The following was extracted from "The Ocean Experience" website's forum:

If you don´t mind, i´d really like to ask Jonathan a few questions, since he is one of my favourite C64 composers. They sometimes may perhaps sound a little bit geeky, so please forgive...

- Which platform was your favourite to explore/compose songs for?

Definitely the 64 as that's what I started out on and also becuase I coded my own drivers. Never got round to doing it on the spectrum/amstrad.
Later I did enjoy working on the SNES, which I coded my own driver for to.

Cool, was there anything special (apart from being your first computer) about the C64 and the SID which you liked? And is my impression correct that Keith and Matthew also used your driver code?

There were a couple of 64 drivers - Just after Martin left he did some Freelance work for us (Combat School and Rastan) which used his new driver. From '87-'90 Jon, Matt, Gari and Keith all used a driver I wrote (and Jon and Gari specced out) - stuff like the Ocean loader music, Robocop, Navy Seals and Vindicator etc used it.
It was mainly written for size and processing time - Robocop used the 4th channel sample player for the first time, then Vindicator used the full blown 4th channel sampled drum sequencer.
Jon then did his own (jolly nice) driver with a much improved sequencer that replaced mine.
Jon could just rattle out tunes - I've still no idea how he got half the sounds he got out of that chip. He came up with the "a la Hubbard" drums which I implemented - no idea why it sounded like a Simmonds SynDrum - but it did!!!
- Paulie (Paul Hughes).

It's worth remembering that in most cases, when we licensed a movie, the music rights were not included. This meant Jon, Dean, Barry, Keith, etc had to compose soundtrack music from scratch. They always did a fantastic job and in many cases, surpassed the original in terms of appropriateness of sound for the game.
- Gary (Gary Bracey)

- Do you have a song which is your personal favourite?

Of the 64 stuff it would be Total Recall.

Whoa, that´s really a surprise! Because personally, I would have bet that either Platoon or Robocop would be your favourite.
I think Total Recall stands out for its heavy use of the filter to create a smooth yet strong sound, although a little bit repetitive.
My personal impression is that in most of your music you were doing for movie games you were aiming at not just doing a conversion of the soundtrack, but instead go for something which does capture the feeling of the movie´s "theme".

I recall sitting down the hall from Jon hearing him compose his choons. You'd hear the same bit over and over again but it never became annoying. Then you'd have to go down and have a proper listen cos most of them were so good. Then you'd go get the bus home and find yaself whistling some little melody then realise it was one of Jon's!

- Mark Jones Junior

Is there perhaps a music piece which you are most unsatisfied with?


- How was the atmosphere at Ocean back in those days? Was there some kind of competition/pressure between the different composers?

Not at all, we often worked together doing different platform conversions.

- When developing music, what is/are your source/s of inspiration ?

Usually a few good noises gets me going.


- How are you seeing your work of the old days on the old machines (C64 etc.) now in retrospective ?

Quite funny to think that there's people out there remixing and reproducing the work. If you'd told me that 15 years ago I'd of laughed you out of the building.

Yes, i can imagine... It´s funny that the older computer games, which were back in the past considered a lower form of entertainment for kiddies(compared to music and movies), have made such a strong impact on many people. If someone would have told me back then that 15 years later I am sitting here talking to you about your work, i also would not have believed it. ;-)
I have the feeling that in many cases, there was much more to it than just doing your work you were supposed to, elevating it to some kind of art form. Would you agree with this concerning your work back then?


-What was your biggest challenge you had to face back at Ocean?

Probably recording Gary Bracey for the free audio tape that went with DT's Olymipic Challenge.

ch ch ch challenge.......


- (Geek alarm) I noticed that in Total Recall on the C64, you use a special waveform combination which can only be heard on those late C64 models which can not reproduce digi sounds. Was this intentional or purely coincidence?

Purely coincidence.

- So if everything was written for the SID, how did you go about porting it over to the AY chip for the Speccy & Amstrad? Was it an easy thing to do?

It was all done by hand, copy all the data statements from the 64 source over to the Z80 source. The drivers were very different as well so it was a total pain in the arse.

- Well I'm glad you did bother to go to the hard work of porting your music over. I always hated it when a developer didn't bother to use the AY chip on the 128k Spectrum.

David Whittaker just converted my music over to the spectrum. I'd only just started at Ocean and was originally only hired to do music for the c64, but eventually ened up doing every known platform under the sun.