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_\\__T_A_T_I_C___L_I_N_E_________________________________________ July, 2001
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\\//__ Monthly Scene E-Zine ________________________________ 221 Subscribers
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  Table Of Contents
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     Opening:
           Message From the Editor
           Letters From Our Readers
     Features:
        Painting Sound
        Party Report -- Takeover 2001
     Columns:
        Music:
           In Tune -- Some Inspirational Music
           The Listener -- Music by Alkama
        Demo:
           Screen Lit Vertigo -- "Glon 243" and "Dewitt Jaycees"
        General:
           Editorial -- Experimentation and Inspiration
           Link List -- Get Somewhere in the Scene
        Closing:
           Credits

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  Message From the Editor
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     Last month was very long, and unenjoyable.  Granted, my life hasn't
  gotten that much easier, but it has at least settled enough for me to
  pick up Static Line again.  I once again thank you all for your patience
  and understanding.

     Since the last time we published, we have put ourselves on a new
  server.  Unfortunately, I don't know all the details behind it, but it
  is now working much more smoothly, and Ranger Rick is happy about that.
  For those of you who don't know Ranger Rick, he's essentially the
  network administrator for the SceneSpot server.  He's the reason this
  mailing list exists, and he's the reason why we have SceneSpot, and the
  wonderful account management system.  If you get a chance, send him a
  message telling him how much he's appreciated:  ranger@scenespot.org

     Alright, now that I'm done kissing up, let me fill you in on this
  issue.  For starters, Seven found yet another party to go to, Takeover
  2001, and he was kind enough to provide us with yet another in-depth
  coverage in his latest Party Report.

     Eric Hamilton (aka Dilvish) submitted a very interesting article on
  manipulating your sound files with Photoshop.  It's not the typical
  approach to sound editing, but it is one that you will find very
  interesting.

     In our regular columns, we have a lot of stuff for you to read this
  month.  Seven has two demos to review this month:  "Glon 243" and
  "Dewitt Jaycees".  I also dug through my hard drive to find some tunes
  that I thought were pretty inspirational.  Hopefully, all this excess
  reading should make up for the missing release of Static Line.

     On a side note, please realize that you can begin to use the
  SceneSpot website.  There are some rare bugs that we have found, but
  they shouldn't affect your use of the site too much.  If you see any
  problems, please notify us using our bugzilla tool, or just e-mail one
  of us.  The more people who use it, the quicker we can pinpoint such
  bugs, and make SceneSpot a better place for everyone.  It's also a good
  place for you to get your tunes recognized, and your latest news.  We
  currently have over 150 members, and we're growing every day.  Jump in
  early, and help be a part of the future of the scene.


                --Coplan


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  Painting Sound
  By: Eric Hamilton
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     Some people go to great lengths in the search for new sounds.  As a
  teenager I was inspired by tales of Jimi Hendrix constantly looking for
  new ways to mangle his guitar sounds, and the accounts of electronic
  bands like New Order piping everything you can concieve through their
  Moog's filters.  One day I was reading an issue of Mix Magazine when I
  saw an ad for a new type of synthesis program.  It was a program that
  actually allows you to paint sound.  I got to thinking, and I figured
  out that Photoshop has a raw file import feature, and Soundforge has a
  raw file output feature.  I put two and two together and started to
  experiment.  Here's what I figured out about painting sound.

     The hardest part is in the conversion.  There's no way to achieve
  predictable results unless you can export an audio file, import it into
  photoshop, export it again, and import it into soundforge without
  changing the sound.  There are actually several ways to accomplish this
  feat, but I will make it as easy as possible.

     Start by loading a sound into soundforge.  Select File->Save as in the
  drop-down menu.  You'll be presented with the save as dialog box.
  Change "Save as type" to "Raw File (*.raw, *.*)".  Give your file an
  apropriate name and save it in a directory where you'll be able to find
  it again easily.  I created a sub-directory in my sample creations
  directory called, "photoshop", but as long as you can find it, anything
  will do.  Next, you'll be presented with a dialog asking how to save the
  file.  Select 8 bit, unsigned, mono, and click "Okay".

     The next step is to load the file into photoshop.  Choose File->Open
  from Photoshop's drop-down menu, and you'll be presented with the Open
  dialog box.  Browse to the directory where you saved the raw audio file,
  and make sure the "Files of type" select box is set to "All Formats" or
  "Raw (*.RAW)".  Select the file, and click "Open".

     Photoshop will pull up the "Raw Options" dialog to collect some
  information about your file's dimensions, channels, and header info.
  Normally, it will make a guess at the dimensions automatically.  The
  dimensions that photoshop guesses at have always worked well for me, but
  once in a while the math doesn't pan out.  If this is the case,
  photoshop will present you with blanks.  Rather than trying to work out
  the math (which will force you to cut out part of the sound), you'll
  want to insert silence in soundforge to create a good starting point for
  photoshop.  You may have to experiment a bit to get this right, but
  here's a tip:  It's easier for me to work backwards.  When photoshop
  gets stumped, create a new file (greyscale), and take a guess at how big
  it will need to be to handle your sound.  500x500 in greyscale is
  aproximately 5 1/2 seconds of audio.  Save the file, import it into
  soundforge, zoom out so you can see the entire file, press the End key,
  and check the duration.  If it's not long enough, try creating a larger
  file.  If it's too long, that's fine.  It'll work.  Insert silence into
  your sound file until both files are the same size, re-save the raw
  audio file, and import into photoshop.  Make sure it's set to 8 bits and
  no header.  Click "Okay", and you should see an interesting greyscale
  image with some cool patterns.  The top of the image will likely contain
  some blacks and whites, with a gradual fade as the image gets more and
  more grey towards the bottom.  Saving the file from photoshop isn't such
  a hastle.  It already knows what it needs to encode the raw file.  I use
  the save-as dialog and choose a new name for the modified file so that
  you don't have to do the conversion all over again if you don't like the
  results.  Once it's saved, load the file back into sound forge and
  compare with the original.  Use the same settings for your soundforge
  file open dialog (it'll bring up the "Raw Options" again), and you
  should be set.

     If both files sound the same, you're on the right track.  Now let's
  take a look at what you can do to a sound in photoshop now that you know
  how to load and save.  The sound maps to the image in the following ways
  (from what I've been able to discern):  Each greyscale pixel represents
  one sample.  If the sample is dark, it will be low in amplitude.  If it
  is bright, the amplitude will be high.  Thus, the contrast of the image
  represents the over-all amplitude of the sound.  Another interesting
  note is that Photoshop does not interpret negative amplitude as a
  negative color value.  Instead, everything is positive, making grey the
  zero point in terms of audio.  128, 128, 128, to be exact in the RGB
  Value.

