Day 3: Lead guitars

Howdy ho!

My day didn't exactly have the best start. I had an appointment with the devil=DENTAL HYGIENIST! She scrape my tooth and my gums with such a wicked touch that I had blood even all over my face! Every time she stuck this tube (a suction device) in my mouth I could see that the color of the tube changed to red. Pretty sick dudes and girlies! But enough about that and let's get back to business.

I arrived at the studios around half past twelve. I recorder clean guitars for "Open My Eyes", "Side", "Way You Are" and "Wake" in about two hours. I had noticed that I forgot to record one lead in "Side" and Miggis told me that he had forgot to record one tiny crunch in "How The World Ends To Me". These didn't take much time. But then things got a bit more interesting. Mr. Saksa asked me "Have you ever played with a slide?". Sure I have but it's been like 5 years since I last even touched a slide. So Mr. Saksa had some ideas and we ended up recording some slide guitars for "Side". Nice!

And finally the true fun part started. It was time to record solos for "Open My Eyes", "Side" and "Born Again". :) I have always enjoyed shredding solos in a studio (and live of course). ;D So I just recorded the solos over and over again and really had a blast!

Now we had reach a point where all mandatory guitars were finished. So I stepped inside the room where the actual cabinet of the guitar amplifier was. Mr. Saksa turned gain of the amplifier all the way up and we recored some feedback guitars for few songs. It was a bit tricky because I had to get as close to the cabinet as possible without touching the microphones. In result my left knee was cursing like hell! I didn't have the most ergonomic recording stance. ;)

Around 17.30 I could finally take it easy. Everything on my behalf had been recorded. I had one last thing to do. I had to jam all the guitar stuff (which belong to Miggis by the way) in my car. Thanks Miggis for the help! ;D MoFo! xD I said goodbye to Mr. Saksa and started my journey Back Home. Now I think I've deserved my victory whisky!

And here I am... Drinking my whisky... And writing this legend about my third and last day recording Edward's début album at Sound Supreme studio... Tomorrow shall be a joyful day... ;) Party on people!

- Wäiski

Day 2: Lead guitars

Once again my beauty sleep was interrupted at 5 am and my eyes were feeling heavy as shit! I had same routines planned for today as I had for the day before. And after really long one hour drive I finally reached the studios.

I had lead guitars for two songs and as much clean guitars as possible to record. Recording leads for "Side" and "Way You Are" took more time than I had expected. It took almost half of the whole day. After the leads were finally out of the way it was time to relax a bit by fiddling with the knobs on the Mesa Boogie -head to provide a smooth clean sound. No more headache from killer crunch sounds! ;D No I'm just kidding. All the guitar sounds so far have been just superb! :)

After four hours of recording clean guitars there were only few songs left which lacked of clean guitars. So the final recording day for me shall consist of clean guitars for four songs, couple of solos and some extra guitars à la Mr. Saksa. I'm feeling really happy and satisfied now that most of the work (on my behalf) is done. :) You can bet your sweet ass that I will solemnize this achievement with couple of classes of whisky in the evening! xD And during the next of course weekend! >;D

Tomorrow at 1 pm at the studios. And there shall be an ending to my bumbling around at Supreme Studios... At least for now... Cheers!

- Wäiski

Day 1: Lead guitars

It's 5 am and the alarm clock starts to make fearsome noises. I feel myself a bit, how would I say this... pretty damn tired! Fortunately I had a good night sleep thanks to my almost namesake Mr. Whisky. ;) I decided to start my day off with couple of hours warming up before heading to the studio. At 9 am I finally reached Sound Supreme studio.

I recorded lead guitars almost non-stop from 9 to 17 (I had a 20 minutes lunch break and that was pretty much the only break). The chair I sat on really rubbed my ass the bad way. I felt myself like someone had executed serious ass-rape on me! But I managed to record all the main lead guitars for all the songs except "Side" and "Way You Are". We came up with quite a lot of totally new stuff with Mr. Saksa to make the songs even more massive. I'm very pleased with the results.

Most demanding songs were the two latest songs "Born Again" and "Long Gone". The reason for this was that these songs needed some composition and arrangements before I could record them. We did record demo versions of all the songs before the studio but I wasn't completely satisfied with the lead guitars in these two songs. But everything went without any major problems and it was really rewarding and fun to work with Mr. Saksa. So lead guitars for two songs, clean guitars for all the songs and few solos were still waiting for someone to record them. These recordings were left for the next day and the day after that.

When I finally arrived home I felt pretty damn exhausted. I had to do some other duties for couple of hours. Then I decided to have a few relaxing "malt-meals" and call it a day. ;D The next day shall offer pretty much the same schedule. Need to get some sleep and fast! Ugh!

