Zinc (Justin Ray)

Tracker from British Columbia and the most prolific interviewer and columnist of later traxweekly (listed as staff in the 1997 sheet; source: s-tw106-a-little-panning). Wrote "IT Percussion Tips" (#75, 25 October 1996) — panning, tuning, volume and NNA practice for impulse-tracker 2.06 (source: s-tw075-it-percussion-tips) — and conducted the "Faces in the Crowd" interviews of 1996 (see below), the catspaw interview (#57), the #trax mass interview (#80) and the skaven interview (#109) (sources: s-tw057-interview-catspaw, s-tw080-trax-mass-interview, s-tw109-interview-skaven).

Background (source: s-tw032-interview-zinc)#

• Justin, 18 in October 1995; founded the group Radiance in mid-1995 with Jake Blues (XM) and acidfrog (jungle/trip-hop); releases prefixed ZNC-, packs RADPACK1/2.ZIP; later of Chill / Profound (staff sheet).
• Tracking since January 1995; preferred scream-tracker-3's editor to FastTracker's. Strengths: combining samples nobody else would ("pianos and electric guitars with rave buzzes") and melody; a piano in half his songs. Starts from a short melody and a few good samples.
• Influences Acidfrog and Skaven; plays guitar, no theory. Ripping is fine only for those without equipment — "if you do and you still rip, you're lazy".
• Radiance later: loki joined in November 1995 and describes it as "put together by Zinc and imager" (source: s-tw035-interview-loki; see Contradictions); Acidfrog (Cam Goodman, 19, a DJ) said in January 1996 "I was in the group Radiance, and Spice" and was "in limbo" with lok (source: s-tw044-interview-acidfrog).
• Chill Productions, his 1997 affiliation, was founded in Toronto in 1995 by deus-ex, a techno/trance composer who "was getting flack" for his style, his GUS and FastTracker; WHQ Sight & Sound BBS, European HQ in the Netherlands (source: s-tw034-interview-deus-ex).
• Gear and asides: owned "just an ACE" gravis-ultrasound and lived near Gravis's headquarters; "the GUS PnP has a hardware limit of 8megs!" (May 1996) (source: s-tw060-interview-fisherman); "I'm not a FT2 fan" (April 1996); came last in a 20-minute-chip-compo once; "Those Euroz act like snobs sometimes to us NA's"; notes that some trackers memorise melodies in tracker notation (C-4 64) (sources: s-tw054-interview-scirocco, s-tw055-interview-clef).

Impromptu Compo (source: s-tw041-interview-zinc)#

Started the ImpromptuCompo in #trax (channel #ImpCompo, with gd): a 45-minute timed compo with a DCC'd pack of regular-quality samples and no channel limit — the full-sample counterpart of the 20-minute-chip-compo; four editions by January 1996. He himself placed 15th (3.29 of 9) in 20mc compo #8 on 28 October 1995 (source: s-tw032-20-minute-chip-compo).

Faces in the Crowd interviewer (1996–98)#

• The column's main interviewer from #42: balrog (#42), acidfrog (#44), vadimvs (#50), daedalus and ganja-man (#52 — the Ganja Man header reads [Zinc] and every question is from <zinc>, though the TOC lists Daedalus), quantam-porcupine and scirocco (#54) and clef (#55): eight of the twelve FITC interviews between January and April 1996. He had "done about 3 interviews this week alone" in late March 1996; most were IRC logs left "in tact" (sources: s-tw042-interview-balrog, s-tw044-interview-acidfrog, s-tw050-interview-vadimvs, s-tw052-interview-daedalus, s-tw052-interview-ganja-man, s-tw054-interview-quantam-porcupine, s-tw054-interview-scirocco, s-tw055-interview-clef).
• #60 (May 1996), with fisherman: stated the column's charter — "every musicians' chance to get his/her 15 minutes of fame ... there was a time when even Basehead was a nobody!" — in answer to complaints about interviewing "nobodys"; signed "SE/Thought"; "TraxTips #2 is still in the works", with catspaw "picking up the slack" (source: s-tw060-interview-fisherman).
• #119 (16 February 1998), with mental-floss — the last issue of the archive and Mental Floss's first TW interview; Zinc offered him a co-op (source: s-tw119-interview-mental-floss).

Writing#

"Layman's Music Theory PART ONE" (#107, 1 August 1997): triads, roots, the four triad types, interval qualities (M/m/P/dim/aug) and a table of intervals, written because he had "absolutely no formal music training" and every theory article was "written for the learned man"; no further part appears in the archive (source: s-tw107-laymans-music-theory; the content is on semitone-math and diatonic-chords).

Two 1997 technique pieces: "Stereo Samples with Impulse Tracker" (#94, 9 April 1997) — load the left and right halves of a stereo file as two samples, pan them hard and play both on adjacent channels (source: s-tw094-stereo-samples-in-impulse-tracker; see stereo-panning) — and "Studio Tracking Tips" (#96, 1 May 1997), some forty studio rules adapted to IT, signed "Justin Ray aka Zinc, Chill Productions / Profound Records" (source: s-tw096-studio-tracking-tips; see tracking-workflow, sample-looping, reverb-and-compression).

Contradictions#

• Radiance's founders. Zinc's own account: "I got 2 other musicians together" — Jake Blues and Acidfrog (source: s-tw032-interview-zinc). loki: Radiance "was put together by Zinc and imager" (source: s-tw035-interview-loki). Not resolved; both versions are also on loki.
• Acidfrog's membership. This page records him as a co-founder in mid-1995; in January 1996 he speaks of Radiance in the past tense ("I was in the group Radiance, and Spice") and is "in limbo" with LoK — possibly he had left (source: s-tw044-interview-acidfrog).

Related#

impulse-tracker · stereo-panning · instrument-design · 20-minute-chip-compo · catspaw · skaven · sample-looping · tracking-workflow · acidfrog · loki · deus-ex · balrog · clef · fisherman · mental-floss · traxweekly

Sources#

s-tw032-interview-zinc · s-tw041-interview-zinc · s-tw075-it-percussion-tips · s-tw106-a-little-panning · s-tw057-interview-catspaw · s-tw080-trax-mass-interview · s-tw109-interview-skaven · s-tw032-20-minute-chip-compo · s-tw107-laymans-music-theory · s-tw094-stereo-samples-in-impulse-tracker · s-tw096-studio-tracking-tips · s-tw034-interview-deus-ex · s-tw035-interview-loki · s-tw042-interview-balrog · s-tw044-interview-acidfrog · s-tw050-interview-vadimvs · s-tw052-interview-daedalus · s-tw052-interview-ganja-man · s-tw054-interview-quantam-porcupine · s-tw054-interview-scirocco · s-tw055-interview-clef · s-tw060-interview-fisherman · s-tw119-interview-mental-floss