     The sound is mapped to the image in order from beginning to the end
  left-to-right and top-to-bottom.  The beginning of the sound generally
  has the attack characteristics, and thus the most contrast in photoshop
  (for percusive or plucked sounds).  Here you may find you can do things
  with your sound's attack and decay properties that you never thought
  possible.  For example, you can create a new channel and apply gradients
  running from top to bottom that will change the dynamics over time.  You
  can twist and bend sounds in photoshop in ways unlike any other sound
  editor on the planet.  To apply a gradient that will alter the sound's
  attack, open the channels palette, create a new channel, and name it
  "Selection mask".  Then Set your foreground color to white, and your
  background color to black, apply a gradient from top to bottom, and
  re-select the original channel.  Click Select->Load Selection, and
  choose "Selection Mask" from the drop-down menu.  Click "Okay".  Make
  sure your background color is set to 128, 128, 128, and hit delete.  And
  you thought ADSR envelopes were powerful.

     The dimensions of the image have a large impact on the way that the
  audio will sound.  Genarally a combination of height and width
  determines the length of the sound (naturally, since more sample data
  means a longer duration).  Something you might not guess right away
  though is that altering the width of the image *can* modify the
  fundamental frequency.  The precise mapping for this is actually
  variable, though, depending upon the pattern of light and dark sounds in
  the image.  I suggest you experiment, and use soundforge or another
  audio tool to tune the resulting sounds.  Simply applying a filter can
  change the fundamental percieved frequency of your sound drastically.
  My main point here is that just as in real life, size matters when
  you're painting sounds.  Altering your images dimensions will also alter
  the formants, the same way that playing a picolo produces different
  frequencies than playing a bassoon.

     There is a lot to be said for experimentation, but I must warn the
  beginner, photoshop is a powerful program that is not designed
  specifically to make audio files sound good.  It does have a lot of
  features that have some very cool and interesting effects on your sound
  files, but be warned, it is very easy to create noise in photoshop that
  will not sound pleasant at all.

     For example, in many photographs and images, there is a high degree
  of contrast, and many pixels placed close to each other that are not
  similar in value.  I'll call this texture from now on.  In audio, there
  is generally much less texture.  Texture's number one enemy in photoshop
  (and your number one friend in fighting it) is the gaussian blur located
  in the Filter->blur menu.  Another way to fight texture is to reduce the
  contrast of the image, but this method is less effective in that it
  reduces texture by reducing the amplitude of your sound, which is not
  necesarily the result you're after.  The gaussian blur does have some
  side-effects you may not be prepared for, though.  In addition to
  smoothing out the rough edges and removing distortion, it will also
  alter the formant frequencies of your sound.  This can be good or bad,
  and can be fixed or enhanced in soundforge to some extent with the
  graphic EQ feature - if you're good at identifying which frequency to
  boost or cut (something I'd start practicing right now if you're not).

     For the most part, sounds you import will have blacks and whites up
  top, with a smooth fade to grey as it goes down.  Images you might load
  will probably look quite different.  This basic sound shape is a result
  of how sound works in nature:  attack, sustain, and decay.  That's why
  most synthesizers come with envelopes that let you edit Attack, Decay,
  Sustain, and Release values (ADSR Envelopes).  It's a good rule of thumb
  that unless you're planning to create a looping wave and apply ADSR
  envelopes in you sampler or soundforge, you should try to mimic the
  behavior in photoshop.

     Without altering the general shape of your sound, there are many
  things you can do that will wildly change or enhance the frequency
  spectrum.  One of the most dramatic examples is the color curve feature
  in photoshop (Image->Adjust->Curves).  Also try Image->Adjust->Auto
  Levels to try to maintain a good center and maximize your signal.  Each
  time you run the auto-levels command, you may need to re-adjust the
  center manually using the brightness/contrast dialog.  To do this, I
  like to zoom in on the lower right corner of the image, use the dropper
  tool to select the last pixel, and then double click the forground color
  on the toolbar to view the color settings.  If the RGB values are
  anything but 128, go into the brightness/contrast dialog and add or
  subtract to compensate.  You may also want to adjust the contrast to
  slightly reduce the amplitude and avoid clipping effects.

     Some effects that have produced cool sounds are the
  Filter->Distort->Twirl effect, Filter->Render->Clouds or
  Filter->Render->Difference Clouds.  You can achieve a strange blocky
  sound by running any plugin that has the effect of reducing the number
  of distinct colors in the image (such as Cutout, Stained Glass, or
  Crystallize).

     Another thing you might want to try is the photoshop twist on sound
  morphing.  To begin, choose two sounds that are roughly the same
  frequency.  Load them both into Soundforge and add silence into the
  shorter sound until the two sounds share identical length.  From there,
  import them into Photoshop with identical parameters.  There are
  multiple ways you can morph the sounds.  My favorite is to copy the
  shorter sound into a new layer on the larger sound..  position the
  smaller image so that it comes in where you want it to.  Adjust the new
  layer's opacity to let some of the other sound mix into it.  Now set up
  a selection on the smaller sound, and set the selection feather value
  (in the Selection menu) to something like 30 or 50 pixels, reverse the
  selection, and hit delete.  This should create a fade effect around the
  edges of the smaller file which will work great to morph smoothly
  between the sounds.

     On an ending note, 8 bits is not the limit of your sound painting
  abilities in photoshop.  Experiment, have fun.  And the next time
  somebody tries to tell you that electronic music isn't art, you've got a
  good way to prove them wrong.


                -- Eric Hamilton (aka: Dilvish)
                   http://www.mp3.com/erichamilton


--=--=--
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  Party Report
     Takeover 2001
  By: Seven
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  -=- Friday, 22 july -=-
  21:42
     I'm sitting here in one of the four scene-rooms at Takeover,
  listening to Nectarine Sceneradio! There's a fast Internet connection,
  and the rest of the network works like a charm. (Hmm, just realized it's
  better to take advantage of the Dutch 128 kbps server rather than the
  Norvegian one, now that I'm in the Netherlands :))

     The rest of Green is having exams (Hi DJefke), or watching over poor
  students doing exams, or just having no time :/ It's just Eggbird and I
  now, and since Eggbird already lives in the Netherlands, I had to drive
  on my own from Belgium to Eindhoven. This means I'll need to sleep a bit
  more than usual, because sleeping and driving back home at the same time
  might be not a good idea.

     It wasn't difficult finding the University of Eindhoven. In fact, it
  was harder to find the building on the campus in which the final
  Takeover took place. Inside, I searched for familiar faces, and ran into
  Avalanche after a few minutes. I hadn't reserved a place in one of the 4
  demoscene-rooms, but each one had a list on the door with the names of
  the groups who where supposed to sit there, and the list on Avalance's
  room ended with "klein grut", meaning small fry. So I guessed it was OK
  to install my stuff there. Going to my car I saw Skyrunner coming in,
  and he settled down in the same room. And just as I start typing this
  report, Infinite Reboot/Fuel have arrived here as well. Eggbird
  apparently hasn't arrived yet.

