Dauntless Studio Diary 2008

Mixing and Mastering

2009-01-08T10:00:00.006+02:00

Mixing In General

I was almost suprised that I didn't have to stay up many nights in a row to finish the mixes. I got some tracks pretty late due to some mistakes but there was no panic in the air. All in all the mixing process was pretty scattered, because some tracks were always missing. It helped a great deal that Riku and Olli did a lot of recording on this album. It would have sucked so much to mix after a long day at the studio. We found the "basic foundation" to our sound pretty soon after the guitar re-amping and did only minor adjustments to it. Then it was all "add this and that" kind of stuff. It was so much easier to mix this album than play (+edit) the drums on it! Arto: have fun with playing the songs live! LOL!

Thursday 18.12.2008 (V1)

Jaakko (the mastering engineer) started preparing the files by himself. He upsampled them to 96 kHz because it apparently sounds better and "makes the job easier". Cool. Ok, we wanted the album to be a pleasing listening experience, so we didn't want to make it as loud and aggressive as possible. The mixes sounded good and I was relieved that we didn't find anything to fix in the mixes!

Monday 29.12.2008 (V2)

After listening the album in various places we found that the guitars were "lost" when listening in a car. I was worried that I would need to make new mixes with better guitars, but I didn't, because Jaakko is the man! He showed us how much you can do with a little EQ, distortion and limiting. The difference was huge! We also did some minor volume automation fixes. Everyone was happy with the version 2, so IT'S FUCKING READY!

The mastering engineer's notes
by Jaakko Viitalähde, Virtalähde Analog Audio

Having mastered the previous Dauntless album, I was excited to hear what the new one sounded like. The mixes did not let me down - they were pretty damned good and required no major brain surgery. Santeri told me that the sound they wanted was something that is easy on the ears and enjoyable to crank up in volume. So I selected the "easy listening" preset from my finalizer plug-in and that was pretty much it.

Well, not quite!

Session one

Looking at my notes, I generally used very little EQ. All corrections seem to be in the 0,5dB - 1,5dB window, and I have used four bands of EQ most of the time. Usually, it was a bump in the bass between 60Hz-70Hz, a little low mid cut at around 180Hz-220Hz, a high mid cut around 3,5kHz and a tiny bit of boost between 10-12k. The EQ used was my trustworthy analog parametric EQ.

For the compression I used a Gyraf vari-mu, to which I seem to keep on coming back. It's a sign of good piece of equipment. I did not crank up the input much to keep the distortion low and the bass nice & tight, and the gain reduction was usually kept between 1dB-2db with slow attack and fast release.

For A/D conversion I use a Crane Song HEDD192, which has a few nice tone shaping options. I used a little of both Pentode & Tape process. The Pentode control adds air and presence in a very natural way, while the Tape does nice things to the bass and low mids.

With this set-up, I just kept on balancing EQ, compression and the HEDD process controls until I got where I wanted with each song.

The sequencing went smoothly, and for the final touch-ups we ended up turning some parts of the songs down in volume since the compression had brought them up. It gets boring pretty fast if everything is loud all the time. I used a little of Voxengo Elephant to bring the volume up, but left plenty of headroom, just to see if I could get it through..

I gave the reference copies to the people present, shut down the studio and headed for the christmas holidays.

Session two

Revision time! There was a general agreement that there was slightly too much of bass and the guitars could stand out a touch more. Otherwise everything seemed to be fine. The volume needed to be slightly louder, too.

The bass issue is probably due to the learning curve with the HEDD (and my obsession with old-school Chicago house music?).

It's just so easy to overdo it with the Tape control. It adds bass, but it's good bass I've captured, so I simply brought it down using a Sonoris linear phase EQ. A less than -1dB shelf from some 100Hz down and brining the low cut up in frequency did the trick.

This is something I do now and then - capture a slightly pushed tone and then bring it down a little. This time I just did it by accident..

For the guitar presence I tried several things. The already captured (non-limited/clipped) sound was very healthy, and I wanted to adjust that tone, not the source. M/S EQ sounded like M/S EQ does sometimes, a little disjointed. Limiting alone did not bring the guitars up enough, so I decided to try the HEDD in digital mode. Only a touch of Pentode, and a nice sheen of balanced distortion appeared on the sound. That we decided to try, so pushed REC and we waited for the

capture.

I pushed up the limiter a little more and burned the new copies.

