/\ /. \ _____ _____. _____ _____. // \ ______ .___\_ \_ | .___\_ \_ | // .\/ _ \_ | | | |____|_ _| | |____|_ | | | | |____| ______/ \_ | ______/ | | | ^\____ \| |____| | | |____| | |____| | | | | | | | | | | |____. |. | |. | |. | |. | | |. | | |: | |: | |: | |: | | |: | | || | || | || | ||_ | | || | | | | | | | | | \ | | | | | ^\_______/^\_______/|____| | \_____/| |\_______/^ cRu|________\ | | Issue #48 |. __|__ /\ ____ ____ |: \ / __/. \__\_ \___\_ \_ _. September, 2003 || / \ \__/ / / /___// | 292 Subscribers World Wide | /___/ \ / / __/_ / | | / / / / / / // | ^\____ /___/___/ /^\____ //____| \/ /___/ \/ --=--=-- --=--=------=--=------=--=---- Table Of Contents --=--=------=--=------=--=---- Opening: Message From the Editor Features: Party Report -- Evoke '03 Party Report -- Pilgrimage '03 Key Signatures Reviews: Music: In Tune -- "Trickster" and "Mirrorpeople" On The Sideline -- "Ninth" by Polygon Ring The Lineup -- Monthly Music Listings Demo: Screen Lit Vertigo -- "El Bourrrinas" and "Red Line" Opinion / Commentary: Coplan's Eyes -- Keep It Simple Stupid Link List: Get Somewhere in the Scene Closing: Staff and Contact Information --=--=-- --=--=------=--=------=--=---- Message From the Editor --=--=------=--=------=--=---- Greetings, and welcome to the September issue. Ciaran is still on vacation, so I will be your editor for this issue. It has been another eventful month. The bad news is that Cloud beat Sephiroth on the gamefaqs.com 2003 character battle. The good news is that we have a great issue this month. Seven went to three parties in the last four weeks, so he has been a bit swamped for time. This month we are including some unpublished demo reviews that were done some time ago. Seven gives his apologies that this month's reviews are not the latest and greatest. The great part is that after all that partying, he had enough energy to write reports. This month we'll report on Evoke, and next month we plan to report on Buenzli. We're also including Secnuop's Pilgrimage party report, my review of "Ninth" by Polygon Ring, and an article by Dilvie about musical key signatures. On the same tone, Coplan wrote commentary about keeping things simple while composing songs. One last thing.. Vince says he hasn't been getting much feedback on The Lineup. The Lineup is a great resource, and it's great to have someone like Vince scouring the net for good modules. Consider dropping him a line, a little bit goes a long way. Enjoy, --Ben Collver --=--=-- --=--=------=--=------=--=---- Party Report Evoke '03 By: Seven --=--=------=--=------=--=---- I had actually planned not to go to Evoke, as I would be going to Buenzli the next week with Djefke, and three demo parties in one month is a bit too much of a good thing. But a friend of Djefke was going to marry during the Buenzli weekend, so he decided to go to Evoke instead, and invited me along. After hesitating a day, I thought "Why not? What good are money, sleep and sanity if you can't recklessly abandon them for a good party?" :) -=- Friday 22 August -=- DJefke picked me up at the Berchem train station with the car from his work (free transportation! Yeah!) The trip to Cologne, Germany was uneventful, except that we almost missed the right exit due to babbling too much. We illegally parked the car near the entrance after driving around the block three times without finding a better place, and went inside the party building to find some empty seats. 21:02: I've installed myself temporarily next to SCA, on half an empty place at the corner of a table. The party place is packed, there are hardly any seats left, let alone two next to each other. Djefke went to the orgos to ask for extra tables. We've already met Fred/Calodox, Steeler/BP orgos and Unlock/Pain who were enjoying a beer outside, and Steeler who is also an Evoke organizer and told us we could enter now and pay later, when the party would open officially. That happens a tad later: everyone has to go back outside, and stand in a queue to get a ticket and (more importantly) a vote key. There's a combination ticket deal for Buenzli which is 5 Euro cheaper than separate tickets, so I decide to get one of those. The orgos have been quite thoughtful, they have provided flyers with a plan of the party place and its surroundings, with shops, bars and fast food joints marked on it, and the local bus schedule is shown at the entrance so even people without cars can easily go on a shopping/drinking spree. I move my stuff to the small hall connecting the main hall and the entrance, where the orgos have installed some extra tables. Djefke went moving his car to the parking space, which is no less than 2.5 km way from the party place :( Outside, I get to know some new people, such as Leia and Wayfinder/Farbrausch. I've recently found a web site with his old Azure stuff, which I really liked since I discovered it at Nectarine, so it was great to meet the man in person. :) He tells me Farbrausch may release something at Evoke, otherwise they'll wait till State Of The Art (in December in France), in which case it will be much better finished. :) 22:15: The opening ceremony is over: it started with a theme song with cheezy vocals about Evoke Z003 (pronounced Zoo-thousand-and-three), everyones favorite monkey meeting. The main orgo enumerated all the special extras at Evoke, such as 2 music workshops, a barbecue compo, a remix compo etc. He also asked to sit with 3 people at each table, in order to alleviate the lack of seats a little. That will probably make the overheated room even more hot, a problem we don't have in our cozy little hall. :) 23:35: Since the improvised tables had no switches, I went to the orgos to get one. This was more complicated than I expected, I had to sign a rental agreement and they asked me to give them my ID card, but in the end my social security card was acceptable as well. They claimed this is the usual way of getting switches at major parties, but most parties I've been to had switches pre-installed :-/ Anyway, the small hall has access to the party net now, which is nice because the dutch sceners Shifter/TPB, Warp, Skrebbel/Green and Turismo have just arrived and sit here as well. -=- Saturday 23 August -=- 00:26: We've been barbecuing on the roof of the party place, but this is less outlandish than it seems. :) A short description of the party place is in order: Evoke takes place in an old fort in the middle of a park. The entrance hall is connected to the small hall (more like a room) where maybe 10 people are sitting. It's connected with a T-corridor, if you turn right you're in the dark sleeping hall, which is probably used by schools as a gym because it has lots of equipment installed. If you turn left, you're in the main party hall, which looks rather cave-like without any windows and a rounded ceiling. The (rather small) big screen is on the far end, and on the left and right are the organizer rooms and the toilets respectively. There are couches here and there, and even a soccer table and pinball machine in our room. If you go outside and around the building, there is a huge staircase to the roof, which has the form of a cross, with a statue of an eagle on a pillar in the middle. Around this pillar, several groups of sceners are boozing, barbecuing and generally having a good time. Djefke is discussing the various kinds of Belgian beer with the dutch Lowres orgos. As usual, Djefke has brought an ample supply of Jupiler with him, plus some Rodenbach, while I've chipped in some Kriek and Hoegaarden. Inside, Crest is running his classic demo show, at the moment The Good, The Bad & The Ugly/Surprise!Productions is playing. Shifter is showing the winners of Assembly'03 to Leia and an organizer on his laptop, and for every demo in the top-3 there is someone who doesn't like that demo! Well, I guess tastes differ, also in demos. :) 3:09: DJefke, Skrebbel and Warp have decided to make a bad demo. :) In case this surprises you, the dutch scene has a long and proud tradition of making the most horrible demos, preferably with bad techno music (Check the Soepkip series sometimes). Djefke asks if I can do some code, which I decline at first as I don't have my tools with me, but then I realize I copied my code directory to my laptop for Assembly, including fmod and SDL etc, so maybe I can lend a hand. 3:58: I've converted some old software-rendered effects to SDL, and they run mightily fast on my P4 2.6GHz (originally written for a P2 450 :) ). Unfortunately, even though they are several years old and not very original, Skrebbel considers them too good for the demo he envisions. I suppose the demo will really redefine "bad" if that's true. :) 5:22: People are sleeping everywhere, Shifter has found himself a quiet place under the pinball table but others are using the couches, or the floor with or without mattresses. I think I'll do the same, yawn. 9:49: I'm back awake. A bad point for this party: there ae only 2 toilets and 2 urinals for over 200 people, so you've to wait often :( I went outside for some fresh air, people are still sleeping outside in the park and on the roof. 