Thursday 11.12. & Friday 12.12.2008
"Am I done?"
There were only three verses left on Amoral, but like always we ended up doing a lot more! Overcrowded got a new chorus because of wrong lyrics (bad English). Sami did his remaining parts (mostly fixes), so we fucking scored all the vocals! Usually it's a relief but it can also be depressing, because now you have to wait, wait and wait to get the album released! After I realized that my work was done, I took my Typhoon for a spin as you can see at the end of the video ;)
I also bought Sampo a birthday present and took it for a test drive, I wish I were a child again, or maybe I am! Heres one clip from the manufacturers site:
Sunday 14.12. & Monday 15.12.
Niko and Anssi finished the "gang bangs" with Sami and they sounded great... Here's one clip from the sessions. On monday we had to do one fuckin word to one our songs and I did that before we had our band practice for the upcoming gig (On The Rocks, Helsinki 19.12.).
keskiviikko 17. joulukuuta 2008
tiistai 16. joulukuuta 2008
Ari's Diary
Saturday 6.12.2008
"Jingle bells jingle bells dancing all night long... blah"
I saw a strange dream, we were on a gig with Dauntless and the first song went fine, after that everything fell apart. Other guitarist went to take a nap in the backstage and Sami started to play poker with the other guys on stage! I were quite pissed of about the situation and started to panic. Well, the whole thing went so far that the crowd started to leave, because they thought the gig was over and the other band (some latino/samba orchrestra) came to the stage. I yelled at them to "fuck off" and after that I woke up! Whoa, I hope this is not those premonitons they talk about.
I updated one of my mornings on the videos, so theres my normal routine that I do almost every day. Get up, wake up the kids, do some pushups and drive the kids to school. Once again wery fuckin interesting ;) Then comes the boring part. Originally we were supposed to go to the studio later because Riku and OP were creating some FX and drinking beer at Riku's place. For my suprise OP called me at about 12.00 that they could come to the studio right away! I was like fuck yes! I havent been drinking in two weeks, so I was full of energy and ready to rock. The day was a success! We did the whole Riku Speziale again cause I thought my voice was too "lazy" on that one and like Riku said to me: "Ari, you can do anything today" and it felt like it was almost true ;) After that we did one phrase to Amoral and listened all the songs two times back and forth. I redid one scream to Core and one fucking sick scream to Pois alta! song. So, there it was, one day done and only 3 phrases to go on Amoral if the other guys and Ville approve the arragements.
Videos
"Jingle bells jingle bells dancing all night long... blah"
I saw a strange dream, we were on a gig with Dauntless and the first song went fine, after that everything fell apart. Other guitarist went to take a nap in the backstage and Sami started to play poker with the other guys on stage! I were quite pissed of about the situation and started to panic. Well, the whole thing went so far that the crowd started to leave, because they thought the gig was over and the other band (some latino/samba orchrestra) came to the stage. I yelled at them to "fuck off" and after that I woke up! Whoa, I hope this is not those premonitons they talk about.
I updated one of my mornings on the videos, so theres my normal routine that I do almost every day. Get up, wake up the kids, do some pushups and drive the kids to school. Once again wery fuckin interesting ;) Then comes the boring part. Originally we were supposed to go to the studio later because Riku and OP were creating some FX and drinking beer at Riku's place. For my suprise OP called me at about 12.00 that they could come to the studio right away! I was like fuck yes! I havent been drinking in two weeks, so I was full of energy and ready to rock. The day was a success! We did the whole Riku Speziale again cause I thought my voice was too "lazy" on that one and like Riku said to me: "Ari, you can do anything today" and it felt like it was almost true ;) After that we did one phrase to Amoral and listened all the songs two times back and forth. I redid one scream to Core and one fucking sick scream to Pois alta! song. So, there it was, one day done and only 3 phrases to go on Amoral if the other guys and Ville approve the arragements.
Videos
lauantai 6. joulukuuta 2008
Guest Vocalist
3.12.2008
We recorded the mysterious guest vocalist today for the song Pois alta!. Everything went really well and we were done after an hour. Well, who was it? Don't worry, you will hear it in the radio! :)
We recorded the mysterious guest vocalist today for the song Pois alta!. Everything went really well and we were done after an hour. Well, who was it? Don't worry, you will hear it in the radio! :)
perjantai 5. joulukuuta 2008
Ari's Diary Continues
Monday 1.12.2008
Once again I got the flu! I hate this! Well I have to cope with it and my monday went just chilling and taking it easy. I went to the local drugstore and bought the whole shop as you can see on the first video. I heard that ASA (Finnish rapper) got a great award from finnish Teosto. 40 thousand euros! This is the first time I agree with these awards so far. Great! Luckily the other guys, Sami, Op, Riku and Santeri went and did some lyrics and arragements for the two missing songs.
