*********************************** AM/FM ***********************************     THE MAKING OF "HOBBITS & SPACESHIPS"       PART 1       By   Bjorn "Dr.Awesome" Lynne    I have been asked by a reader (ref. letters article) to write an article or a series of articles about how we created the Hobbits & Spaceships CD - all the way from the early birth of the music until the finished CD was available for sale. Since perhaps many of you hobby musicians out there are playing with the thought of once recording and releasing your own CD, I thought this was a great idea, so here I am to write this article, and maybe give you some useful information, hints & tips worth knowing as you go along. Or maybe you'll just put the whole idea aside, when you read about some of the problems we encountered on the way...! This article will be in two parts: In this first part, I will describe how we did things, practically, who we contacted, etc. etc. and explain how we went about getting our CD done, without going too much into the technical things. Next time, I will describe in more detail how we did things, technically, to compose and produce the music, what equipment we used, etc. But first a little background: Your favourite AM/FM Editor (me) released in the autumn 1992, a compact disc in co- operation with a friend and fellow musician, Seppo Hurme. The CD was titled "Hobbits & Spaceships", and it was one of the first CDs to emerge out of the "Amiga scene". The music on the CD was composed by two pure Amiga-musicians, Bjorn A. Lynne and Seppo Hurme, in the Amiga world better known as Dr.Awesome and Fleshbrain of the Crusaders. I think ONE other CD had already been released by an established Amiga-musician, and that was Chris Hulsbeck's CD "Shades". But Chris never released the CD with an angle towards the Amiga society. "Hobbits & Spaceships" was directly aimed at Amiga freaks. For the first time, Amiga artist pseudonyms were used on a fully professional product (it actually says "Dr.Awesome" and "Fleshbrain" on the cover); hence this CD has become somewhat of a novelty and a collectors item for all Amiga fans. You might almost say, Hobbits & Spaceships was a new Crusaders music disk; but; it was released on a Compact Disc instead of an Amiga disk! The music on H&S is NOT (!) Amiga-music recorded onto CD, like some people have been thinking! The music on H&S was composed and produced on fully professional digital equipment; synthesizers, effect units, drum modules, etc. Still; it was the Amiga that was the most important tool used to create it. OK, so here it comes then: THE "STORY" OF "HOBBITS & SPACESHIPS" The 1991 Demo Tape It is necessary to go back in time, all the way to 1991, to find the early seeds of ideas that would later lead to the H&S CD. In the summer of 1991, I released a cassette tape for sale in the Amiga scene, containing 10 songs that I had composed on my synthesizers. I advertised the tape in Amiga underground magazines such as the Official Eurochart, Zine, and other such magazines. Of course, the only reason the tape sold any copies at all was the fact that I had been composing Amiga music for lots and lots of demos, music disks, games etc., and most active people in the Amiga scene knew who "Dr.Awesome of Crusaders" was. I exploited this fact, and many of those who liked my Amiga-work thought it was well worth to spend a few pounds on a cassette tape with synthesizer-music composed by this "Dr.Awesome" guy. The cassette actually sold about 150 copies, and it gave me enough money to buy a new and better synth; the Ensoniq SQ-R+. (For those interested, the synths used on that old Demo Tape was: Roland U110, Roland Juno-2, Korg DW-8000). After the release of this cassette, I didn't have any further plans to do the same thing again, although I continued to compose, of course, mostly for my own pleasure. However, as the months went by, I heard that my friend Seppo Hurme, also known as "Fleshbrain of Crusaders" had also started to work with synth equipment. I have always admired Seppo's music, I find it very original and strong, so I started thinking about perhaps making another demo-tape, this time together with Seppo. The idea took it's form, and after a few weeks, I had contacted Seppo, and we had agreed to release a C90 cassette tape together, and sell it to the Amiga scene, just like I did with my first Demo Tape. For many weeks, we planned the release of this cassette, tried to figure out which songs to use, etc. etc. I was thinking of a title of the tape, and came up with "Hobbits & Spaceships". The background for this was that, well, for one, it just sounded like a nice and original title, and in addition, the two words Hobbits and Spaceships seemed to reflect the two styles of music that were dominant on the tape. Some of the music was very hard and electric, futuristic maybe. (Space Train, Dimminuendo, Cosmic Winds) Other songs were mystic, atmospheric, with a mediaeval touch and generally reminded people of the world of Tolkien and Middle Earth (Tinuviel, Mikael Lost in the Wood, Sword of the Past, A New Age). From tape to CD I told a friend of mine, Vegard, about the plans that Seppo and I had, about the tape and the music, etc. Vegard has always been one who likes to play big when he plays, and it was him who first said the words "Why don't you make it a CD instead of a tape?". My first reaction was just to wipe it off and go "Are you