Boys of Putworks
Hungarian Ghost I

Johannes Brahms

Johannes Brahms was born in Hamburg, 1833. He lived most of his life in Vienna. In 1800's Vienna was musical center of Europe. Brahms was Europe's leading composer in the late 1800's - During the time he composed Hungarian Dances. 

Brahms died in the year 1897.

Brahms was bachelor all his life. Never lived in long term relationship. It is said, that he had many female friends.

Brahms is one of the greatest composers ever. His name and music are taught in European schools. Many of the sequences he wrote, are widely used in modern commercial music.

Brahms is one of the three big Bee's of the music. Other two are Bach and Beethoven.

Boys have awful lot of occasional listeners. Boys' songs keep their popularity for months and sometimes few years.  Boys' EP and Album releases are really big events.

Lets go Commercial

After Nursery Rhymes we had some notes about the interference to the music sales. Dances are very different from the main stream music. They would interfere the sales only in the case of complete and very unlikely loss. Hungarian Ghost and classical music would have to beat the whole commercial genre, before Hungarian can cause notable drops to the sales of the commercial music.

Wows in the plays

Few songs have some childish, distorting wows in them. Wows come from the recording, they are also in the master tapes. Wows were born, when Midi recordings from Boys play ( easy to fix and correct ) were gathered / mixed to the master file and converted to wave files.

The reason for the wows comes from Audio CD format, it is not good enough for these plays. This is not the first time Boys are suffering from the poor Audio CD quality. 

Mr. Brahms used non-aligned notes in his compositions, they do not hit at the right time. The wave  sample is not always taken from the beginning of the notes. And during the slides low sample rates causes disorder / vibration to the sliding.

You can find further information about the Audio CD format from The Chain of Sound stories in the Melody section.

MP3 files

The whole Hungarian Ghost EP was made as Audio CD mix. MP3 files which are available from Boys plays in here, have been tested with a common  good quality audio system. The bit-rate and compression of the files is 128 kBit / s.

The songs loses quite a lot, when you listen them with poor quality speakers and audio system. On the other hand you will not be disappointed, when you listen the songs with good system. When song is mixed and made for web, it misses lowest and highest tones. Web / computer audio systems operates with smaller frequency range than common audio systems. 

As an example could talk about the good, low bass. A good low bass in Web-Audio system, sounds as higher tone in good quality Audio systems. When the same track played back with Audio system it misses the good basses. Since audio system is capable of playing lower tones and you are used to listen lower basses from the common audio system, your ears registers the good Web-Audio basses as higher tones.

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- - Album Introduction  - -

We made Hungarian Ghost because our manager-composer's ( Jack ) move was delayed. In the same media and election driven mess our plan to buy a Music Pavilion from Budapest was ruined. Cannot understand what kind of benefit presidential electorates in United States and common electorates in Finland gain by delaying Jack's move.

Had earlier promised to push the release of the Holy Ghosts over Christmas. After Jack's ,move was delayed over Christmas 2012, we started to make music again. Took less-commercial Hungarian Dances from German Johannes Brahms into Jack's workshop and our play. 

Plays were made as reward songs for Game Hall. Reward songs in Game Hall are piano plays. It means that one of the leading instruments in the plays is Honky Tonk piano. 

Hungarian Dance 5 [Ghost mix]

Dance 5 is the most popular Dance from the 21 dance series. Tones with what Johannes Brahms composed the dance had been very often in commercial music. So often that you cannot use the tones in new commercial melodies.

The EP version is version number / letter H from the dance. Getting something fresh and new into a worn-out song was very challenging task. 

The song has three parts. The first part / verse is repeated twice in the beginning. The first verse follows the original melody, and the second is modified. Two other sequences are unchanged. 

In the end the worn-out verse is played for third time. In the third we had difficulties with Ghosts. The beginning of the verse was lengthened. After long piano slide, Ghosts rose very poorly. After the piano slide there is an add-on cycle for the Ghosts.

Hungarian Dance 1 [Space Covers mix]

Dance 1 is probably the second popular dance from the series. This was not that difficult. After the release the rolling sounds caused some overreactions. Gave some additional speed to the rolls with drums.

There is real life Ghost and Background Chorus in the song. Both sound effects came to the song without any notes and play. We were rather surprised after we heard the effect from final recording / master file. No one knew where did those sounds come. Still a complete mystery to us.

Hungarian Dance 7 [Young Audience mix]

During production time Dance 7 was our favorite song. Fresh new melody. 

Not as popular and worn as Dance 5 and Dance 1. Jack added very low piano in to the power sequence in the end. When our big maestro was asked, he said "Kids like it".

Hungarian Dance 3 [Ghost Mix]

This was very easy song for us. Much like musical Fairy Tale. Dropping the song from the EP was not an option we had, from the maestro.

Notes we had for the play were complete mess. There was changes in sign and tempo in the middle. After Jack cleaned the composition from the mess, the play was very easy. 

The body for the fairy tale like beginning is taken from the power sequence in the middle. It is modified and multiplied from that sequence. 

During the cleaning, Jack made changes to the timing and tempo. After he brought the beginning to play and recording, the first verse from the original score sounded like Orpheus would be singing in Underground. Power sequence runs one octave higher than other parts of the song. The beginning affected very heavily to the sound of music, in the first original verse.

Fixed the dungeon like sound with an additional high track. In the first verse, brightness which plays higher piano / melody, is doubled. In the first verse brightness plays the original melody with original and one octave higher pitches. We were almost sure that the doubling  will not work well. But after we adjusted high track's volume levels, we were satisfied with the results.

Hungarian Dance 4 [Ghost Mix]

Dance 4 is very beautiful, melancholy song. Challenging too. Gave very many thoughts how to make and play it.

Eventually decided to play it much like some ball room songs. From around 70's and 60's.

Left the melody unchanged. It is based on the original single piano play.

Made some cuts to the tracks which support piano. Another track is played with "traditional" Ghost Box. Another track is played with a fully synthetic instrument, it belongs to standard secondary Midi palette. It is called "Jungle Tune", it sounds much like flute.

- - Booze Mix - -

We like the melody a lot. Mr. Brahms succeeded far more better with his "booze-mix" than we did with in our Summer Place Theme in Space Covers. Few of the first time listeners were rumored to have thrown out. After listening the song. Just like it happened with Space Covers, Booze Mix.

Heavy, gun shot like drum hits seemed to suit to the melancholy melody.

- - Mr. Brahms  - -

Mr. Brahms developed music a lot. In this song secondary, assisting melody-track, runs sometimes higher than melody. Usually piano plays ( for both hands ) are played so, that your left hand plays the simple secondary track. Right hand plays the melody.

Hungarian Dance 6 [Ghost Mix]

Dance 6 is nice fast song. When we heard it for the first time, could not help falling in love with very and rare tone in the middle song. Listened the song for the first time as piano play. Did not necessarily manage to preserve the unique sound in this song. We did our best, Ghosts are shut down during sequence. 

The piano play for Game Hall is one the fastest song we have ever made. Counting from the time we heard it for the first time.

The day before the song was released, out web computer was hacked and trashed. By the co-ops of "very nice" people mentioned in the beginning. Released the song almost right after we got the systems going again - Ghost Number Six has left the Ghost base.