TW #41 — Interview with Shawn (shawnm / NOISE)

DennisC interviews Shawn (IRC nick shawnm), head of the small group New Objectives In Sound Exploration (NOISE), an orchestral-percussion student who tracks in scream-tracker-3. The same shawnm wrote "Serial Composition" five issues later (s-tw046-serial-composition: same group, same citenet.net address).

Key claims#

• NOISE had been around "for about a year" in January 1996 and "isn't too well known"; it began with "strange stuff" and moved to normal styles done differently — techno, ambient, industrial, hard rock, "classical". Members, none active on the Internet: Benoit Charland (Benny), Harry, "Van Halen" (an alias), danielm and, newly, SamH. Releases at http://www.citenet.net/noise and on ftp.cdrom.com.
• Workflow: type ST3, "fool around with my samples for a while, and get some musical ideas"; nothing is tracked before he has a direction. Two modes: the rare tune finished in one sitting, or a tune half done that "sits around, until some new inspiration hits". "Good samples are VERY important"; he makes his own, rips some, and credits what he borrows.
• Background: drum set from about age 7, five years of concert band (tuba, percussion), two years of CEGEP classical percussion, then a B.Mus in orchestral percussion at McGill; jazz, salsa/latin-jazz, Indian classical music, studio sessions.
• Theory: his is classical — Bach four-voice chorales, Renaissance modal counterpoint — as opposed to the "jazz theory" of basehead and necros. It helps but is not necessary: maelcum, phoenix and Karl have none; "it's the SOUND that's important, and that can be done with a good EAR"; theory "will develop naturally if you have the ear".
• Quality: the Internet's popularity, not the "more powerful formats", brought more music — more good and "TONS of more bad music". S3M/XM over 4-channel MOD was a real gain, but he is "not yet convinced that 16bit-44kHz samples will be as big an advantage as the jump from 4-16 channels was".
• Tools: prefers ST3; fasttracker-2 offers more features he does not need yet; before ST3 he used MultiTracker (MTM) and expects to switch again eventually.
• Newcomers have the advantage of examples and helpers (no tracker is complicated) and the disadvantage of a huge scene where nobody listens: "Most people would rather get a Necros tune than a NOISE tune."
• On #trax since June 1995; likes it when it discusses music, sampling, software and demos.
• Extended samples: drum loops are "perfectly legal — they're used in professional productions"; guitar riffs too, "hopefully played by whoever is making the tune"; what he rejects is a part copied off a band's CD used as a major part of the tune. the-grey-note passes because the samples are rearranged; solo fragments played end to end would not.
• The scene's biggest problem: "this weird need to try to create 'real' music" at the expense of writing good music — do not force acoustic guitar because Necros used it, nor the pan flute heard everywhere since "Ascent of the Cloud Eagle". Techno is legitimate; "do what you hear".
• Pride in what the scene did "without commercial intervention": NAID, the Freedom CD, KFMF.

Practical takeaways#

• Samples first, direction before the first note; park a stuck tune rather than force it.
• Ear before theory; classical counterpoint and jazz harmony are different theories, and neither is required.
• Loop and riff etiquette: loops and self-played riffs yes, lifted CD passages no; credit borrowed samples.
• Do not chase the "realism" fad or the current star's instrument palette.

Notable quotes#

• "It's the SOUND that's important, and that can be done with a good EAR." — shawnm.
• "Basically, it's 'do what you hear', 'do what you want', not 'do what people might like', or 'do whatever Necros does'." — shawnm.

Relevance#

The earliest statement in the archive of the anti-"realism" position, half a year before the #70–#73 debate; a clear sample-ripping etiquette; the MTM → ST3 → (FT2) path of a 1995 tracker; and the identification of the "Serial Composition" author.

Pages touched#

shawnm, noise-group, scream-tracker-3, fasttracker-2, sample-ripping, realism-in-tracked-music, the-grey-note, tracking-workflow, serial-composition, necros, basehead, maelcum, phoenix, kosmic.