About Leonard "paniq" Ritter

So who are you?

My name is Leonard Ritter, named after composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein. I was born 07/31/1980 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

I have two siblings. My brother Florian Ritter works as a graphic designer and photographer. He lives in Shanghai, China. My sister Saskia Ritter worked as a development aid worker in South America and Africa. She studied communication science in Munich, Germany and is currently employed as a "cultural manager" in an international language school.

What are you known for?

People mostly know me for my musical work. I have released around 20 electronic albums on the internet over the past 14 years. My style is very diverse, but it has traditionally been dance music that fascinated me. The idea of music that you can move to is fantastic.

I have produced a few music videos, and in the process discovered that I dig it very much. It gives me the opportunity to have an impact on audiences that is impossible to achieve with music alone.

I am also versatile in the world of programming. The music videos mentioned above have been largely programmed, and naturally I am employing a job in the game industry. I do not enjoy programming per se. For me, programming is another tool in the artistic toolbox. If typing a few lines of text leads to audible and visible entertainment, then those lines of text are good.

On a wider scale, I also draw and do vector graphics, often depicting psychedelic, iconic, abstract or surreal concepts. I love patterns and ornaments, the idea that you can rest your gaze on a surface in thought, and have the surface's structure contribute to your thought process. The past 100 years have been remarkably ornament-free. I do think that we need to bring that back.

Finally, there's the writing. Although I never release much of it, I occasionally write lyrics, poems and short articles.

You seem to be a prolific artist, how come?

I'm very much like my mom. She writes music and books, sings, produces radio plays for children and runs a traveling theater. For her, art is a tool to teach, and of course I share that viewpoint. My dad is a tinkerer, with interest in pretty much anything that covers technology. Although I rarely met him, he helped me make my first steps with computers, film and photography.

How did you get the idea to make films?

As a kid, I was avidly fond of Steven Spielberg. His name alone was reason enough to watch the movie. When I visited my dad on weekends, I often wanted him to take me to the film museum. It is not a very large museum, but it was enough to make me dream of doing my own movies.

When people asked me what I wanted to be when I was grown up, I would always say: I want to become a director.

My dad gifted me with an 8mm movie projector once, and a few short cartoons on film. Occasionally, I would turn my room into a theatre, invite my brother and sister over, and do a presentation of the three short films that I had. Needless to say, they weren't so keen on attending my cinema the second time around.

My dad also gave me his 8mm film camera. We made a few shots of me running around, and then we had to wait a week for the film to be developed at the local shop. When I finally put the film into the projector, I was sad to find that the image was out of focus and there was no sound. This was no profession for an impatient little boy, who wanted instant and good results.

My mom had a VHS camera and recorder. When my mom wasn't looking, I took it for my first animation attempts. I had never seen Star Wars, but at least I knew Spaceballs, which, if you have never seen the original, comes amazingly close to it. In some regards, it's even better. I drew cutouts of the space mobile, and attempted to animate it flying around using stop motion, but it didn't work out at all. Everytime a new image came on, there were these discolorations and stripes in the picture. It just didn't look professional.

There were more failures. When I went to school, I had my friends from school come over to record scenes with them for films that I would never finish. I wanted to imitate the fantastic scenes that I had seen on TV. I was fascinated with anything that had special effects or looked strange.

Finally, I gave up on film for the time being, and discovered computer graphics instead.

How did you get in touch with computers?

We had a PC at home, one of the first 286's with Windows 2.0 installed. For my 9th birthday, my dad gave me a Commodore Amiga 500 that I used mainly to play games with.

How did you start composing music?

My mom used an Atari ST, Steinberg Cubase and a Korg M1 to arrange her songs. I watched and learned. Whenever she was not at home, I would secretly play my own tunes, attempting to recreate the dance music I loved. Eventually, I was allowed to use the computer for composing.

The Korg M1 was a nice synthesizer when it came to pads, but it was terrible for composing techno. A friend introduced me to The Prodigy, which made things even worse. It was impossible to reproduce that euphoric, groovy and thick sound on the Korg.

I was 14 when one day, in a large store, it was pure luck for me to discover a CD-ROM with a tracker on it, a sequencer that was programmed using a computer console only. It was not possible to record MIDI, but it had the complete functionality of a sampler. I was sold.

From then on, I always made music with a tracker, and never stopped using it. Todays trackers like Buzz or Aldrin gift you with the full range of digital effects, samplers and synthesizers, while still offering full control over every note. Using a MIDI keyboard and a piano roll confines me to use what my hands can express in real time. Entering the music step by step gives me incredible control over time and flow, although it can become tedious for big arrangements.

In that sense, I have always been a classical write-to-paper composer, even if in a weird modern unorthodox sense, and always much more devoted to rhythm and sound engineering.

I also spent a lot of time programming small games in BASIC. They never got finished though, because I spent more time on tools than actual results, but it was fun.

Did you learn a "real" instrument?

I was always bad at playing the piano. Instead of doing my etudes, I would rather play my own compositions, which mainly oriented themselves on the mainstream at that time: Eurodance was still a big thing, and people like Dr. Alban and Hadaway owned the charts.

How did you get into the demoscene?

When I was 16, the internet entered our home, and I spent much time online, making first contact with people who were alike: maverick amateurs who spent their free time composing dance music. We shared and commented on our music online, a decade before online communities, MySpace and YouTube.

All those computer art aficionados finally gathered in the only kind of group you join these days: the demoscene. If you had internet access, and you were into programming and music, you would end up there, and that's where I spent most of my time doing releases, receiving feedback on my work, getting to know people, and most of all: enjoying technology art.

So far my biggest successes have been in the scene. I had several musical releases which won prizes on demo parties. I released three demos of which two were well received: "Die Ewigkeit schmerzt" (#1st Evoke 2006) and "Masagin" (#1st Breakpoint 2008). Masagin marks my "good-bye" to the scene and a "hello" to the rest of the world.

What is your special talent?

A friend told me that my specialty is to be drifting between the serious and the humorous, without giving in too much into either - and it's true. I love to flirt with despair.

I grow bored quickly and thus have trouble attaching myself to routine. I'm strongly dependent on desire (and occasionally, caffeine). I don't like going the same path twice; a trait which certainly sucks in a world built around duty, commitment and ritual, but is beneficial in creativity and art.

What I do is always new for me, because I love shaking off the shackles of rules, axioms and dogma. In composition, I drive myself to complete complacency, which often results in tracks never being finished because they hypnotize me too much. To get finished I have to work swiftly, without looking back.

What do you sound like? What artists inspire you?

I have a hard time comparing myself to other artists. I pick up impressions and ideas wherever I can (read: I steal), so there's a big deal of different stuff in my music. If you recognize other artists in my music, it's highly likely that I have heard them too.

Do you have contact with your fans?

My audience consists of highly intelligent and curious people. They drive me to new sounds and experiences. I can't tell how many times the suggestions of an admirer have brought me to new ideas. The "paniq" project wouldn't be much without them. We mostly communicate through Twitter.

Are you single?

I have a lovely wife. We are married since summer 2011. She cares for my wellbeing and suffers from my impenetrable attention deficit disorder. We both have a very old-fashioned idea of romantic love that lasts until we are old, gray and toothless, and we are willing to make this dream come true, and be an example to others.

Do you enjoy asking yourself questions?

*Monocle pops* By golly! It's true, I wrote this FAQ myself. I admit, nobody is ever asking me anything, but I hope that it is entertaining to know a little about the artists you enjoy.

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