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Have any of you played in other bands?

Alexander: Yes, I used to play in one garage band, from which I later left and created what is now called Nota Amara. And now I also started my instrumental project Overlapping Magisteria.

Natalya: My story of this kind is ordinary at least .  It was  a small local music bands and solo performances.

How is it that you started playing music?

Alexander: Back in school it seemed to me that classmates playing the guitar were incredibly cool. And then in 16 years I decided to try it myself. And that's what this led to. Without music education, yes.

Natalya: It started back in high school, continued at the University to this day. It was very childish, although at the time I didn't see it.

What are your names? / Who plays what? / How old are you?

Alexander: My name is Alexander, I’m a 25, I’m a composer and guitarist.

Natalya: I’m Natalya. 28. vocals  & lyrics

Have you had other previous members? Alexander: Oh yes, of course. There were a lot of them. But many left when we started playing more complicated music. Initially, we played something like a sympho metal and was called the Messiah Syndrome. After disagreements with one of the ideological inspirers of the Syndrome, we broke up and we with Natalya founded Nota Amara. And as a result, now we exist in the form of a studio project of 2 people.

Did you make music even when you were young?

Alexander: Soon after I started learning to play the guitar, I started trying to write my music. It turns out that this greatly speeds up the learning process.

Natalya: Yes. Although, of course, those songs were inherent in some youth naivety.

Where are you from? We are from Russia. From a small town in the south of the country, called Novocherkassk

What year did the band form? 2011

What's your style of genre? As a composer, I would call our genre a comprehensive word prog-metal, but in compositions one can find both avant-garde and fusion, or other.

What inspires you? Science, the universe and a lot of beautiful and complex music.

How often and where do you reherse? At the moment we do not rehearse live performances, only studio ones. We are working on material for the future album, the release date of which we can not yet say. But in the near future we will release a single.

How have you developed since you started with the music?

Alexander: Starting to play the guitar, I was heard by the classic Metallica and Scorpions. And my compositions were very similar to them, at least I thought so. Fortunately, almost no one heard my early works. Soon I discovered the no less popular Dream Theater, and with it there are many more bands. And then I realized that musical snobbery is mine. There is nothing better than writing music, which the listener really appreciates, if he can listen to the end.

Natalya: I was interested in a lot of different music. But were the preferences of classic russian and foreign hard’n’heavy. Laterly, I’ve already interested in the more complex genre of progressive metal

Do you have other interests of work outside the band?

Alexander: my other instrumental project Overlapping Magisteria. And also I'm a real movie maniac. I would start specific channel on YouTube, if these channels were not a billion. And books, I really love to read, popular science literature. And fiction, miscellaneous.

Natalya: Yes. Also NA I have many creative pursuits (knitting, drawing, batik), scientific work ( this fall, I’ll defended PhD thesis in the field of animal husbandry) and professional interests - I'm a veterinarian doctor .

Are you looking for a label, and what are your thoughts around that? Not at the moment. While it is more convenient for us to publish ourselves and freely.

What made you decide to make this music? Because it is interesting first of all to us. 

What are your songs about? Natalya: Our lyrics are about science, critical thinking, current knowledge and the dynamism of scientific development of the modern world. That people is vital to keep up with all the observed and proven facts, to be self-critical and self-development, taking all the new knowledge.

Who does the composing and writes the lyrics? As we said, Alexander is a composer. Natalia is the author of texts.

Do you start with the music or the lyrics? The question is interesting. Not every text will fall on the music that Alexander writes, so we have to write the text for the finished song. Sometimes we have to adjust the already written text.

Do you compose in a certain inviroment?

Alexander: In a sense, yes. I'm not a fan of writing for inspiration. The concentration and absence of distractions contribute to the writing of new music best. Usually I know in advance that I want to write and just work on it.

Natalya: I also argree.

Have you done any covers live? In the early stages of the band, we played Scorpions and Nightwish songs. Once there was a Gimme Gimme Gimme.

What language do you sing in? At first we sang in our native Russian, but from the last album of the Mediocrity we switched to English, being guided by a wider audience.

What are the least and most people to attend one of your gigs? 5 against 200 somewhere. It was completely different gigs.

What was your first gig like? He was awesome. We rehearsed for a long time and built up the fan base at the expense of a large number of band members (six) and their friends. The concert was for several groups and the atmosphere on the concert was amazingly friendly.

Have you had to cancel a gig? This was not, even with the big problems we tried to play a gig.

Where do you plan to gig the comming year? If we decide to resume concert activity, we will start from our city and region.

When did you start to sell merchandise, and what do you have for sale? There will be demand - there will be an offer.

What do you think about people downloading music instead of buying records now a days? We see no reason to fight this problem. If the music is good, then a person can donate money after listening. Therefore, in addition to paid resources, such as iTunes, we used free to publish their music.

How do you think the music industry have changed because of this? To tell the truth, we did not find time, when for any music it was necessary to pay.

What do you think of my work? Music journalists do a very useful job. Personally, we would be interested to read about the thoughts and motivations of the performers we liked.

Do you have any role models or idols? Alexander: I think that this phenomenon is not relevant in our day. There are a lot of talents and one should strive to do something unique.

Is it easier to find inspiration from older bands, or bands that are more active today?

Inspiration can come from everywhere. It happens that you will live all your life and you do not know about the band, for example King Crimson, and after listening to them, you think their first album is almost the best that you've heard.

What have been your biggest obstacles? Probably money. Very expensive is the studio recording

What advice would you give other bands or artists? We are not so important as to give advice. But the only thing we can always say is to create.

Do you have any new material? Yes, our single is now at the stage of recording vocals. Other material while in the form of entries in the music editor.

What are your web sites? Link at Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NOTA-AMARA-519062891492617/ https://notaamara.bandcamp.com/releases

How can people reach you? At Facebook or VK. Or in Google search «Nota Amara»

What are your plans for the future?Required release of the single in 2017, the album in 2018, and there we'll see.

Do you have something to add? Thank you for a good and interesting interview.