TW #57 — Interview with Catspaw (Zinc)
zinc's "conversational style" interview with catspaw of Rat, at quarter to one in the morning, Seattle time.
Key claims#
- Brandon Bannerman, Seattle; "Catsy" to his friends in Rat. Rat was started in 1993 by his friend Miran (Dude) as an art group of poets and a few trackers "to spite" the local warez kids — "basically a group built around local friendship in the Seattle area within art". Rat City BBS (206) 246-6647; files on ftp.eskimo.com
/u/c/catspaw/ratand on ftp.cdrom.com in the s3m and it directories. - Not fond of grunge; inspirations are 1980s metal (Megadeth, Iron Maiden, Slayer), Yanni, Holst, Beethoven, Loreena McKennitt, Enya and orchestral film scores; writes rock and indie styles and was moving toward an orchestral style.
- Greatest limitation: no musical training — "it's hard to come up with melodies sometimes when you just learned a few months ago what a key or time signature was"; envies the background of necros, basehead, Aahz and leviathan; his classically trained girlfriend helps.
- Tracker wish: a new format needs a player from day one — "if there's no program to play their format, people are going to be hesitant to track for it"; that made him wary of IT at first. He suggested to Pulse a command-line switch to play a song (with or without looping) straight from the tracker; Pulse was already working on an IT player. FT2 and IT "cater to entirely opposite schools of thought as far as user interface", loaded with features "80 % of the trackers out there won't need".
- Respects, talent-wise, Moby, Dr. Awesome, skaven, PM, and newer Vegas, Pulse, Chris Jarvis, Phoenix; attitude-wise Necros and Basehead ("great contributions"), Leviathan and Luvk ("just plain nice").
- Picked up ModEdit 2.0 three years earlier "with not a clue in the world even which notes were which"; had just started using IT (May 1996). Expected a child in October 1996 and doubted he would still be in the scene in two years.
- On tapes of his music: no objection to personal use, free copies or friends' compilations; had considered "shareware music" — cassettes handed out free in record shops; would only object to "major money" made without him hearing of it. "I've never understood how people can put a price tag on art."
- Released Sorrow's Redemption; often partners with Dude.
Practical takeaways#
- Learn the basics of keys and time signatures early — the self-taught tracker's own diagnosis of what held his melodies back.
- Toolmakers: ship a player with the format.
Notable quotes#
- "music is music. It's an act of creation." — Catspaw.
Relevance#
Fills in the author of "The Finishing Touches"; documents the 1996 adoption barrier for the IT format and the case for theory from someone without it.
Pages touched#
catspaw, zinc, impulse-tracker, jeffrey-lim, leviathan, necros, basehead, skaven.