In February 2014 I took part to the Forever party compo with a tune called “ The Challenge”, a sort of hymn which was so ambitious that it almost ended at the last place! There was another compo at the Forever 2014, dedicated to the POKEY: Ramos asked me to study the ATARI sound chip and told me about the ATARI rmt music editor, which I used for composing “ Be Strong”, my first ever POKEY tune, which finished at the last place in the compo… I also composed another single SID tune for the “note”, but it was scrapped, so the tune was never released. It took almost three months, and the first 3SID collection (containing “ A Walk in the Countryside”, “ New Adventure”, “ SID Power Ballad”, “ Waterfall” and “ Arcade Memories”) was released. It’s time for some trivia: the tune sent to Samar Productions was actually called “ Filtered Feelings (v2)”, and featured no filters at all! In fact, the first version I made had filters, but when I accidentally switched the emulation from the 6581 chip to the 8580 one, the filtered part sounded very bad to me, so I decided to remove the filters… At the end of 2013 Ramos asked me if I wanted to join Samar Productions: he already had the ambitious project of a 3SID collection in mind, and asked me if I could compose some 3SID tunes. He liked the tune, and asked me if I could make another one I accepted the challenge and made “ Filtered Feelings”. Then, on the CSDb forum, I noticed a request for SID musicians willing to take part to the 20th birthday of Samar Productions (2013) I felt ready to compose something different from my usual game tunes, so I made “ Acoustic Freedom” and sent it to Ramos.

In 2012 I started making another game, called “ Sheer Earth Attack”, another compo winner, for which I made a complete soundtrack and a loading picture. The game won the first prize, which consisted in some enhancements such as a High Score Table, a new title screen, and so on: this gave me the chance to compose a proper soundtrack for the game (and to draw a loading picture as well! It was my first one ever!). My second SID tune was the “ SEA Soft Loader”, which should have been the loading music for my next (SEUCK) games in fact, I was already designing a game, “ Il Mago”, which I later submitted to the Standard SEUCK Compo 2010. That game also featured my first ever SID music (apart from that old adventure game’s soundtrack which fortunately was never released!), made with GoatTracker maybe, if it weren’t for that game, I would never have started composing for the Commodore 64! It was made for the “ Sideways SEUCK Compo” held in 2010 by The New Dimension. – Apart from some adventure games written in BASIC, with my brother, which we never released, and some early SEUCK games which were recovered and put online by the SEUCK vault (and also on my website), I may say that my very first release in the C64 scene was a SEUCK game called “ The Rocket Man”.

Starting from zero, could you present us the timeline of your C64 gaming / music experience? – Although new to the C64 scene, you certainly managed to put your mark on with numerous fine releases.

From then on, I composed my songs on the guitar mainly. At that time, my parents gave me and my brother a music keyboard on which we composed some very simple songs later, when we were 17, we bought a guitar.

– No, I haven’t I’m a self taught composer, and I’m still learning! I only studied music at the intermediate school (from age 11 to 13), where I learnt to play the recorder. – Do you have any academic background as a composer? I’m a business consultant, I’m married and I’ve got one daughter. – Hello, I’m Gaetano Chiummo, I was born in Trani (Italy) where I live, and I’m 40. First of all, allow me to say that it’s a honor to have you here! Let’s start with all the usual stuff…Name, country of origin, age, studies, present status, all these tiny bits and pieces you’d like to share with us…

Goattracker instrument tables