11:24: I'm not claiming that the sanitary provisions at Evoke are primitive in any way, but here's a copy-pasted news entry form the evoke.net web site: "Shower" at the entrance ------------------------ Sat, 10:32: If you have the desire to take a shower, there is a garden hose in front of the entrance which you can use. 12:56: I missed half of the ANSI/ASCII compo, either my clock must be off or the compo started too soon. There were 7 PC entries, followed by 8 Amiga ones. I don't know enough about it to judge the quality, though. Downside to small hall: cannot see when the compo starts, but seems to follow schedule more or less. 14:52: A big downside to sitting in this small hall is that we cannot hear the compos start. :( Often we don't notice a compo is running until a very good entry draws a loud applause. And waiting in the main hall is not an option, as the schedule isn't being followed very much. All this to say that I missed most of the tracked music compo. :/ It's a good thing we can get them from the FTP server when the compo is over. I just went shopping for food and drinks, when I came back I saw there are still new people arriving! One of them asks if he can attach his wireless base station to our switch, which is no problem. You can see more and more of those little boxes with their twin antennas at demo parties, soon UTP cables will be really oldskool. :) 16:02: The 4k intro compo is over, a mere 2 hours behind schedule. :) None of the 6 entries were really spectacular, but overall they were OK. Calodox had one that looked really great, with lots of transparent orange particles, but it had no sound. Instead, the introduction shown on the big screen before the entry said "First interactive intro: add your own music". And one of the orgos gladly obliged, adding an a capella sound track that was quite good, and got a big applause from the audience. 17:09: The barbecue compo is about to start, Shifter is doubting wether he'll compete but it turns out that the orgos will "judge" (read: eat) the results, not the competitors. So Shifter decides he'll fill his stomach some other way. :) 18:20: The multichannel compo is being played right now, but Djefke, Warp & Skrebbel are still working on their low-fi joke demo. About the only effect they have morphs particles from one line-art picture to another, so they need some pictures made from 23 straight line with the last one connecting to the first. Using my extremely limited graphic talents, I drew a cow-head and a giraffe on paper for them, then go back to the music compo. Skrebbel is proud on his idea to use an uncompressed wave-file for the music, because "compression causes quality loss" and also a bit to enrage the people on Pouet who have to download it by modem. 19:35: The demo deadline is in 25 minutes, Skrebbel is frantically debugging his particle effect. He forgot the intro compo was only one hour before the deadline, so he lost some time there. :) There were 3 64K entries, the ones from Razor 1911 and Cubalid7 were about equally good. 20:45: 6 Wild demos were shown, and seldom has the winner been clearer beforehand. The last entry, "Egon + Doenci"by Aenima was an incredibly professionally animated story about a guy and his cat visiting Mars. It reminds me a lot of the clay-animation of Wallace & Grommit, except that Egon + Doenci doesn't uses spoken words. 22:32: Djefke and I went for a pizza, and thus missed the graphics compo. :( I meet Kojote/Sueno again, who was at Assembly as well. He has the bad luck that his music entry was the only one that wasn't preselected, and the orgos didn't warn him at all. He's obviously in a bad mood due to that, and goes on enumerating the bad points of Evoke. I agree he has a point with some of them (parking space too far away, not enough room to watch the compos, sleeping hall too small and noisy,...) There's a party outside in the park, and the Dutch and Swiss sceners are trying to crash it. :) The organizers of it say it's a private party, but Shifter argues it's in a public location, so anyone should be allowed to it. -=- Sunday 24 August -=- 0:11: The OGG Vorbis compo is still busy (MP3s are still allowed, but it's nice to see people recognize the superior (and free) format). The Farbrausch guys are still working on their demo (waaay after the deadline), and I'm fascinated by the amazing tool Chaos demonstrated at his Assembly seminar. 1:07: The console demo compo is over, I'm sure that "Green Cheese"/Haujobb & Kolor & Park was the best of the 3 entries. Everyone is waiting for the demo compo, but the orgos warn it is 1 hour delayed... 2:42: To fill the time, the Breakpoint video "Boozed over the limits" is shown, it consists mostly of Bronix puking (yuck), on the "Oh fortuna" sound track. Leia thinks it's hilarious, especially since Bronix himself directed the video! No less than 11 demos were shown, without preselections. Tpolm made a stylish ninja demo, I heard it was actually entered at the Assembly but it wasn't selected, a shame. Smash design made another 3d camera flight, this time of an entire neighborhood. Shops, parks, office buildings,... everything is modeled really detailed, but there's no-one walking around in it, which makes it feel very empty. At the start they added a joke about Elitegroups Kasparov, see if you get it. Farbrausch demo is less good than I expected, and not all scenes I saw them working on are in it (I remember a bomber plane that would have supplemented the submarine nicely). Since there are no preselections, even the joke-demo is shown (Hete Dansactie II/Groen, watch it at your own risk), and they even managed to submit the original Hete Dansactie demo, which is over 4 years old and has been "released" on 6 parties so far. :) Various people are using my laptop to vote, before they go to sleep. You could in fact vote right after each compo, but an annoying point is that you need to re-enter your vote key every time. 8:30: I can't find my backpack when I wake up, but it turns out someone moved it to the other side of the room and everything is still in it. Phew, that was a bit of a panic. :/ 9:59: The voting deadline is extended to 11:00. I've talked a bit with Wayfinder about MP3 players, and how it would be nice if OGG Vorbis support became more mainstream. He burned me a CD with some of his songs, including the normal version of Record Royale, which I have been looking for after getting the short version from the Azure releases. Thanks a lot, Wayfinder! 11:54: I got the last XL Evoke T-shirt, first it seemed only small sizes were left but the orgos found one more hidden somewhere. XXX also gave me an coffee mug for the Kriek beers I stored in Scamps fridge for him. 12:30: There's still no prize ceremony, it has been delayed till 13:00 (and the voting was extended once more till 12:10). Skrebbel is showcasing his collection of bad demos, and I'm giving the remaining beers away. 15:02: The prize ceremony is finally over! The results were a bit surprising here and there, Tpolm placed only second with Smash Design getting first. Egon + Doenci got more point than all the other wild demos combined. Cubalid7 got 7 points more than Razor 1911, and thus walked away with one of the high-end PCs Intel had sponsored for the demo and 64K compos (hyper- threading P4 3GHz, 1 GB DDR RAM, 200 GB HD, Radeon 9800 etc etc). IMHO The pocketPC demo (Green Cheese) had a higher quality than the first 64K intro, so the 2nd PC should have gone to that compo. On the other hand, their prize fitted better with the "console" category: a modded XBox with a 80GB HD, with an Amiga emulator and a large archive of Amiga demos preinstalled. Shameless name-voting causes Hete Dansactie II to reach the 7th place, which only shows the makers of the demos that ended lower were fair enough not to vote on their own productions. The results were shown using the Breakpoint system, with rising bars for each production, with one refinement: for the top 3, the bars paused a while whenever one ran out of points, so you had some time to see which productions remained in the running. There was also a special newcomer award, given by Digitale Kultur. This is an organization set up by some German sceners to promote and help the demo scene. It went to Cubalid7, they got 100 Euro and Tobi said this money should enable them to quit their school and jobs and go make demos full-time. :) Next were the usual thank-yous, to the sponsors and everyone who helped. The sponsors were very positive to Evoke, the Intel guy was surprised something like the demo scene existed, and they would sponsor Evoke again. And the Native Instruments guy who did the music seminars (about Native Instruments software) had learned what a tracker was and how Buzz worked :) Everyone is packing, I have to wait for Djefke to get the car. After stuffing our possessions back into the car, we hang out a little longer outside in the sun, with the dutch guys and Leia and her friends, reluctant for the party to stop. The ride back home went without a hitch, as far as I know as I was sleeping. I think Evoke was a nice party, although it had its