TW #2 — Interview with Leinad (Populus)

Populus met leinad "by coincidence" on IRC and interviewed him on 1995-03-15 (14:57–16:13): an Amiga-era Swedish composer, most active in 1990–91, who by 1995 made multimedia for a living and tracked on a PC with a GUS — "all 'grown' up, he is doing our little past time a mean of living".

Key claims#

• Daniel Falk, 23, Sweden (e-mail at s-data.se); "computer nerd"; authors multimedia for a living — 3D animation, digital video and image editing, sampling, programming in Director.
• Groups: Avalanche was dropped by him and Fabian (Zax) when the other members got too involved with work and school; MAGE is "a couple of friends who are developing games", perhaps a future company name, whose action game Iron Plague was to get his music in spring 1995.
• Started composing in 1989 with his first Amiga; about 25 released songs, many more unreleased on Amiga disks; "rather lazy", most active in 1990–91. Played drums for 12–13 years, sold them at 18 for a synth ("drums is the only thing I really CAN handle").
• Songs: Carry My Torch (his favourite; written for a game that never happened, released on a Syntax Error musicdisk he had not seen), Vote 4 Me and The Happy Hamster Hop (both Assembly '94; the latter did not reach the final), Kingdom of the Hedgehogs (his own spelling uncertain), Fear of The Exams, Do it! Pull the Trigger. He likes songs with singing and rap; will not do funk, pop or soul, and "no Ace of Base covers".
• Gear: an Amiga 500 for sampling (in a closet since a move in November 1994, but "I still think I get a lot better sampling quality with my Amiga than the GUS"), a gravis-ultrasound "sponsored by Gravis", a Kawai K4 synth, a Dr-550 drum machine and "lots of music CD's". Software: AudioMaster III on the Amiga, Extreme's Tracker, fasttracker-2 and GoldWave for Windows.
• Motivation "often begins with some kind of weird sample", or plinking on the synth, or lyrics.
• Workflow: choose the samples first ("that can take a lot of time"; "I try to do most of the samples myself"), punch out simple drums as a base, get chords in, "start fiddling with the effects far too early", then decide where the refrain goes, do the intro, add lead instruments "with all kind of effects needed", go back to the drums, adjust the volume of everything so no instrument "drowns" the others, vary the drum patterns, and finally name the thing.
• Four channels: he no longer uses protracker; Vote 4 Me was made in Extreme's Tracker while "limiting myself to the Amiga rules". He keeps writing 4-channel songs because "I don't need more channels" and "I want to be in all possible compos at the parties" (he entered the graphics compos at Assembly '93 and '94 too). His Assembly '94 multichannel song used three, in places four, effects at the same time.
• Why Extreme's Tracker: the coders are friends who live nearby, he beta-tested it before FT2 was out, it has most of what he wants and is "very easy to use for us ProTracker nerds"; he never liked text-mode trackers like scream-tracker-3 — "far too much pain to learn yet another interface".
• Favourite PC composers: Zodiak / CDA ("a great composer … a bit on the slow side when it comes to returning disks"), necros ("doesn't everyone?"), C.C.Catch ("that good old Kenny").
• Listens to Dead Can Dance, Front 242, Green Day, old Metallica, Candlemass, Swedish synth (Mobile Homes, Elegant Machinery, SPOCK), Bad Religion — "no euro-techno".
• Plans: a musicdisk of tunes made for demos, intros and unreleased games; more "sing-along" songs at future parties; the Iron Plague soundtrack. His stuff was not online: a directory at wasp/hornet may or may not still exist; he had been off the Internet for eight months.

Practical takeaways#

• Instrument set first, mostly self-sampled, then drums → chords → structure → leads → back to the drums → volume balance → vary the drums (tracking-workflow, instrument-design).
• Sample on whatever gives the cleanest result — his Amiga beat his GUS for sampling quality (recording-samples).
• Keep a four-channel habit if you want to enter every party compo (compos); a multichannel tracker lets you stack three or four effects on one row.
• "Try to be original. And if you can't, at least not boring."

Notable quotes#

• "I try to do most of the samples myself." — Leinad
• "I never liked text-mode based trackers like ScreamTracker. Think it's far too much pain to learn yet another interface." — Leinad
• "Stay cool — Don't close the fridge (my slogan)" — Leinad

Relevance#

An Amiga-to-PC path with the tools named (AudioMaster III, ProTracker rules, Extreme's Tracker, FT2, GUS), a samples-first workflow with the drum/volume-balance passes spelled out, and the compo reason for staying with four channels in 1995.

Pages touched#

leinad, tracking-workflow, fasttracker-2, protracker, scream-tracker-3, gravis-ultrasound, recording-samples, compos, traxweekly, necros.