The Zapper (Marc Girard, Force Ten)
Musician of Force Ten (zapper@autoroute.net), a group of friends from the Montreal suburbs that is also a real band (Zapper on bass and synths), and of the demo group The Apollo Project. Wrote "Loops and Extended Samples" in traxweekly #25 — the case for long guitar/drum loops and how to keep them in time (source: s-tw025-loops-and-extended-samples); Szalemandre counted "the Zapper" among the makers of the classic early chiptunes he collected (source: s-tw037-death-of-the-chiptune-debate).
Background (source: s-tw027-interview-zapper)#
- Marc Girard, 22 in September 1995, computer technician. Started with Sonix 2.0 on the Amiga, made his first
.modon an Atari ST with NoiseTracker, and began composing in earnest on a Gravis Ultrasound with "ProTracker 4 GUS" (see protracker). First release Distorted Music Disk; a song from it won Amiga Convention 94; 23rd in Music Contest 3; music for the demo Night Life (coded by Kodiak); an ASM'95 co-op tune with IOR. - Own samples: "99 % of the samples I use were sampled/edited/processed by me", from a Korg Poly-61, Roland JX-8P and Yamaha DX7 through a Yamaha FX-500 and a small mixer, with a Shure SM57 for amplified bass and guitar; he supplies the other Force Ten members.
- Believes playing an instrument teaches "the technique to apply to your tracker — how to make it feel" (slides, vibrato); necros complimented his real-sounding bass lines. Composes by jamming for hours over a tracked arrangement.
- Covered Jarre's Oxygène IV; notes that the Amiga "Sonix Lead" is all over Second Reality (purple-motion, skaven). Influenced by Purple Motion, Necros and progressive rock; names jase among his favourite trackers (Jase's own interview, a month earlier: s-tw022-interview-jase).
"Distance" at Assembly '95#
necros's review column rated "Distance" (S3M) 7.5: the main theme sits on two extended samples from a Mr. Big CD that set up the chord change, then drums, "really really nice" fretless bass and organs build "a very nice modern rock groove"; heard first at the Mini-Impulse party, "I could _barely_ tell that this was tracked". It was disqualified from the ASM95 voting because of the extended samples — the very constraint Zapper argued against in #25 — and its weakness was structure, the same riff repeating "possibly because of the extended samples being somewhat limited"; Necros calls him "a fine Montreal native, and leader of the music group Force Ten" (source: s-tw024-in-review-asm95; his own case for long samples: s-tw025-loops-and-extended-samples).
Related#
sample-looping · chiptune · pitch-slide-and-portamento · vibrato · protracker · compos · necros · jase
Sources#
s-tw027-interview-zapper · s-tw025-loops-and-extended-samples · s-tw037-death-of-the-chiptune-debate · s-tw024-in-review-asm95 · s-tw022-interview-jase