Tuesday 02.12.2008
"Luke I'm not your son."
I woke and were still quite ill and because of that I was quite down. But I decided that today I'm going to score some vocals anyway. So we (me and Ilmari 5 years old) jumped into my GMC Typhoon and started driving. On our way to the studio we went to get my 8 year old boy Sampo from school and I dropped the kids to the town to their mother Suvi. During the trip Ilmari did some video shooting and singing the new Slipknot as you can see on the video ;) When I arrived to the studio there was only Elvis (name changed) who opened the door for me:) After a little while Sami, Riku, OP joined the production team. First we scored some re-takes because Ville had noticed some bad english on the lyrics ;) After that we did 1,5 songs. I will try to make some more lyrics to the other song and hope that its done on next saturday. The videos show how fucking difficult arragements those fuckers had done yesterday ;) My feelings for the day were quite strange because I didn't know if I even entered the studio or not because everything happened so fast!
Sami had a good drive today and after the vocal recording the rest of the guys started to practice with our new drummer (we have a gig 19.12.). OP is playing his bass tracks with acoustic guitar on the video for Elvis. This fat fuck will try to sleep now. Good night, sleep tight.
Videos
Once again I got the flu! I hate this! Well I have to cope with it and my monday went just chilling and taking it easy. I went to the local drugstore and bought the whole shop as you can see on the first video. I heard that ASA (Finnish rapper) got a great award from finnish Teosto. 40 thousand euros! This is the first time I agree with these awards so far. Great! Luckily the other guys, Sami, Op, Riku and Santeri went and did some lyrics and arragements for the two missing songs.
Tuesday 02.12.2008
"Luke I'm not your son."
I woke and were still quite ill and because of that I was quite down. But I decided that today I'm going to score some vocals anyway. So we (me and Ilmari 5 years old) jumped into my GMC Typhoon and started driving. On our way to the studio we went to get my 8 year old boy Sampo from school and I dropped the kids to the town to their mother Suvi. During the trip Ilmari did some video shooting and singing the new Slipknot as you can see on the video ;) When I arrived to the studio there was only Elvis (name changed) who opened the door for me:) After a little while Sami, Riku, OP joined the production team. First we scored some re-takes because Ville had noticed some bad english on the lyrics ;) After that we did 1,5 songs. I will try to make some more lyrics to the other song and hope that its done on next saturday. The videos show how fucking difficult arragements those fuckers had done yesterday ;) My feelings for the day were quite strange because I didn't know if I even entered the studio or not because everything happened so fast!
Sami had a good drive today and after the vocal recording the rest of the guys started to practice with our new drummer (we have a gig 19.12.). OP is playing his bass tracks with acoustic guitar on the video for Elvis. This fat fuck will try to sleep now. Good night, sleep tight.
Videos
Guitar Re-Amping
Friday 28.11., Sunday 30.11. and Monday 1.12.2008
Re-amping guitars is fun when you have loads of great guitar gear at hand. This time we wanted the guitar tone to have some attitude, but it had to be really tight at the same time. I started our tone hunting with very basic combination: Tubescreamer + Mesa/Boogie Dual Rectifier + Mesa/Boogie Rectifier 4x12". Ok, the sound was nice, but not quite there yet. I removed the Tubescreamer and took ProCo Rat distortion and boosted the amp with it. OMG! I knew this would be the sound. Lots of attitude but not loose at all. It had some "Swedish death metal" flavour, but not as extreme as Boss HM2 would have been. I sent a sample to Sami and he was blown away!
Then the problems started. To make a long story short, after two broken fuses and one faulty power tube, we could not use the Mesa. We had to start from the beginning and find the same sound from Peavey 5150II. To our suprise we managed to match it 98 %. I'm not kidding at all. The sound was not worse at all, just 2 % different. We were very happy and re-amped all the rhythm guitars through this combination:
After the rhythm guitars were done, I changed the boost pedal to Tubescreamer to make it slightly smoother for lead guitars. It didn't took long and I was done.
Now I can finally start mixing this album!
