And
My name is Bas Wiegers. I'm conductor for the C64 orchestra.
What do you do with your hands as a conductor?
Obviously what you do with your hands as a conductor is meant to convey the quality of sound that you want.
So if you want something very loud, you make like a big gesture, sort of powerful gesture.
If you want something very soft, you can make something, you can make like a sweet sounding with your hands.
So it's a bit like painting. You can make very light strokes, and then the ensemble or the orchestra that you work with,
and if they know you, they know what you mean by that kind of stroke, so they give you a different sound.
Or if you want something very sharp, then it's like...
My name is Julio Untel, and I'm a video game composer.
The first time we actually rehearsed in Amsterdam, conductor was saying one, two, three, four.
And I heard music I wrote when I was like 15 years old.
Twenty years later, being played by an orchestra, and I was having goosebumps, believe me.
Oh yeah, well, we're actually one of the most prestigious venues in Amsterdam.
It's called Paradiso.
When I first heard the music for the Old Commodars, because we started from that, I first heard the real song.
I really liked it. I mean, it's a fantastic way of... In a way, it's very simple, because it's like catchy tunes, good rhythm.
You put those two together and you get something really nice.
But the way they did it was so sort of inventory, was so sort of nice and new, and especially with those freaky sounds that go bleep, bleep, bleep the whole time.
It's really fantastic.
The problem with the Commodore 64 sound was, for a lot of people back then, we're talking about 1987, 1986, 1987.
People just hated this bleepy sound.
When we had to convert that to an orchestra, you actually have like 12 channels, whether or not channels, they're instruments,
but they can take each part individually, so you can actually just expand on it.
What I like about the working with the C64 orchestra is the openness of the musicians, basically.
Of course, they're all classically trained, but they play any kind of music, no matter what, and they play it with as much joy as if they were playing a Mahler Symphony.
And they're young and they're willing to also try things, because maybe another sound works better in this arrangement.
You get even some ideas of how to enhance the sound or whatever, so they're really not like a boring ensemble that sits there and waits for you to say things.
They're there, and they're cooperative, and even funny, and you have a real nice atmosphere.
I was writing this music on a Commodore 64 behind my computer in hexadecimal numbers.
Now you hear this stuff as an adult being played by an orchestra. It's just... it's the best that can happen to you as a composer, you know?
Thank you.
