Bass, vocals, leads and post-production madness

Hiya,

it's been quite a while since the last update.. In this timespan, we've managed to switch our rehearsal place/make-believe studio to a much better one and get the recordings to the post-production phase.



This actually means that the bass tracks, vocals and lead guitars are done! Now all that's left is the easy part of giving the stuff to someone for mixing, right? Well, almost. You see, we didn't do the tracking the conventional way..

Instead, we opted to record a shitload of takes of every riff and vocal track and thought that we'd go through them in the post-prod stage and pick the best takes. This has proved to be quite time-consuming way of handling the recordings - and we'll probably do this never again, heh - but all in all the stuff that we've managed to get is pretty awesome, I'd say.


And what's even better, we've decided to try out the mixing ourselves so this is going to be a real DIY learn-while-you-do process. Who knows, we might even do even the cover art on our own!



And about the recordings themselves.. Well, the bass tracks took us only a few hours to record and everything went really smoothly there.

Somehow this always seems to happen when recording basses (at least in my experience). Some might say that it's the bass tracks themselves that are easy that anyone could play them, but I think it's just that the bass players themselves seem to be the hard-working guys that actually even manage to rehearse before recording.


The vocals took a bit longer and were done mainly in two days (plus some bonus takes a bit later). I've never been 100% happy with the way my vocals have been in previous recordings, so I decided to try out a bit unorthodox way of handling the vocal recordings this time around.


Well, not entirely like this but getting close.

The trick this time was that there wasn't any kind of vocal "booth" setup or anything like that, just simply me and my trusty Beta 58 mic (with our bass meister Ari overseeing the takes). This is the way I handle things live and I thought that to capture that "live" feeling in the vocals as well, I'd have to sing like I usually do and am used to in rehearsals or live.



The problem is that we had insufficient monitoring at the time and there were some takes that were rendered unusable since I tend to compensate my shouting by moving the mic further and closer as I shout and scream - and Ari wasn't able to hear the problem this caused in some takes right from the bat since we had that slight monitoring problem.

I am actually currently in the process of picking out the best takes from the vocal tracks (and of course our main engineering dude Juuso already did quite a lot work on this) and there are good takes to get the stuff to work, but this is just another issue that set us back a bit.


OK! So when the vocals were done, we turned to the lead guitars. This was a pretty quick process as well, we just lured Niko and Tapio to the rehearsal room, setup the mics and let them go at it by themselves. Recording lead guitars is sensitive work, they prefer to do their work at peace so I don't even have any pictures about this - so here's a pic of Ari drinking beer and smoking a cigarette.


So here it was in a nutshell - part III of the still-continuing saga of making of The Carrion King.
Hopefully the next update won't take as long, since I guess we seem to be actually nearing completion on this one!

Until then, be seeing you!

- Teemu

Making of The Carrion King, part II - guitars.

Hello again.


So, it has come to this. Recording of the six-stringed instruments on which our music is 95% based on. No wonder yours truly (me; Teemu, the incoherent vocalist, blogger and all-around asshole wannabe-engineer/overseer) is a somewhat a nitpicker during this phase, especially when quite a lot of these riffs are my rotten babies.


The general idea - at least in my head, this blog may or may not represent the views of the band as whole - was to get some real 'playing live' feeling in the guitar tracks. This basically meaning the following: if the "feeling's good" and the take is long and a continuous one with some slight mistakes, we will gladly put that on record instead of a take where everything is 100% perfect, but it's all just pieced together from a lot of different takes. Get it?


If you don't, by all means go and listen to those golden age Slayer records (in my book, Reign In Blood, South of Heaven and Seasons in the Abyss) and check out the abundant liveliness of the guitar p/slaying. If you still don't get it, just go ahead and listen to War Ensemble's intro riff.

The riff in question is not in any way sloppy, but it has the sense of just barely staying in one piece, which is a big part of the magic that's Thrash Metal for me. I hope we have captured at least a tiny amount of that magical stuff in the recording process we've done here..


But anyway, enough of this pseudo-philosophical ranting. Here are some videos that were taken during these recording sessions that took place on Sunday 18th April (Tapio) and Sunday 2nd May (Niko).

Tapio playing

Juuso acting silly and Niko playing

All in all, these two hard sessions went really well. It's always a bit difficult situation to fully reach one's potential in such short notice, but I personally do think that we've got something quite special on our hands when the whole thing's done and a lot of thanks go to these six-string fellows that took care of their duties without much bickering or fistfights.