Re-amping guitars is fun when you have loads of great guitar gear at hand. This time we wanted the guitar tone to have some attitude, but it had to be really tight at the same time. I started our tone hunting with very basic combination: Tubescreamer + Mesa/Boogie Dual Rectifier + Mesa/Boogie Rectifier 4x12". Ok, the sound was nice, but not quite there yet. I removed the Tubescreamer and took ProCo Rat distortion and boosted the amp with it. OMG! I knew this would be the sound. Lots of attitude but not loose at all. It had some "Swedish death metal" flavour, but not as extreme as Boss HM2 would have been. I sent a sample to Sami and he was blown away!
Then the problems started. To make a long story short, after two broken fuses and one faulty power tube, we could not use the Mesa. We had to start from the beginning and find the same sound from Peavey 5150II. To our suprise we managed to match it 98 %. I'm not kidding at all. The sound was not worse at all, just 2 % different. We were very happy and re-amped all the rhythm guitars through this combination:- Little Labs Redeye
- ProCo Rat Distortion
- Peavey 5150II
- Mesa/Boogie Rectifier 4x12"
- Shure SM57
- MS Audiotron MultiMix
- RME Fireface 800
After the rhythm guitars were done, I changed the boost pedal to Tubescreamer to make it slightly smoother for lead guitars. It didn't took long and I was done.
Now I can finally start mixing this album!
maanantai 1. joulukuuta 2008
More Vocals
Sunday 30.11.2008
Ari was sick again, so Sami had to work a little harder today. OP had wrote some great lyrics to one song. We started trying out OP's arragement and it worked like Ari's 4wheel drive :) Ville joined us and we got his approval. One more song was still without arragements, so we started working with it. We all had lots of great ideas and it didn't took long to finish the song. Our "to-do" list is still pretty long, but at least we have 90% of the lyrics and arragements ready. We need to get everything done by 17.12. because the mastering is booked 18.12. No problem! Who needs sleep anyway...
Ari was sick again, so Sami had to work a little harder today. OP had wrote some great lyrics to one song. We started trying out OP's arragement and it worked like Ari's 4wheel drive :) Ville joined us and we got his approval. One more song was still without arragements, so we started working with it. We all had lots of great ideas and it didn't took long to finish the song. Our "to-do" list is still pretty long, but at least we have 90% of the lyrics and arragements ready. We need to get everything done by 17.12. because the mastering is booked 18.12. No problem! Who needs sleep anyway...
Technical Notes for Vocals
For those who might be interested, we are using the following gear for vocals:
- Shure SM7B
- TL Audio 5050 Ivory II (compressor on, fast attack/release, GR 1-4 db)
- RME ADI-8 Pro
Ari's Diary
Ok, so I got sick during/after the "mini tour" we had with OG/PP. It started on sunday on our way from Oulu to Helsinki. My voice didn't work at all and I had a terrible cough that kept me awake about 5 nights in a row... So thats why I had to keep my mouth shut for a week and hope that my voice would get better.
So far I have done three songs. I was not so satisfied with the sound I had on one of the days. Anyway, I have decided that on this album and I should have a little "punk attitude" on my vocals. The most important thing is that the emotion is right and my head explodes every time I open my mouth.
Thursday 20.11.2008
I had a long day before going to the studio. I woke up at 05.45, woke up the kids, make some breakfast, went to the basement to do some pushups and exercise my abdominal muscles. After that I drove the kids to school and kindergarden, drove to work and finally after work drove to the studio at 17.30. I managed to take some chiken nuggets with me so I ate them in a hurry before singing and first it felt like the nuggets are coming straight out of my ass when I started the work.
Anyway, we had a great production team today. There were Santeri, OP, Riku and our new drummer "Elvis" (name changed).
Everybody had great ideas about the vocal arragements and I had a good drive also. This was the first time I had the "luxury" to sing my own lyrics on one song :) After five hours of straight screaming and 1,5 litres of Pepsi (no Freeway Cola today, what a bum) we had 3 songs done. The songs that we did were Overcrowded, UFO and Core. Only one song got me frustrated but I managed to score that fucker down. I have been lazy with the videocam so no videos for this day sorry. I promise to do something for the next studio diary entry.
Monday 24.11.2008
Winter is here, luckily my Suburbans 4wheel drive works fine :)
I had a great weekend with my family. On saturday we went to Flamingo and swimmed our asses of. The snow storm hit Kivistö sunday and didn't stop unting this morning. My two boys got sick so I stayed with them the whole day and did some work from home. It should be easy to sing some Dauntless stuff at 17.00 but usually when I'm feeling great it's not going to work at all.
The night went fine though we did only one song (work title Gojira) and listened through all the songs we had done and fixed some things. Santeri was recording and producing. The other guys arrived to the studion sometime after 20.00. The trains were stuck etc... I was home again at 22.30.
