TW #8 — Interview with Blaze Runner (Populus)

Populus's "last minute" live interview with blaze-runner, music coordinator of PURE, about "subjects that don't get around much": copyright registration and going commercial, plus an AWE32 workflow in a GUS-dominated scene.

Key claims#

• Christian Desnoyers, 25, in Belgium, final-year engineering student in biotechnology; one of PURE's two music coordinators with Blue Adonis. "I'm not a nerd and I've got a beautiful girlfriend since 7 years."
• Started tracking on a C64, then an Amiga 500 with "nearly all the tracker programs"; "more than 10 years of computing history". Learned the accordion from a "really crap" teacher — waltzes — which "taught me a bit of theory that I use every day now"; a techno waltz is "an idea to retain": 3/4 "is harder to implement in a tracker, but it's not impossible".
• Belgium "is a special country for techno … loads of clubs for such a little country": underground techno, trance, happy house; he also listens to Kraftwerk, older electro-pop, hard rock, U2, Cure, Depeche Mode.
• Copyright: PC musicians, "mainly techno", can be ripped and released commercially by "unscrupulous people". In Belgium you register tunes with SABAM; then the royalties from any sale, TV, radio or club play of a ripped tune go to your account. He had heard Amiga demo tunes in films, and Blue Adonis heard one of his own tunes in a club. He registered because of a commercial project, not because he had been ripped.
• Gear: a Sound Blaster AWE32 with 2 MB ("I know a lot of people will laugh"); fasttracker-2 with 16-bit samples, configured as an SB16, but playback through AWEplay, which drives the AWE32 natively and adds reverb and chorus; the card's digital out goes straight to DAT at 44.1 kHz/16-bit — "NO noise and NO distortion". In MIDI the AWE32's filters can be controlled "like on an analog synth". D-Lusion's X-Tracker supported the AWE32 natively. A small Yamaha keyboard as MIDI controller; planning a "Deep Bass Nine" TB-303 clone with MIDI.
• Workflow, two starts: sample sounds and play with them until a melody comes, or carry a melody in his head into the tracker; then add instruments, a second melody, a drum part; with one or two patterns, make variations; with several, build the song.
• Samples: mainly from CDs; his own voice; sounds made on the AWE32's synth and then sampled.
• TRAXX (PURE's ancestor) started around January 1994, founded by Blue Adonis (ex-PHUN, a PPE/PCBoard modem-scene group) and The Undertaker (an Amiga user); he joined in July 1994 when he got a modem.
• Commercial plans: vinyl through a small new label (vinyl "means it will be played by good DJs"), tunes online with references so buyers can find him; a tape of his and Blue Adonis's work was with the producer; friends Piet and Phil (also PURE) had done the same; artist name undecided ("Blue Blaze" or nameless — "there are even vinyls without any inscriptions").
• Scene: "growing every day … the overall level raised a lot", but with many releases and new groups "there is a lot of crap in it". Sign-off: "love, peace and tolerance".

Practical takeaways#

• A tracker-to-master chain in 1995 without a GUS: FT2 (SB16 mode) → AWEplay (native AWE32 + reverb/chorus) → digital out → DAT (commercial-tracking, recording-samples).
• Sample your synth: make a sound on the card's synth, then sample it (instrument-design, recording-samples).
• Register with your collecting society before releasing commercially; module music does get lifted for records, films and clubs (commercial-tracking, sample-ripping).
• Two ways in: from a sample, or from a melody in your head; grow patterns into variations before building the song (tracking-workflow).
• Odd metres are possible in a tracker — pattern length is the tool (rhythm-and-groove).

Notable quotes#

• "They can laugh … but they also have to hear the AWE32 used by someone who knows it!" — Blaze Runner
• "It's important for me that they will be released on vinyl 'coz vinyl means it will be played by good DJs." — Blaze Runner

Relevance#

The first commercial-release plan in traxweekly, with the collecting-society step (SABAM) — background for commercial-tracking two years before the 1997–98 debate — and a documented AWE32 + FT2 + DAT chain against the scene's GUS orthodoxy (gravis-ultrasound).

Pages touched#

blaze-runner, commercial-tracking, fasttracker-2, gravis-ultrasound, midi-in-trackers, recording-samples, sample-ripping, tracking-workflow, traxweekly.