TW #63 — Interview with Ryan (Kleitus)
Kleitus (Seth Katzman) interviews Ryan of Grey — a 4,600-word IRC log, edited by Ryan himself, that is mostly jokes; Kleitus disclaims "the lameness that follows". This Ryan is Ryan Sprott of Grey, not Ryan Cramer (interviewed in #7) and not pinion (Ryan Hunt) — his first answer is that his real name "should be evidence enough that i am NOT RYAN CRAMER". The facts below are what survives the banter.
Key claims#
- Ryan Sprott, Tivy High School, Kerrville, Texas; born in Germany, lived across Europe until 8, then San Antonio and El Paso (his father was in the army); tech support for his ISP during the interview ("i lost my job about 2 days after this interview... coincidence? nah"). "Nearly five years" on IRC, in the scene since August 1995.
- Grey: founded by him one night in #group, named by Skie — "one can only take so much outer-space innuendo"; members Ryan, hunz, gblues, luvk, skie, imager, cd and qporcupine; "a music group, mostly" with coders and graphicians; releases at
ftp.fm.org/pub/music/grey/"while it's still up"; a web page planned. - Introduced to tracking in July 1995 by a colleague at the phone company, "wireman", "a REALLY good tracker" who releases nothing; "about 90% of my samples come from him... the rest from basehead".
- Ripping: "i think sample ripping is fine... i myself don't own anything i can sample from"; old Amiga elites ripped (Heatbeat "for a while", says Kleitus), and SoundTracker modules were "100% ripped samples" from the ST disks "and they still manage to rock" (sample-ripping).
- Favourites — Amiga: Dizzy, Audiomonster, Jester, Bit, Bit Arts, Chorus & Sid, Heatbeat, Airon, Sidewinder, Moby, Clawz, Brainbug, Vinnie, Virgill, Jogeir Liljedahl ("anyone who hasn't raided aminet deserves a vergazo"); PC: basehead, Mellow-D, Zake, wireman. Songs: Basehead's "Urban Culture Bomb", Dizzy's "Banana Split", Bit Arts's "ba1". Overrated: necros ("he's not the god everyone says he is"), Elwood, skaven, purple-motion, rage, Captain; underrated: the Amiga names, Mellow-D and Basehead ("bashing basehead and mellow-d has become what bashing pm and skaven was... people are just jealous"), Injekted, Ded Silence, everyone in Grey; gblues's remix of Romeo Knight's "Boesendorfer P.S.S." recommended.
- Style: none fixed — "i think i'll track a house tune... and do it... i don't say 'oh, i only track THIS and THAT'". Has not tracked "for a LONG time"; works full time; a co-op with gblues for Music Contest 4 is the tune he is proudest of. Lyrics written for many tunes, never put in.
- Music Contest 4's "player controversy": IT users had an advantage because no standalone IT player existed; his proposal — judge each format in its own tracker (FT2 for XM and MOD, ST3 for S3M, MMEdit for MTM); "cubic player fuxors up most of my tunes" (compos).
- Had met lord-pegasus ("lpegasus", Zack) the day before — "still in kosmic", on a six-week road trip with a broken keyboard (source: same log).
- Claims "the record for 'most tunes rated *' in demonews for a single composer" and wants them all deleted — and objects that Death's "Onion Breath Monster" got the same star (hornet).
- Tools: uses fasttracker-2 — IT and FT2 "are great programs... better than st3, and look how long st3 lasted"; wishes Pulse "would stop changing the damn tracker so much, and put in mouse/ems support" (impulse-tracker).
- Scene forecast: "a big population boom" — "we're just going to be inundated with trackers... i don't think many of them will be very good, or have the willpower to stay with it and become good".
- Objects to the view that TW "should not contain interviews with 'non-elite' people". The vergazo, defined at length, is a Spanish vulgarity.
Practical takeaways#
- The 1996 argument that "all samples are ripped anyway" (SoundTracker's ST disks, Heatbeat) in its plainest form.
- MC4's judging problem — no IT player in mid-1996 — explains why IT users saved as S3M (see s-tw062-interview-vegas).
Notable quotes#
- "look at people who wrote soundtracker mods... all they were doing was ripping, in essence... 100% ripped samples, and they still manage to rock" — Ryan.
- "i have great ideas in my head, but i try to get them into the tracker and they go thbpt" — Ryan.
Relevance#
Identifies the third "Ryan" of TraxWeekly; a sourced Aminet-era list of Amiga composers as heard from the PC side; the MC4 player controversy; a pro-ripping position; Grey's releases hosted on fm.org.
Pages touched#
ryan-sprott, pinion, sample-ripping, hornet, fasttracker-2, impulse-tracker, basehead, necros, rage, compos, five-musicians, traxweekly.