     At the entrance, we were given the usual wristband, voting key, a
  mousemat and (this is new) a 46-page paper mag! All the compo rules are
  in there, the network info, the surprise compo rules, the schedule and
  the deadlines, plus articles from each of the organizers. It's both
  useful and funny to read. After installing our hardware, we go to the
  info desk for an IP address. On the way back we peek in the compo hall,
  where some orgos are playing Final Fantasy on the bigscreen (tsk, tsk,
  bad orgos).

     Let me give you a description of the partyplace: the main hall is a
  large, square room, with a balcony on three walls. you can reach the
  balcony via four different stairways, and via the balcony you can access
  the four smaller scene-only halls and the rest of the second floor. With
  all the stairs and balconies, it look a bit like a Quake level :) The
  compo hall (official name: the Blue Room) is next to the main hall, and
  it's perfectly suited for demo compos: a 6X4 meter bigscreen,
  theater-like arrangement of the chairs, special accoustic panels on the
  walls and ceilings...

  23:49:
     Avalance and I have been talking with XXX/Haujobb, Xo40 and other
  german sceners, about Haujobb, Aardbei and Farbrausch, speculating which
  groups would enter the demoscompos. We watch a demo they made for MS2k1,
  and Pandur/Black Maiden is kind enough to explain me how that
  satelite-like effect in Wonder/Sunflower is done. Then it's time to
  visit the blue room, where the classics demo show is about to start.


  -=- Saturday, 22 July -=-
  1:16:
     The classics demo show has ended, and it was very nice. Instead of
  showing the "typical" classics like Second Reality or Crystal Dreams,
  they choose demos that deserve to be known better, such as Catchup/Grif,
  Teddybears Revenge/(?), Three Little Goats/Moppi productions etc.
  Compared to today's demos, these classics lasted much longer, some over
  10 minutes, and the effects changed more quickly. If only someone would
  make a modern demo with those characteristics ... :/

     A siren sounded a moment ago, and at first we thought the hackme box
  had been broken really quickly. But it turned out to be just a test. The
  hackme is a Linux machine in the main hall with a flashlight and a siren
  attached to it. The object of the hackme compo is to log in as guest,
  and gain enough privileges to run a program that starts the siren and
  flashlight, so everyone will know when the compo has a winner. I wonder
  what would happen if a fire breaks out. We'll probably all shrug at the
  fire alarm, thinking it's the hackme siren.

  1:58:
     Avoozl is making a flash demo, but he doesn't have a computer with
  him so he has to use a loaned laptop, and he needs to check if his
  production works on my PC. It works nicely, and I'm surprized that you
  can do such advanced 3D in flash, I thought it was limited to flatshaded
  stuff.

  4:33:
     Just returned from watching the movie Traffic. The room is almost
  completely empty, except for a few people sleeping under the tables. I
  read the

  (secret avalanche message inbetween...don't tell :)

     Grr. Don't you just hate it if you go away for a second and random
  people start to add comments to your report, and then even dare to
  criticize the mag you're writing it for?  Back in your sandbox,
  Avalanche, and be quiet!

     I was reading the paper mag, more specifically the surprise coding
  compo rules. You have to make a simple program that print a string, but
  it behaves different when you start it in a windows-dosbox than when you
  start it in pure DOS-mode. Hmm, I think I'll try to make something.

  7:17:
     The Takeover website has this very useful feature: in the top left
  corner, it says which event is coming up next, or is currently happening.
  The only disadvantage is that you have to press refresh often to stay
  up-to-date, and that the website and real life aren't always synced
  correctly: you hurry to the blue room and the event has not yet started.
  When I see "Playing now: movie Dungeons & Dragons", I decide to go watch
  it. The two orgos in the blue room aren't happy to see me, cause I'm the
  only spectator, and they were going to watch Hackers :) I said that's
  alright for me, but 5 minutes later more people come in and so it's D&D
  after all. The special effects are OK, but the story and characters are
  as thin as a sheet of airmail paper.

     After D&D, the orgos at the compo machine decide to show some demos:
  Vip2/Popsy team and Nowhere/3state, with the music turned *loud* ...
  thanks, guys! The next move is Titan AE, which I've seen already, so I
  decide to take a nap. I illegally unroll my sleeping bag under a table
  between the chairs, because due to fire regulations you can only sleep
  in the sleeping hall, which is several minutes walking away from the
  party place. The catch is that that hall is only available between 0 and
  8 AM, which would leave me with only half an hour sleep :/

  9:24:
     Awake again (more or less), just in time to eat some breakfast and
  then go see the next demo show: the Takeover collection.

  11:14:
     Demos and intros that were released ot a previous Takeover were
  shown: Stasis/Analogue, 303/Acme, Clone Meets Clone/Fudge, Flow/Digital
  Nerds, Vip2/Popsy Team ... Nice, nice, especially to hear the ones with
  GUS-only sound.

     One of the sponsors, CMG, has brought a cool toy with them: a 2-meter
  long scale model of a zeppelin, that can actually fly remote-controlled.
  They are flying it all over the main hall, and the build-in camera in
  the gondola is sending a live video stream to the network. Now we can
  see a bird-eye view of the main hall without having to get up and walk
  10 meters :)

  12:00:
     The party has been going for 19 hours, but only now the opening
  cermony is scheduled. It's delayed first, and starts quite chaotically:
  Da P walks by asking the audience if they have seen a technician, then
  returns asking for the english translation of "landbouwagregaat" -
  agricultural agregate - and a tad later says "[Remind] me to buttfuck
  Jal after the ceremony". Nobody knows what poor Jal has done wrong.
  After announcing the availability of party T-shirts and requesting that
  mobile phones are switched off, Da P  starts a short animation, and then
  gives his 10 rules to make a great party (such as not announcing you
  party via conventional media, but via friends on IRC etc).

  14:57:
     The animation compo had a lot of joke/low-quality entries (such as
  the two by Avalance, under the rECTUM cAUDA label of course :) ), but
  also a few high-quality ones. Superstition made a very professional
  entry, First Day, featuring devils and robots.  And there was a funny
  cartoon-style animation (The Alien Menace/Clan RotA) about a stupid
  alien whose UFO gets a bluescreen and crashes on earth. Unfortunately
  the story wasn't finished.

     The house music compo is half an hour delayed. I don't think I'll go
  listen, I'm too busy working on my surprise coding entry.

  19:04:
     Oops! I missed the 4K compo (Seven beats himself on the head). That's
  what happens if you don't pay attention to the schedule :( I did go
  watch the handdrawn & raytraced image compos, though. Again there was a
  lot of difference in quality, only a few pictures really stood out so
  it's quite predictable who will be the winners (Magicboy for raytrace
  and a pic called Stunning Scener for handdrawn).

     I also skipped the tracked music compo, deliberately, cause the
  deadline of the surprise compos is 12 o'clock and I still need to write
  a compressor to get rid of the fat PE-header that is included in every
  windows exe.

     And Eggbird has finally arrived, but he's sitting in an different
  scene-room.