A few days later an approval came and I burned the master. Nice!

Thoughts about the job

I learnt a couple of things, as I do from most of the mastering jobs I do. I think that with every new piece of equipment, there's a learning curve. A mastering engineer needs to know one's equipment throughly, and this takes time. The HEDD I had only had for 1,5 months, which I consider to be just enough to know something but way enough to toy around in dangerous ways.

The other thing is the guitar presence. Lately, I've done a lot of jobs in where I've shaped the presence by cutting some of the edge off. This sounds good IMO, and results in sound you don't want to shut off. Loud and balanced can be cool, while loud and piercing just results in ear fatique.

I'm listening to the record as I write this text, and I consider it to be one of my better jobs. It's the combination of good mixes and a skilled mastering engineer that results in good sonic outcome. No corners needed to be cut, and nothing was fixed while doing this album, apart from my ghetto bass.

Ari's Diary

2008-12-17T13:00:00.000+02:00

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.).

Group Vocals

2008-12-16T22:00:00.000+02:00

Tuesday 9.12.2008

We were supposed to record some group vocals on sunday, but Sami's car broke down and we had to cancel it. So... we did them today. Niko (Ex-Amoral) and Anssi (Scaur) joined us and gave us some serious gang bang action with Sami! It sounded better than ever! We have already tested this "gang" in January when we recorded a three song demo. The microphone was AT4047.

Edit: I'm not sure if the mic was the best choice, because the tracks sounded a bit too dark when I placed them in the mix.

- Santeri

Ari's Diary

2008-12-16T17:00:00.002+02:00

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

Guest Vocalist

2008-12-06T20:00:00.001+02:00

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! :)

Ari's Diary Continues

2008-12-05T13:00:00.008+02:00

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

Guitar Re-Amping

2008-12-05T12:00:00.001+02:00

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:

Little Labs Redeye
ProCo Rat Distortion
Peavey 5150II
Mesa/Boogie Rectifier 4x12"
Shure SM57
MS Audiotron MultiMix
RME Fireface 800

I wanted to keep it simple, so I recorded the cab with only one microphone. I didn't even move that microphone after placing it the first time. I used the basic on-axis "dustcap edge" placement. I think Mesa cabs are the easiest to record, because they sound good with almost any mic placement.

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!

More Vocals

2008-12-01T18:00:00.000+02:00

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...

Technical Notes for Vocals

2008-12-01T10:00:00.002+02:00

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

I think we are going to use a different microphone for the upcoming group vocals, because SM7B is not very good at capturing many different voices from different angles at the same time.

Ari's Diary

2008-12-01T09:00:00.003+02:00

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

Bass Re-Amping

2008-11-20T14:41:00.004+02:00

Friday 14.11.2008

We gathered some bass related gear (thanks Siuhu!) and started to search for the ultimate sound. We used Machine Head's "The Blackening" as our loose reference, because I happen to have one of the bass tracks and it sounded great. We ended up using the following gear:

RME Fireface 800 out
Little Labs Redeye (re-amp box)
Ibanez PD7 Distortion
Hartke HA5500
Hartke 115TP (15")
AKG D112
MS Audiotron Mic Pre
FME Fireface 800 input

We also tried these pedals instead of Ibanez: Boss ODB-3 and Digitech Bass Driver. It was not hard to choose the Ibanez, because it had the character we were looking for. I would have prefered a 4x10" cabinet (the lows are tighter), but it was not available at this point. I will split the signal anyway into DI + amp, so it's not really a problem.

The microphone choice wasn't very hard either. We tried Sennheiser E602 first, but it cut way too much mids. AKG was a clear winner this time. It didn't took very long to find a great sound, because we didn't have too much gear to try out. We wrote some lyrics while re-amping the sound. Next thing to do is to record Ari's vocals. At some point we need to re-amp the guitars, but it's not possible yet.

Vocal Recording Pt 2

2008-11-14T14:00:00.006+02:00

Friday 7.11.2008

We had a in day off in the middle of our Kuopio and Oulu shows, so we decided to go to cottage in Mikkeli and record some vocals. It was not a very productive day because cottage + sauna = alcohol. We got some new lyrics and arragements done, so it was still more useful than going back to Helsinki.