You might also be wondering how we're doing all of this. Well, in the murky depths of our foul-smelling rehearsal hole, our drummer Juuso is doing the body of the technical work on this recording. This means not only pushing the rec button while we record, but patching the takes together and all-around taking care of business on the technical side, setting up mics, creating the raw mixes etc..

The man even seems to enjoy all of this.

Next time, we'll probably be some of the last fixes and lead guitar work that was left from last time. Hopefully we'll be able to record some juicy bass tracks as well.

But let's get back to that when the time's right, oh boy oh boy!

Be seeing you,

Teemu

PS.

We've just released some prettttty cool promo photos courtesy of Lukas Pearsall on our MySpace and our official website should soon follow. Check 'em out!

PPS.

We've also released two live recordings from our Kouvola gig earlier this spring at our MySpace, and Mikseri.net should soon follow! Ain't that just AWESOME!

Making of The Carrion King, part I - drums.

Hullo.

We are recording three songs for our upcoming demo - named 'The Carrion King' - at our own leisure in the peace of our Sepultura-smelling rehearsal hole. This will add up to 15 minutes of music, freshly written within the two-year cycle of our recording schedule (quality over quantity, ladies and gentlemen..).



Anyways, the difference to the first demo which we also did in our rehearsal place is that we now have some proper equipment to record all the stuff to make it actually sound good. You know, getting drum tracks to actually different and multiple tracks, not just mixin for a stereo recording, not doing everything within one day, all that jazz..



Why not a proper studio like The Circle, then? The Drop Hammer studio was pretty much concentrated awesome last time around, but it would've cost us a lot more to go there and give us a arbitrary time limit to the whole process - which can lead to cutting corners in some things deemed necessary. Of course, if we should feel like it, we can always give the raw tracks to someone outside the band to do all the post-production stuff like mixing and mastering. But anyway, one of the purposes of this exercise is to get both raw and professional-sounding recording out to the public by just ourselves.



But I'm probably getting ahead of myself talking about the process as whole, so I'll just shut the hell up and give you the opportunity to check out videos of Juuso drumming a song called 'A Graceful Exit':

Video 1
Video 2

Oh, I forgot to mention that we got the drums to all the songs tracked down on Good Friday pretty quickly. Just because, you know, Juuso is that damned good. The best part is that we won't have to resort to unnatural clickety-click fixing in the post-production phase, we rather corrected every mistake there and then by playing only; this will make the record sound much more natural. That's Swath's brand of slut metal for you - a big no-no to sampled drums and ulterior motives!



Be seeing you,

- Teemu

Hommat hoidettu

Jeah.
















Kun bassot oli saatu työstettyä (niissä oli paljon kokonuotteja, puolinuotteja, pistenuotteja, trioleita mutta ei yhtään 64-osaa), siirryttiin vihdoin ja viimein päiväkirjailijan alueelle eli huutoihin ja mekkalointiin.



Tässä välissä lienee kuitenkin hyvä kertoa hieman kappalemateriaalista: äänittämisen ikeen alle joutui siis kaiken kaikkiaan neljä kappaletta, joista kaksi on selvästi hittipitoisempaa in-your-face -tavaraa jonka voi sisäistää nopeasti ja saada hyvän mielen, ja kaksi uudempaa raitaa jotka ehkä kuvastavat paremmin sitä mihin päin tässä ollaan menemässä. Eli hulluuteen. Toinen näistä uudemmista biiseistä on vallan eeppinen, kahdeksaa minuuttia lähentelevä progekyhäelmä, ja toinen muuten vain vitun häijy ja härski riffipitoinen otos luomisen tuskasta. Joten hommaa kyllä piisasi ihan kaikin puolin, mutta yllättävän kivuttomasti näistä saatiin siedettäviä otoksia aikaan.

Eikä vituttanut missään vaiheessa. Paitsi ehkä kitarataiteilijaa.

Joka tapauksessa, jo torstaina bassoäänitysten jälkeen ehdittiin nauhoittamaan Slightly Inconvenientin laulut, jotka olivat siitä helpoimmasta päästä, eli eivät sisältäneet juuri mitään ylimääräisiä kommervenkkejä.. Tosin ensimmäistä kertaa orkesterin historiassa päädyttiin nauhoittamaan myös hieman ns. mullikuoroa kuten asiaan ehkä kuuluu tällaisissa salamakappaleissa.



