Boys Of Putworks
Keyless EP
Breakout 2015-17

We are quite often inquired about copyright violations to our songs, and Jack's melodies. Especially then when someone succeeds very well ... better than the others.

Melodies, arrangements and lyrics are copyrighted. There aren't any limits or rules, about the point where the rights ends. Our own policies is that all songs, which are not made from scratch are covers. Covers have many makers. 

Almost all copyrighted melodies, arrangements and lyrics are available for everyone. When you begin, you need cover songs for getting enough length to your live performances, and possibly for the 1st album, too.

Usually it is not a very bright idea to claim / steal copyrights to yourself. If you get caught, you lose your reputation, and your music loses it's popularity. There are many examples from such, and not very many from successful violations. It is rather difficult to keep the violations hidden. If your song gets popular, quite a many who knows and has heard the original song, hears your song too.

When you borrow parts from some other's music, you can follow Madonna's example. She usually mentions sources of inspiration and borrowed samples in the album covers.

Short Singer's dilemma

When you check the musical megastar singers, they are usually taller and bigger than people in average. Usually most popular shorter singers to fall slightly  behind the most popular.

Usually the popularity needs you to be the better than the others, or then you got to be somehow different from the others.  

If you are shorter than average and interested in main stream, best selling music, you should develop / practice something special to your voice and singing style. 

Since differences between top and the bottom are usually rather small, changes do not have to be big. You can embed your unique style / talents into common melodies and lyrics.

The differences between best and less selling music are so small, that it is often impossible to even long term professional to say, whether this song is a success or failure.

From the below you find two things you could practice to your voice.

From the Asian women, we know that shorter, small people's voice is at higher pitch range than average and tall people's voices. In principle short singer can train his-her voice to higher pitches than others.

Another thing from where you can get something unique to your songs can be found from the way muscles work. Big muscles are usually slower than small muscles. When old, experienced pop-rock composers for example write melodies, the ones which are written to women are usually an inch sharper, notes are shorter than in melodies for men.

From this thing, you could practice your voice into faster pitch range changes. And also to sharp and  fast drops / pops.

In general, melodies in the songs with lyrics are merely hint books to the way song is sang. 1st singer  finalizes and fine-tunes the melody, when she-he adapts the lyrics into it. When song gets popular. later performers follow the first singers adaptation.

When you do these adaptations, you add ... or at least can add ... your specialties into your performance. 

Actors job is almost equal to singers. Actors practices all kinds of looks, movements and voices, without script, for future use. When they get a role and script. they think, what looks / movements suits best to this and this shot. During shootings director corrects the base acting into way he-she wants. Singers do not get much guidance from the others. Almost the only thing others can say, is that "Can you change this. It does not sound good."

When guitarist or some other band member have a solo in the ( middle of the ) song, it is usually players own musical practices / works. Solos are hardly ever based on written melodies.

Threats, are they real ?

Population of earth has grown from around 4 to 6 billions rather quickly. Overcrowded earth is one commonly presented threat for the future. The population of earth is dependent on food and home production. The recent growth comes from the industrialization and latter creation of emerging markets in Asia. 

Russia, the biggest country in the world, has only little over 120 million citizens. Cold weather limits Russia's population into relatively low numbers. Country is so cold, that it cannot produce enough food and homes for bigger population.

Intercontinental nuclear missiles have been popular threats. These missiles are big and slow. Their guidance systems are not very reliable. Shape of missile makes it very difficult to steer. If it has to fly through for example storm, and it manages to fly through it, you can be very sure, that it is no longer heading to it's original target. 

Launch of the nuclear missile is very dangerous thing to do. The acceleration, heat and fire around the shell can detonate the missile. Same threat exists during the flight. At the end of World War II, Americans used safer nuclear bombs, which were dropped from plane.

When Soviets and Americans started to build these missiles, it was already known, that it is rather easy to shoot them down. 

Ancestors of the intercontinental nuclear missile are Nazi's V1 and V2 missiles. Nazi's used these missiles in their attacks against London / southern England. It didn't take long, before Britons managed to shoot down over 50 percent from the V1 and V2 missiles. When you shoot and detonate nukes high in the air, the blast and radiation are harmless. The blast and winds spread the radiation.

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This a set of songs from Spring 2016 music sessions. All songs are made and played without keys. Very first .. to for at least our Jack. Although they wouldn't be the first ever, keyless melodies are very rare.