Vocal Recording Pt 3

2008-11-14T14:00:00.005+02:00

Tuesday 11.11.2008

Back at the studio. Ari is sick, so Sami did his vocal parts for three songs. The vocals sounded really good! Aggressive and melodic at the same time. Great stuff! Hopefully Ari will get his voice back next week. Most guitar tracks are still missing + lyrics & arragements for three songs. We are going to re-amp the bass on friday.

Vocal Recording Pt 1

2008-11-03T10:21:00.004+02:00

Sunday 2.11.2008

The situation is currently like this:

Riku's needs to record most of his guitar parts.
We have done almost all the lyrics but we know only 40 % what goes where.
Half of the vocal arragements are still unclear.

So, we started with the song with Finnish lyrics. Yes, you read right! Mr. Sorvali wrote some nice lyrics for us. The song is pretty fast and the vocals were done with a nice punk attitude. There will be a guest vocalist on this one. The song was pretty easy and both Sami and Ari didn't have any problems singing it.

We ate some pizza and Sorvali had to leave after that. We still had plenty of time left, so we decided to try out some vocal arragements with real lyrics. We got something done but most part it was pretty frustrating. We called it a day and I went home and did a rough mix for the possible guest vocalist.

Kitarat ja bassot - mökkisessio

2008-11-03T09:00:00.000+02:00

Sunnuntai 19.10.2008

Saavuttiin Päijänteen rannalle jälleen nauhottelemaan kielisoittimia ja muuta häröilyä. Vettä satoi ja hiiret oli paskantanut bass-workshopin (kesäkeittiön) täyteen. Kukaan ei tiennyt mitä levystä on tulossa... riffit oli auki, kuten jallupullokin. Kuten rumpalimme Santeri osuvasti sanoi, että fillit olivat "vaarallisia", totesimme, että vaarallisuus equals "not for guitarists".

Ensimmäisen biisin (työnimi: Amoral) pohjat purkissa. Paska fiilis. Paskasti vedetty. Eiku hyvä fiilis. Ja hyvin vedetty.

Ensimmäisen päivän nauhoitukset sujuivat alkusäätöjen jälkeen jouhevasti pienessä pierussa. Riku onnistui telomaan peukalonsa hämärissä olosuhteissa, joten loppuviikko näyttää menevän äänittäjän roolissa.

Maanantai 20.10.2008

Vittu, maanantaiaamuna krapula ja vapina, eilisen konjakkipullon ja kaiken muun tultua ulos oksennuksena joka jannulta, oli kiva lähteä vetämään seuraavia piisejä, no itseaiheutettu, ei auta valittaa.

Vitun hyvä fiilis tältä päivältä, purkissa PASKA, CORE ja S.Y.L.

Ekan päivän jälkeen elimistö prakaa ja jäseniä kolottaa... Samilla sormet napsahti ja silmissä pimeni kesken nauhotuksen, mutta nyt taas mennään. Basistit lähti kauppaan muutamia tunteja sitten... soittivat seuraavanlaisen puhelun: "nyt tuntuu et me ollaan eksyksissä" - "aijaa, millä tiellä ootte" - "me ollaan heinolassa" - "okei.. tulkaas takaspäin".

Noin tunnin päästä tulee puhelu: "moi .. nyt ollaan Vääksyssä" - "okei.. tulkaas takaspäin".
Kello on puol neljä aamulla. Kohta mennään saunaan ja ollaan nauhotettu muutamaan biisiin laulusovituksia muutaman tunnin.

Tiistai 21.10.2008

Jees. Piuhoja on noin kymmenen. Eli siinä se hifistelyosuus... Uskomaton soittotatsi, riffit vaan lähtee ihan tosta vaan, saattaa tosin johtua myös tosta David Hasselhoffin kuvasta, mikä on inspiroinut jo aika paljon lyriikoihin: lonely is the night, boy!!!! Jumalauta tänään purkitettu jo L. O. G., Riku Quatro Stagioni ja UFO + runsaasti mielenkiintoisia laulusovituksia. Nyt saunaan...

Keskiviikko 22.10.2008

Heräsin juustonaksumerestä (alasti?), herätin Rikun ja nyt soitetaan. Vittu päähän koskee. Kello on viisi ja kitaristeja vituttaa, basistia ei kiinnosta, nauhottaja lähti sutii ja tuottaja on koomassa, joten päätimme ottaa breikin ja lähteä Vääksy cityyn karaokebaariin hakemaan inspiraatiota.

