As I read Ghandy`s article about the musicscene I figured I had to, as a musician, state my point of view and comment a few things. First let me correct a thing here. Ghandy said: Not to forget that compared to play MP3 songs from the charts collecting those modules is legal as there`s no copyright for this kind of freeware.

All music IS copyrighted (unless other is stated). If you decide to distribute your music free, that`s up to you. But you own the music. If someone else is making money of your music without your knowledge and approval, you have the right to sue him/her. The problem is you have to prove the music is yours, and that you made it first. And that`s the tricky bit.


Now there`s too much music on the internet. Yes. Too much. There`s no way in HELL you can keep track of everything. There`s only a slim chance the wide masses will ever hear your work. Just take me as an example. How many of you have heard songs by me, apart from the ones that have been featured in Hugi? Not many, still I have a pretty well established name. Even if very few of you have heard my non-Hugiwork there are a lot of musicians who hardly no one listen to. And that`s very frustrating. And that`s in my experience the first reason for joining or forming a group. To have some steady listeners who gives you feedback. It`s not as easy as Ghandy makes it sound to join a wellknown group and people will leech your music. If you`re not really, and I mean REALLY good at what you do there`s no chance you`ll be accepted into an established group. That`s why so many groups are formed. Because it`s hard to get attention as a musician these days, and frankly it`s because there`re too many musicians!

If you take a look on the charts you`ll see the same names as you did five years ago, which kind of proves that it`s only the really good and big musicians we remember.







Shit and crap

When I was as most active about a year ago I downloaded so much music I thought my modem would blow up. And even I, as a very dedicated member of the musicscene/demoscene didn`t keep very good track of the names the musicians had. Because I couldn`t! It would be like memorizing random words in a dictionary and associate each with a different person. It`s hell. I had my favourites which I checked out regularly, and many of them were the ones on the charts as they were the established ones. They were the easiest to find, and you knew you`d get quality music. Something you can`t say about many trackers. The web is flooded with low quality bullshit, which for a long time made me hesitate to download new artists (as 50% was absolute rubbish). That`s why I started to stick to party compos and artists I knew. Which is kind of sad, as you miss a lot of good music that way. But at the same time you don`t want to filter out all the shit to get to the good stuff. I`m not interested in hearing a 13 year old kids FiRsT MoDuLe EvErRrRrR!!!!!!!!! For gods sake, please! Compare your music to what can be considered average, and don`t spread it in public unless it can qualify as that. If you want feedback ask friends or people you meet on IRC. Also ask them to be honest, and don`t get pissed off if they say it`s shite. Ask them what to change to make it less shitty.



Talking about tracker GUI`s

I can`t really understand what Ghandy means when he says the looks of PT on amiga is better than on FT. It`s a matter of taste, but personally I prefer FT. And I`ve worked a lot with PT as well, it`s all about what you`re used to. That`s why I`m not changing to IT, because I find the GUI terrible. Even if IT is a better program than FT, I still prefer FT.

I can agree with Ghandy that a music program that is older than any operating system anyone is using on PC these days (and was coded long before many of us even had pubic-hairs) is scary. But that only shows how superb the program was when it first was released. Still we cannot live in the past. Even a tracker has to move on sometime. But until I find a program that suits me better, I`ll keep Fasttracker (FT). No matter how old it is, it still does what it`s supposed to. Produce cheap and small music.






As a final touch to the article I`m going to answer the same questions as Assign did.

Showtime (ST): At the beginning, typical for my interviews, please introduce yourself to the public with your name, age, job, hobbies etc.


Makke: My real name is Marcus Nilsson, I`m 20 years old and I live in Sweden. Right now I`m in the army (Until the 8`th December 2000), and I`m also just about to move from my parents. After the army I will study and hopefully become a computer engineer. When I`m not in the army or hanging with my friends (which nowadays is what I do most of the time) I sit in front of the computer doing nothing, music or writing.


ST:How did it come that you`ve started to make music on your computer?


Makke: I got a copy of FT for Amiga sometime in ‘93/`94 by my good friend Wolk. I played around for a few years and didn`t become very active in the scene up until late 97. I`ve always been interested in music.


ST:The list of MusicGroups in the net is endless. What does a new crew have to do to be part of this circle??


Makke: Getting established in a small circle of people first. Get a bunch of steady listeners and do not expand too fast. You don`t want to push your stuff on people, and when they finally download it, it`s crap. They won`t download any of your stuff again. What I mean is, don`t get lots of people to download your music unless you`re sure it`s something they`ll listen to more than once.







ST:Could you please introduce us a bit into the music Scene?


Makke: Check out The Good Stuff. Can`t really remember the URL right now, but sites like that is a good start. That way you`ll be sure to get high quality music.


ST:How did the foundation of TDR take place and which people are members of this crew?


Makke: I don`t have the slightest idea and at least no me


ST:What do you think about the highly discussed MP3`s in Demos or at music-compos at parties??


Makke: I used to think it really sucked, but I`ve changed my mind a bit. I still think modules are to be preferred. But as I myself have released a few songs in MP3 I know the good sides of MP3`s (you`re able to mix the track better, add real reverbs etc.). The most disturbing thing with music in demos these days is the use of commercial music. My idea of a demo-production is to do everything yourself, a true in house production. It`s even more disturbing when it`s the elite groups who do these kinds of rip-off. The ones who really shouldn`t have to do that. I read an interview with Made somewhere…was it in Static Line or was it Orange Juice? Don`t really remember. He said something about there being to few good musicians in the scene, and that no one can produce music professional enough. Bullshit. You just have to look. And even if you get an idea for a demo from a commercial track you can ask a musician to make something similar and in the same style, and then make the demo from that song.