An Interview with John Rasmussen

by Neil Carr

John Rasmussen describes Bounce (Arkanoided) has his best remix to date. John enjoys remixing tunes that have rarely been remixed before. He's open to suggestions. So if there's a sid that hasn't been remixed that you would like to hear, why not drop him a line.

Real name: John Rasmussen
Handle: Nohj (sometimes)
Born: 1976
Nationality: USA

Hubbard, Whittaker, Warhol.

The cover of DEVO's Some Things Never Change from the game.
Neuromancer by Dave Warhol (both the intro and the game music)
Skate or Die music by David Warhol.

Delta by Rob Hubbard which is a Philip Glass cover.
Dragons Lair 2 soundtrack from the game by Rob Hubbard
Sanxion by Rob Hubbard

Skate or Die theme by Rob Hubbard
Max Headroom by David Whittaker
Menace by David Whittaker

Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future by Graham Marsh and Andy Wilson
Tons of demo tunes, some with unknown authors.

(from remix.kwed.org)
Zak McKracken redone by Dr Doom and Komatrohn.
TSR's Ghost'n Goblins mix.
DjLizard's International Karate.
Puffy64's Maniac Mansion.

Bounce(Arkanoided) because I think it came together better than the others I have made.

Hardware
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Korg Electribe EA-1
Yamaha DX100
Casio MT-240 (only as a controller)
A real c64 sometimes (connected to my pc via a modem to transfer files)
Things I have modified: TI Speak and Math, Voice changer, Square wave oscillators, other misc kids toys to make horrible sounds.
My Sony MZ-R70 minidisc recorder
Tascam 6 channel mixer

Software
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Steinberg Wavelab
Steinberg Nuendo
Steinberg Cubase sometimes
Sonic Foundry Sound Forge
Sonic Foundry Acid 1.0
Propellerheads Reason (the sampler in it is great for some things)
Propellerheads Recycle
Fruity Loops Pro
Native Instruments Reaktor
Cakewalk (probably will upgrade to sonar)
Sid2Midi of course
lots of plugins vst and directx

I'd really like to get a Nord Micro Modular, a Sidstation, a Droid-3 http://www.droid.dk/info/ , and the small analog boxes put out by technosaurus. Some type of hardware sampler. I really need to pick up a nice keyboard amp for when I do live shows.

Richard James, aka Aphex Twin, why did he have to stop John Balance and Peter Christopherson from Coil People who tour through Denver playing small noise shows. The guys from "Press Play on Tape" and others who perform SID music live, eventually I want to get to the level of that.

I try and make sure there is a good baseline going for it. At least one of the channels should be drums because I like a lot of rhythmic songs. I try and see if the individual voices sound good on their own.

Throbbing Gristle introduced me to such bands as Coil, and Psychic TV.
I like Einstürzende Neubauten. Groups like Negativland that push the envelope with sampling are a lot of fun. I like some of the latest Orbital coming out and some Download. Aphex Twin is a big influence. Kraftwork made a big impression on me. Kid606 and CEX are neat. I like some Squarepusher. Then there is Joy Division and New Order.

I'm a fan of noise music so I also like harsh things like Cock E.S.P. , MSBR, the Bran Pos, NON, Government Alpha, Merzbow, MAZK, SPK, and local noise people I play with in and around Denver.

Sometimes I'll be surprised when I convert a SID to MIDI. For instance I'll run sid2midi, open it up in Cakewalk and take a look at the rhythms. I was going to do a remix for a song from the game Robocop but noticed one of the voices was playing "Stand by me" so I stopped remixing it.

More often than not I won't be sure what to do with a tune once I have it converted to MIDI. So it will just sit on my hard drive for a few weeks or a month until I get an idea of what to do with it.

I remember beating Pitfall 2 and being so proud as a kid that I took a picture of the end screen where the guy flips back and forth. I had a neat program by EA that let you make small animations and make little movies. I think it was called "Movie Maker" but I'm not sure. I remember each month pouring through Compute Gazette and trying out the disk that came with it each month. I learned basic on the c128 so I remember learning some of the super basics about graphics and sprites. I also tried my hand at some 6502 assembly and made some tiny demos for myself to look at.

I would probably want to claim the music from the game Menace as mine because it was such a good song and it helped with the mood of the game. In Compute Gazette once someone entered in all of the 1812 Overture, that had to have taken a very long time, I would have liked to be responsible for that.

A few years ago I had tried out a copy of Propellerheads Rebirth and it had a remix of Sanxion as a demo song for it. That got me interested. I've been playing around with C64 emulators since C64S was around. By chance I found the website for the 6581 SID radio show hosted by Hard Hat Mack. From that I found out about HVSID and got a copy of sidamp for winamp. Later I found out about Sid2Midi which is a great program.

I had tried tracking a little bit on the PC with Fast Tracker 2 and some others but I never really liked it much. When Software synths came out and I got my Korg things changed a lot and now I use MIDI for a lot of things.

I think people like Aphex Twin have influenced the popularity of computer game music, he did a song based around the pacman song. A lot of people grew up playing with C64s or had a friend that did so they were exposed to some of what the C64 sounded like. I think that people got really burned out on the TB-303 sound and started looking for alternatives.

I am amazed at how large it really is. There are a ton of websites out there on the old games, screenshots, downloads, manuals. My favorite site currently is "The Commodore Wire," they have the latest news. Emulators are great and let people get back into messing with the C64. I've even run some music trackers on c64 emulators.

There are so many demo tunes that have lots of possibilities.

Every so often I'll start playsid and take a look around the HVSID collection. I want to do some demo tunes. I'd like to do tunes that haven't been remixed a million times. If anyone has a request drop me an email from my mp3.com site.

I like the low-fi aspect of how the SID sounds. To me its a bit gritty. I like sampling drum hits because they sound so different from what I usually work with.

Greetz to EOTD, ZI, Stevyn from Iron Feather Journal, people from Page 27, and the local noise/experimental electronic scene in Denver.

Throughout this interview John hints towards Live music. Now that's something that so far has only been achieved by few. The biggest has to be Press Play On Tape, which John states that this is the level he would like to achieve.

- Neil