Producer's note: Kohta tulee myrsky. Inspiroiduin tekemään vähän sanoja ja nyt ihmettelen tätä tyhjien (ja puolityhjien!) kaljatölkkien määrää. Olemmeko me syypäitä tähän kaikkeen, vai onko David Hasselhoff käynyt täällä yöllä dokaamassa?

klo. 19.51: Kävästiin Vääksyssä palauttamassa tölkkejä. Pikkasen vaille kaksi sataa oli tässä vaiheessa ja ostettiin sitten kolme lavaa lisää, joista kaksi tuli ilmaiseksi vahingossa, kiitos myyjälle. Kävästiin myös karaokebaarissa parilla kaljalla ja saatiin tunnelma nousemaan taas siitä turhautuneesta vittuunnuksesta. Nyt lähtee taas aivan eri tatsilla nauhotukset. Ville sai vaihdettua viisi päivää vanhat vaatteet viimein. "Vittu mun kalsarit oli kunnon ydinjätettä."

Studiolle tuli vierailemaan hindulainen spurgu yhdentoista maissa.

Torstai 23.10.2008

15:00: 1/3 nauhoitusrykemtistä kömpii studiohuoneeseen. Ilokseen hän toteaa Rikun nohevasti kaivaneen esiin bittiviidakosta eilisen kitara-hits-tietokone-vahingon aiheuttaman rebootin hävittämät bassoraidat.

17:00: 1/3 nauhoitusrykmentistä ja herra tuottaja saunoivat aamuun asti ja heräsivät ihmisten aikaan. Eli viijeltä ilitapäivällä.

17 - 20: Läpsyttelimme loput bassot Himmailuun ja tuuttasimme kyseisen soittimen myös Överiin = bassot levylle valmiit = hindulainen spurgu tuplatyötön. Tätä seurasi Samick Helteen kitaraelostelut Överiin = Samin kitarat levylle on valamiit.

20:00: Ville ja Riku huolestuivat menoveden määrästä ja lähtivät Vääksyn metropoliin kohentamaan ohrapirtelövaraintoja. Sami lämmittää saunaa ja Oope nauttii Kotikadusta.

Perjantai 24.10.2008

12:28: Sami heräsi uljaasti uuteen aamuun siivoamalla leijonanosan mökkialueesta. Vielä astiat tiskaukseen ja kamat kohti takakontteja, niin voimme suunnistaa kotia kohti. Väsyneet miehet ovat erittäin tyytyväisiä session produktiivisuudesta, niin soiton kuin laulusovitusideoidenkin osalta.

Tuottaja ja äänittäjä saunoivat (taas) aamuun asti ja pulahtivat ohessa 5 kertaa hyiseen Päijänteeseen. Erittäin onnistunut lopetus erittäin onnistuneelle sessiolle, hyvä fiilis palata pääkaupunkiseudun hektiseen sykkeeseen.

Sami, Riku, Olli & Ville

Cottage Sessions

2008-10-21T09:48:00.004+03:00

I finished the drum editing in time. Sami, Riku, Olli and mr. Sorvali are currently recording bass and guitars in a cottage near Lahti. We are again recording the DI signals and will re-amp through amps later. One thing that is different this time is that the monitoring is done using a real amp/cabinet. It's in the same room as the monitors (zero latency you know). They are going to spend five days there.

Photos, videos and more information will be available when they come back.

Drum Recording Pt 6

2008-10-09T23:00:00.004+03:00

Thursday 9.10.2008

I recorded the drums for the missing instrumental song today. I did it by myself and just played it by listening the programmed drums (by Riku). We have never played this song together, so it was a very unusual approach. For us at least. I have been editing and tightening the other drum tracks every night after sunday. A lot of work, but we want to make it super tight this time.

I also visited Chartmakers today, because one of my recent studio projects (Adastra) was mastered there. I really liked the results, so maybe we will use it on our album too? Definately one of the best mastering studios in Europe.

Drum Recording Pt 5

2008-10-05T23:59:00.002+03:00

Sunday 5.10.2008

Sometime after twelve I took my bike and drove to the studio. The sun was shining and everything looked so promising. When I finally arrived to the studio I was already sweating like Chuck Norris! My goal was to record the remaining two songs. Actually three, but one of them is an instrumental track and I haven't even heard it yet. Without goint too much into details, it was the shittiest day so far. I really had to push myself to get the job done. Finally I nailed the main songs (in 11493 different takes) but the instrumental track still needs to be recorded later. There will be no other sessions in the studio for a while, so we can leave everyhing like they are at the moment. I will start the drum editing tomorrow and hopefully don't have to stay up too many nights while doing it.

