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How this project came to be, from the minds of those involved.

Part One: The Tuareg Genesis

The following is an account of the Tuareg phenomenon as written by Bram Bos, Creator of Tuareg, Moonfish and Pump:

"Great ideas are born in the most unlikely places. I was camping on Santorini, an island called "Thira" in Greek, which historians believe to be the remnants of Atlantis. 3650 years ago, the volcanic core of the island exploded and turned the place into one of the most unbelievable wonders of nature in Europe - and destroyed most of the Minoan culture at the same time. But I digress.

In this inspiring place I ate feta-cheese and thought about what had happened to HammerHead. People were using all kinds of little tools to string together samples and loops made with HammerHead, TS404, Stomper and other applications. That's when the idea came to me to create a tool that could be used to rhythmically layer all kinds of samples. I'd include a drumcomputer just for kicks. The codename of the new project would be "Thira", which later became "Tuareg".

The Tuareg Tribe was founded on sep 16, 1999. Some credit for this should go to Zap Andersson, whose Stomper Community inspired me to start a community to support Tuareg. The Stomperlist was another one of those flourishing corners of the world of cybersubcultures. I was a member there for a couple of years and during that period I created applications like Pump and MoonFish and was part of the first Stompilation project.

I left the group while working on Tu because I was too much of an interface design dissident and started my own Tuaregs community. On March 6th 2000, after many discussions and using great suggestions from people on the Tuareg Tribe, "Tuareg Free 1.0" was released."

Since 2000, there have been hundreds of songs, thousands of projects, and uncountable communication between global musicians who utilize Tuareg and other PC software to shape the future of music on planet earth. Visit our Artists section to learn more about some of the users of Tuareg who appear on this compilation.

Tuareg is now at version 2.5 and is available as freeware and shareware at www.brambos.com.

NEXT: Part II, The Rules of the Game - by Bruce Rich

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