  21:37:
     After hitting a problem when trying to execute an exe file from a com
  file, I dived in my saved comp.sys.ibm.pc.demos message directory, only
  to find a post from Ryg/Farbrausch claiming that doing that was easy.
  Since Farbrausch was at Takeover too, I searched the party place for
  people wearing MS2K1 organizer shirts, and yes, Ryg was there too and
  could help me out. Thanks Ryg! Since I thought the hardest part of the
  entry was done now, I went to watch the live concert of Vic's band.

  22:57:
     The performance was good, but the audience was rather passive. Of
  course, it's easier to make a bunch of chickens dans than to get a bunch
  of computer freaks do the same. They played the soundtracks of Melrose
  Space and Nowhere (both from 3state) and new songs, and the audience,
  though passive, gave them a hearty applause. Too bad I had to leave
  before the encores, because of the surprise deadline :/


  -=- Sunday, 23 July -=-

  0:03:
     There are moments when I wonder why I ever learned assembler. I
  thought I was finished, but it turns out that the way I transfer the
  arguments from my com-file to the exe-file works only in windows and not
  in DOS, so I have to figure out a new way to do that. Luckily the paper
  mag states: "Competitors are allowed to submit entries after the
  deadlines, but the organizers cannot guarantee that these entries will
  be included in the competitions". I went to ask the orgos, and they said
  they didn't have many entries for the surprise compos yet, so they would
  accept anything until a reasonable time before the compo. Phew!
  Relieved, I decided to relax and go watch the browser demo compo.

  0:47:
     There are several sceners that have formed web-design companies, so
  there are some very good flash-demos between the usual joke entries. My
  favourite is Phat Frenzy by Active Interactive, who also designed the
  Takeover website, and the Omega Interactive demo is also impressive.
  There's also an extra animation played that somehow was left out of the
  animation compo: No More by June, focussing on the death of the Bizarre
  and Takeover demoparties. The rest of the compos will follow during the
  day, giving people time to sleep without missing too much.

  1:31:
     Surprise! Corona/Green has decided to visit Takeover too, together
  with a friend who was curious about the current state of the demoscene.
  They arrived around 5 PM yesterday, so they can still watch the majority
  of the compos. There is now a DJ performance going on in a smaller room,
  but the music plays so loud I would have a headache within 10 seconds.
  Besides, I'm still working at my entry that sometimes decides not to
  work for no appearent reason. I've the feeling I've made every single
  error I could make, but I'm probably too optimistic <sigh>

  2:55:
     It's request night, meaning you can request things to be shown on the
  bigscreen. I think it was Avalance who said that if you just yell a
  demo's name long and loud enough, the orgos will play it :) Skyrunner
  has finished his tune for the surprise music compo (a chiptune remix of
  "An der schonen blauen Donau"), and is sleeping under the table after
  having asked to wake him in time for the next compo, or when I go
  sleeping.

  5:00:
     Finally, finally I've finished it! Only 479 bytes, not bad
  considering that the windows header alone is typically 512 bytes
  <*insane laughter* Sorry, I'm tired>. Now all I need to do is to submit
  it.

  6:47:
     Can you believe it ?!? We're at a major demoparty, and there's no-one
  that I know who is a) awake and b) has any diskettes with him! The
  organizers suggest that I submit it by mail, but I'm not in a state to
  figure out how to change the mailserver in Outlook (hey, don't laugh).
  Luckily the surprise compos have been delayed too, as several other
  events, due to the performance of Vic that had started later than
  expected.

  7:00:
     Let's forget about nature-friendliness and being economical, I've
  just burned my entry to a CD. That's 649,9995 MBs wasted. I mean, my
  first harddisk was only 3% of that, talk about progress :) I wake up
  Skyrunner as he requested, and now I need to sleep... sleep ... zzz ...

  9:30:
     Awake again, in time for the 64K intro compo. Although, awake may be
  an overstatement, because I wanted to shave, and rejected two toilet
  rooms that did have mirrors but no power outlets before I remembered
  that I've an electric razor with build-in batteries. Yawn.

     The 64K compo had 5 entries, most were quite good. The best one IMHO
  was Shroom/Bypass, a .The .Product wannabe: pure 3D, very detailed
  textures, lots of scenes, but the music wasn't my taste. Also nice was
  Helix, another 3D intro, but it was rather short, especially because it
  took ages to generate its textures and music. The surprise graphics were
  also nice, some pictures could have easily have gotten a good place in
  the normal graphics  compos. The surprise music compo was rather bad,
  there was one entry (suitably called BURP) that used belching as
  samples, another was just people singing "lalala" on the "An der schonen
  blauen donau". Skyrunners "Extreme Donauing" was about the only entry
  with a shred of melody in it, but I think the audience will vote for one
  of the "funnier" entries :/

  10:36:
     Something really great at Takeover is that after a compo, all the
  entries are immediately available on the website. So I can now peek at
  the other surprise coding entries :) After a quick check, it seems that
  half of the entries doesn't work as required: there's 1K big graphic
  scroller that's been made for fun, a bat-file that doesn't work,... the
  ones that do work are 2 to 3 KB large, except for the entry by Skal/Bomb
  and Hulud/Digital Murder, which is 534 bytes. Wohow, I've beaten Skal
  and Hulud <big stupid grin>.

  11:59:
     Yep, the democompo is over. I had been wondering if there would be
  another clear winner such as VIP2 last year, and was there one? You bet!
  Cocoon, the french demogroup that made Shad and Shad2, has made
  something completely different this time: Glon243 (See the complete
  review in a quality E-zine near you :)) The rest of the 9 demos was of
  high quality, compared with the level of the other TO2K1 compos. Science
  made two demos, one good and one so-so, and Farbrausch did the same,
  although the music was twice horrible (imho). Also Aspirine made Destroy
  The Unappropriate Enemies, an original demo with a theme, in software
  rendering. So Infinite Reboot, Corona and I are not the only Belgian
  sceners here.

  13:00:
     While I'm voting and downloading the entries from the website,
  Skyrunner tells me that there are rumors that Farbrausch hacked the
  voting system. Again (see Ambience 2K and 2K1). They are nice guys, can
  make good demos and intros, and organize the best party that I know
  (Mekka/Symposium), but for some reason I cannot fathom, they think it's
  OK to "help" the orgos find security bugs by messing up the voting
  system :( Skyrunner says they suffer a bit from a "misguided attitude".
  Couldn't agree more on that, may they quickly return to the righteous
  path and stuff.

  15:13:
     The last demo show has passed, this time of famous Dutch demos. Just
  before that, a TV-crew from the university wanted to film a demo, so the
  orgos showed "just a possible winner", in other words the Cocoon demo :)
  I left when they went to the more recent Dutch productions, which I had
  seen already, to try to catch a little more sleep. Skyrunner woke me up
  in time for the prize ceremony, and then the orgos announced that the
  ceremony was half an hour delayed :/ (yawn).