Sources for the inspiration are old circus and theme park songs. They have quite a many successfully written sequences with mixed, consequent black and white notes.

All songs have over one octave pitch range and within octave the number of used notes / pitches is 12. Songs are a bit dark. During the construction, times were bad. But primary reason for darkness is, that when you start to do something new, you find the darker sounds first. Lighter smoothly rolling pop sound comes later, with experience. It is the way music and composers usually develop.

+ + Keyless Storm Speller  ( March 2016 ) + +

Keyless Storm Speller was Jack & Ghost Boys nominee for Spell of the year award, in yearly Witch festivals at Halloween Mountain. The key event .. Witch Award Gala ... is held on Easter Saturday night. "Weather spells are so common, that it is very difficult to win with a weather spell."  Jack and Boys commented the loss after the gala. Said that the brand new stand-by typhoons and hurricanes ... doggy style rain diggers ...  did get quite a lot of attention amongst the partying participants.

The winner was ... of course ... Santa and his team, with very rare eternal curses.

The story has a connection to real-life. It was finished right before Easter 2016. During the night of Witches there was an unpredicted, small night time storm. Night time storms are rare outside warm hurricane-typhoon-tornado areas / seasons.

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Possible that this melody is the first ever, which does not have a key. It is at least the first I have worked with or finished. Keyless is written randomly to one octave tube, with all 12 available notes. Sources of inspiration were written around 100 years ago. Amongst very old circus and theme park songs there are few which are written without formula. Mixed black and white notes. When so, they have parts with 8-9 notes per octave, outside slides.

From few parts you can hear lighter and happier sounds. Which could be used in Pop-Rock songs. 

It took seven days' ( music sessions ) before 1st version - worth listening - was ready. After you discover the keyless tones, the rest is just like it is with common melodies. Finalization and lengthening of the melody didn't take more time than usual. When you listen a similar kind of 12 note melody and traditional 7 note melody right after each other, 12 note melody has rich and fresh sounds.

One thing which came out, is that you must use 12 note palette all the time, throughout the melody. The melody starts to crack almost right after you slip and use 7 note tones in it. Best sounds and tones are not the same, you have to start from scratch. Study and search the sequences with tone-by-tone basis. It takes some time and patience. It is much the same, when you extend the tube from one to two octaves.

If you are not familiar with composing, it is often said and believed, that 7 notes per octave is maximum. Keys in the scoreboards have only 7 notes.

In the future keyless melodies have quite a lot of potential in songs, which are sang by common people. In sing-a-along songs, hymns, etc. you can use only 3 to 4 full notes, with half notes, you can raise the number of levels, without setting higher demands to singers' voice.

+ + 12th Fantasy  ( April 2016 ) + +

12th Fantasy is Boys 2nd full scaled 12 note song. Tried to get it happier than Storm speller. Almost 3 minutes from 4 minute 2 verse play has unique notes / sounds. 1st is latter, it was tuned for getting rid of disturbing sounds in the second part. When you listen 2nd without 1st for the first time, it tends to generate disturbance into your listening experience. In the play 1st part sort familiarizes you with the sound with tamed score, in the second disturbing parts are played to you with "full force", in intended way. The total pitch range is 1 octave and 1.5 full notes. 

Construction time for the first-version-worth-listening was around week. Just like it was with Storm speller. During both got rather familiar with a thought, that I'll never get this going.

During workout it turned out that compressed range has the same 7 note limit than traditional melodies. It was a bit difficult to use over 7 pitches in the melody. 8th, 9th, etc cracked just like they do with common 7 note melodies. They go too high or low and disturbs the listening.. One nice thing in the full range melodies is, that you can raise and lower the pitch without problems. Traditional melody can be raised and lowered in the same simple way per-octave basis only. All other pitch changes need some work with individual notes.

In the back drums are playing 2/4 and 4/4 rhythms. 4/4 comes from Ghosted Bass Drum. The usage of two bass hits is one the easiest ways to embed double rhythm into song. Others tend to disturb the listening experience. When you write melodies for double rhythm, it usually a good idea to listen both 2/4 and 4/4 ticks. If you dot no do so, it is not rare, that you end up rhythmic troubles when you ( or someone else ) embeds 4/4 dance rhythm into the song.