share of problems, most of which were caused by the location. There were far more people than expected, but the orgos promised they would find a larger location for next year. The schedule wasn't kept very well, and I missed quite a few compos but I could get them from the FTP server before voting, which is nice. But the best part of Evoke for me were the people, I saw more old friends again at Evoke then at Assembly which was 20 times its size. Greets to everyone I met there, see you again on another party! --Seven --=--=-- --=--=------=--=------=--=---- Party Report Pilgrimage '03 By: Secnuop (secnuop at yahoo dot com) --=--=------=--=------=--=---- -=- Friday 8 August -=- My flight arrived into Salt Lake City around 10:30PM. I had some tentative plans to meet up with Sylphin/Suboptical when I arrived, but it turned out that it took a while to get a shuttle bus to the hotel so I basically just ended up crashing as soon as I got to the hotel. Not a big deal since the hotel I got was way out in the boonies, and I had no transportation downtown (no plans to get to the party place either, hrmm). It took a while to fall asleep in an unfamiliar environment, plus Utah is an hour ahead of California, so I was attempting and failing to fall asleep even earlier than normal. I set my alarm for 7:00AM and got as much sleep as I could. -=- Saturday 9 August -=- Both the first and last day of Pilgrimage! The party was officially supposed to begin at 8:00AM. I figured I'd be somewhat fashionably late, so I was about right on schedule when I left the hotel just before 9:00AM. The taxi fare was $15 to get downtown from the hotel. Mental note for next time - pay a couple of extra bucks for a hotel nearer to the party place. The actual party place was pretty much optimal for the number of people that attended. It was at the Metro Learning Center Campus of the Salt Lake Community College, in basically the middle of downtown Salt Lake City. Interestingly I had to convince the taxi driver that there really was a part of the community college downtown. If I didn't write the address down I have no idea where we would have ended up! On entering the "lobby" of the Metro Learning Center Campus there was a sign welcoming Pilgrimage attendees and directing us up to the second floor to Salons 3, 4, and 5. So, I took the elevator up and found a the Pilgrimage welcome desk. The welcome desk had a sign-in sheet and some literature about the demo scene (including an original copy of the demo scene Wired article). Sylphin and TFinn/dc5 arrived about exactly when I did, and we set up in the salon nearest to the lobby. Each of the salons had a projector, four rows of tables, and enough seating for six people comfortably at each row. I sat down and opened my laptop to check my email and we hit the only real major technical difficulty of the party. Apparently, even though the Metro Learning Center was equipped for wireless Internet you needed to be a student with an account to get on the wireless LAN. Oh well. Wired it is, I guess... I guess now would be as good a time as any to mention that I have been to demo parties before. In 1997 and 1999 I attended the Spring Break demo parties in San Diego, California. The Spring Break demo party in 1997 was my introduction to demos. In 1999 I was convinced that I was going to enter a demo into the compo, but I pretty much completely underestimated the amount of time it would take to make a demo (even after a bunch of rendering routines and effects were already completed). So this time, I resigned to myself a few weeks before the party that a demo just wasn't going to happen and decided that I was going to concentrate more on the social aspects of the party this time around, since that's what I regret not doing so much of in 1999. If Pilgrimage 2004 happens I've convinced myself that I will have a demo to enter, done before the party starts, so hopefully in 2004 I'll have the best of both worlds! One of the coolest things about Pilgrimage were the various talks that were scheduled throughout the morning. I managed to make it to four of them. In the first, Russ Christensen gave a talk about a project he worked on in school where he designed his own game console (and wrote Tetris and Space Invaders clones for it). It made me wish I was still in school so I had time for wacky projects like it. The second talk was on programmable shaders by Thant Tessman. Thant works for nVidia in their "tech demo" group. Even though I knew most of the information he presented it was a pretty good talk. I just wish his presentation used non-nVidia specific OpenGL extensions for those of us with ATI cards. The third talk was given by David Notario, also known as mac/xplsv^threepixels. David's talk was probably the one I was most interested in, since in it he described threepixel's 'Studio' demo framework. His talk was awesome, and gave me a bunch of good ideas to work on in the next few months. I figure if I can do a third of what he's done I'll have a demo that's at least competitive for next year. Very inspiring. Somewhere during the morning Dan was interviewing people asking them a few questions about their experiences in the demo scene. I of course was lame and couldn't even think up three words that I associate with the demo scene. Can I retroactively say "awesome electronic art"? Sure beats what I said (I think it was something about lack of sleep - how telling). After a quick break for lunch at the local 'Crown Burger' (think cheeseburger plus pastrami - the ultimate heart attack on a plate) Dan from Fusecon gave the final talk of the party. It was basically a slide show and comments on his experience at the Breakpoint demo party in April. It was interesting to compare and contrast his experiences with the ones were were all having at Pilgrimage. We clearly have a long way to go before we get a European-sized party in North America (not that that's a bad thing!). We'll also probably need to have the party in a different state than Utah if we're going to have a beer truck. Overall all of the talks were excellent and I'm disappointed I couldn't make some of the others. I spent the rest of the afternoon just hanging out, taking pictures, and watching demos. Sylphin took over one of the salons and played a bunch of demos that I hadn't seen in years. For example, I had almost completely forgotten about Replay's 'Fall Equals Winter'. We also tried to keep a connection to AssemblyTV, since the Assembly demo party was going on simultaneously in Finland. We managed to catch a bit of the wild compo, but eventually the quality just got too bad and we had to disconnect. Next year I'm going to try to bring my oldskool demo machine (DOS + GUS) to watch some of the classic old demos. The Mindcandy DVD does a pretty good job representing demos that just can't be run on Windows PCs, but there are just too many good 1990s demos to fit onto one side of a DVD. Not to mention good intros, which aren't on a DVD at all! Still, the last few major modern demos have been pretty darn impressive. We watched 'The Popular Demo' several times and each time I notice something else that's just plain awesome. Somewhere along the line we decided to try out the video postcard software that had been donated to the party. The basic plan was to film some professional looking video clips, send them over to Assembly, and hope we could get on AssemblyTV. I don't know if we ever actually sent anything anywhere, but if nothing else it'll be amusing to see next year. I managed to grab mine on my USB drive before I left as a nifty souvenir also. Sometime during the afternoon we hit our second technical difficulty of the day. We discovered that it wasn't possible to share files across the network. Though this makes sense in an academic setting (where that last thing the community college wants is their students transferring MP3s on their network), it makes submitting compo entries somewhat difficult. Luckily campus IT didn't block FTP ports, so we were able to set up an FTP server to submit compo entries. Over the course of the evening I was very impressed with the number of entries in all three compo categories. When the compo deadline was reached at 8:00PM there were already four demo entries, four graphics entries, and six music entries, and two groups were still frantically trying to finish their demo! To allow the two groups to finish the compo deadline was extended by an hour. After all, it wouldn't be a party if the compos all started on time, would it? Finally around 10:00PM the judges had screened each of the entries and it was time to vote! The organizers used a pretty unique voting system, but I think it worked out pretty well. Basically, each attendee had a total of ten points to distribute in each compo, and judges had a total of fifty points. The points could be distributed however the voter wished them to - all ten points could be given to one entry, or they could be distributed among several (or even all) entries. First up was the graphics compo. All four entries were pretty good, and I think I gave points to each entry. Next up