     Finally we could enter the blue room, but we had to wait a little
  more. Da P promissed a T-shirt to the first person who could make a call
  to his mobile phone, mainly because he had lost it and hoped to find it
  back by the ringing sound.

     Meanwhile XXX/Haujobb was showing of his new Dutch skills. Remember
  that the Dutch organisers don't speak English that fluently, so
  sometimes they continued an explanation in Dutch. This was much to the
  dismay of all the foreign visitors, and the Germans always started to
  shout at such occasions. Someone with a wicked sense of humour had
  learned XXX to say "Goddamn I do not understand you!" in Dutch, plus
  sentences as "Bicycle thief!" or "I am an elephant! Do you want to see
  my trunk?" Of course XXX shouted those enthusiastically at all the wrong
  times :)

     At the start of the prize ceremony, a Takeover ending animation by
  Superstition was shown, I really liked it so I hope they'll make it
  available somewhere. Since there wasn't much time left before the halls
  had to be closed, the orgos just announced the top 3 winners for each
  compo, gave them an enveloppe with the prize money plus a T-shirt (a
  special edition featuring the Takeover mascotte bear on the front, and
  in big black letters "WINNER" on the back). No "do you have anything to
  say?", and no rewatching of the entries, except for the first places in
  the demo, 64K intro and a few other compos. I didn't win the surprize
  coding compo, because that 137-byte small bat file *did* work (under
  win2K, as was required by the rules. I have win98). It used a network
  utility to send a message to itself when in windows, which is showed in
  a window, and it simply echoes the message to the screen in DOS. Very
  clever, I've to admit. But since the winner only got a DVD, and not even
  one of those limited-edition T-shirts, I didn't really mind :) Skyrunner
  won the second place in the house compo, and Avalance managed not to win
  anything despite having submitted 6 entries in various compos (prefering
  fun over quality) Keep going Avalanche! For most of the compos the
  results were predictable, although I have no idea how the bad Science
  demo placed second, higher than the better one which placed third. The
  audience voted weird on that one.

     Da P also called Farbrausch on the podium, reprimanded them for
  adding 1200 votes to the graphics compo (which was very noticable cause
  the highest pic had only 70 votes), then thanked them for helping to fix
  it back and they all got a T-shirt (50% of the audience applauded, 50%
  shouted boo). Also the winner of the hackme contest was announced, plus
  some hackers that noticed a vulnerability on the fileserver, fixed it
  and warned the orgos. Da P: "See Farbrausch, that's what you should do
  instead of exploiting it!"

     Da P then said thank you to the sponsors for the partyplace, the
  network, money etc, he thanked a group for having ordered 11 pizzas,
  which were  confiscated by the orgos (remember: you were not allowed to
  bring food inside the party hall), and he also thanked the audience for
  leeching so much that the traffic had quadrupled compared to the
  previous year, and thus the orgos had won a bet with their ISP: if the
  server of the ISP could manage the traffic generated by Takeover, the
  orgos would treat the ISP team to a dinner, and if the ISP server would
  crash under the load, the ISP team would treat the orgos to a dinner.

     And it did crash.

     After that we started to pack our hardware and said goodbye to each
  other. Since a lot of parties in the vincinity are dead (Inscene, LTP,
  Bizarre), we couldn't really say "see you at this or that party", but
  I'm sure we'll all meet again somewhere.

     Traveling back, I had to stop at a parking place at the highway to
  sleep some more, cause I couldn't really concentrate and I didn't want
  to take any risks. I mean, you don't want to have an accident if you
  have your computer in the back of your car, do you? I still got home at
  a reasonable hour, which is nice if you've got to work the next day.

     So, what were the good and bad points of Takeover 2001? The only bad
  point was the low average quality of the entries in most compos. Too
  much productions were made only for fun, with no attemp for quality. I
  had hoped that, for the last Takeover, people would have done some extra
  effort.

     On the good side, the organizing was excellent. The crew kept you up
  to date with everything that happened, explained why events were
  delayed, and were always very friendly and relaxed. There were some
  stupid rules (don't bring your own food, only sleep from 0 to 8 in the
  sleeping hall) but these were  not actually enforced: you could sleep
  pretty much anywhere, even the orgos slept in the hallways, and if you
  could get your food past the entrance, you could eat it without being
  bothered. I didn't see any security guy wake people up or check in the
  scene rooms for smuggled food (unlike at Ambience for example). Also the
  bigscreen was used very well, showing movies and 3 extra demoshows.
  Thanks a lot, organizers!

     Personally I'm glad to have met old and new friends, and to have
  finally taken part at a compo again (it's been over a year, lazy me).
  It's sad that this was the last Takeover, but as Da P said some
  organizers will help some new, smaller parties like Scene Feestje to
  fill the void. I'm looking forward to it already.

                --Seven


--=--=--
--=--=------=--=------=--=----
  In Tune
     Some Inspirational Music
  By:  Coplan
----=--=------=--=------=--=--

  -=- Introduction -=-
     I was wandering through my massive track collection today, and I
  found some tunes that I have been rather inspired by.  Each has a
  unique reason for being so inspirational.  These tunes aren't
  necessarily the  greatest tunes of all time, nor are they the most
  popular.  It's unfortunate that I don't really have information for
  finding each of them, but they should be easy enough to find.  Almost
  everything here can be found on Hornet Archive (http://www.hornet.com),
  Trax In Space (http://www.traxinspace.com) or Scene.org.


  -=- "Energia" by Necros -=-
     If you listen to any of Necros' more current tunes, he has a very
  unique style.  I believe he fit himself into that groove after many
  years of experimentation.  But if you were to listen to "Energia", you
  wouldn't really know it's a Necros tune.  I'd have to say this was an
  experiment, but one that turned out pretty well.

     The tunes depends very heavily on percussion.  Unlike many other
  songs, the percussion helps to actually form this song.  With exception
  to the drum loop that starts a good way through the song, there is a
  lot of synthesized percussion that is used almost melodically
  throughout the song.  "Energia" is definately worth a download if you
  need to get some ideas, or some good samples for your highly percussive
  tunes.


  -=- "2deep2" by Lord Pegasus -=-
     "2deep2" is a mellow club style tune that has been one of my
  favorites for a long time.  The entire song is based around a very
  simple riff that is played throughout the song and modified to help set
  the mood.

     The main function of that riff changes throughout as LP changes the
  riff ever so slightly every once in a while.  In some cases, he funks up
  the riff a bit by throwing in some pauses.  Other times, he drags the
  riff out a little more with the pauses.  And he still comes back every
  once in a while and plays the riff as smoothly as it is first presented.

     So what's the big deal about this?  If you were to go back and listen
  to a lot of Bethoven's works, you'll notice a very similar structure to
  his music.  Bethoven is most known for his ability to take a simple
  riff and play it through different octaves, and with different speeds
  throughout a given symphony.  It sounds like a simple concept, but one
  that is difficult to do well.  And when it is done well, it is very
  pleasing to the ear.


