Interview: Markus Castrén (2022-02-07) by fusoxide

An interview with Nokia composer Markus Castrén by researcher fusoxide, posted on February 7, 2022 on the Ringtone Bangers Twitter account.

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Q: How did you originally become interested in creating music? I come from a rather musical family and we’ve always listened to a lot of different music at home. I was made to play piano very early on as a child and had a band with a bunch of friends at the age of 7. When I got my first Amiga computer in the late 80s I got interested in “tracking”, making music with tracker-software and also got into the demoscene where I was making music for demos and just for fun. That’s how I know Aleksi Eeben. I used ProTracker on Amiga and later FastTracker 2 on PC. After the 90s I got into more professional music making and audio design which eventually led me to work at Nokia (partially it was also my history with 4 channel tracking that helped me to get the position as the phones at the time were limited to four sound polyphony). Ironically, it was there that I realized that I don’t want to work as a “nine-to-five musician” as it really wasn’t how I worked with music (I mostly composed in the evening or at night).

Q: What was the process for writing each ringtone? Was it just like "write whatever you feel like" or were you ever given specific orders? A: For the most part, I was free to write whatever I wanted. When I started in the summer of 2002, Nokia had already moved to polyphonic ringtones but it was only four voices and I got to write some of those. I still got to write some monophonic tones as well, as they were still being added to a bunch of phones. It wasn’t long after I started that we also started producing "multichannel" (more than 4) polyphonic ringtones and I was tasked to write for two specific models: 7600 and N-Gage. I even remember them having a special legal team that listened through all the tones we did and then they would turn down the ones that sounded too much like some commercial or "real" track. For the N-Gage, I was tasked to write some "gaming" related alert sounds. There was discussion that Nokia wanted to have gaming related alerts and tones, and there wasn’t really anything relatable in PC/PlayStation gaming at the time so I suggested going a bit "retro" and ended up producing an "80s arcade/retro" set. From what I remember, they flew over some designer guy of the 7600 and we had a session with him where we would play some tones we’ve made and he would play some real tracks and then we exchanged ideas about what could be in the phone. The 7600 was for some reason a "super secret" to-be trendy model that needed special attention. I was tasked to write something similarly trendy for the 7600, ie. "Jungle", but Nokia always wanted to have a set of their classics in the phones too. I ended up writing some house, techno, drum’n’bass, two-step tones and whatever was hot at the time.

Q: Did you submit a demo CD of your music to Nokia? If so, what tracks were on it? A: I did have an interview, but I really don’t think I have any idea of the tracks and the only copy I made was for the Nokia guys. Hannu af Ursin sent us a CD too as I remember us having a group listening session for all the demos with Jussi Salonen, Mikko Tillander and Jarkko Ylikoski. The tracks on my Nokia CD must have been some of my later tracker music.

Q: Did you compose any audio ringtones? A: No, only MIDI and some beeper ones too. Audio tones started being produced not long after I left, but there was already talk about them replacing MIDI in the near future.

Q: Are you still in touch with any of the composers at Nokia? A: I know both Hannu and Aleksi, and we’ve known each other before Nokia times, but I’ve not been in contact with Jussi and Mikko, who was our boss. Timo Anttila, a friend from the Tampere Polytechnic Art and Media school we used to study in, was also there. I replaced him when I started. I was there for about half a year and even though I was asked to stay, I wanted to finish my studies, so we got Hannu and Aleksi to continue and I think they were to the end (with DJ Orkidea who joined sometime later).

Q: Have you ever heard your ringtones in public? A: I’ve very rarely heard my own tones in public. I think one reason is that my tones ended up mostly in foreign models/markets and experimental models, but when my current boss had a Communicator he used one of my tones without knowing it was made by me, so I heard it all the time.

Q: Overall, how do you feel about the popularity of the ringtones that you and your friends/team produced, even today? I certainly was not prepared to be contacted about them 20 years later! Even though there was a certain amount of excitement amongst us composers during the time, people didn’t really feel too interested about them. I played some tones to my friends or friends of friends and generally people weren’t that excited. Maybe ringtones were considered a “normal thing” at the time at least in Finland? Or maybe they just sounded too “MIDI”. I’ve only recently (thanks to you!) come to realize the impact they must have had on some people around the world which is wonderful and makes me feel happy that instead of being “just an alert” they’ve actually had an effect on people.

Q: Do you still make music nowadays? A: Nope, I haven’t made any since the mid 2000s. I did a couple jingles for some local TV ads in Finland and that sort of thing. I just don’t have the time unfortunately. I guess it’s never too late to start again, although I think I have a lot of catching up to do with the technology. While working for Nokia I was also producing drum'n'bass and a nu-jazz project, had sent demos to labels in Finland, UK and US and was about to release at least three tracks on those three labels but I never got around to finishing them.

Q: What was the story behind your track, "Here with Me"? A: The director Teemu Niukkanen, a friend of mine, and the guy who shot and edited the video (also a friend of mine) came to me and said they have a video that they need music for. So I just wrote a track for the video and they stuck my name on it as the artist without telling me. The video then wins a newcomer prize in a local Finnish music video festival, later gets uploaded to YouTube, and Teemu goes around promoting it. The original video (it’s been removed now) gets a lot of likes and funny comments like "Who the fuck is Markus Castrén?" and "I like this, sounds like St. Germain".

Q: What are you up to nowadays? I see you became a DVD author at Craft Finland Oy after graduating from TTVO. A: I’m still on the same path, I’ve been in the same company since 2007. Even though physical media is not our company’s main focus anymore, we’re still working on similar stuff. Mostly Digital Cinema Packages and video on demand services for production houses, distributors and other businesses. We did some effects work, post production and 3D animation too but that didn’t really pick up.