was the music compo. Again, each of the entries were pretty good. Last was the demo compo, which was the compo I was most interested in. I don't think I remember the demo order exactly, but one of the first demos was 'Fastmade', by 'Tres Beats'. I really liked this demo in a party setting. The sound track was upbeat and the demo was entertaining. About all I didn't like was the color scheme. Second was 'Charged', by 'OTM'. This was one of the two demos that were being worked on right up to the last minute, and unfortunately it crashed midway through the demo. Still, it was pretty neat, and I'll definitely download the final version. Next was 'K-Wak' by 'k-rad' and 'dc5'. Another very cool demo. It was pretty obvious that either this or 'Fastmade' was going to win. Next was a 16 byte (that's right, no typo) demo from the Northern Dragons, and a 4Kb intro also from the Northern Dragons. The 4K intro was technically very impressive, but it's difficult to judge a technical feat like it in the same context as a full-blown demo production. I guess the only solution is to have enough entries such that intros can have a category of their own. Last was 'CursesDemo' by 'dc5'. It's a NetBSD demo, though I assume it'll compile on any OS that has the curses library. The music was played through a separate computer. Overall it brought back fond memories of the dc5 Spring Break 99 demo, where they hummed the music. While the votes were being tallied we all congregated in a fourth salon where Nullsleep/8bitpeoples was entertaining all party goers with a live set of Gameboy tunes. It fit the mood perfectly and gave everyone a chance to hang out for an hour or so. You can download his live set on his web site: http://www.8bitpeoples.com/nullsleep. Finally, Legalize announced that the results were tallied and were ready to be announced! First, though, there was a bunch of free stuff that was raffled off. I don't remember the details of all that was given away but ATI donated a bunch of stuff, including five Radeon 9800 Pro graphics cards (three of which were given as first prize in the compos and two of which were raffled away). The graphics results were announced first. Bruce won third place with his hilarious 'DemoWoman' picture. Clarissa won second place with 'Ronnas', and Oman won with his 'Wrenchman vs. Mothman' picture. This was the one compo where my opinion really differed from the results. I liked the fourth place picture, 'In Tolerance We Trust' by Fred. Oh well. The music results were announced second. Though I had the ordering slightly different, my votes went to the three productions that eventually won first, second, and third. Mr. Moses won first place with his nifty island tune 'Ipanema Sands', Nullsleep won second place with 'Her Lazer Light Eyes', and ChaoticOne and Troll won third place with 'Embraced'. The music talent was pretty good, and I liked a lot of the songs that didn't win also. Finally, the demo results were announced. As expected, 'K-wak' won first place and 'FastMade' won second. 'CursesDemo', the dc5 text mode demo won third place. Cool. I was a bit surprised that the Northern Dragons 4Kb entry didn't place higher, but I guess that just goes to show that it's tough to rank 4Kb intros in the same context as full-blown demos. It didn't help that the demo didn't run on the compo machine, but I still thought it was pretty cool. Just before midnight Legalize raffled off the final Radeon, thanked all of us for attending (though we really should have been thanking him for organizing such a successful party), and we left the Metro Learning Center and Pilgrimage 2003. Before leaving several of us made plans to meet up for a Pilgrimage afterparty at Troll and ChaoticOne's hotel room a few blocks from the party place. ChaoticOne and Obsidian went out to try to find some ladies while myself, Troll, Dilvie, and Dilvie's girlfriend went out to obtain some of the local fermented malt beverages. I thought that Sylphin and a few others were going to meet up with us as well but we never managed to cross paths with them again that night. At the afterparty Obsidian continued working on a song he began in the waning hours of Pilgrimage, and Troll, ChaoticOne, and Dilvie helped out to make a four-person collaboration that was, as I quote, a "total mind fuck". Cool. We even had some plans to do an extremely ghetto post- Pilgrimage demo, though the unfortunate realization that Troll's laptop had no OpenGL drivers and that my laptop had no sound code put a damper on these efforts. I was also starting to feel the effects of the four hours of sleep I had the night before and the realization that I was going to need to be at the airport for a flight out early Sunday afternoon. Man, I'm getting old. Interestingly we also discovered that Darwin and a few of the other Pilgrimage guys were staying in the hotel room next door. They were driving back to Oregon the next day so they weren't too eager to join in the festivities, but it did lead us to dub the Sheraton the unofficial hotel of Pilgrimage 2003. Finally around 4AM we decided to call it a night and I got a ride back to my hotel from Dilvie and his girlfriend (Marcy?). I finally fell asleep around 5AM. -=- Sunday 10 August -=- I woke up just in time to catch the end of the continental breakfast, made it to the airport on time, and typed up most of this party report before I got back to Sacramento mid afternoon! Thanks (in no particular order) to... All of the Pilgrimage organizers, especially Rich (Legalize) and Adam for their awesome work organizing the party. All of the Pilgrimage sponsors, including ATI, Microsoft, FuseCon, and Serious Magic for the prizes and giveaways, and XMission for hosting the web page and donating money to secure the party space. All of the Pilgrimage speakers for their excellent talks. Thanks especially to Mac for giving me ideas and inspiration for next year. Troll and ChaoticOne for hosting the unofficial Pilgrimage afterparty. Dilvie and Marcy (?) for driving me back to my hotel in the wee hours of the morning. Next year I'll get a hotel downtown! I'll see ya at Pilgrimage 2004! --secnuop/Ingenuiti Productions --=--=-- --=--=------=--=------=--=---- Key Signatures By: Dilvie --=--=------=--=------=--=---- A lot of musicians received formal training in music starting at a very young age. For them, the foundations of written music were probably drilled into their heads long ago. I learned music by ear. I've had very little formal music training. As a music major, my lack of training has been a major handicap in college. I suspect many trackers and self- trained electronic musicians may be in the same boat. One of the first obstacles to overcome when you set out to learn music theory is the process of memorizing a total of thirty key signatures. Key signatures tell you about the pattern of half steps and whole steps that make up the harmonic framework of a passage of music. This tonal framework is technically called a Mode. There are actually seven different modes, but the majority of modern music is centered around only two: Ionic and Aeolian (Major and Minor). Like all other aspects of music, key signatures are based on mathematics, and where there is math, there's a shortcut. Eventually, you will probably memorize all the keys. Until then, all you need to remember is a simple sequence of letters: B E A D G C F. This sequence represents the order that flats are displayed in the key signatures: Bb, Eb, Ab, Db, and so on. The reverse represents the order that the sharps are displayed in the key signatures: F#, C#, G#, and so on. 7 b 2 3 4 5 6 0 1 number of flats in the key B E A D G C F 5 4 3 2 1 0 6 # number of sharps in the key 7 The key of C Major has no sharps or flats. The key of G has one sharp. If you start on the sharp end of the sequence, you'll see that the sharp in the key of G is F#. D has two (F#, C#), A has three (F#, C#, G#), E has four (F#, C#, G#, D#), B has five (F#, C#, G#, D#, A#), F# has six (F#, C#, G#, D#, A#, E#), and C# has seven (F#, C#, G#, D#, A#, E#, B#). All of the flat keys, with the exception of F have flat in the name. The flat keys are F (Bb), Bb (Bb, Eb), Eb (Bb, Eb, Ab), Ab (Bb, Eb, Ab, Db), Db (Bb, Eb, Ab, Db, Gb), Gb (Bb, Eb, Ab, Db, Gb, Cb), and Cb (Bb, Eb, Ab, Db, Gb, Cb, Fb). Don't worry. You don't have to memorize all of that to know your key signatures. All you have to remember is BEADGCF, or its reverse, FCGDAEB. From that simple sequence, some easy math trickery can reveal every one of the thirty keys. Picture a number line from -7 to 7. Negative numbers represent the number of flats in the key. Positive numbers represent the number of sharps in the key. Remember that C has zero sharps or flats, and that F has one flat, and G has one sharp. -7 -6 -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Cb F C G D A E B C# Let's take a closer look at what we have here. Look at where the C's are: Cb has seven flats (-7 on the number line). C has zero sharps or flats, and C# has seven sharps (+7). This principle can be used to find all of the flat and sharp keys. To find Db, simply subtract seven from 2 (-5). Db has five flats. To find F#, simply add seven to -1 (the key of F has one flat). F# has 6 sharps. This same number line can help you find minor keys as well. To find the minor key signature, simply subtract three. G minor has two flats (G has one sharp. 