  -=- "Charcoal Entropy" by aMusic and "Pocket" by Ari -=-
     When one is considering inspirational music, one doesn't always
  consider the chip tunes.  Any chip tune is inspirational, in my eyes.
  Chip is an artform that is very difficult to refine.  After all, you
  are literally working with samples that are nothing but buzzes and
  blips, and you are turning it into a song.  Two of the best chip tuners
  that I've ever heard are aMusic and Ari.  Two songs in particular stand
  out for me:  "Charcoal Entropy" by aMusic and "Pocket" by Ari.

     "Charcoal Entropy" is a fast paced song, typical of some of the
  classic chip tunes.  One would argue that it isn't a true chip tune,
  because it is more than 4 channels, but nevermind that fact for now.
  There are some essential tools that a chip tune must employ to sound
  good.  Pitch  slides, vibratos and arpeggio's are among the favorites to
  use.  aMusic's strength is his wonderful talent at bending sounds so
  that they sound appealing, and interesting.  In this tune, he can make
  a chip sound like a synthesized violin, or another like bells.

     Ari is very different in form, but not style.  The essential tools
  used for "Pocket" are the same, but this song is far more mellow and
  relaxing than "Charcoal Entropy".  Ari is very good at handling his
  volumes.  If you cut out any of the volume control commands from this
  song, you'll find that the song is boreing and unimaginative.  Even the
  chord in the back has some very subtle volume work to make it sound
  like its pulsating.  Other instruments will fade in, and pan across the
  field from left to right and vice-versa and then fade out again.  This
  alone gives this chip tune some depth and texture.

     Both tunes are very small in size, and worth a download if you can
  find them.  Interestingly enough, both tunes were part of Analogues
  first chip compo.  So, both tunes use the same sample set, and got very
  different results.  Unfortunately, I believe the Analogue website has
  been taken offline.  If anyone knows of an archive containing their
  music, please let me know.


  -=- "Not For Kids" by Skaven -=-
     Now we're going oldskool.  Skaven has always experimented with an
  orchestral sound, and that was quite a feat at the time.  Most of his
  samples were very synthesized, and obviously not true to form of the
  instruments that they represented.  But that didn't stop Skaven from
  coming up with a warm sound.

     This tune is still one of my favorites.  It has a lot of orchestral
  inspiration, and some influence from modern rock.  "Not For Kids" takes
  up a nice place on the fence somewhere between the two styles, and is
  something that might have come out of Andrew Lloyde Webber's closet.

     What truly makes this tune interesting, especially for the modern
  trackers, is the fact that Skaven comes from the true oldskool days.
  While this tune is an S3M, it is a pretty primitive version.  The song
  is only four channels, two panned completely left, and the other two
  panned completely right.  While it seems as though there's a lot going
  on in this song, it's important to realize that he's jammed all this
  sound into these four channels, and still made it sound pretty damn
  good.


  -=- "Minimum Velocity" by Purple Motion -=-
     Purple Motion fans might hang me for picking this tune over any
  other.  After all, it is far from one of his best tunes.  But there is
  a very good reason why I picked this tune over any other:  Without any
  limitation from the software, "Minimum Velocity" is written using only
  two channels.  Minimalistic doesn't describe this song.

     What impresses me most about this tune is the fact that it truly
  sounds like there is a lot going on.  While at times its obvious that
  there are only two channels, it's still impressive to think how well he
  handled those channels.  It also humors me that I was just
  complimenting the oldskoolers who could write impressive music in the
  software limited four channels.  Apparently that wasn't enough of a
  challenge for PM, 'cause he felt the need to write this song.

  Whatever the reason for its creation, I'm sure the completion of this
  song gave PM a serious feeling of joy and confidence.  He set a goal for
  himself, and reached it.  If you're feeling curious one day, you should
  try to do a tune in two channels.  It's fun to do, and it teaches you
  the value of simplicity.

                --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 useing the
  addresses found in the closing notes.  Please do not send files attached
  to e-mail without first contacting us.  Thank you!


--=--=--
--=--=------=--=------=--=----
  The Listener
    Music by Alkama
  By:  Tryhuk
----=--=------=--=------=--=--

     First of all I've got to send huge thanks to psychic symphony,
  because he pointed me on this. For me, this was unknown talent. Although
  I'm quite sure now that I noticed his name before, he was hidden behind
  the fog that floated in front of my eyes and I needed someone to blow it
  away. The person I am talking is Alkama, a coder and a musician. I can't
  forget to mention that all of his tracks were done in cooperation and so
  a part of the acclaim belongs to others who participated.

     When I downloaded his track called "2L", I was amazed. It opens with
  a nice xylophone styled sound and a short chord loop of strings. The
  melody extends and because you haven't heard anything from this guy, you
  just expect what comes out of it. It can progress to trance or breakbeat
  or stay in the unstable world of electronica. As the melody progresses,
  a group of sounds appears that follow a style which can be generally
  described as monotonik style. It goes on and on and then suddenly breaks
  in a lovely chord progression. If you don't fall in love with these
  strings, there is something wrong with you. While this beautiful sound
  goes on, many secondary sounds come in and out forming a melody, a
  drumline, everything that needs to be done, not too separated, rather in
  one complex piece. And it goes on and on and then, there is end. You
  find yourself holding your breath. Damned that was good.

     You can find on the homepage a sequel with a weird name "2L#2==2M".
  Author  drops there a note that people like it more than the first part
  "2L". It starts much more aggressively with its loud synthetic sound
  which in contrast to its intensity floats very softly. It is accompanied
  by deep bass and later by various electronic sounds that start to form a
  wild drumline. A melody comes in, you hardly notice when if you don't
  pay attention. Whole thing is like a part of demo, like a 3d object with
  particles spinning and floating around. As the time goes on, a break
  appears and color of the track changes and turns out to even  wilder
  storm of sound particles joined with the previous part of track by a
  repeated melody. It grows wilder and wilder like a whirl. Like the first
  track, the second disappears that you don't know how, it just went away.

     Alkama has on his homepage (alkama.planet-d.net) also other tracks in
  a wide range of styles, like a "Coop" of UmaLluviaMdShodanRadixAlkama,
  an interesting "Yellow Boy" which is a remix of "Immature" by Bjork, or
  Halcyonish beat "Planette Lune". But I can't help myself, those two
  tracks that I mentioned today impressed me most and I'm really  happy
  that I could feature them here and share them with you. And now go go
  and get them.

  Song Information:
     Title:  2L (deux ailes)
     Author:  Alkama
     Release date:  1999
     Length:  4m00s
     Filename:  2l.mp3
     File Size:  3840kb
     Source:  http://alkama.planet-d.net/secret/2L.mp3

  Song Information:
     Title:  2L#2==2M
     Author:  Alkama
     Release date:  2000
     Length:  4m33s
     Filename:  2m.mp3
     File Size:  3840kb
     Source:  http://alkama.planet-d.net/secret/2M.mp3


                --Tryhuk


--=--=--
--=--=------=--=------=--=----
  Screen Lit Vertigo
     "Glon 243" by Cocoon and "Dewitt Jaycees" by Unique
  By:  Seven
----=--=------=--=------=--=--
  A fixed version can be found at:
     http://cocoon.planet-d.net/ts/glon243v12.zip
  And a full final version can be found at:
     http://cocoon.planet-d.net/ts/Glon243.zip

  1st place at the Takeover 2001 democompo.

