Interview with Richard Kronfält
(aka Merlin, Gammelfar)
Could you tell a couple of words about yourself?
I'm currently 26, working as project manager at a software consulting company. I've always been interested in music and music-making, although in recent days I find myself without enough time to really make something creative. I've been living in Malmoe, in the south of Sweden, with my girlfriend for 3 years now.
How long have you been composing music?
Been playing the guitar since I was about 11 or 12 years old. Actually played the guitar in a couple of bands, starting at 12 or something. Didn't go very well :-), so when a friend got an Amiga 500 and we found a tracking-application for it, I got interested in making modules. I don't really know when this was but I think I was something like 13 or 14, but boy did those modules suck!? :-).
...And from there it went on. Got a 486 with a soundcard about around 1994, and got my hands on FastTracker. I knew a couple of guys who were also into the BBS scene around where I lived so I also started exploring that, with a 2k4baud modem and eventually (1995) started my own BBS - Garden BBS, that I focused on tracked music and on VisualBasic-programming :-). Through the BBS scene I got to know some guys in the Demo Scene. Some of the founders of some of my favorite BBSs turned out to be Demo Scene guys (mostly unknown Southern Sweden teams, but nevertheless). I started spreading my music and was surprised (and glad) to find that people actually liked it. So throughout 95, 96, 97 and parts of 98, I composed a lot of songs using Fast Tracker 2, which I spread either through BBSs and/or through my own homepage which I swapped the BBS for after 96.
In 98 I found myself wanting a bit better sound-quality so I started purchasing "real" music equipment. So since that moment I've been composing music on synthesizers instead.
Btw, where have you taken your nicknames, Merlin and Gammelfar from?
Gammelfar is Swedish and means something like "The Old Man" (a direct translation would be "Old Dad"), and was kind of what I felt like when I was 18 - 20 years old among a lot of 14-15-year-olds in the scene :-). I later changed it to Merlin to become more international ;-). Merlin is of course the wizard in the old stories, and I wanted a cool-sounding name that implied that I was doing my magic with Fast Tracker 2.
The last time I was trying to visit your homepage it was down. Is there any other place on the Web, where one could download all of your tunes at once?
Unfortunately no. I used to run my own website on my machine at the university where I studied, but once I was done there I lost my tasty T3 connection and thus the website was gone. I didn't really try to find a substitute host either, so....
Have you released anything since then (module or MP3)? I cannot recall any song of yours, released after '98.
I released a song in 99 or 2000 I believe. Titled "Even Colder Breath". It is actually a cover of one of my own songs :-), titled "Cold Breath". This time I made it with the sampler and the other stuff that I had at the time.
Most of your songs I've heard are dance. Do you like this kind of music? :)
Hehe, you see a pattern, ey? :-) I love dance music. Actually, I have always hated the braindead commercial "products" on the music scene, but once in a while there have been some innovative, fresh dance groups or one-hits that have been really cool. I've always loved those.
But I love all sorts of music. Anything from dance, electropop and industrial synth music to blues, jazz, hard-rock or swing. On the electronic side I've always admired Depeche Mode, Enigma and Yello. In recent days I've been listening a lot to "VNV Nation", "Apoptygma Berzerk" and "Dance or Die". But "moody" electronic music has always been my favourite. You know songs that communicate some kind of mystical or "cozy" feeling to the listener. I don't know if that has been reflected in my own music tho. I guess that's up to you :-). Come to think of it, one big idol of mine (still is) is a scene musician called "Elwood". Always loved his songs a lot. Wanted to sound exactly like him :-). Can you hook me up with his email address? :-)
And what about more-less modern tracker music (2000-2002)? Do you still listen to it or prefer "live" sound?
Unfortunately no. I haven't been able to keep track of the tracker music scene for the what.. past 4 years or something. I would like to, though.
Do you have any musical education? Or, maybe, are there other musicians in your family?
Well, I took Guitar evening-courses for a year when I was like 14, but I suppose that didn't really have such a big impact. I'm pretty much self-taught, but I've always managed to have friends with an equally big interest in making music so I guess we've influenced each other.
