Tantacrul

Martin "Tantacrul" Keary is a composer, UI designer and YouTuber. He is the head of design for Muse Group, the company that owns Audacity, MuseScore, Ultimate Guitar, and StaffPad, and runs a YouTube channel where he posts about music, design, and philosophy. He initially gained popularity from a video titled "Music Software & Bad Interface Design: Avid’s Sibelius", which has gained over 1.4 million views.^[1]

Early life

Not much is known about Martin's early life. He was born in Northern Ireland and was introduced to music when he learnt violin at the age of four.^[2] Tantacrul performed in the Irish underground scene as a teenager, performing to large crowds.^[3]

Education

He has a Masters Degree, presumably in music, and studied at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland under Gordon McPherson.^[4]

Design work

Martin has worked on many different UI design projects over the course of his career. Notable ones include MuseScore, where he helped to overhaul its UI,^[5] Paint 3D, where he was the design lead of the UX/UI architecture,^[6] Tumble, a rhythm game for the PlayStation 3, et cetera.

Music

Martin has composed a large array of music, some of which has won awards. In 2016, he composed a large-scale classical music piece called "NEW" which was performed Craig Armstrong Prize as well as the Patrons Fund Prize from the Royal College of Music.^[7]

Channel

Martin runs a channel called Tantacrul, which focuses on music, design, and philosophy. His videos are a unique blend of the video essay genre as well as philosophical conversation.rMartin composes virtually all of the background music for his videos.

Eurovision video

In 2017, Tantacrul released a video about Eurovision and his criticism of it. It received a large amount of negativity, and was even taken down by Eurovision through a DMCA takedown notice, which YouTube complied with. The Eurovision video is available on his Patreon page for patrons.

Sibelius video

In November 2018, Tantacrul released a video criticising the poor UI design of AVID's Sibelius.^[8] The video went viral almost instantly, having amassed 1.4 million views.

MuseScore video

Motivated by the success of his Sibelius video, Tantacrul polled his viewers on what he should review next.^[9] When his viewers decided on MuseScore, he released a video criticising its bad design. When this happened, he got the attention of the MuseScore team. After the video was released, he began integrating with the team, submitting fixes, and was eventually added to the team, becoming the head of design of Muse Group.^[10]

'SS' video

In January 2023, Tantacrul released a video about a suicide forum he had discovered after one of his Discord members had ended their lives through said site.^[11] To avoid disclosing the name of the forum, he referred to it as "Sorrow Solution" in his video. When the video was released, the site administrator released a response, criticising him for profiting off of the exposure the site got. The admin also successfully indexed his website under the keywords "Sorrow Solution". The video became viral once more, gaining over 2 million views, becoming his most popular video, despite not being similar to the rest of his content.

Hbomberuy collab

In 2020, Hbomberguy released a video about RWBY, a failed American anime. Tantacrul was chosen to compose an intro song that would be played 20 minutes into the video. He released a video about this project.^[12]

Personal life

Tantacrul lives with his wife and two twin boys.^[13]

Trivia

• He worked on many Microsoft-related projects during the development of Windows 10, such as Cortana, Paint 3D, and HoloLens.
• He has a master's degree from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.
• When he composed his first solo piano piece, he was scammed by a freelance performer who was supposed to send a physical performance of his piece. Instead, he received his MIDI passed through a bad piano sampler, and ended up losing a "not insignificant" amount of money.
• Many of his videos contain certain email addresses that are placeholdered to "feldmansyeast@gmail.com", which is a reference to his Sibelius video.
• His muse (classical music inspiration) is Dmitri Shostakovich.^[14]

Quotes

• Feldman's yeast. Just add it to the mix and half-bake to perfection.^[15]
• On January 18th 2020, I was diagnosed with cancer, and cholera, and then AIDS. The AIDS canceled out the cholera, but, then my wife and children died.^[16]

References