  System Requirements:
     11 MB HD, Win9x or Win2K, DirectX 8

  Test Machine:
     PIII 900 192MB, SB1024, GeForce 2MX 32MB, Win98

  The Credits:
     code: Guille, ATC
     gfx: Azo, Nytrik, Tenshu
     music: Syl East

  The Demo:
     Cocoons demos have always had a very recognisable style: dark
  feelings, destroyed and faded text fragments, blood on the walls,
  flying eyeballs above lakes of lava and other 3D scenes straight from a
  nightmare.

     Enter Glon 243, their new demo "with no more blood, and _nearly_ no
  violence", featuring cute animals, bright colors and a jazzy soundtrack
  with singing birds. Seems like Cocoon has really made a turn of 180
  degrees.

     From the very start, the key ingredients of this demo are clear: funny
  3D models that are professionally animated, and a perfectly synchronized
  soundtrack. A talking pig announces the demo, and the way his eyebrows
  and his mouth moves is just sooo good... The whole audience at Takeover
  knew at this point already that this was a likely winner. The talking is
  in English, but the French accent is quite noticable.

     Next the 4 letters G, L, O, N appear, balancing on a board and nearly
  pushing each other from it. Again the sounds and the movements are
  perfectly synced, no minor feat since the music is in MP3 format (it's
  not available seperately, but you can notice the name glonmix.mp3 in the
  data file). There's a simple background effect of slowly moving/morphing
  circles.

     I don't want to spoil the demo for those who haven't watched it yet,
  so I have to be a bit vague. The next 4 parts all follow the same line:
  first there is a tunnel effect with streaming particles and some cute
  animal (penguin, rabbit,...) flying around, some text is displayed and
  then read aloud by the voice. The text is an order, in the style of the
  biblical 10 commandments but weirder. For example: You will not resign
  yourself to the force of habit, or: You will not overestimate your
  intelligence. Then the best part of the demo follows: a short animation
  of a little purple owl, who disregards the order, much to his own
  misfortune. After each of these stories, everyone in the partyroom was
  applauding louder and louder. The characters are just lovable, the
  animation really shows their feelings, and the multiple-layered
  background and the soundscape add depth to the story. There's no voice
  in these parts, simply cause there's no voice necessary here. Really
  very well done.

     The credits and the greeting are shown latest, while groups of the
  animals are dancing in a rain of falling stars. At the end, a handdrawn
  head of a chicken is shown, again of a very high quality.


  Overall:
     This is simply a must-see. It has without doubt the best animated 3D
  models I've ever seen in a demo, plus some very funny stories with great
  soundeffects. Of course, after watching it once most of the surprise is
  gone, and there aren't many "normal" demoeffects in it, but that's no
  excuse not to watch it. Go get it, now!


  -=- Dewitt Jaycees by Unique (party-version) -=-
  Found at www.scene.org
  1st place at the Escape2001 PC democompo.

  System Requirements:
     5.6 MB HD, PIII or K7 CPU, DirectX8, GeForce 3D card.

  Test Machine:
     PIII 900 192MB, SB live, GeForce 2MX 32MB, Win98.

  The Credits:
     Code: Absurd
     Models & Design: Raymon
     Gfx: Dodge, Lum, Piriste
     Music: Smirk, Duplo

  The Demo:
     Unique's latest production goes by the rather strange name Dewitt
  Jaycees. The demo itself is also a bit weird, it uses a subtle mixture
  of different styles but feels coherent as a whole. It starts with a
  vague red/yellow background of a screaming face and nerve textures,
  which begins to distort after a while. On top of this, various white
  images are blended, such as cogwheels, a face, unreadable text and a
  nice Unique logo. Till the end of the demo, the top and bottom of the
  screen are masked with a border reminding me of spaceships or printed
  circuits, and a couple of black vertical design lines run over the whole
  screen. The music starts very ambient with some woodwind instrument and
  a low-sounding piano. The slow melody they play is kept through the
  whole demo. When the percussion kicks in, an impressive underwater cave
  is shown with some meaningless scrolling numbers . The cave morphes very
  slightly, and the double texturing does a good job at emulating
  scattered light on the walls. The rest of the demo shows mostly
  transparant morphing objects using textures to fake a wireframe-look.
  Sometimes the screen gets too white, especially when flares are added.
  The backgrounds show lines, circles and texts, but mixed with textures
  in one tint, making it more colorful than those 100% flatshaded design
  demos. There's a flock of nearly-transparent cubes that look good, and a
  weird blob that is mostly made from holes in it (weird, as I said). At
  the end, an Unique logo is shown as a 3D painting. This part has a bit
  of Shad-style feeling. There's little syncing to the music, new parts
  come up when musical subthemes start or end but most objects move
  slowly, independent from the short funky melodies that the foreground
  instruments play. Here I think that's OK, because it adds to the
  relaxing atmosphere.

  Overall:
     Dewitt Jaycees is an rather abstract demo with an ambient feeling. It
  doesn't have revolutionary code, but the design is solid, with colors
  that fit well together, and nice, relaxing music. I would have liked
  some other transitions between effects than simple fades, and there are
  some minor errors such as the music that starts to play again at the
  end, then is cut off, or the mousecursor that isn't hidden in fullscreen
  mode. But those are just glitches. So, if you like ambient demos, make
  sure you get this one.

                --Seven


--=--=--
--=--=------=--=------=--=----
  Editorial
    Experimentation and Inspiration
  By: Coplan
----=--=------=--=------=--=--

     Many people forget how to get inspiration after they've been tracking
  a while.  It happens to the best of us, especially after we've had a
  long period of time where we've been very musically productive.  It
  just happens one day:  We forget why we were so productive, and how we
  got our inspiration.

     Inpsiration comes from many places.  It can come from the feelig you
  get when something good happens to you.  It comes from the bad times as
  well.  It can even come from experimentation, and that's the one thing
  that you can control.  A friend of mine used to call it "forced
  inspiration", which is a pretty fitting term.

     One rule that I have followed ever since I started writing music is
  to try and write something new every day.  Sometimes, I'll start from
  scratch without an idea in my head.  Other times, I'll play around with
  a riff that I heard from the radio, or one of my CDs.  There are some
  trackers that start with just one sample, and write out the lead, and
  fit everything else around it.  The key to this forced inspiration is
  that you cannot expect everything to turn out wonderfully.  I'd say
  about 10% of anything you write with forced inspiration will actually
  come out sounding good.  The rest will range anywhere from uninspired
  crap to chaotic tunage.  But that's okay, because you're prepared for
  that.

