It was when I was eleven or twelve years old. I remember that from the time I was a kid I always wanted to make my own music. At that time some of my friends studied music and they were very keen to learn how to play an instrument while for me, my objective was to create my own melodies and rhythms. One day, I got my parents to buy me my first keyboard. It was a Kawai that had 24 instruments, a sequencer of 4 channels and not much more polyphonic... It was not something great, but for me it was the latest in technology, so I expended most of my time messing with that machine, making what we could call my firsts music.
My formation is basically self-taught. I started to make music well in advance before I started to study it, and with the time and thanks to be working on it, I had the opportunity to broader my musical education.
To be honest I never imagined that I was going to dedicate myself to the music, in fact to me it was basically a hobby to which I was dedicating almost all my free time. I always had the sensation that it would be almost impossible to make the living from it, so I did not have too many expectations. The first time I was interested in the videogames music was in the year ‘89. At that time, I got a Commodore Amiga and there were many videogames with an impressive soundtrack, like “Shadow of the Beast” from Psygnosis, just to name one. To see or I should better say to listen to what that computer could do, was what I think pushed me to starting making music with it, and strangely ended up opening the doors to enter the videogames industry.
It was a bit by chance. There is an annual convention in which lots of people related to: programming, making computerized music and digital art, get together. There are different programmes to choose from, like graphics, programming, music, etc., and there are also different conferences. I was attending to this convention since 1990 or 1991, and normally applying to all music contests. In 1998 I was planning not to attend, as I was not in my best mood and this convention took place 800 Kms. away from home, but finally some friends came to my house in their car, and literally forced me to go with them. So I went there, and on that year there were people from Pyro Studios offering a conference about videogames. Commandos had just been released and it was a big hit, so they were preparing a missions disc and looking to hire more people. They got in contact with me there, and ended up offering me to join Pyro Studios to work on the videogames music and sound effects.
Participant : Pyro Studios' musician Mateo Pascual
Interviewer : our very own musician ziili