shawnm (Shawn, NOISE)
Head of the Quebec group New Objectives In Sound Exploration (noise-group), an orchestral-percussion student at McGill who tracked in scream-tracker-3 and preached ear over theory and "do what you hear" over the "realism" fad. Two sources: his January 1996 traxweekly interview (source: s-tw041-interview-shawnm) and his February 1996 article "Serial Composition", signed "shawnm / New Objectives In Sound Exploration (shawnm@citenet.net)" — the same nick, group and domain as the interview's www.citenet.net/noise (source: s-tw046-serial-composition). Only the first name is printed.
Facts#
- NOISE had existed "for about a year" in January 1996; members Benoit Charland (Benny), Harry, "Van Halen", danielm and SamH, none active on the Internet; releases on
www.citenet.net/noiseand ftp.cdrom.com. Styles: techno, ambient, industrial, hard rock, "classical" (source: s-tw041-interview-shawnm). - Training: drum set from about 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, studio sessions. His theory is classical — Bach chorales, Renaissance modal counterpoint — as against the "jazz theory" of basehead and necros; theory helps but "it's the SOUND that's important, and that can be done with a good EAR" (source: s-tw041-interview-shawnm).
- Workflow: load ST3, play with samples until a direction appears, then track; tunes are finished in one sitting or parked until inspiration returns. Makes his own samples, rips some and credits them. Loops and self-played riffs are fair; lifted CD passages used as the core of a tune are not; the-grey-note passes because its samples are rearranged (source: s-tw041-interview-shawnm; see sample-ripping).
- Tools: MultiTracker (MTM) before ST3; prefers ST3 and sees no need yet for fasttracker-2's features (source: s-tw041-interview-shawnm).
- Opinions: the Internet, not the formats, multiplied both good and bad music; 16-bit/44 kHz samples will not matter as much as the jump from 4 to 16 channels; the scene's biggest problem is "this weird need to try to create 'real' music" instead of good music — do not copy Necros's acoustic guitar or the pan flute of "Ascent of the Cloud Eagle" (source: s-tw041-interview-shawnm; see realism-in-tracked-music).
- Wrote "Serial Composition" (TW #46, 8 February 1996), a twelve-tone primer for trackers, although he had "never seen any tracked music that uses serial technique" and is "not a very big fan of serial music"; his advice to trackers who find tonal theory hard is to listen to Webern first (source: s-tw046-serial-composition; see serial-composition).
Related#
noise-group · vadimvs · serial-composition · scream-tracker-3 · sample-ripping · realism-in-tracked-music · the-grey-note · tracking-workflow