Tuesday 25.11.2008
I had quite atrocious day at the office today. I also heard who's the new singer of Amoral. I dont know what to say. It's interesting to hear the new Amoral songs for sure!
I also checked Norther's new video clips from their Canadian tour and almost vomited on myself because the videos were so fucking abortive. Well, thanks anyway. I arrived to the the studio at 17.30 and there was no one around. After waiting a while I got a call from Sami who told me that it will take an hour when he gets there and the reason was once again the fucking blizzard of oz. So, I waited and decided to eat my lunch which was tunafish and gottage cheese. This is on tape too, whoa! It's so interesting I know ;)
Finally when Sami, OP and Riku got to the studio with the keys we started to fix some parts and Santeri had done a few new lines to UFO, so I did those first. After that we listened song by song everything once again and fixed quite a lot of Sami's vocals and I fixed my own parts that needed more force or better pronunciation. Now I'm home again at 23.30 and I'm once again eating tuna and gottage cheese. I feel tired and think that we didn't do anything today but when you think it over we actually had a quite nice day at the "office" once again. The next recording day is sunday and there's only two songs left without vocals. It will be harder because we don't have all the lyrics and arragements for them. Our producer Ville is finally back from Moonsorrow's Canadian tour and will very likely join us again.
Videos
So far I have done three songs. I was not so satisfied with the sound I had on one of the days. Anyway, I have decided that on this album and I should have a little "punk attitude" on my vocals. The most important thing is that the emotion is right and my head explodes every time I open my mouth.
Thursday 20.11.2008
I had a long day before going to the studio. I woke up at 05.45, woke up the kids, make some breakfast, went to the basement to do some pushups and exercise my abdominal muscles. After that I drove the kids to school and kindergarden, drove to work and finally after work drove to the studio at 17.30. I managed to take some chiken nuggets with me so I ate them in a hurry before singing and first it felt like the nuggets are coming straight out of my ass when I started the work.
Anyway, we had a great production team today. There were Santeri, OP, Riku and our new drummer "Elvis" (name changed).
Everybody had great ideas about the vocal arragements and I had a good drive also. This was the first time I had the "luxury" to sing my own lyrics on one song :) After five hours of straight screaming and 1,5 litres of Pepsi (no Freeway Cola today, what a bum) we had 3 songs done. The songs that we did were Overcrowded, UFO and Core. Only one song got me frustrated but I managed to score that fucker down. I have been lazy with the videocam so no videos for this day sorry. I promise to do something for the next studio diary entry.
Monday 24.11.2008
Winter is here, luckily my Suburbans 4wheel drive works fine :)
I had a great weekend with my family. On saturday we went to Flamingo and swimmed our asses of. The snow storm hit Kivistö sunday and didn't stop unting this morning. My two boys got sick so I stayed with them the whole day and did some work from home. It should be easy to sing some Dauntless stuff at 17.00 but usually when I'm feeling great it's not going to work at all.
The night went fine though we did only one song (work title Gojira) and listened through all the songs we had done and fixed some things. Santeri was recording and producing. The other guys arrived to the studion sometime after 20.00. The trains were stuck etc... I was home again at 22.30.
Tuesday 25.11.2008
I had quite atrocious day at the office today. I also heard who's the new singer of Amoral. I dont know what to say. It's interesting to hear the new Amoral songs for sure!
I also checked Norther's new video clips from their Canadian tour and almost vomited on myself because the videos were so fucking abortive. Well, thanks anyway. I arrived to the the studio at 17.30 and there was no one around. After waiting a while I got a call from Sami who told me that it will take an hour when he gets there and the reason was once again the fucking blizzard of oz. So, I waited and decided to eat my lunch which was tunafish and gottage cheese. This is on tape too, whoa! It's so interesting I know ;)
Finally when Sami, OP and Riku got to the studio with the keys we started to fix some parts and Santeri had done a few new lines to UFO, so I did those first. After that we listened song by song everything once again and fixed quite a lot of Sami's vocals and I fixed my own parts that needed more force or better pronunciation. Now I'm home again at 23.30 and I'm once again eating tuna and gottage cheese. I feel tired and think that we didn't do anything today but when you think it over we actually had a quite nice day at the "office" once again. The next recording day is sunday and there's only two songs left without vocals. It will be harder because we don't have all the lyrics and arragements for them. Our producer Ville is finally back from Moonsorrow's Canadian tour and will very likely join us again.
Videos
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