MD:
Thank you for taking time for this, Stef! My first question is, how did the style of music inspire you when young?

SP:
Well, when I was young I was inspired by the electronic music of the eightees: Howard Jones and Nick Kershaw in particular. I was, and still I am, a big fan of Duran Duran.

MD:
You've provided soundtracks to many GBC ports such as Rayman. What led you to the realm of video games and electronic music?

SP:
In truth I started composing electronic music on the glorious Commodore 64. I listened billions of times the musics composed by Rob Hubbard, Jeroen Tel and Martin Galway. They were a great and awesome source of inspiration to me. The sound of SID drives me crazy and I decided to stop just listening to my heroes and try to create music by myself. It wasn't easy at all because I'm totally autodidact but when you're young you have time to put passion and efforts in something you can hopefully reach good results. The main problem was that I wasn't a good coder at all. I tried to reverse-engineer the music routines used by RH and JT but it was a nightmare without labels even if I understood the basic principles. But one day I met a guy from F4CG and it provided to me Future Composer... My dreams came true and I finally started composing real SID musics. Until then I've did just basic patterns and scale exercises using C64 sequencers but resulting files were "closed": you could play them into the sequencer.

       MD:

Did you ever think at that time, this kind of music would catch on to the later demographic?

SP:
At that time so many people liked synthesized SID music, but it's extraordinary that more and more people appreciate it today.

MD:
So, would you say the mainstream audience with dubstep and autotune are coming into that scene of SID? Or does it seem that crowd is moving a slightly, if not completely different direction?

SP:
I can recognize without doubt many sounds from the 8-bit era in many modern recent production, or at least those typical monophonic sounds even not taken directly from the SID. One example is Spectrum by Zedd. There are a couple of sounds in it that remind me of the SID and they have been used in the exact way I would have use it 20 years ago. But it's something that I can notice because of my past as SID composer. There is a music style, we can call it minimal or chip music, with a quite ample crowd and audience but it remains a niche in my opinion.

MD:
So, what would you say was the breaking point for you as a musician? When did it all come together to where you felt enough confidence in becoming one?

SP:
Oh well... It's a good question. Looking behind I think it was a gradual growth but as I can remember there are 2 breaking points for me as musician: one is the moment I 
listened to Pinball Fantasies soundtrack, one the Amiga, and the other was the demo Second Reality on PC. That kind of music... Burned away everything I did before. In some way I ripped respectively, the .mod and .s3m then studied it, and studied it again. They contained EVERY technical aspect you should know if you want to compose music with trackers (such as Protracker on Amiga or Fast Tracker on PC or, on the last days, Renoise). Pinball Fantasies soundtrack was done by Olof Gustaffson, Second Reality by Jonne Valtonen. They are 2 fantastic musicians.

MD:
So, in ripping this .mod and .s3m was this a very difficult task, or do you think with enough instruction our readers could learn this trick too?

SP:
There is an appropriate software for this I've had (And still have), a cartridge called Action Replay MK III that can freeze the Amiga in any moment and you can examine the entire memory of the machine. On the PC, there was a DOS program called Multiripper.

MD:
The composers you mentioned, do they still hold that same influence on you from years ago, or are there more modern composers today that you feel more inspired by?

SP:
Well, in truth I also sing. I have been the lead singer of one of the most important italian metal bands (Crying Steel) from 2009 to 2013. With my actual band (Blindrage) we've just finished to record our first album and it should be out before the end of 2014. So, there are 2 distinct layers: as a singer, my inspiration is totally different (Geoff Tate, Bruce Dickinson, Sebastian Bach) but when I turn to computer music... Well, they're still the same from years ago. Oldschool rocks!

MD:
Very well spoken! The aspects of music are truly limitless. Well, thanks again for taking time to do this short little halfass interview, Mr. Palmonari! Are there any last words of advice you can offer to the young faces of music out there?

SP:
Thanks to you!! One last thing I would say: don't put stupid limits to the music, and don't be prejudice about any genre. Be open minded. That sounds probably chliche, but to me it has always worked.

Interview by Mike D'Amato 5/3/2014. Droid-Tunes-Interviews 
contact: dribbledroidz@yahoo.com