     There is a certain friend of mine who has been messing with synthesis
  for a very long time.  And he started sampling his synthesizer for his
  music.  It is unfortunate that he hasn't really gotten inspiration from
  the incredible samples that he creates, but it has done wonders for me.
  One day, though, he'll write something glorious, and he can thank his
  efforts of sample creation.

     Samples are very important to the tracked tune, as you all know.  But
  what a lot of people don't realize is that you have to keep a large
  library and constantly look for new samples if one expects to get
  inspired.  The best method I've seen so far, as I mentioned briefly
  above, is to literally find a lead sample that you like and write a
  little tune.  Then, build everything else behind that with familiar
  instruments that you can grab from your well organized library.  Now
  when I say a lead instrument, keep in mind that you are experimenting,
  and you can use whatever you wish.  You can use some sort of percussive
  instrument as a lead, you can use some tourtured cat sounds if you
  really wish.  Some of the best tunes use samples that you'd never think
  of using in your own tunes, and I would bet that in any case, that was
  accidental.  I have one tune on my hard drive that actually has
  "autoexec.bat" and "config.sys" loaded (and heavily cropped) as chips
  for a chip tune.  If you really want to have some fun, read Eric
  Hamilton's article about painting samples.  That alone will provide you
  with some interesting inspirations.

     The least you could do is try something.  Don't get frustrated if it
  doesn't work out.  You might find a riff somewhere in your latest work
  that you might actually like, and you can implement that somewhere else.
  And then you might end up with a finished peice one day.  What's the
  worst that can happen?

                --Coplan


--=--=--
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  Link List
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  Portals:

      Orange Juice.............................http://www.ojuice.net
      Scene.org.................................http://www.scene.org
      SceneSpot.............................http://www.scenespot.org
      CFXweb.......................................http://cfxweb.net
      Pouet.net.................................http://www.pouet.net
      Demoscene.org.........................http://www.demoscene.org
      Scenet....................................http://www.scenet.de
      Demo.org...................................http://www.demo.org
      Czech Scene................................http://www.scene.cz
  <*> Danish Scene..............................http://demo-scene.dk
      Hungarian Scene........................http://www.scene-hu.com
      Italian Scene...........................http://run.to/la_scena
      ModPlug Central Resources..........http://www.castlex.com/mods
      Norvegian Scene............http://www.neutralzone.org/scene.no
      Polish Scene...........................http://www.demoscena.pl
      Russian Scene..........................http://www.demoscene.ru
      Spanish Scene............................http://www.escena.org
      Swiss Scene..............................http://www.chscene.ch

  Archives:

      Acid2.....................................ftp://acid2.stack.nl
      Amber.......................................ftp://amber.bti.pl
      Cyberbox.....................................ftp://cyberbox.de
      Hornet (1992-1996)........................ftp://ftp.hornet.org
      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://alienprophets.ninja.dk
      Anakata..............................http://www.anakata.art.pl
      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
      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
      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
      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
      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.bentdesign.com/chill
      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
      Five Musicians.........................http://www.fm.scene.org
      Fusion Music Crew.................http://members.home.nl/cyrex
      Goodstuff..........................http://artloop.de/goodstuff
      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
      Miasmah.............................http://www.miasmah.cjb.net
      Milk.......................................http://milk.sgic.fi
      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
      Mo'playaz..........................http://ssmedion.de/moplayaz
      Mono211.................................http://www.mono211.com
      Morbid Minds..............http://www.raveordie.com/morbidminds
      Noise................................http://www.noisemusic.org
      Noerror.......................http://www.error-404.com/noerror
      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.error-404.com/sunlikamelo-d
      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
      Wiremaniacs.........................http://www.wiremaniacs.com
      Zen of Tracking.........................http://surf.to/the-imm

  Programming:

      Programming portal......................http://www.gamedev.net
      Programming portal.....................http://www.flipcode.com
      Game programming portal...............http://www.gamasutra.com
      3D programming portal.................http://www.3dgamedev.com
      Programming portal......................http://www.exaflop.org
      Programming portal............http://www.programmersheaven.com
      Programming portal.....................http://www.freecode.com
      NASM (free Assembly compiler)......http://www.cryogen.com/nasm
      LCC (free C compiler).........http://www.remcomp.com/lcc-win32
      PTC video engine.........................http://www.gaffer.org
      3D engines..........http://cg.cs.tu-berlin.de/~ki/engines.html
      Documents...............http://www.neutralzone.org/home/faqsys
      File format collection...................http://www.wotsit.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
      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://wildmag.notrix.de

  Parties:

      Assembly (Finland).....................http://www.assembly.org
      Ambience (The Netherlands)..............http://www.ambience.nl
      Dreamhack (Sweden)....................http://www.dreamhack.org
      Buenzli (Switzerland)......................http://www.buenz.li
      Gravity (Poland)............http://www.demoscena.cp.pl/gravity
      Mekka-Symposium (Germany)...................http://ms.demo.org
      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
      Demonews Express.........http://www.teeselink.demon.nl/express
      Demo fanclub........................http://jerware.org/fanclub
      Digital Undergrounds.....................http://dug.iscool.net
      Doose charts...............................http://www.doose.dk
      Freax................................http://freax.scene-hu.com
      GfxZone............................http://gfxzone.planet-d.net
      PC-demos explained.....http://www.oldskool.org/demos/explained
      Pixel...................................http://pixel.scene.org
      Underground Mine.............http://www.spinningkids.org/umine

  IRC Channels:

      Scene.........................................ircnet #thescene
      Programming.....................................ircnet #coders
      Programming....................................efnet #flipcode
      Graphics.........................................ircnet #pixel
      Music.............................................ircnet #trax
      Scene (French)..................................ircnet #demofr
      Programming (French)............................ircnet #codefr
      Graphics (French)..............................ircnet #pixelfr
      Scene (Hungarian)............................ircnet #demoscene
      Programming (Hungarian)......................ircnet #coders.hu
      Programming (German)........................ircnet #coders.ger


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  Editor:          Coplan / D. Travis North / coplan@scenespot.org
  Writers:         Coplan / D. Travis North / coplan@scenespot.org
                    Dilvish / Eric Hamilton / dilvie@yahoo.com
                    Psitron / Tim Soderstrom / tigerhawk@stic.net
                    Setec / Jesper Pederson / jesped@post.tele.dk
                    Seven / Stefaan VanNieuwenhuyze/ seven7@writeme.com
                    Tryhuk / Tryhuk Vojtech / vojtech.tryhuk@worldonline.cz
  Technical Consult: Ranger Rick / Ben Reed / ranger@scenespot.org

  Static Line on the Web:  http://www.scenespot.org/staticline

  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 with two spaces at the beginning and one
  space at the end of each line.  Please avoid foul language and high ascii
  characters.  Contributions should be mailed to Coplan
  (coplan@scenespot.org).

     See you next month!

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