TW #11 — Interview with Perisoft (Popcorn)

Popcorn ("no time to write a long intro, must release TraxWeekly") interviews perisoft, the new president of defiance and the author of issue #8's "Samples And Rippers" piece that started the row over basehead's NAID entry. Perisoft was interviewed again in issue #87 (January 1997): s-tw087-interview-perisoft.

Key claims#

• David Wiernicki, "16.417" years old; in epinicion "for some reason", Interamnia ("finnish demo/booze/boozegroup") and Defiance, which he runs; does assembler embedded-systems coding for his father at a tenth of the going rate. Obsession: SV.
• Found the scene through IRC in 1994 — #3dland, #gfx (oman), #coders ("Who's FC?" during Assembly '94), then #trax; first track September 1994.
• Machine: 486DX/40 VLB, two 14" monitors (one feeding a projection lens for a "6 foot big screen"), 262 MB disk, 4 MB RAM, a gravis-ultrasound with 1024 KB "that thinks it has 512".
• Workflow A (conventional songs): download "some poor bastard's song", play with its samples in the sample screen of scream-tracker-3 3.21, find a melody, clear the song and write — unstructured, "until I hit a mental block or 30 patterns, whichever comes 1st"; the songs before Flight suffered from repetition.
• Workflow B ("stream of consciousness"): when something (usually SV) "freaks" him, three or four standby samples — "FC SINER FROM PANIC", a "FILTER SYNTH", the lead from Insideout — and "write until my brain fries"; about ten songs in two weeks that way, "the purest expression of music … but ppl don't like it so much".
• Defiance: Zer0 messaged him in early December (1994) and made him an "exalted cofounder"; Zer0 later "got tired and left", lowrider took over and then left with personal problems, handing him the presidency on IRC; half the group had left with Zer0, so he was rebuilding "from 4 or so members".
• The Basehead controversy: he "based my article on what I saw in the crediting in the song — I didn't realize he reworked the sax samps at the time"; Basehead kick-banned him and called him "anal retentive" instead of talking; his purpose was "to shock people into thinking — to make sure we don't get complacent about the way we think of famous people or the way we deal with dissenters".
• Violin for about eight years, some piano, but no composition before ST3; "I have no music theory, I don't really know any notes … but that's what's nice about computers. You don't need that stuff — in my opinion it's an archaic remnant of past inadequacies of composition."
• Admires Beethoven, Haydn, Mozart; Paranoia was "a deliberate attempt to be 'Purple Motioney'", Arbitrary (uploaded to hornet) "a realistic song somewhat in a standard basehead style".
• Favourite trackers: ryan-cramer ("professional, smooth, and ambient"), necros ("you get both 'December' and 'Bugs in my head'"), Ranger Rick ("awesome sample offsets and whacked out rhythmic melodies"), phoenix (Synaesthesia "makes my head spin"), Liam the Lemming ("a Purple Motion that actually writes music"). Non-computer: Leo Kottke, BeauSoleil, Counting Crows.
• Songs: Continuity (his NAID entry — best "technically and balance-wise"); unreleased stream-of-consciousness pieces Filtration, Red, Newer, Strife, Brain Dead, Deterioration; for melodies Brain Density, Guilty, Swig; Sideswipes "for being a cool song with a rhythm".
• Plans: computer science, professor — "or maybe I'll move to the bahamas and write lewd novels". Greets SV, lb, miss saigon, Defiance, bigjim.

Practical takeaways#

• The "borrowed instruments" start: load someone else's module, audition the samples, find a melody, clear the patterns — the same trick Psibelius taught beginners (tracking-workflow, s-tw003-beginning-the-tracking-experience); credit the samples (sample-ripping).
• A fixed three-sample palette (sine lead, filter synth, one lead) removes decisions and lets you write fast — a chip-style constraint (chip-samples, instrument-design).
• Read the sample crediting of a song before calling it ripped — the #8 charge rested on it.
• Ranger Rick's "sample offsets" as a named 1995 example for sample-offset.

Notable quotes#

• "I just write away until I hit a mental block or 30 patterns, whichever comes 1st." — Perisoft
• "You don't need that stuff — in my opinion it's an archaic remnant of past inadequacies of composition." — Perisoft, on theory

Relevance#

The other side of the Basehead ripping row of #8–#9 (sample-ripping), Defiance's leadership history, and two contrasting workflows: sample-audition-then-clear, and stream-of-consciousness on three samples.

Pages touched#

perisoft, defiance, epinicion, basehead, necros, phoenix, ryan-cramer, scream-tracker-3, gravis-ultrasound, sample-ripping, tracking-workflow, hornet, traxweekly.