TW #13 — Interview with Big Jim (Popcorn)

Popcorn heard Foreign Skys and "just had to interview the next Purple Motion": big-jim of Valhalla and the five-musicians, a British computer-science student who writes on guitar and then tracks. The second half drifts into a comparison of UK and Canadian phone bills (left out here).

Key claims#

• James Storer, 19 (20 in June 1995), second-year computer-science student at the University of Bradford, England — "take a tip from me … don't! It sucks. I wish I'd done music now."
• Musical family (his father); an Atari ST before the PC, where friends got him into demos and music; wrote computer music on the ST at about 14 for a year, then gave up; studied music for four years at school and college, composing "real" music — "writing a score and stuff"; back to modules from July/August 1994 (his tracking "increased way beyond reasonable proportions" that September, per s-tw003-interview-five-musicians).
• First PC in April 1994, for his course; a sound card a month later "cos I was sick of that damn beep": a Logitech Soundman 8-bit, then a Sound Blaster 16, then a standard gravis-ultrasound with 512 KB. First PC tune an AdLib tune; first tracker tune in scream-tracker-3 (Popcorn's first was in ST3 too — "I still suck!").
• IRC since September 1993 (university), but only regularly from Christmas 1994, after reading about #coders in a UK PC magazine in August 1994.
• Valhalla, December 1994: asked Oxide on IRC; sent songs; after Valhalla's 64k intro came 2nd at The Party he phoned Sandman, who had already heard the tunes — "Sure!". "UK bods get preference. Except xToto — cos he's cool!"
• FM: met Mellow-D on IRC; weeks later Mellow-D "had this new idea for a 'virtual band'" and asked him in. A co-op started by Mellow-D was in progress; he hoped to meet him at Assembly '95; a Valhalla musicdisk with Hollywood and co-ops was planned. No Music Contest 3 entry yet because of exams.
• Songs: Of a Land Beyond Hope began as the opening riff of a song written a year earlier; Foreign Skys was written on guitar and then tracked — "probably my 'nicest' sounding one, but as a piece of music" not his best: "only 3 different themes … I spent more time on the samples and then rushed the tracking … it gets boring half way through".
• Workflow: "differs every time" — load samples off the disk and play; make samples and see what they suggest; or work it out on the guitar and track it. Plays electric and classical guitar; no keyboards ("I'd like to"); violin as a child.
• Favourite composers: necros, basehead, Mellow-D, purple-motion, skaven, Hollywood (4-channel only — "I can't wait to teach him multichannel!"; on Aminet, unprefixed, e.g. mod.all, mod.x-t), leviathan, DNA-Groov (Anolog.s3m "rules"). Rock: Faith No More, Therapy?, Nirvana, Oasis; The Orb's Little Fluffy Clouds.
• Plans: a year's industrial placement at Hewlett-Packard near London from July 1995 ("a lot more spare time to track"), Assembly '95, Wired '95, NAID '96 money permitting. Popcorn: "ASM 95 is a total farce with all the SB support crap … like 2 steps back for the demoscene"; Big Jim: "it doesn't affect my entry in the music compo".
• Sign-off: "keep on trackin'… and werd to Necros' tracking tips cos they rule" (s-tw012-advanced-tracking-tips).

Practical takeaways#

• Write on an instrument, track afterwards — guitar riffs become module themes (tracking-workflow, melody-writing).
• Nice samples do not save thin material: three themes and a rushed arrangement "gets boring half way through" — budget time for structure, not only sounds (arrangement, instrument-design).
• A sound-card ladder of 1994: 8-bit card → SB16 → GUS 512 KB; the GUS was the destination (gravis-ultrasound).

Notable quotes#

• "I spent more time on the samples and then rushed the tracking. Which is why it sounds nice, but as a piece of music it isn't really great." — Big Jim
• "Werd to Necros' tracking tips cos they rule." — Big Jim

Relevance#

The FM member who named the band, in his own words: a trained composer's self-critique of a "nice-sounding" module, the guitar-first method, and Valhalla's and FM's 1995 plans; also Popcorn's status ("TraxWeekly Editor and … in Hornet") and his Assembly '95 complaint.

Pages touched#

big-jim, five-musicians, necros, basehead, purple-motion, skaven, leviathan, scream-tracker-3, gravis-ultrasound, tracking-workflow, hornet, traxweekly.