a
mixture of manipulated sound samples and high level synthesis. The results
will be stunning. Watch this space.



Jon Bates / Games Machine Oct 1987


