TW #87 — Interview with Perisoft (Pizza Head)
Pizza Head's first interview for TraxWeekly, an unformatted IRC log that psibelius printed uncorrected; the subject is perisoft, interviewed before in #11 (May 1995) and known in the wiki from necros's 1995 reply to his sample piece (see sample-ripping). Pizza Head introduces himself as 17, starting a group with Troll and Sublime, reachable at PiZZa_HeaD@juno.com and on irc.neato.org #trax.
Key claims#
- David Wiernicki, "10 and 8 years old", from Ithaca, NY, "really in the middle of nowhere". Began by downloading scream-tracker-3 from cdrom.com and hearing "Insideout" on a Sound Blaster Pro — "I'll NEVER be able to do this at all, why would you want to" — then wrote "a really bad bad bad ass 8 channel song with 1 sample"; first modules heard: the Panic soundtrack, "insideout", "armani.s3m" ("WHICH STILL ROX").
- Inspiration until recently was the sounds themselves — "the sound of a sample or a rezo flange" — "I'll start out making a pattern with the sounds, and the song will go from there based on my mood"; now "all in my head", and from CD tracks. Favourite artists Underworld and Orbital; in tracking basehead ("very wonderful sounding songs and they're just perfect musically as well"); Necros "too damned idle to be on the list anymore".
- Output: "25 or 30 tunes on cdrom, I think.. about 5 of them are good"; written "upwards of 150 or 160" — "it's always the last 5 which are any good". Tells readers to delete his
D-*.S3Mfiles and keep only his ITs. Last real release: "Attraction" (cc_attr*, the Capacala prefix), written around March 1996; his computer had been dead for six weeks; new songs "will probably be upward of 8meg now". - Groups: the graphics group VeXT (1994), merged into "the ubiquitous" epinicion (until 1995); founded Defiance with zer0 and Ranger Rick, which "died soon after naid '95"; Capacala as a graphician ("but then we died too"); in January 1997 a trance/techno band with a friend (Supamart) doing co-ops and gigs, "not scene-releasing" — "most people aren't interested in releasing 75meg wave files over the internet"; graphics for Opiate's game.
- Best tracker: impulse-tracker — "because it's got 120 channels on a fast computer, great support behind it, great advancement, and is the only tracker that can make a truely CD quality song (by diskwriting and support of huge samples)"; and "a phat ass interface"; a jab at "ft2 gimps".
- Plays the violin "for years"; imagines a "techno-lin with pickups and effects pads on the neck" — "just imagin glissandoing your violin, and out coems a rezo flange".
- Advice: "you CAN make good quality with a tracker, and you shouldn't think that because it's a tracker it's limited. use your brain, think of everything you can do with your hardware".
Practical takeaways#
- Start from a sound: build one pattern around a sample or an effect and let the song grow from the mood (tracking-workflow).
- IT's disk writer and large-sample support made "CD quality" modules a stated goal by January 1997 — the road to the release workflow on commercial-tracking.
- Five good songs out of 150 written was a working tracker's honest ratio.
Notable quotes#
- "you CAN make good quality with a tracker, and you shouldn't think that because it's a tracker it's limited" — Perisoft.
Relevance#
Perisoft's own account of his groups (VeXT, Epinicion, Defiance, Capacala) and of IT as the CD-quality tool; a "sound first" workflow. His 1995 interview (#11) is summarised separately for perisoft; liam-the-lemming recalls Perisoft recruiting for Defiance in 1995 (source: s-tw066-interview-liam-the-lemming).
Pages touched#
perisoft, impulse-tracker, scream-tracker-3, epinicion, tracking-workflow, commercial-tracking, basehead, necros, psibelius, liam-the-lemming, traxweekly.