1 - 3 = -2). [Flat -7] <-- [Natural] --> [Sharp +7] | | v [minor -3] In addition to these simple calculation methods, there are a couple of neat tricks that will help you to identify written key signatures. To identify a written flat key, the key name (if it is major) will be the second to last flat in the signature. For example, the key of Bb has two flats. The second to last flat in that signature is Bb (Bb, Eb). The key of Ab has 4 flats. The second to last flat in that signature is Ab (Bb, Eb , Db). To identify a written sharp key, look at the note represented by the last sharp, and raise it one step. For example, in the key of C#, the last sharp represents B#. One step above B# is C#. Now that you know the tricks of the trade, how about a little practice? The best way to learn key signatures is to drill. If you don't, everything you've just read will fade out of your memory very quickly. Head on over to and take a look at the trainers. You'll find one called the key trainer. Start by configuring the keys you want to practice. You can select major or minor, 4 different clefs, and the keys you want to work on. Start with three, and add two more when those three start to get too easy. Switch off major and minor, and rotate through the various clefs until you've become the king of key signatures. If you're a serious musician, you'll be glad you did. One day you will need to communicate with other musicians in writing. The language for doing just that has evolved over thousands of years. Today, written music is an elegant way to record your musical ideas for future generations. It's also the best way to let other people take a crack at playing the music you write. --Dilvie --=--=-- --=--=------=--=------=--=---- On The Sideline "Ninth" by Polygon Ring By: Ben --=--=------=--=------=--=---- This month I am going to introduce "Ninth" by Polygon Ring. The comments in the instrument list classify this song as experimental/intelligent drum music, released in December 2000. It is unsurprising that the first notes in this song are drums, and a smooth pad begins the progression that carries the song at a leisurely pace. I like the relaxed tone of this song, it isn't too demanding to listen to. Since there is no given story behind this song, it's easy to make one up. I could imagine a solitary VW bug weaving along a 2-way highway that follows a small river through a coastal mountain range in June. It could be just after a brief rain storm, and the sun could occasionally sparkle off blooming plants. In this scenario the song's title could be taken from the milepost the car was seen driving past. But that's enough fantasy for now. The drums are crisp, but remain fairly static in about 3 variations of the a single theme, with a couple well timed percussive pauses. The melody is formed mainly by pads and echoing staccato instruments that sound somewhat like a harp with a stereo delay. Taken as a whole I found it a full and mildly upbeat sound. The ending could be improved, it is only a little better than cutting abruptly into silence. The drums stop, then the tempo winds down and the pads pitch bend into fading dissonant tones. There is a lot of music circulating called experimental or intelligent drum music. Though some IDM lacks structure, "Ninth" is pleasantly melodic and lighthearted. The person(s) behind Polygon Ring know better than to take their music too seriously, and found good results. Song Information: Title: Ninth Author: Polygon Ring Length: 7:06 File Size: 871k Source: http://polygonring.hypermart.net/music/ninth.zip --Ben Collver --=--=-- --=--=------=--=------=--=---- In Tune Music from Nightbeat By: Coplan --=--=------=--=------=--=---- -=- "Trickster" by Nightbeat -=- There's an old mod by Jogeir called "Guitar Slinger". Nightbeat's song reminded me of this song. There's just as much skill demonstrated in Nightbeat's talent. And being compared to Jogeir, I would imagine, is nothing to be ashamed of. "Trickster" is an acoustic guitar and flute piece. It's got a bit of a folk music feel to it. It's basically only got four instruments: An acoustic guitar, an acoustic base guitar, drums and the flute. But it's simplicity is what draws me to Nightbeat's music in the first place. I must point out that this is a true Impulse Tracker module. This is important for two reasons. First is the fact that all the guitar riffs are sampled, and pieced together much in the same way that the classic trackers, like Jogeir and Necros, did. It's a very difficult style to perfect, and it can be very limiting at times. Not limiting to the sound, but limiting to what you can do with the song. So it's very common that this technique results in a broken sound, or a poorly written song. This is not the case with "Trickster", and I admire the song for that reason. Second of importance is the fact that with a module, there is no post- mixing as you might find in an MP3. Any echos or room noise that you would hear in this song were written right into the song. Every detail has been accounted for, and this song sounds like a bunch of guys in a studio. It sounds that good! So all technical observations aside, lets get down to the music. Throughout most of the song, the flute takes the spotlight. It's the lead instrument, and Nightbeat has presented us with quite a good tune. That is not to say that the guitars are forgotten. They are as essential to the song as the flute. They're the first and last instruments that you hear. The opening is clean and simple. The song itself provides a very warm feeling. Unfortunately, I was not 100% happy with the closing. I thought it a bit too abrupt. However, with the live performance feel of the song, this would likely be a very appropriate ending. This is a great song, and I recommend a download for some easy listening. Song Information: Title: Trickster Author: Nightbeat Release date: 7/27/03 File Size: 2.7 MB / 3.2 Source: http://w1.314.telia.com/~u31445974/mods/nb_trickster.zip -=- "Mirror People" by Rain -=- I picked up this track on recommendation from Novus. It's a guitar rock song, so you already know my admiration for the skill required to do such a song. Throw on top of that the fact that Rain uses a distorted guitar as his lead. That makes things even more difficult. But as I just went through discussing why guitar modules are difficult to work with in the "Trickster" review, I won't drag that horse out again. Rain seems to have a very good ear for some FX in his songs. He's thrown in a couple of FX samples like blips, a car starting and Rain (which I'm curious if he put it in there because of his alias). These bits are not essential to the song. I think the song stands on itself. But they definately add to the song. The rain, in fact, even changes the feeling of the song a bit. Up until the rain came in, I figured this song for a happy song. But I'm thinking it's a bit more of a blues song with a bit of a modern edge. As I said, I was really impressed with the guitars. I think the lead guitars (both the distorted guitar and the clean guitar lead) are well written. The leads are catchy and fun. I imagine they'd be fun to play if you were a guitarist. But nevermind that. The rhythm guitar's role wasn't overlooked, either. The guy isn't playing the same damn thing throughout the song. The rhythm guitarist (I say this figuratively...it is a module, after all) changes things up every once in a while. He ebbs and flows with the leads. The percussion is simple, but very appropriate. There are a couple of really good riffs, but otherwise the drums never get any splotlight. As I said, this is appropriate, and I don't mean this to sound like a negative comment. Rock tunes typically require the drummer to be a bit more subdued. The percussion style in this song is very similar to what you'd find from Mick Fleetwood, of the mainstream band Fleetwood Mac. The percussion in this song lends its hand in creating the overall mellow feeling of the song. After hearing this song, I'll be adding this to one of my playlists. I realize that this song isn't for everyone. But if you're a tracker, you can definately learn a lot from this song. As mellow rock songs go, this should be classified as one of the better tunes. Especially in the world of the demoscene. The song file isn't that large, all things considered, and it would be worth a download. Song Information: Title: Mirror People Author: Rain Release date: 8/25/03 File Size: 1.5 MB / 2.9 MB Source: ftp://ftp.scene.org/pub/music/groups/sands/rain/rn-mpp.zip --Coplan "In Tune" is a regular column dedicated to the review of original and singular works by fellow trackers. It is to be used as a tool to expand your listening and writing horizons, but should not be used as a general rating system. Coplan's opinions are not the opinions of the Static Line Staff. If you