Be My Baby : Talking about boys May 15th 2012

Jack. Hello. Boys are still away. But you are here.

Hello to you too.

Jack. I would like to have a word with you.

I didn't do that. I was heavily intoxicated. Everything that bitch says about the last weekend, and Saturday night is a lie.

Khrrm. I was wondering if we could talk about the boys.

Sorry. My mistake. Of course. What do you want know, ask what ever you want.

What is it like to make an album ?

Busy time. You have to repeat the same song and parts over and over again. Lots of troubles. Something is always wrong. As composer I am always thinking about cracking sounds and tones in melodies and arrangements. Boys have troubles with their instruments and play. All the time.

Is it fun ?

It is not fun when you do the album. The troubles overshadow all the other things. Always thinking how to do this, and how to do that. The fun and pleasure comes after the album is ready and the troubles are away. 

Pleasure comes afterwards ?

After album is ready, and you return to everyday life, you notice how fun and interesting it was. Miss the times you worked with the album. Would love to start to work with new album. It is almost the same with tours.

You do not have a vocalist ?

No we don't. No intention to hire one either. Most of the music is made without lyrics. We like guitar and classical music. Instrumental music suits well for the ATS site.

What would be the best language for music making ?

Probably German. It has lots of English and French like soft words. It has also many east and south European like hard words. Easy to find words for all emotional stages. Easy to find words for the love and hate songs. Both.

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Boys are no longer making non-commercial music ?

After we got the Space Waves done and it was a big success, we sort of lost the interest in traditional non-commercial music. Boys are still making lots of non-commercial songs. Songs and cover songs for children belong to non-commercial music.

Did you get pissed with the success of the Space Waves ?

No. The success made us happy. The success fulfilled our dreams and goals. There was not much to go on with the genre anymore.

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What is wrong with commercial music ?

Your chances to make and compose commercially oriented music are heavily limited. You must follow the trends, and make songs for masses. All era's have a certain sets of tones, sounds and instruments from which commercial songs for the masses are made. If you do not follow these rules, your melodies and songs are left to shops and storages. And song becomes non-commercial. By it's nature.

How long does it take to write a melody ?

From 30 minutes to few hours. Sometimes you get stuck and it takes days and sometimes even weeks before the melody is ready. Sometimes you cannot get it going at all. The melody is left unfinished. Talking about time it takes to start to write the melody, and get it to the stage where it would be ready for play. Usually finalize and fine adjust the melodies after we start to make songs from the melodies. 

When you write more than one melody to the composition, then you must reserve time for adjusting the tones and melodies together. 

Writing the music box melodies for Ghost Opera took about one hour per each. Converting and arranging the melodies for boys and Ghost Opera took few hours per each.

Boys have a new vocalist on Space Covers and Ghost Opera ?

No. Boys are still using my old composing instrument, brightness, for the vocal tracks. Spent few days, when I tuned it for composing. Ghost changes the sound of vocals on Space Covers and Ghost Opera. In most songs one Ghost is playing the melody track with brightness. Ghost changes the sound of the old brightness. Boys also shifted brightness from Space Waves, in Space Waves they played on C3, and in Space Covers brightness is played in C4. One octave higher.

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Success of Space Covers surprised you all ?

Yes. When we released Space Covers and Tribute to Rihanna, we had no idea how popular the album and it's cover story would be. After we saw how popular Rihanna was, we thought that Tribute would only lift the spirits of the hospitalized Rihanna, the boost to Rihanna's popularity and album sales would be marginal, and so on. 

Ghost Opera follows the success of Space Waves and Space Covers ?

When we made and talked about Ghost Opera, we thought that Ghost Opera would be an album for limited audiences. Almost non-commercial album. 

Ghost Opera is slowly gaining popularity as Sunday song album. An album you listen in the background. Mostly when you want to relax. Holy Ghosts was planned to be a Sunday song album. Re-profiled Holy Ghosts after we noticed that Ghost Opera is taking it's place.

Re-profiled Holy Ghosts ?

Yes. Initially all songs we planned for Holy Ghosts were calm Sunday songs. After we noticed how our listeners took Ghost Opera, we started to add rhythmic and power songs to Holy Ghosts.

The first front page single release from Holy Ghosts has been very successful.

Boys new covers from "Brothers in arms" and "I wanna hold your hand" have reached the audiences.

All songs for Holy Ghosts are ready ?

Boys left after we got first versions from Holy Ghosts ready. Made over 40 cover songs for Holy Ghosts. Do not know how many of these will be on the Holy Ghosts. When Boys come back, we listen the songs and check how they sound after a break. Make required changes, drop some failed covers and make some improvements to the songs after that.

Boys have made almost 100 songs. Lots of small changes in between verses. How do they remember the songs ?