Drum Recording Pt 4

2008-10-04T23:00:00.001+03:00

Saturday 4.10.2008

I finished three songs today. My father visited the studio and drilled a hole to the brickwall. Now we have this piece of artwork on our live room wall! It really helps us with the future projects, because now we can just say "look at the sign you fu*ker!!!" Well, actually I was looking at the sign today... If you like it, check out FaderWear!

Drum Recording Pt 3

2008-10-03T23:00:00.003+03:00

Friday 3.10.2008

I was meant to record some drums yesterday, but got sick and decided to cancel some violent activities and do it today. Luckily Matias was fine with it. When we continued punching one of the songs recorded earlier, we noticed that the third tom track was missing. Well, not actually missing but it was just pure silence! After doing some test, we found out that the problem was in the mic preamp. Oh shit! We have recorded two songs without the third tom close mic! I'm not going to record those songs again, so I need to do some fixing in the editing stage. It can be done, but still sucks!

Riku recorded a few more backing tracks and that actually took most of our time today. We needed to program the tempo tracks for two songs. It sucked, because there were some kinky 3/16 2/16 arragements. So, we wasted our studio time with all this nonsense. Don't try this at home, kids.

Drum Recording Pt 2

2008-09-29T22:00:00.001+03:00

Monday 30.9.2008

I got one more song down tonight. I played some random stuff again that will be very hard to reproduce later :) Here's some gear photos and stuff.

MS Audiotron MultiMix

Soundcraft Spirit Studio

Studio Rack: 1. D&R Mic Amp 2. Samson rack mixer 3. Behringer headphone amp
4. TLA 5050 Ivory II 5. RME ADI-8 Pro (Nuendo 8 I/O) 6. RME Fireface 800
7. Behringer ADA8000

Drum Recording Pt 1

2008-09-29T12:00:00.012+03:00

Friday 26.9.2oo8

I changed the drumheads and seated them. By seating I mean tuning them high and pressing them with my palm. I didn't change the kick drum head, because it was still sounding fresh enough. I left the tuning for tomorrow.

Saturday 27.9.2008

Matias picked me up and I started to tune the drums. I used my Ahead DrumDial to get the tuning to the right zone. Then I finished the tuning by ear. The tuner doesn't work very well with higher or very low tuning, so I needed to tune the snare drum and floor tom by ear. One thing I noticed was that the snare drum didn't sound "right". Luckily the sound was getting better and better throughout the soundcheck, so it was just the new drumhead tension. It was the first time I changed a new head to this snare drum, so I didn't know what to expect.

Next we sat down and started to plan what microphones and preamps we are going to use. After some serious thinking and testing, this is what we ended up using:

Kick Drum

I have been using Beyerdynamic M88 inside the kick drum for some time now. I really like the way it captures the midrange. You can really hear every hit clearly. It's not a sound that works in a mix without EQ (like Audix D6 could work), but who cares if the end result is great. I left my DIY subkick microphone out this time. I don't think I will miss it, because the sound we are after is pretty modern and I think I will need to add a layer of samples (triggering, what ever you want to call it) to the kick in the mixing stage to make it sound consistent. That's why I also recorded the DDrum trigger "splats". Actually, I would have recorded them anyway, because the "clicky" sound it gives is very useful in itself.

Snare Drum

Miking a snare drum is pretty easy. Most of the time Shure SM57 works very well on top and Sennheiser MD441 on bottom. We tried my other favourite, EV Co4. The sound was pretty cool, but the cymbal and hihat bleed sounded bad. When we compared EV to Shure, the EV had a nice "gritty attitude", but Shure captured a wider range of sound. It still needed something, so I asked Matias to drive the preamp harder to get some saturation. After he found the sweet spot, we were happier than ever! Getting a good saturation out of a microphone preamp is very important for me. Luckily I have 10 channels of MS Audiotron MultiMix (Finnish console manufacturer from the 80's, uses Lundahl transformers) and 16 channels of Soundcraft Spirit Studio. Both of them have great saturation characteristics, but MS is usually my first choice.