have heard a song you would like to recommend (either your own, or another person's), We can be contacted through e-mail using the addresses found in the closing notes. Please do not send files attached to e-mail without first contacting us. Thank you! --=--=-- --=--=------=--=------=--=---- The Lineup By: Novus --=--=------=--=------=--=---- Welcome to The Lineup! Every month, I scour through the hundreds of new releases on the scene's major archive sites to find the best new music, saving you the trouble of having to download 20 instant-delete songs to find 1 that's worth keeping. The feedback has dried up in the past few months, and my ego is feeling neglected. C'mon people! Tell me what a great job I'm doing! (Or what a lousy job I'm doing too. My ego may be inflated, but it's also honest.) Whether it's positive or negative, send all feedback on The Lineup to vince_young@hotmail.com. In the meantime, you may consider the following 16 tunes to be the best tracks of August 2003: -=- THE BEST OF THE BEST -=- "World #204" - Graff - light rock ftp://ftp.scene.org/pub/parties/2001/addictanniversary01/mmul/world204.zip -=- THE REST OF THE BEST -=- "Acid Maintenance" - Keith303 - dance ftp://ftp.scene.org/pub/music/artists/keith303/k303main.zip "Checksum Error" - Breakthru - pop http://www.users.ch/portela/breakthru/xm/brk_chk.zip "Discovery" - Temezo & T-Tracker - dance http://www.modarchive.com/cgi-bin/download.cgi/D/discovery_fk.xm "GravTune" - Robert Gravener - pop http://www.modarchive.com/cgi-bin/download.cgi/G/gravener1.it "Ice Peak" - Turkanen - pop http://www.mbnet.fi/~eska/t-ice2k3.it "Idolatry" - Gargoyle - pop http://www.tunestore.de/songs/idolatry.zip "Kjelsaas By Night" - Neon - trance http://home.no.net/zoolmods/ne-kbn.zip "L'envol" - Xenon - fantasy http://www.novusmusic.org/songs/envol_8.zip "Mirror People" - Rain - light rock ftp://ftp.scene.org/pub/music/groups/sands/rain/rn-mpp.zip "Mystified" - Aitrus - ambient http://www.modplug.com/mods/nrdetail.php3?session=&detailno=10798 "No Surrender, No Retreat" - Speci - trance http://www.mbnet.fi/~special1/files2001/spc-nsnr.zip "Road To Sunset" - Butch - pop ftp://ftp.scene.org/pub/music/artists/butch/b_sunset.zip "Trickster" - Nightbeat - fantasy http://w1.314.telia.com/~u31445974/mods/nb_trickster.zip "West Song" - Butch - fantasy ftp://ftp.scene.org/pub/music/artists/butch/b_west.zip "You Are My Sky" - Speci - dance http://www.mbnet.fi/~special1/files2001/spc-yams.zip Latez! --Novus --=--=-- --=--=------=--=------=--=---- Screen Lit Vertigo "El Bourrrinas" and "Red Line" By: Seven --=--=------=--=------=--=---- -=- "El Bourrrinos" by Marshals -=- (party-version) Found at www.scene.org 1st place at the Synthesis party 2003. System requirements: CPU: P4 1.6GHz prefered (may work on P3/Athlon @ 500Mhz) 3D: NVidia GeForce4 ti prefered (may work on GeForce2/3 ti, ATI Radeon 8500+ (tested on GeForce 32 mx with few loss of speed) Mem: 256Mb RAM prefered (may work with 64Mb) Soundcard external or integrated SB compatible Windows, 5MB HD Test Machine: P3 900 640MB, Gamesurround III, Radeon 8500 LE 64MB, Win98 The credits: code: Woid music: Celsius graphics: Isobel, Zone, Yannus Stark The demo: The category this demo belongs to is clear from the very first second: El Bourrrinos is a house/techno type demo, with all visuals synchronized to the pumping bass of the soundtrack. I don't like extremely repetitive music, but at less than 4 minutes and with some variation here and there, it's bearable :) Now, the visuals: imagine a white dice floating in the air, with disconnected red feet and hands (think Rayman), and a huge grin on its face. Take four of these and you have the inhabitants of this demo, whose sole purpose in life seems to be to dance to the music, and to run around in a landscape filled with simple houses, a few clouds and many booming speakers. For the rest there are no graphics, and almost no effects: some zooming, a horizontal blur suggesting speed, and the blue fog that is too dense in the second part of the demo. The syncing is precise but simplistic: every movement and camera switch is synced to the main beat. Overall: Very simple, but not bad if you like this kind of music. The little cube- men are kinda funny, and the design of their world is very consistent: rounded cubes, and low-poly versions of everything else. The animation is quite good, although there are a few places where it is noticable that sprites are used (ugly difference, IMHO). So if you like techno music, make sure you you get this one. -=- "Red Line" by Condence & Mandarine -=- (party-version) Found at www.scene.org 2nd place at the Equinox 2003 democompo. System requirements: Nothing listed, so these are the obvious ones: Windows, 7MB HD, a 3D card. Test Machine: P3 900 640MB, Gamesurround III, Radeon 8500 LE 64MB, Win98 The credits: Code: Norecess, Jylam Gfx: Mikl, Fra Music: Med, Redribbon The demo: If you expect the next cooperation between Condence and Mandarine to be similar to the funny Superjam Superheroes, you'll be disappointed. Red Line is a short 3D-demo without a real story, although the visuals follow a theme: small cities in eastern and western style, in a uniform grey and blue colorscheme overlayed with a noise-effect. The only other color is the bright red from a strange rocket and a giant blimp, plus some twitching red lines in the sky (that remind me of the Intense Pattern demo). I first assumed it was an anti-war demo, but then I became confused by the presence of a alien robot, something that looks like a flying taxi and a futuristic restaurant with an evil-looking micky mouse balloon. There's a small but annoying visual bug, maybe only on Radeon cards: the two triangles of the noise-effect don't always connect perfectly, leaving a black diagonal line over the whole screen. The credits are staggered over the whole demo, always accompagnied by a low- color retro science-fiction image: an astronaut firing a gun, or a brain with tentacles in a bowl. According to its ID3 tag, the genre of the MP3 soundtrack is blues, but it sounds more like pop to me: energetic, fast percussion, a couple of vocals that are repeated ("Oh Baby", "Cant't get my lover") etc. Granted, my musical knowledge is very very limited :) The speed of the music is reflected in the fast camera movements and changes of the 3D scenes. Overall: Red Line is quite a strange beast. It has consistent design, simple 3D objects, nice graphics and a soundtrack that doesn't quite fit, except for the rhythm. It is less than 2 minutes long, but it left me wondering about its meaning for much longer. Recommended if you like weird demos. --Seven --=--=-- --=--=------=--=------=--=---- Coplan's Eyes Keep it Simple, Stupid! By: Coplan --=--=------=--=------=--=---- A very strange thing happened the other day. I woke up, and had a song idea. Now you wouldn't appreciate me for a true artist of any medium if I didn't first tell you the details. It was 4:30am. I was dead tired. I was still a bit hung-over from the night before (forgot to drink my water before bed). It was dark, and there was nothing more I wanted then to fall back asleep. I went to the bathroom, grabbed a drink of water and some medication for the headache, and wandered back into my bedroom. And it hit me -- a song idea. That need for sleep was now secondary to my need to complete a song, and I think this was it. So I slapped on my headphones so as not to wake anyone. I turned on my computer and my synths and starting diddling on the MIDI controller. Before I knew it, I had a very rough sketch for a song laid out complete with some chorus and some background instruments. I even had some percussion mapped out. And wouldn't you know it, it was then....11:30am? I had been working on this damn thing for 7 hours? Talk about losing track of time. Thank goodness it was a Saturday. So I let myself fall to sleep and I'd wake in the early evening. I ate something, and then sat down at my computer. Now any wise musician knows that he can't hack together a song (including the final mix-down) in one day. It's good to listen to it over and over again. But before I do that, I like to listen to other music to get in the frame of mind. Considering the type of song I had sketched out, I decided to listen to some old 'scene music. After about a dozen or so songs, I went back on a nostalgia trip through my own music collection. Back when I was a young tracker, maybe only 15 years old with only a year or so experience, I would write songs as fast as I could think of them. Even today, I'm still very nimble when I'm jumping around in Impulse Tracker. I can map out a whole song without even hitting play once. Rough, but I know the way the tracker works THAT well. Almost all my songs were using the same speed/BPM, and I grew to a point where I was not limited by the program. I was only limited by my ideas. And back then, I had a lot of time to think of new ideas. I would release a song every week or two. I would start a new song almost every day. Last count on my hard drive, I have over 240 incomplete songs. Some are two or three patterns long. Others