Josh Whelchel honored at Trax in Space

This month I was honored by the musicians and listeners of Trax in Space as May's Artist of the Month. You can read an exclusive interview hosted by TiS or check out my Trax in Space artist profile. I have been a member of the website since 1998, and returned after the site met a sudden demise in 2002. Currently I have over 50 songs available on the website sporting over 2,000 online plays and more than 400 downloads.

Trax in Space is a website designed for musicians and listeners of every genre of music, and allows artists to submit music electronically for members to listen to, review, and discuss. Guests may also listen to lo-fi previews of all submitted music by clicking the small play button found on each music page. I also keep a profile on a similar website, ctgmusic.com.

An exclusive inteview with TwiTerror
roncli:		Firstly, who is TwiTerror?
TwiTerror:		Josh Whelchel, a guy from Louisville, KY studying Computer Science at the University of Cincinnati. I'm 20 years old and I've been writing music since I crawled to TiS in 1998.
roncli:		What got you interested in the field of computer science?
TwiTerror:		My father was a software developer for a company he started before I was born. Naturally, being around all the cool computer stuff in the home I got to wondering what exactly he did. I didn't really expect him to show me, but he shared with my an old programming IDE called Clarion that I played around with (back even before Windows was around). I kept with that until I eventually picked up Klik & Play and finally learned C++. If I was doing anything I was either playing piano, swimming, playing some Apogee game, or programming.
roncli:		Is swimming another life-long hobby of yours?
TwiTerror:		I swam competitively from the age of 8 until I turned 18. I received a number of honors as I traveled the states competing, including placing in the State Championships in Kentucky and at Sectionals. With school being my number one priority, however, I decided not to pursue swimming in college, but I'm looking to join the recreational masters team this spring.
roncli:		Obviously you haven't given up on music, though. Tell me how you got started composing.
TwiTerror:		The first bit of composition I ever did, if my memory serves me well enough, came in the form of improvisation between formal piano practice. I was very restless when I took classical piano and would often play out melodies off the top of my head. I was eventually introduced to the indie gaming community (formally the Klik community) where I tried my hand at creating games. I found that I spent a lot more time assigning the MIDI to music my creations than I actually did on the games themselves. That's when I decided to look into how one creates music for games, and the most obvious result came up first, which was tracking. That's how I came across Trax in Space and met a few people who helped me get started. I still remember learning how to segment a pattern into beats. Those were bright days with friends like Warrior Bob who was always giving me advice as a listener, Ralesk who I composed a bit with, and a few others.
roncli:		And about how old were you when you found out about Trax in Space?
TwiTerror:		I must have been about 10 and a half at the time. It was a long time ago and it was a much different place (:
roncli:		That is quite young. I'm sure there's still a few of us out there that remember you by your original handle, "Twilight Terror". What various tools have you used over the years to help make your music?
TwiTerror:		When I first played with MIDI I had a tool called Digital Orchestrator Plus by Voyetra. I didn't produce anything at all in it, however, besides a crummy VG Remix that you can actually still find on the internet (yuck). I came to the light when I met Modplug Tracker and thought forever MIDI useless and dead. I stuck with this in producing a number of game soundtracks as well as the music I just enjoyed to write. I also had the privilege of participating in several OHCs with MPT as my tracker of choice. Eventually (and only quite recently, maybe within the past two or three years) did I realize what I was missing without MIDI. I tried out a number of MIDI tools, but really only settled on one DAW: Cakewalk Sonar. TiLT, another great musician on TiS, also recently recommended Renoise to me so I could manipulate MIDI and VSTis in a tracking environment. I now use Renoise and Sonar interchangeably depending on the project, and sometimes both. Working on Cakewalk allows me to sort of rely on my piano playing ability and get advanced mixing and mastering ability, while I use Renoise when I want to create something reminiscent of the 'old days.' Seaside Village is a Renoise track, while Midnight Song is a Cakewalk track. I create two very different sounds depending on which I use, actually, and I like the ability to switch to one when I grow tired of the other. (: So that's Digital Orchestrator -> Modplug Tracker -> Sonar -> Renoise, where I now use Sonar 6 and Renoise. I use an M-Audio Axiom 61 as my MIDI Controller (although I had a Kurzweil K2vx for a number of years). I have two M-Audio BX5a studio monitors. An M-Audio Audiophile 2496 soundcard (I'm not an M-Audio fanatic, I promise!). And my sound libraries are almost exclusively Native Instruments and East West/Quantum Leap. I rely heavily on EWQL Symphonic Orchestras, QL RA & Colossus, and I recently purchased Voices of Passion. Tomorrow actually ends one of their buy one get one free sales so I have Ministry of Rock and Symphonic Choirs on the way. And I have all of this setup in my quaint little dorm room that I share with a roommate. And he's grateful I also have a pair of AKG K240 headphones. (;
