< Back

Breaking the Standards

 

In this short article, I’ll talk about how I break the standards in Ships Fly Up. In many aspects of life, we’re constrained by boundaries we don’t even notice. This conditioning affects us so strongly that we can spend years living in a narrow closed circle, without realising that we’re the ones maintaining the boundaries of that circle. Everything is in our minds.

 

Over more than ten years of creative work, I’ve written various kinds of music: electronic, orchestral, ambient, rock, metal, lounge, and more. Over time, I’ve become acutely aware that despite the different styles, many compositions follow certain rules — the very boundaries and constraints I’m talking about. This conditioning exists in creativity too, particularly in music.

 

Where do boundaries come from in something as seemingly free as music? It’s quite simple. We all listen to music from childhood. Those who wrote it listened to some other music. One generation builds on another, unconsciously copying creative musical laws that, upon closer inspection, are merely following standards — some of which aren’t actually mandatory at all. They haven’t been for a long time — and perhaps never were. It’s us, listeners and composers alike, who have each established these standards in our minds and keep following them.

 

However, if you consciously look at this issue and try to rise above it all, you’ll feel your breath taken away by the endless perspectives and opportunities that appear on the horizon, no matter which direction you look from a bird’s‑eye view. I’m not claiming that Ships Fly Up music removes all standards — of course not. I myself am conditioned in many ways, including in my creativity.

 

All I think I’ve managed to do is spread my wings just a little and, in flight, glimpse some spaces that were previously hidden from me. To be more specific: in Ships Fly Up, I’ve tried to break the standards. That wasn’t my initial goal. All I wanted was to finally start composing what my soul desired — to free myself from the standards, at least to try. Just to clear my mind of templates, trust my heart, and let it decide what should be and how. Even if the result is strange, overly simple, or conversely, confusing and overcomplicated — it doesn’t matter. The main thing is that it comes from the heart.

 

“What’s so unconventional about Ships Fly Up?” a sceptical listener might ask. I think everyone can answer this question in their own way — just as I, as the author, can give my own answer.

 

Before Ships Fly Up, I used certain technical standards common in most rock and metal music. For instance, I’ve tried minimising the use of so‑called guitar double‑tracking. I still do it sometimes, but far less often than before. What does this mean? I now write a single central guitar part instead of recording a matching double‑track to pan the guitar tracks across the stereo field for a fuller stereo sound, as is usually done.

 

My heart told me this standard shouldn’t be strictly followed in Ships Fly Up. And so, about 80–90 % of the music has a single central guitar track. To create a sense of width, I use stereo delay, which produces a very interesting sound image. For illustration, take the track Catch the Moment.

 

As a result, Ships Fly Up compositions very rarely feature rhythm guitars panned across the stereo field. There are a few tracks where guitars were recorded using the old standards, but now I do this more consciously — not because some unspoken rules demand it, but only because the artistic vision calls for it, and it simply works better in that particular place.

Additionally, to maintain a sense of sonic fullness, I like to incorporate electronics in Ships Fly Up. When they play on the left and right during climactic, dramatic moments instead of rhythm guitars, I believe this adds a distinct contribution to the project’s originality. You can hear this effect, for example, in the composition Rebirth.

 

This is one of the “tricks” I’ve discovered and continue to discover while working on the music. As you can see, it’s a very simple innovation — nothing extraordinary — but I believe it’s precisely from such slightly non‑standard details that a band’s or composer’s unique sound and recognisable style emerges.

 

Yet this, too, could become a new standard — so I don’t rule out that I might revise even my own tricks in the future. I might well return to guitar double‑tracks in some future release — but this time for the reason I mentioned above: because of an artistic vision, not because “that’s how it’s done”.

 

Breaking standards, moving away from rules, expanding boundaries, not being afraid to experiment — that’s what Ships Fly Up music has taught and continues to teach me. Of course, rushing to extremes and removing all standards probably isn’t the best approach. Some fundamentals are still solid and hard to avoid — and perhaps not worth avoiding, at least for now. But healthy adventurism, which opens up new possibilities, can only be beneficial.