mad? We could never afford that; besides we could never sell enough copies to make it feasible! I'm not risking hundreds and hundreds of pounds on that! Besides, where would we ever get the money for it??!". But Vegard kept at it, trying to convince me that a CD was the way to go. He would even lend us the money, he said. But I still refused. Nope, I'd done a tape before, it worked fine, it was safe and didn't cost that much. Thanks to Vegard though, who kept talking about it over the weeks, I gradually changed my mind, and the idea of a CD sounded more and more tempting. Finally, I decided to go for the CD, and I contacted Seppo and told him about these plans. Seppo's first reaction was (of course) similar to the one I had at first ("are you mad?" and so on), but once he was convinced that Vegard would take the loss if we weren't able to sell enough copies to make it pay for the pressing, he said "OK". I think Seppo was even more reserved than me though; I'm quite sure he anticipated that the CD would NEVER sell enough copies to make it earn what we had to pay to get the copies pressed. Hobbits & Spaceships had turned from a planned tape into a planned CD!! The composing At this point, most of the music for the CD had already been composed. But I will go back in time and try to recapture when it was done... As far as I can remember, my own tracks from H&S were composed _in this order_, during the period July 1991 - May 1992:  1st track finished: Tinuviel (H&S 6) July '91 2nd track finished: Cosmic Winds (H&S 12b) August '91 3rd track finished: Dimminuendo (H&S 1) Sept. '91 4th track finished: Fell Breeze over R. (H&S 12a) Nov/Dec. '91 5th track finished: Space Deliria (H&S 10) Spring '92 6th track finished: A New Age (H&S 4) Late Spring '92  "A New Age" was the last track that was finished, and it was the only track that was composed/completed after we had decided to release H&S as a CD. OK, in this part of the "The Making of Hobbits & Spaceships", I won't go into any details about how we did things technically, like which synths we used, etc. etc. - that will be covered in the next part, which will appear in the next issue. But the music was recorded onto a DENON DTR-2000 DAT recorder, which I didn't own myself at the time, but a friend of mine let me borrow his. (I have since then aquired one of my own). I had the DAT recorder for three days and nights, and I was able to make decent recordings of all my songs during this time. Note that all this was done IN my own living room; the DAT- recorder placed on a chair beside my other gear (there was no room for it on the desk..) At the same time, I instructed Seppo to borrow a DAT-recorder from one of HIS friends, and do the same thing to his songs. (I might have forgotten to mention this, but ALL the time this was going on, I myself was in Norway, while Seppo was in Finland! We had contact through letters, telephone and telefax!). A few days later, Seppo's DAT tape appeared in my mailbox, and this was in fact the very first time that I heard ANY of Seppo's synth music! My satisfaction was only the better when I heard how nice Seppo's music was, but then again, I had expected this all the time - Seppo always comes up with some great stuff. But now we had ONE DAT cassette with all of MY music on, and ANOTHER DAT cassette with all of Seppo's music on, and in some way we had to get it all collected onto one single DAT! Well, back came the friend with the DAT recorder, this time he'd brought ANOTHER DAT-recorder (the same model) which HE again had borrowed from HIS friend!!! (Getting complicated...) We spent the whole night transferring the music from the two separate DAT cassettes onto a third - all the while we used digital transfer, so that we didn't lose any sound quality. While all this was going on, during the past couple of months, I had also started to check around to see who we should contact to get our CDs made. After a few phone calls, I learned that the absolute minimum number of CDs allowed to order was 500. However, if we should order only 500, then the price for each one would be pretty stiff. I was told that it is in fact the VERY FIRST CD that they make, the Master-CD, that's expensive to make. Pressing this ONE CD costs more than 10.000 NOK (£1.000), and after that, each CD was quite cheap to press. So we decided to press 1,000. Never in my wildest dream had I ever hoped to sell all of these, but that's in fact just what happened. Now, one year later, Hobbits & Spaceships is in fact SOLD OUT. I'm thinking about ordering another 500 copies, but I haven't yet decided... After checking prices, I concluded that a Norwegian CD-pressing agency called "Strawberry Records" was the cheapest alternative. They would take the DAT and the cover-art, send it all off to Germany, take care of all the mailing, administration and everything for us, and deliver 1,000 CDs to my door. The delivery time was said to be about 4 weeks from they received the DAT. I gave them the DAT around the first of July '92, along with the cover material. But wait!! I have completely forgot to tell you about the production of the cover! Well, the various bits and pieces that made up the cover for H&S actually took quite a long process, and the forming of the cover took place at the same period that the last finishing touches were made to the music. Seppo, sitting all the way up there in Finland, didn't have anything to do