Boys are professional musicians. And they do not have to remember the songs and scores. They have small electric scoreboards in their instruments or at their sight. The screen shows the score and notes they have to play all the time.

What next ?

Nothing special. Next album for Christmas 2013 or later. We need one album for getting the Maxwell Thunderbird story to the end. Maxwell Thunderbird have four books.

Four books.

Yes. In the sheet or preplans the story is divided to four books. First book, Lost Earth, told about the meteor storm. Iron Base is about the war against the savages and about building the Iron Base to the moon. In the third book survivors travel to Venus. And in the fourth they build settlements to Venus. And possibly continue their journey from there.

Have you forbidden movie medias from making stories and talking about Boys  ?

No, we haven't done so. 

Google, Yahoo, MS have been sending their search robots to this site very often. With a great enthusiasm. I did forbid the visits of the robots. It seemed that they were delivering the search results to movie medias and others for further, hostile behind the backs processing. They were not searching material for their searches and common web users. They were searching material for something else.

What will be the national anthem of the Holy Ghosts, Austrian, Hungarian, Czech, Russian or what ?

There aren't any anthems practiced and played for the Holy Ghosts. 

No need to do so.

Now that you mentioned it. We could take and make song from the National Anthem of the Space City to the Holy Ghosts.

National Anthem of Space City ?

Yes. Wrote an anthem for Space City few years ago.

Anything from the next single release ?

Nothing at the moment.

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The cover girls, are they top-models ?

No. They are good looking, beautiful ordinary women. Most of them making some extra with modeling. Decided to use the old TDK cover format also on Space Covers and Tribute to Rihanna. Used our own models instead of pictures from Rihanna.

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What makes you popular and famous ?

Don't know. You got to be honest, decent and friendly for your fans and listeners. Being strong against people and powers, who keeps your fans and listeners under their control is another thing.

After you forget your fans, and start to play games with movie medias, you are almost certain to lose your popularity quite quickly. Getting proud and bold from the success and forgetting your fans because of it, is another good way to put end to your best selling season.

Music is nothing ?

It depends on the way you are. And how you are oriented . . . . I would say, that music is not everything, you got to be nice, decent and honest too . . . to your fans and listeners.

What do you think about your birthday mate. Nowadays ?

Robyn is my birthday mate. As composer can tell you that she has an excellent voice. The marketing genies in her background team rather damage her career than promote it. In my opinion she would succeed better without the strange marketing tricks, they are doing all the time.

She is a very nice person.

No anthems. Any tributes coming to Holy Ghosts ?

Made a version from I will always love you. The best selling song of Whitney Houston. And it really is a tribute.

Melody was so difficult, that without a need to make some sort of tribute song to Miss Houston I would have cold bloodedly dropped the song away from the album. Rewrote the melody track for Boys almost completely. Still working with it.

You have any favorites in Holy Ghosts ?

We made a version from "I am, what I am", Gloria Gaynor's song. Five minute long powerful spirit raiser. Made it to be the last song of the concert, and the album too.

You are making covers.

To the albums and to this site we are making songs our listeners and visitors want to hear.

Although we did Ghost Opera quite hastily, it was the primary release in the Christmas-time 2011. Most of our listeners want to listen and follow the melodies. They prefer rhythmic Rock'n'Roll drumming from commercial drumming. Drumming, where you hit the drums and hats all the time, without following the rhythm. They do not like the complicated arrangements in Boys own songs either.

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What are the Ghosts, you always talk about ?

They are Boys' instruments or synthesizers. They have extremely long release times. In Boys' instruments the scale for release time is 0 to 100. From the standard instruments Pulsing Pad has the longest release time, in Boys instruments it is 62. The release times of the Ghosts varies from 60 to 90. The release time means that there is lots of echo in the sound, and the note you play. If you listen I Got Lucky from Space Covers, there is quiet sequence in the middle. Ghost drum stops play at the same time with others. It takes almost one second before the drum goes quiet.

Usually Boys play Ghost tracks with two instruments. Another one is a common non-echoing instrument, and another one is Ghost.

Are they difficult ?

You have to do quite a lot of work, when you adjust ghosts so that they play smoothly throughout the song.

You could do the same in studio, after or during the time the track is recorded ?

Sound quality is at least better with Ghosts. Haven't tested the studio tricks very much. When we compared ghost and echoed sound, ghost had clearer sound.

Release time is not exactly the same as the echo. It is the time it takes from a played note to go from volume level X to 0. It is the last parameter in wave synthesis envelope. When you have a short sample, the instrument repeats the short sample during the time the volume level is lowered. The echo effect comes from that. The echo is added to each played note, separately.

Do you change instruments and settings during the song ?

No. Boys use only one instrument and one instrument setting per song. Changing the settings during the play usually ruins the song you are playing. If your primary instrument has only a part time job in the song, and there is another instrument, which do not overlap with yours, you can play two instruments in one song.