are nearly finished, although these are far less common. These days, I'm lucky to complete 4 or 5 songs a year or start one every other week. Time, as always, is an issue. I don't have as much time for my music as I used to. But I think the problem now is that I've sort of become so engrossed in the details and the quality of the sounds in my song that I have often failed at completing a song idea before I start concerning myself with how the piano sounds. But I'm not upset with myself for that. Some of my friends are, as they'd like to see me release more often. But I have a lot of fun messing with the details. If its only for me, so be it. But the fact is, there are less songs coming out of my computer over the last couple of years. I'm not concerned. So with this thought in mind, I decided that the other song could wait. It's roughed out in Cubase. All I really had to do was some tweaking and some mixing and post-mixing. The idea, once written down, will never be forgotten. So I loaded up my old legacy application: Impulse Tracker. I pulled out some of my old favorite samples, and started doodling with my ears. I forgot all that I had learned the past couple of years about sound quality, and just let my mind free. And wouldn't you know it? Another song just popped out of nowhere. So that's how I used to do it. And when I returned to Cubase to listen to that ditty I had written earlier, I didn't like it anymore. Yes, the instruments were beautiful, and the sound quality was about 300 notches higher than anything I could've gotten out of IT (even with good samples). But the song...it sucked! I'll probably release it some day. I've put a lot of work into it, and it is mixed well. It's not the most terrible thing I've written, and I haven't released anything in a while. But I will likely keep things simple the next time I have a song idea. I've learned from my recent observations in Impulse Tracker that the tune is sometimes more important than the sound quality. And within the world of MIDI, it's easy to fix the sound quality later. How stupid I was! I should have been thinking about the song all along. --Coplan --=--=-- --=--=------=--=------=--=---- Link List --=--=------=--=------=--=---- Portals: SceneSpot (Home of Static Line).......http://www.scenespot.org CFXweb.......................................http://cfxweb.net Czech Scene................................http://www.scene.cz Danish Scene..............................http://demo-scene.dk Demoscene.org.........................http://www.demoscene.org Demo.org...................................http://www.demo.org Diskmag.de...................................http://diskmag.de Greek Scene............................http://www.demoscene.gr Hungarian Scene........................http://www.demoscene.hu Italian Scene...........................http://run.to/la_scena <*> Kahvi.....................................http://www.kahvi.org ModPlug Central Resources..........http://www.castlex.com/mods Noerror.................................http://www.noerror.org Norwegian Scene........................http://www.demoscene.no Orange Juice.............................http://www.ojuice.net Planet Zeus..........................http://www.planetzeus.net Polish Scene...........................http://www.demoscena.pl Pouet.net.................................http://www.pouet.net Russian Scene..........................http://www.demoscene.ru Scene.org.................................http://www.scene.org Scenergy on-line (8bit)............http://www.scenergy.natm.ru Scenet....................................http://www.scenet.de Spanish Scene............................http://www.escena.org Swiss Scene..............................http://www.chscene.ch United Trackers.................http://www.united-trackers.org Archives: Acid2.....................................ftp://acid2.stack.nl Amber.......................................ftp://amber.bti.pl Aminet.....................http://wuarchive.wustl.edu/~aminet/ Cyberbox.....................................ftp://cyberbox.de Hornet (1992-1996)........................ftp://ftp.hornet.org MOD Archive..........................http://www.modarchive.com Scene.org..................................ftp://ftp.scene.org Scene.org Austra........................ftp://ftp.au.scene.org Scene.org Netherlands...................ftp://ftp.nl.scene.org Swiss Scene FTP...........................ftp://ftp.chscene.ch Demo Groups: 3g Design..............................http://3gdesign.cjb.net 3State...................................http://threestate.com 7 Gods.........................................http://7gods.sk Aardbei.....................................http://aardbei.com Acid Rain..............................http://surf.to/acidrain Addict..................................http://addict.scene.pl Agravedict........................http://www.agravedict.art.pl Alien Prophets.....................http://www.alienprophets.dk Anakata..............................http://www.anakata.art.pl ASD....................................http://asd.demoscene.gr Astral..............................http://astral.scene-hu.com Astroidea........................http://astroidea.scene-hu.com BlaBla..............................http://blabla.planet-d.net Blasphemy..............................http://www.blasphemy.dk Bomb..................................http://bomb.planet-d.net Broncs..................................http://broncs.scene.cz Byterapers.....................http://www.byterapers.scene.org Bypass.................................http://bypass.scene.org Calodox.................................http://www.calodox.org Cocoon..............................http://cocoon.planet-d.net Confine.................................http://www.confine.org Damage...................................http://come.to/damage Dc5.........................................http://www.dc5.org Delirium..............................http://delirium.scene.pl Eclipse............................http://www.eclipse-game.com Elitegroup..........................http://elitegroup.demo.org Exceed...........................http://www.inf.bme.hu/~exceed Fairlight.............................http://www.fairlight.com Fobia Design...........................http://www.fd.scene.org Freestyle............................http://www.freestylas.org Fresh! Mindworks...................http://kac.poliod.hu/~fresh Future Crew..........................http://www.futurecrew.org Fuzzion.................................http://www.fuzzion.org GODS...................................http://www.idf.net/gods Halcyon...........................http://www.halcyon.scene.org Haujobb..................................http://www.haujobb.de Hellcore............................http://www.hellcore.art.pl Infuse...................................http://www.infuse.org Inquisition....................http://inquisition.demoscene.hu Kilobite...............................http://kilobite.cjb.net Kolor................................http://www.kaoz.org/kolor Komplex.................................http://www.komplex.org Kooma.....................................http://www.kooma.com Mandula.........................http://www.inf.bme.hu/~mandula Maturefurk...........................http://www.maturefurk.com Monar................ftp://amber.bti.pl/pub/scene/distro/monar MOVSD....................................http://movsd.scene.cz Nextempire...........................http://www.nextempire.com Noice.....................................http://www.noice.org Orange.................................http://orange.scene.org Orion................................http://orion.planet-d.net Outbreak................................http://www.outbreak.nu Popsy Team............................http://popsyteam.rtel.fr Prone................................http://www.prone.ninja.dk Purple....................................http://www.purple.dk Rage........................................http://www.rage.nu Replay.......................http://www.shine.scene.org/replay Retro A.C...........................http://www.retroac.cjb.net Sista Vip..........................http://www.sistavip.exit.de Skytech team............................http://www.skytech.org Skrju.....................................http://www.skrju.org Spinning Kids......................http://www.spinningkids.org Sunflower.......................http://sunflower.opengl.org.pl Talent.............................http://talent.eurochart.org The Black Lotus.............................http://www.tbl.org The Digital Artists Wired Nation.http://digitalartists.cjb.net The Lost Souls...............................http://www.tls.no TPOLM.....................................http://www.tpolm.com Trauma.................................http://sauna.net/trauma T-Rex.....................................http://www.t-rex.org Unik........................................http://www.unik.de Universe..........................http://universe.planet-d.net Vantage..................................http://www.vantage.ch Wipe....................................http://www.wipe-fr.org Music Labels, Music Sites: Aisth.....................................http://www.aisth.com Aural Planet........................http://www.auralplanet.com Azure...................................http://azure-music.com Blacktron Music Production...........http://www.d-zign.com/bmp BrothomStates.............http://www.katastro.fi/brothomstates Chill..........................http://www.chillproductions.com Chippendales......................http://www.sunpoint.net/~cnd Chiptune...............................http://www.chiptune.com Da Jormas................................http://www.jormas.com Fabtrax......http://www.cyberverse.com/~boris/fabtrax/home.htm Fairlight Music.....................http://fairlight.scene.org Five Musicians.........................http://www.fm.scene.org Fusion Music Crew.................http://members.home.nl/cyrex Goodstuff..........................http://artloop.de/goodstuff Hellven.................................http://www.hellven.org Ignorance.............................http://www.ignorance.org Immortal Coil.............................http://www.ic.l7.net Intense...........................http://intense.ignorance.org Jecoute.................................http://jecoute.cjb.net Kosmic Free Music Foundation.............http://www.kosmic.org Lackluster.....................http://www.m3rck.net/lackluster Level-D.................................http://www.level-d.com Mah Music.............................http://come.to/mah.music Maniacs of noise...............http://home.worldonline.nl/~mon MAZ's sound homepage..................http://www.maz-sound.com Med.......................................http://www.med.fr.fm Miasmah.............................http://www.miasmah.cjb.net Milk.......................................http://milk.sgic.fi Mo'playaz..........................http://ssmedion.de/moplayaz Mono211.................................http://www.mono211.com Morbid Minds..............http://www.raveordie.com/morbidminds Moods..............................http://www.moodymusic.de.vu Mstation.....................http://mstation.org/software.html Nectarine Demoscene Radio................http://scenemusic.net Noise................................http://www.noisemusic.org One Touch Records......................http://otr.planet-d.net Park..................................http://park.planet-d.net pHluid..................................http://phluid.acid.org Radical Rhythms.....http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/merrelli/rr RBi Music.............................http://www.rbi-music.com Ruff Engine................http://members.xoom.com/ruff_engine SHR8M......................................http://1st.to/shr8m Sound Devotion................http://sugarbomb.x2o.net/soundev Soundstate.........................http://listen.to/soundstate Sunlikamelo-D.....................http://www.sunlikamelo-d.com Suspect Records........................http://www.tande.com/sr Tequila........................http://www.defacto2.net/tequila Tempo................................http://tempomusic.cjb.net Tetris....................................http://msg.sk/tetris Theralite...........................http://theralite.avalon.hr Tokyo Dawn Records........................http://tokyodawn.org Triad's C64 music archive.............http://www.triad.c64.org UltraBeat.........................http://www.innerverse.com/ub Vibrants................................http://www.vibrants.dk Zen of Tracking.........................http://surf.to/the-imm Programming: 3D engines..........http://cg.cs.tu-berlin.de/~ki/engines.html 3D programming portal.................http://www.3dgamedev.com Documents...............http://www.neutralzone.org/home/faqsys File format collection...................http://www.wotsit.org Game programming portal...............http://www.gamasutra.com LCC (free C compiler).........http://www.remcomp.com/lcc-win32 NASM (free Assembly compiler)......http://www.cryogen.com/nasm Programming portal......................http://www.gamedev.net Programming portal.....................http://www.flipcode.com Programming portal......................http://www.exaflop.org Programming portal............http://www.programmersheaven.com Programming portal.....................http://www.freecode.com PTC video engine.........................http://www.gaffer.org Magazines: Amber...............................http://amber.bti.pl/di_mag Amnesia...............http://amnesia-dist.future.easyspace.com Demojournal....................http://demojournal.planet-d.net Eurochart.............................http://www.eurochart.org Heroin...................................http://www.heroin.net Hugi........................................http://www.hugi.de Music Massage......................http://www.scene.cz/massage Jurassic Pack...........................www.jurassicpack.de.vu Pain..................................http://pain.planet-d.net Scenial...........................http://www.scenial.scene.org Shine...............................http://www.shine.scene.org Static Line................http://www.scenespot.org/staticline Sunray..............................http://sunray.planet-d.net TUHB.......................................http://www.tuhb.org WildMag..................................http://www.wildmag.de Parties: Assembly (Finland).....................http://www.assembly.org Ambience (The Netherlands)..............http://www.ambience.nl Buenzli (Switzerland)......................http://www.buenz.li Dreamhack (Sweden)....................http://www.dreamhack.org Gravity (Poland)............http://www.demoscena.cp.pl/gravity Mekka-Symposium (Germany)...................http://ms.demo.org Pilgrimage (Utah, US)..............http://pilgrimage.scene.org ReAct (Greece).............................http://www.react.gr Takeover (The Netherlands).............,http://www.takeover.nl The Party (Denmark).....................http://www.theparty.dk Others: Demo secret parts....http://www.inf.bme.hu/~mandula/secret.txt Textmode Demo Archive.................http://tmda.planet-d.net Arf!Studios..........................http://www.arfstudios.org #coders..................................http://coderz.cjb.net Csound-tekno e-mail list...................................... ............http://plot.bek.no/mailman/listinfo/csoundtekno Demonews Express.........http://www.teeselink.demon.nl/express Demo fanclub........................http://jerware.org/fanclub Digital Undergrounds.....................http://dug.iscool.net Everything tracking..http://zolaweb.com/Zola/trax/tracking.htm Freax.....................................http://www.freax.hu/ GfxZone............................http://gfxzone.planet-d.net Mod-Radio.....................http://www.back2roots.org/Radio/ PC-demos explained.....http://www.oldskool.org/demos/explained Pixel...................................http://pixel.scene.org #trax e-mail list............................................. .............http://www.scenespot.org/mailman/listinfo/trax Underground Mine.............http://www.spinningkids.org/umine IRC Channels: Graphics.........................................ircnet #pixel Graphics (French)..............................ircnet #pixelfr Music......................................irc.scene.org #trax Music.............................................ircnet #trax Programming.....................................ircnet #coders Programming....................................efnet #flipcode Programming (French)............................ircnet #codefr Programming (German)........................ircnet #coders.ger Programming (Hungarian)......................ircnet #coders.hu Scene.........................................ircnet #thescene Scene (French)..................................ircnet #demofr Scene (Hungarian)............................ircnet #demoscene Zx-spectrum scene..................................ircnet #z80 --=--=-- ----=--=------=--=------=--=------=--=------=--=------=--=------=--=------ -=- Staff -=- Editors: Ciaran / Ciaran Hamilton / staticline@theblob.org Ben / Ben Collver / collver1@comcast.net Staff Writers: Coplan / D. Travis North / coplan@scenespot.org Dilvie / Eric Hamilton / dilvie@dilvie.com Novus / Vince Young / vince_young@hotmail.com Psitron / Tim Soderstrom / tigerhawk@stic.net Setec / Jesper Pederson / jesped@post.tele.dk Seven / Stefaan VanNieuwenhuyze/ seven7@pandora.be Tryhuk / Tryhuk Vojtech / vojtech.tryhuk@worldonline.cz Vill / Brian Frank / darkvill@yahoo.com The Watcher / Paul-Jan Pauptit / sprout@zonnet.nl The current issue of Static Line can always be found on the Web at: http://staticline.scenespot.org/issues/current_issue Static Line Subscription Management: http://www.scenespot.org/mailman/listinfo/static_line If you would like to contribute an article to Static Line, be aware that we will format your article to 76 columns with two columns at the beginning of each line. Please avoid foul language and high ASCII characters. Contributions (Plain Text) should be e-mailed to (static_line-owner@scenespot.org) by the last Friday of each month. New issues are released on a monthly basis. See you next month! -eof---=------=--=------=--=--