Both Storm Speller and Fantasy introduces brand new sounds and full range modifications from existing popular sounds.

+ + Moonshine Popper + +

Moonshine popper was originally planned to be a slow ballad, named Moonlight Popper. During finalization the slow beat was replaced, because 2nd part started to crack after listening the song over 10 times. Therefore we changed the original Moonlight to Moonshine. Moonshine is name for self made, illegal booze. Thought that a hint from booze & drunkenness, with Moonshine,  would suit better than the original Moonlight.  And then to production time notes :

This was the third keyless song for 2016. 

2 minute 10 second melody is played to you twice. Pitch variance is one octave and 4 full notes. Construction of the 1st verse took 5 days music sessions, it was made in the beginning of April 2016. Music sessions are shorter than working days. But you can keep more than one session per day. You cannot work long times without longer breaks ... or of course you can, but it is usually only a waste of time. Hardly ever get anything worth listening done.

When we added 4 step rhythm into song, had to make many changes to the beginning of the song. The melody lost a little from the shrink and stretch adjustments. In the beginning there is a part which didn't fit into 4/4 rhythm. 4/4 bass hit disturbed the melody too much. Decided to stop ghost bass drum for the impossible part, and play the 4/4 with crashes only. 4/4 is unchanged throughout the song.

Song is played with 2/4 sign, 180 BPM tempo. Over 90% from our own songs are played with this Rock-Disco beat. With 4/4 sign Beats-Per-Minute drops to 90. 45 BPM is the third steady beat.

+ + Trickster + +

The 4th keyless was the 1st that came out without major problems. Almost like writing and working with traditional melodies. 

In this song there are sounds / sequences / tones, which are often considered to be and often also are impossible. When you play three or more consequent half and full notes right after each other, you quite often end up into a meaningless musical mess.

The play was originally planned to be a keyless commercial . Unfortunately failed to get a proper sound to it. Decided to make a short artistic or non-commercial song from the melody. Song has busloads of elements and small details. It has also two melody tracks. They are from the attempts to create lighter and happier sounds to the slightly failed melody. Melody has many add-on enhancements, small tricks. That's from where the name comes.

Decided to release the song because it is keyless. 4th of the kind. Similar kind of traditional melodies / failures are almost always left into archives. You fail like this, when you start to do music mechanically, without proper inspiration and creative touch.

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- - Making impossible possible - -

When you compose keyless melodies, the key thing is to keep all notes in play / melody all the time. If you compose part from the melody with lesser notes, like only 7 notes per octave, you are in big troubles. After a break ... next day ... the melody usually sounds awful.

Then you must be patient and humble. Writing your first keyless melodies, is much like it was, when you wrote your first melodies. You do not know the tones, how they fit and should be connected together, and so on ... you start from the scratch.

If you are interested in composing, the keyless melodies are not necessarily easiest to begin with. Usually the easiest way is to begin with existing melodies and arrangements. You can make small modifications to them. Whilst making the modifications you learn how the common background sounds and tones are written. When you compose and arrange music you do not look the notes like players and singers. Players and singers try to follow the notes as well as they can. They do not pay much attention to the way sounds are created and the notes are written. 

At some point quite a many player and singer start to arrange and compose music. Artists and bands which makes their own music, usually practice music making 5 - 10 years, before they make their breakthrough. Age is not very important thing in composing, young people learns new things faster than older people. Older people are more experienced with the most popular tones and sounds.

When we listened old best selling Beatles and Abba albums, noticed that demands for best selling pop-rock music are nowadays higher than they were. Competition is so tough, that it would be difficult to dominate the sales charts with the albums like they were.

Typical for the best selling albums ever, is that the songs on the album have the same sounds than the best selling singles have. They are not copies from the leading singles, but songs fit into the frames, the best selling singles have created. Difficult to get big sales to an album which has all kinds of songs ... something to everyone.

Order of the songs on the album is also important. Previous song always affects to the way you take and hear the next song. In ATS Mines soundtrack Brass Bumper suffers a little from the preceding Journey and it's Grande Finale. There are songs which stinks in your ears after listening Journey. 

Same thing happens in Circus EP. Brother John, which follows the circus songs was very popular, when it was released as stand alone single. On the EP it suffers from preceding circus and theme park songs and their Grande Finale ( played at the end of Old Carousel )