Hello there!

My name is Markus Kaarlonen (or Captain when I make music :). I live in
Finland, and have lived here all my life (22 years so far). In this
collection you can listen to a couple of mods made by me. I will tell you
about them in this text, as well as a bit about me and my musical
background... (don't panic, this is a short version! :)

At first, music was only an occasional hobby for me. I have never studied
music or taken any lessons in any instrument. My passion for music and sound
in general started from the world of computers. About 12 years ago, I got my
first computer, Commodore VIC-20, which had amazing sound capabilities. At
that time I didn't know anything about music theory, I mainly just
experimented with different kinds of weird sound FX.

My next computer, the legendary Commodore 64, had even better sounds.. I had
a program, in which you could draw notes on staff, and the computer would
play the melody. I just tried different things without really knowing what I
was doing.. these notes sound good together, for some reason these don't..
That's how I learned the basics of melody, chords and rhythm. I didn't try
to compose anything yet (at least I don't admit :), I just tried to
re-create existing pieces of music.

And my next computer, which I still have.. my dear Amiga 500. :) I made my
first "real" and finished songs with a program called Sonix, and it didn't
take long before I got familiar with the world of mods and trackers.
My problem was I couldn't usually finish anything.. I just made short
sequences, like short fragments from totally different songs. One of the
first finished mods I ever made was Space Debris, which is one of my mods
included in this collection. I spent about three months making it! Space
Debris took part in a music competition held in Sweden in 1990, and to my
surprise, it won!

A year after that, I made Beyond Music (it also took three months or so :),
another mod included here. It took part in Gathering '91 competition held
here in Finland, and again, to my GREAT surprise, it won! :) Many people
said BM was very much like "Space Debris II".. OK, it has some similarities,
but I still claim it's a totally different song! :)

I finished the third mod in this collection, Broken Dreams, only a few years
ago, although I started making it somewhere between SD and BM. I made it
originally for a disk magazine that was never finished, so the mod was also
unfinished for a long time. By the way, listen to the drums.. :)

A couple of interesting things about these mods... (or things I think could
be interesting? :) I made these mods with ProTracker 1.2 (if I remember
right). I sampled most of the instruments myself. For example the choir and
some of the synth sounds in SD I sampled from my good old Roland D-5. The
short drum sequences in BM and BD I sequenced in Alesis SR-16 and then
sampled. And the "electric guitar" in BD was my old Kawai K1 played through
a distortion effect.. :)

I recorded most of the sounds on tape before sampling. That way I could get
exactly the same sound every time, and adjust the sampling level so that
there was absolutely no distortion and that all of the dynamic range was
used (with 8 bits you _have_ to use all there is! :).

I'm still a bit proud of the loops in the choir and synth chords.. :) I was
sick of the "click-click-click-click..."-loops heard in most mods. I thought
"how could I get rid of the clicks and get a perfectly smooth loop..?" And I
accidentally discovered cross-fade loop, which of course had for a long time
been a basic function in big studio samplers, but I didn't know it back
then.. :) I made cross-fade loops manually with good ol' AudioMaster, and I
still think they are pretty good... or can YOU hear any clicks? :)

These mods are the only (good) ones I have ever finished! :) I have dozens
of little unfinished ideas and a few that are a bit more finished. I was
even thinking of finishing one of them for this collection, but
unfortunately didn't have the time! But maybe some day I'll surprise
myself... :)

I haven't been in the mod scene for some time now. I have moved more to the
world of sequencers and synths, and I am trying to be a "professional"
musician and make my living with music (that can be hard sometimes... :) I
have a small studio where I make music for commercials, remix Finnish bands'
hits and do other projects. I also had a band a few years ago, we released a
few EP's and one album. Right now I'm trying to be a better keyboard player
and also learn the secrets of guitar, but we can get back to that after ten
years or so.. :)

I listen to (almost) all kinds of music. In the last few years I have become
more and more interested in classical music and classical composers. On the
other hand, sometimes I really like to pump up the volume and listen to
heavy metal, industrial or something like that. In my opinion, music must
have power.. it may have powerful sounds, powerful melody.. but that doesn't
mean it has to be loud or fast to have power. Even a single note or silence
can have power. But in any case, music should create strong feelings,
whatever the feelings are.

I am interested in mixing different musical styles... It's always nice when
I hear something that isn't clearly any specific musical style. I like to
mix synthesizers, guitars, classical elements, everything possible. And I
like everything that somehow breaks the ordinary "rules" of music. One thing
I am very interested in is film music... I hope maybe some day I will
compose music for films.. (one can always hope... :)

If you have read this far without falling asleep, I thank you! I hope you
enjoy listening to these mods. Have fun, bye!

February 9th, 1996

Markus "Captain" Kaarlonen