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An exclusive inteview with ST Arts |
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| roncli: | | First off, who is ST Arts? |
| ST Arts: | | ST Arts is a 31 year old amateur musician from Finland who likes to compose melodic electronic music, mostly synthpop and spacesynth music with influences from the mod/demoscene. Actually ST Arts is not the only artist title of mine... the title "ST Arts" is for all of my music in spite of the genres. To be more strict, for spacesynth music I use the alias Everdune, and for new age and experimental stuff it is Scaon. |
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| roncli: | | What made you decide to use all these aliases for your works? |
| ST Arts: | | It all started in one Finnish webpage called Mikseri. It is a place where mostly Finnish musicians, amateur and pro, put their music available to listen and stuff... like here at Trax in Space. Anyway, it is very common there to use different titles for different projects/genres. I liked the idea, so I started new projects, too. Here at Trax in Space I think it is ok to use only this one old title for all my songs. |
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| roncli: | | How did you come up with each of your different aliases? |
| ST Arts: | | ST Arts is an old title, I made it many years ago... I like arts, mostly visual arts and music. "S" and "T" comes from my real name. It is also a very multimeaningful title (starts, star ts, etc.) Everdune... I just like the word, it is kind of unique, same with Scaon.. not really big reasons behind them. |
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| roncli: | | What do you currently do for a living? |
| ST Arts: | | I am a visual art educator, a teacher. So I teach drawing, painting, photograph, and all of that kind of stuff to young kids... it is ST Arts there... :) I am graduated as Master of Arts in university. |
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| roncli: | | That sounds fun. |
| ST Arts: | | You should try it. ;) Not fun all the time... |
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| roncli: | | How long have you been at it now? |
| ST Arts: | | I've done this about four years now. I'd like to teach older people someday for sure. |
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| roncli: | | Do you work on any visual art in your spare time? |
| ST Arts: | | I like to paint oil paintings. Not for sale, but just for fun. Realistic landscapes are my favorites right now. Not much time to do it though. :) |
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| roncli: | | How did you get started with music? |
| ST Arts: | | When I got interested in making my own music, I think it was around 1988-1989. My father bought me and my little brother a new home computer called MSX... It was just for playing games, not for music, but it had some great Konami's games like Salamander [ed. Life Force], Nemesis [ed. Gradius], and others that had just amazing music in them. So I tried to imitate those sounds. Never succeeded in it thought... :) Later in 1992 I bought an Amiga 500 and I started to make music with ProTracker. Then I used the artist title Stamen and released some tunes at Aminet and The Mod Archive. |
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| roncli: | | What have you used over the years, software and hardware, to help compose your music? |
| ST Arts: | | With Amiga I used ProTracker and OctaMED (I used it mainly for MIDI purposes later). Today I use a PC and my favorite music editor is Renoise. My only hardware synth is the Korg microX, and I use it with the Roland EXR-3 (main keyboard). And many VST instruments... commercial and free. |
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| roncli: | | Most of your releases fall under the category of spacesynth. Can you briefly explain this genre, and what your inspiration behind this style is? |
| ST Arts: | | Spacesynth has roots in the 80's when musical acts like Laserdance and Koto released some instrumental synthesizer music with Italo disco influences. The genre almost died in the 90's but now there are some new artist that are interested to make more music in this genre. I think this "growing interest" started at the beginning of this century. I became more interested in this genre just about a year ago, when I heard some spacesynth songs on Mikseri. I think my demoscene background fits well to this music, it is natural to me to be part of this music. |
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| roncli: | | What song of yours do you think is the best example of this style? |
| ST Arts: | | This year has been very much learning and developing my style, but if I think there is one song that I feel is the best example, it has to be one of the most recent songs I've made. So it might be On the Fireline. I also like Nemesis Conquer Final. Usually I'm not so happy with my songs. |
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| roncli: | | On the Fireline is one of a few songs that uses some vocoded lyrics, along with Born To Fly, Blue Lasers, and a couple others. What process do you go through to make these vocals, and should we expect more songs like this from you in the future? |
| ST Arts: | | At first I make the song without vocoders or any vocals. It is just melodies. Sometimes I feel that it lacks something to be more "ready". Then I usually start using vocoders. I think of some words, like short poems that could fit to the rhythm and feel of the song. And then I use my VST vocoder and find some nice carrier sounds to it, and put some special effects to it. If the vocoder fits to the overall feeling, atmosphere of the song, then I think the song has gone to right direction. And yes, you can expect more vocoder songs from me in the future, for sure. I love vocoders. |
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| roncli: | | Are there any specific musicians that have influenced your music over the years? |
| ST Arts: | | Oh, many for sure... I think the most important influence to me has been Vangelis, but I really love also Jarre, Yellow Magic Orchestra, Tangerine Dream. And the old game music pioneers, like Ben Daglish and Jogeir Liljedahl... And of course Laserdance and Koto, as I previously stated here. |
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| roncli: | | What goals do you have as a musician for the next five years or so? |
| ST Arts: | | I think the most important goal to me is to grow as a musician, to learn more. But I wouldn't mind if I make some commercial music in the future, or some games.. but only if I feel so. It depends on my free time and life in general, but I want to have some fun! Music to me is relaxing and fun. And it should be in the future too. |
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| roncli: | | Having fun with your music is certainly a good goal to have! Any words of advice or other comments you'd like to close out with? |
| ST Arts: | | Well, it might not be good advice, but I always say "don't hurry with making your music"... Give time to melodies and the arranging and mixing. I always hurry with my music, and I just need to learn to be more patient. And thank you for the nice interview! :) I enjoyed it really much. |
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| roncli: | | You're certainly most welcome, and thank you for your time. Good luck with your music in the future! |
