TW #11 — Interview with Beaner (Popcorn)

Popcorn's second interview of the issue, with beaner — "a really cool dude, and a friend" — of ACiD and epinicion: a 16-year-old with two jobs, an ST3 loyalist who cannot write without new samples.

Key claims#

• Sean Cummins, 16; ACiD, Infiniti 2001, CIA and Epinicion. Two jobs: computer engineer at PDC Services, "the 2nd largest VAR of Sun Microsystems", and "the tech guy for my township".
• On #trax for a little under a year, from about a month after he started tracking.
• How he started: a fan of "those old 4-channel pc mods"; found KingMod on a local BBS ("write your own mods") and tracked a song of the band he was in; then heard of "these 16-channel s3m things" but could not find ST3, used ModEdit for a month, then got scream-tracker-3 from "a board in Virginia". The ANSI group REM "had a great music division organised by nemesis, and that really influenced me a lot to continue tracking".
• ACiD: knew pinion (ACiD's music coordinator) for some time; sent him Mirage, "one of my best s3ms", and was invited. The ACiD musicdisk was nearly finished — player coded by FU, graphics by cat — with Pinion, Rimbo, psibelius, Pianoman, basehead and Beaner.
• Machine: NEC Ready 486DX/33, 4 MB RAM, ~170 MB DoubleSpaced; a Pentium 75 with 8 MB and 800 MB on the way; Sun SPARCs and a Compaq 486DX2/66 at work.
• Workflow: "I >NEED< new samples to do anything, because without new samples, i have absolutely NO creativity"; drums first, then the chord progression, then "any little thingies", then the lead.
• Training: piano six years, clarinet one, bass a year and a half — "most of" his theory comes from the bass lessons.
• Influences: Nemesis, Khyron, Parity Error, necros, Dizzy, Basehead; aims for "a mixed style … pretty original". Listens to Rage Against the Machine, Curve, The Tragically Hip, White Zombie, Danzig, My Bloody Valentine, Dinosaur Jr.
• Tracker: "I use Scream Tracker 3.21b, just because I'm so used to it. I've tried Fast Tracker 2, but I just can't seem to get comfortable with the interface."
• Best-known songs by mail received: Battle of the Fireflies and Mirage; his favourite is "the song that I'm currently working on". Plans: stay at PDC, college undecided, tracking "as a hobby".

Practical takeaways#

• Fresh samples as the creativity trigger — build a habit of collecting or making new ones before each song (tracking-workflow, instrument-design).
• Order: drums → chord progression → details → lead (arrangement).
• 1994's PC beginner path: KingMod (4-channel) → ModEdit → ST3 for 16 channels (tracker-scene-history).

Notable quotes#

• "Without new samples, i have absolutely NO creativity." — Beaner
• "I use Scream Tracker 3.21b, just because I'm so used to it." — Beaner

Relevance#

An ST3 user's drums-first workflow and the KingMod → ModEdit → ST3 ladder; the roster of ACiD's 1995 musicdisk (Pinion, Rimbo, Psibelius, Pianoman, Basehead, Beaner) and a second mention of Nemesis's REM music division.

Pages touched#

beaner, epinicion, pinion, psibelius, basehead, nemesis, necros, scream-tracker-3, fasttracker-2, tracking-workflow, tracker-scene-history, traxweekly.