Trusties

Composition: Oikarinen, Ylilauri, Veijalainen
Lyrics: Ylilauri

Comments by Matti:

• A haunting song. The text was inspired by Marko’s guitar tracks and his bass riff.

Comments by Oikku & Ville:

• Marko’s original 4-track demo had the the guitar parts and the main bass riff. Matti did a few takes of improvised vocals and there we had the first version of the song. But that was not the end of it…
• Ville created the bass melody in the middle section. Divine inspiration and composing credits again 🙂
• The bass line is doubled note for note all the way through.
• Once upon a time, it was in Bluesmoon, Raahe, we performed a grunge-version of the song live . Playing the original arrangement requires a very silent audience, which is not usually the case in a club environment.

Posted in Growing Smaller

Composition: Oikarinen, Ylilauri
Lyrics: Ylilauri

Comments by Matti:

• The lyrics contain a reference to a well-known Finnish ski-jumper and some other stars from history. Stream of unconsciousness?

Comments by Ville:

• The quiro is played by Ville, one of his rare percussive contributions

Posted in Growing Smaller

Composition: Oikarinen, Ylilauri
Lyrics: Ylilauri

Comments by Matti:

• Maybe one of the darkest moments in Matti’s life?

Comments by Oikku & Ville:

• The guitars were double-tracked with slightly different speed settings on the recording device. This gives them a wider sound
• The meaning was not to distort the clarinet sound when recording, but it does fit the atmosphere.
• Isn’t it kind of strange that the five first songs on Growing Smaller all have different time signatures?

Posted in Growing Smaller

Composition: Oikarinen, Ylilauri, Veijalainen
Lyrics: Ylilauri

Comments by Oikku:

• This is a compact sad kinda-sorta folk song that was originally written by Matti and Marko. The song was basically in its final form before Ville first heard it. When Ville recorded the bass parts he must have had some divine inspiration because the bass really makes this song something special. We thought the bass lines made such a huge difference that Ville deserved composing credits.

Comments by Ville:

• I think I’ve written my most ambitious bass-lines to other people’s songs. It’s somehow more stimulating. In my own songs I tend to concentrate on more basic stuff, and try to create as simple bass lines as possible.

Comments by Matti:

• Lyrically this is a Waltarinian boy and girl-song

Posted in Growing Smaller

Composition: Veijalainen
Lyrics: Ylilauri

Comments by Ville:

• The verse and chorus contain only two chords. A two-chorded version without the middle-section was once performed live.
• This time the guitar riff is Ville’s
• Marko’s brother Matti plays the Marimba parts
• Ville’s first Trusties song???? He really likes Beethoven, who inspired the middle section. He also got ideas from Paul Simon & Aerosmith.
• Ville had the main bass line and the guitar melody already in 1989. He was playing mainly heavy/thrash metal at the time, so there was no use for this kind of stuff. He also felt not being able to write the song the way he wanted. Over the next years he re-visited the ideas every now and then without getting anywhere. When he joined Trusties in 1994, he gave it another try, because it obviously would fit their style very well. Finally he also found the inspiration for the vocal line, the development section and the over-all song form. Ville’s composition process has always been slow, but this was even unusually slow for him (6 years for 4 minutes of music, talk about productivity).

Posted in Growing Smaller

Composition: Oikarinen
Lyrics: Ylilauri, Oikarinen

Comments by Oikku:

• This song is about some weird X-files stuff. Or maybe it is about indians – it depends…
• Ville wanted to point out that the bass riff in part A was composed by Marko. I don’t know why – maybe he doesn’t like it?
• The guitar solo is doubled all the way through.
• There is a four chord keyboard pattern (A, B, G, A) over the bass riff (you know, the one Ville does not like) in the solo section. Well, actually the keyboard part got deleted but the solo is still based on the chords.

Comments by Ville:

• I do like the riff, in fact I realized that I’ve used a variation of it in a new song

Posted in Growing Smaller

Composition: Veijalainen
Lyrics: Ylilauri, Veijalainen

Comments by Ville:

• Although Ville is credited for the music, the guitar harmonics riff was created by Marko. It inspired also part of the intro.
• The simple bass line alters between the root and the fifth throughout the song. It still contains a good amount of development.
• How fast is fast ? One could argue that the tempo marking in the beginning is 880bpm
• Marko’s guitar solo is maybe one of weirdest he’s ever done.
• Matti started the lyrics, Ville finished them.
• A video of the song was premiered at OMVF 1999.
• The grandfather clock sound was produced by drumming a wooder drawer. The idea for using a clock-sound came from the lyrics. Passing of time is one of the key themes both in lyrics and music.
• The structure of the lyrics contains a lot of symmetry.

Posted in Growing Smaller