with the forming of the cover - because I was here in Oslo, where the CD-agency is located, it was easier for me; and I also had some very clear ideas as to how I wanted the cover to look. First, I knew that I wanted some fantasy- style hand-drawn artwork on the cover. I knew that a guy in the company I work for at daytime (Kvaerner Engineering) is a hell of a good artist, and I asked him if he would like to draw something for our CD-cover. He thought it was a great idea, and within a week, he had drawn the front cover (The Hobbit lifted above the ground) as well as the "framework" around the lyrics for "Tinuviel". Now, I also wanted another guy to draw something for us, a long-time friend of mine who has always been a wizz with the pencil. He came up with many different ideas, most of them unfortunately weren't used in the end, but the last page of the inlay-cover, the warrior sitting by the tree, is an example of Frank's excellent drawing skills. (Expect to see much more artwork by Frank on my next CD). Along with the artwork, there's also a lot of printed text etc. on the cover, and this was in fact made with a PC running WordPerfect for Windows. I know, I know, I shouldn't have used a PC to print the text for the cover of this Amiga-oriented CD, but I had to use a HP LaserJet 4 printer, and at the time, I didn't have a HP LaserJet 4 printer- driver for my Amiga! (I have one now, though.) Fortunately, another friend of mine worked in a printshop, so at night-time, we were able to transform the artwork and the printed material to so called "films", i.e. thin plastic-paper. Strawberry had already told me that I could have a full-colour picture on the front cover, but all the rest had to be black-and-white. One slight problem was that the Hobbit-picture I wanted to use on the front cover was already in black-and-white, so that could end up a bit dull. We did the best we could by adding a bit of colour to the CD title and our names instead. Still, I would have liked even better to have a full- colour picture on the front cover. (Next time, I will!) As I mentioned, the promised delivery time from Strawberry Records was 4 weeks, so after I had delivered the DAT and the cover-films to them, I counted every day until the 4 weeks had gone, and immediately threw myself at the phone, asking when my CDs were coming. Unfortunately, (and I should have known this), things were delayed, further delayed and even more delayed. I called Strawberry every single day, but nothing... Then, in the second half of August, I went on a two-weeks holiday in Greece, and lo-and-behold, when I came back, in early September, Strawberry Records had FINALLY received the finished CDs from Germany, and they delivered them at my door the next day. So instead of the promised 4 weeks, it did in fact take about 10 weeks... Now; do you have any idea of the feeling you get, when you get 4 MASSIVE boxes, no, CRATES, filled up with CDs, and they ALL have your OWN name on the front cover?!? Let me assure you; it's a VERY special feeling, I'm not even going to try to explain, because you just have to try it to understand it! It feels kind of like you've reached a MAJOR milestone in your life. Your own CD... Far out! Well, that's about a year ago now. Even as I write these lines, I have about 15 - fifteen - CD's left. About 100-150 (I'm not quite sure) have been given away to friends, family, software companies, radio stations, local newspapers, etc., and that leaves somewhere between 850 and 900 CDs that have actually been sold. The odd order for a CD still keeps coming in every now and then, but of course nowhere near as often as they did the first few months. I have been wondering whether or not I should order a second pressing from the factory. The problem is that the least amount allowed is 500, and I really don't know if I can sell another 500 CDs, or even half of that number. Indeed, as I write these very words, I still haven't decided whether or not to order another 500 CDs. It will cost me quite a lot of money, and I need that money badly for the pressing of my NEXT CD, which I have planned for early 1994. But that's a different story altogether, which you can be sure to hear more about in future AM/FM issues! Just to keep you on your toes, I can let you know that the CD will be released by me only (because Seppo's gone full-time into drumming in his rock-band I think), and the music style will be more or less the same as on H&S. It will be about an hour long, and will be titled "Montage". The front cover picture will be created on the Amiga A4000 in HAM-8 mode, and the other artwork in the cover will be drawn by my friend Frank. Some song names I can reveal already now are: "Communion", "Plugged!", "Creeping Sleep", "Head Held High", "Hyperride". I hope of course to sell equally many copies of this CD. If you liked H&S, I think I can promise you that you will also like "Montage"! More about Montage later. I hope this article has given you some insight to all the work that's involved with a private CD-release. You have to do an awful lot of the work yourself, but that's part of the fun! Next time, in the second and last part of this article, I will go into more details about how we did things, technically, the equipment, the composing methods, etc. Until then, Sayonara, Amigos! Bjørn A. Lynne August -93 *********************************** AM/FM ***********************************