maanantai 6. toukokuuta 2013
Monday 6.5.2013
Here we go again. It felt surprisingly nice to wake up from my own bed, also seems like I'm full of energy. Awesome. Let's get back to tuning the bass and testing the sounds. With a brief listen, have to say that the guitars we laid down yesterday are still sounding good, just some fine tuning with the actual playing itself
12pm
First song recorded and you could kill a small village full of Apaches with that bass sound, holy shit that's rough and heavy. Can't do anything else than to get excited again. It looks like we are making an album after all, and a really good one. Who would've thought?
5pm
Half of the bass tracks are done and quality of the humor has downward spiral drastically. Even tho there really wasn't any quality in the first place. Most of the bass tracks got done with couple of tries, but I'm sure that the good performances will end on Wednesday when yours truly starts to play my guitars and a winning streak like you haven't seen since Charlie Sheen got booted from his TV show starts. If the strings will hold on to their sound, we'll probably get bass tracks ready today
7pm
The strings are starting to sound dead and there wasn't a backup set with us, so since tomorrow is a day off, there's 2 songs left for the Wednesday. This is a good place to continue from when we come back, the album is already sounding crushing
Sunday 5.5.2013
9am
Deja vu, waking up from the mattress as the engineer comes to studio. Here we go again. I'm pretty sure that today will be a day with nothing much to say, since all that will be done is just adjusting levels and controls from the amplifiers and mixers. At least we're heading back home for the night today. Not bad.
8pm
What do you know, the guitar sounds are starting to form up and we made a test recording for the guitars on Marching Through The Borderlines to get a better overall picture from the sound when Janne starts to pound in his bass tracks. Home sweet home, here we come
Saturday 4.5.2013
9am
This was the first time we had woken up from the floor of the control room. Feeling rock'n'roll right now. We opened our eyes when the engineer Jukka Salovaara came back to his kingdom. Oh well, at least it was a short trip back to work for us. Setting away the mattresses and blankets and let the fun begin again. Starting to feel bit better and sharper, since because of the night shifts that yours truly is working in my day job, I really didn't get more than three hours of sleep for Thursday before packing up the van and leaving to studio. Then because of blown tire I went straight back to work 2 hours late and as soon as the shift ended on Friday morning, I drove back to studio without any sleep at all. So the weariness was that strong that I have no recollection from playing the guitar scratch track for Catharsis, but I guess that it still went decently even if I was half asleep. There was a moment when the rest of the guys decided to have a timeout when I kept constantly falling asleep while recording the scratch track and sent me to have a 20 minute nap.
So let's get back to this day. As I said, I was feeling like a human being again, even I felt bit like an human icicle, but it's nothing that some serious excitement and guitar playing wouldn't fix. If not, there's always sauna after the day, but I guess that we should do some work before that...
5pm
This is impressive, we're just a bit over halfway through our second recording day and drums, along with percussion, are done, ready and finished. I definitely have to tip my hat in that general direction. No we'll add some tambourines and extra bling
8pm
We are done, the guitar section migrates to sauna and drum section leaves back to Helsinki. Our bass player Janne was shooting a wedding today so he will be back on Monday. No harm done, since tomorrow will probably go by with adjusting and tuning the guitar sounds, so there isn't much to do outside the engineer and the guitarists. Would probably be really uninteresting to others
10pm
Brief grilling after the sauna. We had a dream that we could get away from Helsinki to more rural scenery and record the album in an atmospheric old building. I guess that this is pretty much what we wanted. Calm and relaxed vibes, feeling content and excited, sky full of stars above our heads and in the distance a rooster that crows. Pretty sure that the rooster had it's feed delivered from somewhere in the general direction on Columbia, if he thinks that it's dawn right now. Good times, still. At some point after shooting some shit, we'll head back inside, where I ended up having the control room all by myself, since my snoring could be felt in the recording room where the rest of the fled. Oh well, these things happen. Tomorrow we're starting the endless Via Dolorosa of guitars...
Friday 3.5.2013
In spite of the small setbacks and night's sleep that got reduced to couple of hours for the passengers, it was a pleasure to notice how enthusiastic and nostalgic we were feeling when we entered to get some groceries from that same store that we last used when we were recording Metamorphosis. That time instead of Niinikoski, we were recording our album at Oriville Studios in Orimattila, which is the bigger town next to Niinikoski. That time we had the same conductor, Jukka Salovaara, behind the desk as well. Feeling really homey right now.
We started the morning with fine adjustments of last nights drum sounds, logging the tempos and other general initial preparations with the band. So let's get this thing started and let's make an album.
The first recording day started with drums and percussion, that we decided record at the same time to ensure better groove and sound of ensemble. Good call, since Filip's and Jussi's mutual drum work got ignited into unbelievable level and the result was a planet size groove and tight rhythm. In such level that some of the songs were recorded in one take. Got to tip my hat for that, we are all really excited, even the engineer.
After the first day, the drums and percussion for half of the songs are ready. We are clearly ahead of our schedule and if things keeps going this way we are done with them tomorrow, which would mean that we could get to bass and guitar tracks a day early. Good times. Now it's time to set up the grill and go to sauna. Half of the guys went back to Helsinki and the guitar section stayed in Niinikoski and will spend the night over at the studio, sleeping on the mattresses on the floor of the control room. How rock'n'roll is that?
Thursday 2.5.2013
Here we go again. After loads of misfortunes and schedules getting postponed with more than a year, the light of the studio is finally showing up in the end of the tunnel. Right on, full speed towards the light and the next 17 days will be spent in the tender care of Audiamond Studio, in the rural Niinikoski. So pack up and let the journey begin. This day will consist from setting up the drum kits and microphones and a brief sound check for tomorrow. So nothing that will blow your mind for today. But it's a good start for tomorrow