As for the family... Well, my mom's side is pretty creative. My cousin is a professional opera singer and my aunt (her mother) is a professional painter. So I guess it's somewhere in the genes... Or something :-)
Has the connection with the scene helped you somehow in your life?
Well, if nothing else, I guess it has somewhat helped boost my self-confidence. You know, it's always very nice to get positive comments from people about what you do. Personally, I don't really like my own songs. They are pretty bad - not so much musically, but sound-quality wise they really suck. I never really intended to be a "demo scene musician". I just wanted to make cool-sounding songs, and the equipment I could afford at the time was pretty much just a home-stereo, a SoundBlaster and FastTracker2. With the obvious down-side of a bit less sound-quality. I tried to switch to MIDI-based music as you know, but unfortunately I then had (and still have) too many other obligations "in real life" that I had to focus most of my energy on.
Have you thought about making money on your hobby (music)? Composing tunes for games and so on?
Yes. Two attempts... The first one was when I was asked by a couple of guys to create the music for a game they were developing called "Master of the Claw". It wasn't very serious though, so it never got released. I produced 5 songs for this. All of which are released and were available for download from my website when that was up.
The second attempt was actually when I tried to get the record companies interest for tracker music. Got some cool feedback, but it never lead anywhere.
So... I guess you could say that I've made no really serious attempts.
Have you ever had the idea that seven notes are not enough? :)
Yes. It is fairly common (I guess this is the same for most musicians) that you make a cool-sounding 16-bar mockup-song and you really dig the music etc. After 2 days of working and walking around with the melody in your head, you suddenly realize that the melody is from an old early-90s-house-tune or whatever. That so suxxx bigtime! :-). But, sometimes you strike gold. The specific melodic notes themselves do not really make the song. For me, it's more of a feeling that you get when you listen. And in my own music, I guess it's pretty often a melancholic and/or mystical feeling (or that is at least what I want [and hope] my songs to communicate in some way). I myself love music that communicate the same kind of feeling (no matter if it is "hard-rock", synthpop, trance or whatever). Great examples are VNV Nation and Enigma.
Many old tunes (it's a common trend, not for the scene only) had nice music, but terrible sound quality, a result of the low-grade sound equipment the musicians had. Now there's another trouble: the quality of sound has increased, but the quality of music has fallen down. Some works don't have any melody at all! What do you think about this?
I don't really know about the scene today. But I guess that I would have hoped and believed that the far superior tools of today would only change the quality of the sounds as the talents would remain the same. I suppose that the reason for this "non-melodic songs" is more a trend in the music genres than anything. I think there are still as many talented people as before.
One more question about commercial music. How do you think, is making music only to gain money a good idea or music should be free from any commerce?
Well, I could go on for ages about this. Music produced for commercial intentions only is really an outrage and an insult to all the people with even just an inch of real talent (i.e. talent that actually has to do with creativity and not only with large tits or nice biceps). I think it is so incredibly sad that the talented people of today have such a slim chance of actually becoming recognized (and get a chance to actually live of making music) in this huge mess of true crap-, and mainstream music. Imagine if these super-commercialistic strategies in the music industry would have been as widespread 20 years ago as they are now. Many of today's old-timers (I'm talking about the people who basically are the legends today) wouldn't have stood a chance back then.
I fear that there will be fewer and fewer true artists in the future, and more and more crap-music.
However, I have a trust in people that within a couple (I guess at least 10 though) of years, they will start realizing that the stuff played on the radio is garbage and that they instead will turn to the "underground music" and thereby make it much more popular (thus bringing out the talents into the public scene)... We will just have to wait, hope and see.
Traditionally we give the final word to the interviewed one. Would you like tell something else to our readers?
I would just like to say thank you to everyone who has ever downloaded and listened to any of my songs, and thanks a lot to all of you who have sent me e-mails and given me nice comments throughout the years.
I would also like to say that I hope to make some new material really soon, although so far my working schedule has not really allowed it. We will see. I for one definitely keep my fingers crossed that there will come a couple of evenings (or even days) off soon, allowing me to focus on music.
Thanks a lot for the interview.
Thank you! I probably enjoyed it much more than you did :-)
P.S.: You can download some of Richard's music from http://www.mp3.com/merlin.