TW #1 — Interview with Basehead (Populus)

TraxWeekly's very first interview (conducted 1995-03-05 on IRC). Populus introduces basehead as "one of the very best techno/trance/ambient trackers", a member of Imphobia, kosmic/KFMF and iCE, and lists the songs Basehead himself rates highest: Shades of Night 3 (EGG Music Disk #2), Sokoban, Forever, Spartacus, Imajica.

Key claims#

• Real name Dan Grandpre, 18, out of school, plays in a band for money; groups Imphobia, Kosmic/KFMF, iCE.
• Got into tracking by following the Amiga scene in the 1980s/early 1990s — "i loved 4-channel stuff (still do)" — but never had the patience for protracker; first song "Out of Time Again" in May 1993 after "fooling with KingMod". About 80 finished songs by March 1995.
• Tools: scream-tracker-3, Wave for Windows (Turtle Beach) for sample editing, a CD player for sampling from CDs. Samples come from CDs, a friend's synth and sample collection, "and from other songs of course!".
• Longest song took about 12 hours (Shades of Night 2); Shades of Night 3 is the one he is proudest of although "the style is obscure".
• Favourite trackers: Audiomonster, Dizzy, Heatbeat, Delorean, Sidewinder.
• Twelve years of piano, also guitar, bass, drums, sax, trumpet, trombone, "a lot of musical theory".
• Listens to house and modern jazz, some alternative rock and hip-hop (The Orb, Spooky, United Future Organization, Erasure, The Cure, Depeche Mode).
• Future: an LP/EP, eventually a label or studio.

Practical takeaways#

• Basehead's song process: (1) fix a mood for the song; (2) load 30–35 samples that fit it into ST3; (3) spend a few minutes on a main chord progression / theme / hook; (4) write an intro in one of the next patterns and build slowly into the original pattern; (5) advance by variations on the original and add second and third parts that go with the first — a workflow for tracking-workflow and arrangement.
• "Try to open your mind to more styles of music" — techno heads should expand, metal fans should try several types of techno.

Notable quotes#

• "i loved 4-channel stuff. (still do)" — Basehead.

Relevance#

The earliest first-hand description of a leading 1995 PC-scene workflow: ST3, sampled CDs, mood first, hook second, variation third. Also fixes Basehead's real name and groups as printed in 1995.

Pages touched#

basehead, kosmic, scream-tracker-3, tracking-workflow, traxweekly.