TW #119 — Interview with Mental Floss (Zinc)

zinc interviews mental-floss of kosmic, "a long-time tracker we all know and love", in the last issue of the archive — his first TraxWeekly interview, "lovingly edited" by Zinc. The useful core is how he plays tracked music live and what he wants from impulse-tracker.

Key claims#

• Andrew McCallum, 21, in Kosmic "since about 1994", "i write techno"; studying Administration and Information Management at Ryerson University, Toronto, working at Netcom. Tracking "about 6-7 years"; "a 10-year background in Piano, 5 in Oboe, and 1 with Guitar". Playing raves around Toronto for about two years — a small fan base, "almost anyone in the Toronto rave scene" knows the name; an album, Grey Matter, about two years before (1996), "which had more success than I was prepared for" and took him onto the Dr. Trance Show (about 50,000 listeners) and into campus papers; recording all his music to CD — four CDs, "about 60 songs or so", so far; a CD planned for 1998.
• Theory's value for techno: not a direct impact, but it helps keep "a lot of stuff happening on different levels" under control "instead of just following one idea"; techno is "more monophonic than a lot of 'real world music'... Thinking monophonically is a bit of a mental change" (arrangement).
• DJs too, but prefers "Musician"; the name Mental Floss is for "any music that I've created out of inspiration", other names for "commercial cheeze in order to get money to buy the gear that I want".
• Playing tracked music live ("Whatever works"): "I essentially create one pattern, and turn all the channels off except one. Start with that, and turn the channels on and off as you want different parts to come in"; layer effects from an FX box ("I prefer guitar-style pedal boards"); play along on a Yamaha CS1x ("very nice"); two computers — one with only a GUS Classic, the main one with a GUS PnP and 8 MB — cross-faded against each other or between programs; about five systems in a set: Cubase, ReBirth, Impulse Tracker, iPLAY "and sometimes a horrid combination of all of those". The Toronto drum-and-bass act Sourfly does the same with two computers and two copies of fasttracker-2, muting and unmuting channels; "a mixer is pretty much a given" (live-tracking, gravis-ultrasound).
• Beat-matching: hard, because "tracking programs don't cue well" and not all his songs share a BPM; he bridges with ambient sections or stops the song "and let the FX box let the song trail out with a long echo". He asked the ModPlug author (olivierl@jps.net) for "Denon-CD player style mixing controls" and cueing in a player; "the tracker program is a priority" — readers who want DJ controls are invited to write (olivier-lapicque, openmpt).
• Some parts must be pre-sequenced — "some techno is just too intricate to play live" — but a significant amount stays live "because.. well... it just feels nice"; melodies are laid down in advance with some ad-libbing; mixes "by feel" from a playlist he rearranges on the fly.
• Next gear: "A) A sampler with filters B) An effects box"; after the CS1x "I just had to go back to tracking. Synths are nice, but you just have a bigger sound stock by using samples, and more control."
• IT wishes: "a basic sample editor... like in FT2. Being able to cut off the beginning, normalize samples, etc."; "I think Jeff Lim has done a great job with the tracker so far, and when he just added the ability to filter it made it even better"; "more MIDI<->Tracker capabilities" and "the ability to syncronize/start IT by MIDI", so a tracked song could be mastered on a 64-channel console "by isolating each sample, playing it from beginning to end, with it all being syncronized" (midi-in-trackers, sync, jeffrey-lim).
• POTS ("Plain Old Telephone System"): a RealAudio live-to-net concert on 24 January 1998, the idea from Future Sound of London's ISDN; about 120 listeners online and 200–300 people at the POTS2 party "in my livingroom"; notification list via mentalfloss@techno.ca.
• On commercial viability: tracked music can be played live, "but playing live isn't a requirement of commercial viability"; commercial exploitation of tracker-style programs "started 2 years ago" — "trackers are capable of putting out studio-style quality (or at least close) music that will sell, so why not. And the cost of creating the music is free" (commercial-tracking).
• Styles: "Trance based stuff", drum and bass, minimal techno, house, funky house, Rotterdam, hard trance, "soft piano music", ambient — "music that sucks your head in". Wants to play raves across North America and Europe for expenses; co-ops discussed with Keith303 and Kom'ah (and Zinc).
• Influences: FSOL, The Orb, Plastikman, Dune / Orange, Placid and maelcum of Kosmic, "early basehead stuff" (basehead), Timelord, ChuckB; "Most of my tracked music knowledge is about 3 years old".
• Web page http://www.kosmic.org/mentalfloss; 800 unanswered personal messages.

Practical takeaways#

• The mute/unmute live set: one long pattern with every part on its own channel, then channels on and off as the arrangement — transferable to any tracker with channel muting, including LSDj's live mode (live-tracking).
• Cueing and BPM matching are the tracker's live weaknesses; plan ambient bridges or FX tails between songs.
• Samples beat synths for "sound stock" and control; a filtering sampler was the missing piece (instrument-design).
• MIDI sync into the tracker (IT started by MIDI) is what a console mixdown needs — the IT feature list of early 1998 lacked it (sync).

Notable quotes#

• "Whatever works." — Mental Floss, on playing tracked music live.
• "Synths are nice, but you just have a bigger sound stock by using samples, and more control." — Mental Floss.

Relevance#

The most concrete description of a live tracker set in the archive; a Kosmic musician crossing into the Toronto rave scene with an album and radio play; early-1998 IT wishes (sample editor, MIDI sync) and the ModPlug request. The TOC also lists his "Letter from Mental Floss" (#66) and "RealAudio Broadcast" (#103), not ingested. Not to be confused with Floss (George Nowik), co-author of the 20-minute-chip-compo column (source: s-tw032-20-minute-chip-compo).

Pages touched#

mental-floss, live-tracking, commercial-tracking, impulse-tracker, fasttracker-2, gravis-ultrasound, midi-in-trackers, sync, jeffrey-lim, olivier-lapicque, openmpt, kosmic, maelcum, basehead, zinc, arrangement, instrument-design, traxweekly.