One thing I wanted to do differently this time was to add another mic to the side. I have never done it before, so I didn't know how it would sound. We tried Audix i5 (dynamic) and it sounded ok. I was not sure if it added enough to the sound, so we decided to try another mic, Shure PG81 (condenser). The difference was huge. It was much brighter and sounded more "full-range". I'm sure the side mic track will come handy in the mixing.

Toms

Not much to say about toms. When the tuning is right, they sound good. I used my old Sennheiser BF504's on rack toms and Sennheiser E602 on floor tom. I really like how the E602 sounds. It cuts a lot of midrange and adds some low end. It sounded ridiculously huge through our subwoofer in the control room!

Cymbals

It's pretty easy to get a good cymbal sound if you make sure the microphones are picking all the cymbals and the distance between snare drum and the main microphones is equal. By main microphones I mean the overhead pair. If you are close miking the cymbals then it's not possible to do it like this. I added another mic for the hihat (Shure SM7B), ride (Shure PG81) and china (GA Project FC4). We compared the PG81 and FC4 on ride and china. FC4 was too bright and thin for the ride but worked well with the china. I thought about adding another mic for the splashes, but ended up not doing it.

Room and Ambience

We recently bought a pair of cheap T.Bone RM700 ribbon microphones to the studio. I really love to use them as room microphones. The sound is very dark and unique. Because they have a bi-directional polar pattern, I used the Blumlein configuration. Really nice and three dimensional sound! We tried to get some saturation from the preamp, but we ran out of gain. These microphones have a really low output. I placed the pair pretty low, because I wanted to capture the sound of the room and not too much cymbals.

I also added a mono room microphone just in case: a Shure SM57. Sometimes it adds "glue" to the drums in a mix. We also have a really HUGE sounding hallway. I placed another SM57 there.

Sunday 28.9.2008

Matias picked me up again and we started the day by checking that everything still sounded like we wanted. We found nothing to complain about. I started to warm up Matias tweaked the headphone mix to my liking. I wanted to hear every kick drum hit clearly, so Matias added some software "triggering" to my headphone mix. During the day I managed to record three songs. Most of the time it was not easy and we needed to do a lot of compiling from different takes. One thing that I am very proud of is that I played some really dangerous sounding fills! I mean like "oh no, you are gointo to fuck up... WOW! you saved it!". Later Riku, Olli and Sami joined us and they seemed to like everything.

We are going to continue tomorrow night. So far it looks like I don't need to program the drums on this record. I just need to edit them a lot, haha :D

Before the Recording

2008-09-24T15:16:00.012+03:00

Alright! We have been finishing the song structures during the last few months. The final phase is to build the tempo maps. We will start the drum recordings this saturday at our own Drop Hammer Studios. I have three weeks to do the drums and editing. May sound like too much time, but I have to go to work and I have a mixing project going on as well. I really hope that editing the drums won't eat most of my time, haha! Then we will continue with bass and guitars in a cabin near Lahti. I bet Ville (Sorvali, the producer) will eat a few sausages. Matias (my partner in crime at Drop Hammer) will handle the drum recording duties but I will take all the responsability of the actual engineering decisions. You can expect some serious studio porn in this blog!

Let me start by telling more about the actual recording space. It's a 44 m2 space divided into a live room and a control room. Both of the rooms are acoustically treated and feature a laminate floor. Very nice and tight sound! The live room has more treating including loads of rockwool in the ceiling and corners. Some "acoustic foam" and carpet is also used to kill the most vicious upper midrange and high frequency reflections on the walls.

The drumset I will use is a full birch set (80's Tama Crestar, same as Grandstar Custom 8", 10", 12", 14" and 22") with a Ludwig Supra-Phonic (5") snare drum. I just recently bought this snare after dreaming of it for years. Absolutely amazing! I might use my trusty old Sonor Phonic D420 (3 1/2") on faster songs. Don't know yet. My drumheads will be the following:

Toms: Remo Emperor Clear
Snare Drum: Remo CS Coated Black Dot
Kick Drum: Remo Powerstroke III + Aquarian Kick Pad

Most of the cymbals are made by Paiste (Signature, 2000, 2002 and Rude 1000) and Stagg (two splashes). Anything else? Oh, I am using Iron Cobra Power Glide pedal with felt beaters. Why felt? I get a better feel with them and some times wood beaters are making the sound too clicky to start with.

That's it for now.