Kello kuitenkin lähenteli jo myöhäistä aikaa kun tämä työnimellä Apina kulkenut laulu oli saatu tallennettua, joten basso- ja laulusankarit lähtivät kohti kotia. Tapio, tuo kuusikielisen kuningaskobra, joka myös boheemeista yönäädän elämäntavoistaan tunnetaan, jäi studiolle tyrkkimään ehkäpä koko session tuskaisinta vaihetta kasaan. Tässähän tietysti puhutaan kitarasooloista.

Annetaanpa Tapion itsensä kertoa miten nämä sessiot sujuivat..




Päivä vaihtui sitten vihdoin perjantaiksi, ja silloin nauhoitettiin kaksi lauluraitaa lisää. Ääni petti ja rupesi melkein vituttamaan, mutta eipä ihan kuitenkaan.

Tällaista puurtamista se oli äänittäjän viitan harteilleen ottaneen bassovisionääri Arin näkökulmasta.



Lauantaina tehtiin vielä viimeiseen, The Circle -nimiseen MCD:n nimikappaleeseen lauluraidat ja kaikki sujui luonnollisesti kuin tanssi koska raudanlujia ammattilaisia löytyi seinän molemmilta puolilta. Tai no, nokkelimmat pokkelimmat varmaan arvaa, että kannattais opetella laulamaan/huutamaan/örisemään ennen kuin menee studioon, mutta menihän se näinkin.

Vänkää siis oli ja Salmen Santerille suuret propsit: hieno studio ja mukava mies. Aikataulutus sujui yhtyeen kannalta myös ihan helvetin hyvin ja asioista voitiin neuvotella. Tätähän vois tehdä useamminkin!



Lisäpäivityksiä tiedossa kunhan projekti etenee muilta osin, joten näihin kuviin, näihin tunnelmiin.

Jep. Tiistaista sen verran, että rumpuäänitysten päätyttyä siirryttiin vääntämään kitaroita ja siinä menikin sopivasti lähes koko yö.



Eilen hakattiin bassot sisään, ja ehdittiinpä siinä yhdet laulutkin luikauttaa. Bassolinjoissa tyydyttiin kahdeksasosiin, eikä tällä kertaa saatu yhtään bassosooloa tehtyä. Harmi. No vittu eipä tyydytty kahdeksasosiin paitsi yhdessä biisissä. Ja siinäkin oli ainakin sata kuudestoistaosaa. AINAKIN SATA. Ehkä kaksi.




Kappaleista yksi on vanha veto, Slightly Inconvenient, nyt tosin noin 500% tiukemmin vedettynä kuin treenisdemolla. Ihan hyvältä tämä näyttää, vielä ei vituta laisinkaan mikään.

Tavoitteena on tänään tehdä loput laulut siten, että Jorma Kääriäinenkin kalpenee tulkinnan sielukkuudesta. Mutta varmaankin se sitä huutoa vain on. Mutta enpä tiijä, ehkä jotain yllätystä voisi pakettiin kääriä.

Sanoo: Teemu.

Tällä lähti.














Tällä jatkui.













Tätä tehtiin paljon.













Ja tätä.













Äänittäjääkin kiinnostaa!

Aloitettiin eilen studiosessiot Drop Hammer -studiossa Salmen Santerin avustuksella. Homma lähti hyvin käyntiin, koska rummut olivat vireessä ja mikit valmiiksi aseteltu (niitä oli myös aika monta, 19 kaiken kaikkiaan!). Eilen saatiin myös kahdesta biisistä kannut kasaan ja eeppisimmästä teoksesta myös n. 2/3. Eli ihan ok lähtö, flunssasta huolimatta. Kyllä tästä vielä jotain järkiperäistä voidaan odottaa..

Nauhoitettavista kappaleista kaksi on hittivetoista materiaalia ja kaksi eeppisempää ja progressiivisempaa osastoa temponvaihdoksineen ja hämärine tahtilajeineen. Joten etiäpäin on kait menty sitten puolentoista vuoden takaisen treenisrävellyksen..

Tänään sitten jos saisi loput pannut läjään ja pääsisi aloittelemaan kitarointia niin johan pomppaisi.