roncli:		Which musicians would you say have most influenced your music?
TwiTerror:		There is a little bit of Nobuo Uematsu & Bobby Prince in everything I write. Cobra Starship & The Faint inspire the work by Poolside, and Hans Zimmer, John Williams, Harry Gregson-Williams, Clint Mansell, and E.S. Posthumus greatly inspire my orchestral work. For game soundtracks it's obviously Alexander Brandon (Jazz Jackrabbit), Bobby Prince, Nobuo Uematsu, Mitsuda Yasunori, among several others. Zepsi and Skyline were excellent trackers that I studied a bit.
roncli:		About your music, you mostly release music that eventually becomes part of a soundtrack. However, you do have a few occasional single releases. Among those, which do you feel is your best?
TwiTerror:		Among the singles I'd have to say it's a tossup between Christina Love Theme, which is a draft but people seem to like it a lot, and Let it Live.
roncli:		Let it Live is part of your "Poolside" project, can you explain a bit as to what that is?
TwiTerror:		Poolside started out as a joke between me and a friend of mine who I worked at a pool with (we were lifeguards). We played a lot of monopoly and wanted to write a song about how I had a constant winning streak, and we wrote Man of Monopoly. Poolside was really more about me writing music and he, Marshall, providing the lyrics. When we went off to separate colleges, it became more of my project. I wrote Let it Live, Electrik, I Love You, and the other pieces without his input. It's really my outlet out of the soundtrack realm playing around with vocals and popular styles of music, including Rock, HipHop, and Synthpop. I quite look forward to completing "Electrik" (there is draft up on TiS) by improving the vocals and writing more dirty lines. (;
roncli:		One of your soundtracks I would like to mention has also raised some money for the American Cancer Society. Can you talk a bit about how you got involved in making the soundtrack, and also what made you decide to partake in the Relay for Life?
TwiTerror:		Sure. One of the first big games I wrote the soundtrack for was a game called The Spirit Engine, released back in 2003. I'm currently writing the music to the sequel, and I've currently amassed over two hours of music. A lot of it has been sitting around for quite some time, and as you probably know, I love to release music. I have been planning on selling the TSE2 soundtrack for quite some time. Relay for Life is an event we have on our campus where we get into teams of people (my friends and I were on the Disney Unleashed team where we dressed up as the 101 Dalmatians) and raise money to fight cancer. Through the event we have one person from our team walking at all times, and it runs from 6pm until noon the next day. Last year I didn't raise an incredible sum of money, but I really wanted to go out of my way this year to try and raise a good amount to help put our team in good standing and also honor my family members who have been recently diagnosed with cancer. The idea came to me rather quaintly as I was trying to think of a way to release music and raise money at the same time. And so the TSE2 Cancer Drive was born. It got pretty good exposure (namely on TIGSource, where I was newly heard of for composing the Bonesaw soundtrack) and we raised $825.13. The idea was that everyone who donated $5 or more would receive what was basically a pre-order for the soundtrack.
roncli:		Truly a worthy cause. Where would you like to be with your music in the future, say, five years?
TwiTerror:		I would absolutely love to have a professional resume of game music, but my true dream is to be a film composer. I've loved the music of John Williams and Hans Zimmer from a very young age, and it's my real dream to be among them. It's a realistic dream, but not too easy to get into the 'biz,' so I plan to do everything else as a backup until I achieve my dream! :D
roncli:		Any final words of advice to other musicians out there?
TwiTerror:		Keep on trying. If at first you don't succeed, keep on doing it. I remember my mom would cover her ears sometimes when I played my music, but now she's always asking for CDs. Granted, that's my mother, but I think it's the same idea all around. Listen to others, study the kinds of music you enjoy. And remember, if you listen to your own music a lot, it means you're writing music you like to hear, and that means you're having fun. If you're not writing for fun, why write at all? (:
roncli:		Excellent advice. Good luck with your music, and thank you for the interview!