- Wäiski

Day 2: More guitars

I'm posting this one almost in real time, 'cos I brought my laptop with me. It is the second day for guitars and Mikkis is sweating his ass off right next to me. :) Distortion guitars are almost done and now it's time to do some clean and acoustic guitar tracks.

We arrived today at 10 am with my "Italian Stalion" ultimate super car, which worked like a dream.


Let's hope that we will get back home too. For some reason that macaroni nation didn't prepare their cars for Finland's cold-ass winter. Maybe they were too busy eating their lasanges. Am I funny or what? No offence. ;D

This time we brought our Mr. Sleepyhead Kalle a.k.a the photographer LEVOLA with us. As you can see, Kalle (or Colin Jameson what ever you might call him) was feeling pretty tired. He had a long night last night. All sorts of ugly/nasty things happened to the guy and trust me, you don't wanna know more. Basically, he was just drinkin' with Stevie Rosiecheeks, the guy that we'll tell you more later.


The whole day has been full of watching funny YouTube clips, eating microwave pizzas and giving Kalle a hard time. At one point, I was supposed to change strings for Mikkis' acoustic guitar, but of course I just had to mess that up too. For some reason, I broke almost the whole bridge of the guitar and man, was Mikkis pleased. ;D Maybe I should start thinking about building a career as an guitar technician.

I'm beginning to think that theres is something wrong with Väiski's belly. The guy ate two meals and is still feeling hungry. I guess we need to grab and extra, super-sized Happy Meal for the guy when we head back home.

Here are some photos from the sessions. More comin' later, enjoy!

Day 1: Guitar recordings

The Waiting is over now!!!

My English might be a little bit rusty. Its been a "WHILE" since I've been on the school bench. I hope it doesn't bother you folks who are reading this.


First of all it was awesome to know that I could work with Mr. Janne Saksa again at Sound Supreme Studios at Hämeenlinna. Last time when we were recording our latest singles "A Life To be Unreal" and "Try To Make it Last" the sessions with Mr. Saksa were just great. So it was nice to go there again.

As well as Bob, I started the recording session with the new song, Born Again. It's gonna be one of the greatest songs from the upcoming album. First it was a bit sticky to play, because it's fucking -20 degrees of Celcius here in Finland. But after couple of nice, warm microwave salamipizzas I got warmer and could move my fingers on fretboard and start to playing song.

Next one was an old song called "Hope For The Best" with new arrangements. We did lots of new arrangements at the studio...HAHA... and the other guys don't even know about it yet. Let that be our little secret. It will be a suprise.

Then it was time to handle our newest song called "Long Gone". Mr Saksa and Bob had made so many new arrangements that I almost didn't recognice the whole song.

BLAA BLAA BLAA... I guess that's enough about the songs. I recorded five songs and that was it. Six songs left and couple of new ideas to try. It's gonna be HUGE like Mr. Trump use to say. If I have to say something... I would say that "I love the sound. It will punch you in the face."

I left the studios around 11.30 p.m. to Hellsinki. Pretty Scary roadtrip I would say. It was so close that I didn't fell asleep at the wheel. I had to make phone calls all the way to Hellsinki to stay awake. 00.30 a.m. I arrived to Hellsinki and then my dear friend called me and asked to go for a couple of beers... CHEERS MATES!!!

Next Saturday it's my turn again to play kick ass guitars at the Sound Supreme studios.

-M-

P.S. Sorry that I don't have any pictures to show like Bob. Maybe next time.

Day 1: Drum recordings

After Mr. Saksa had put all the mics around the kit it was time to do a little sound check and make sure everything was in order so we could start the recordings.

First day we had four songs to be recorded. First one we did was a song called Born Again. It has never been played live so only few people have heard it. It’s one of my favorite songs from the upcoming album at the moment. Up-tempo song with a catchy chorus and good melodies, what else do you need. We did some minor arrangement chances to the middle part of the song.

Next we did a song called Side. This one you might have heard if you have seen us playing live. We had made some chances to the arrangement comparing to live version. When recording the song we did a few more changes and some alternative arrangements from which to decide. We also came up with some new drum fills. I especially like the verse of this song because it has a nice tom-tom beat.



Then it was time to take the tempo down. The next in line was Way You Are. You might first think that it’s easier to play slower songs than the faster ones but it’s just the opposite. I had a tough time recording this one but finally we got it. Maybe computer helped me a little bit. And again Mr. Saksa came up with some alternative arrangements. We thought that the demo version had some pointless repeating of the chorus. We’ll see how it’s going to be in the final version. Don’t know yet. New drum stuff added too.

Last song of the day was our newest song which is called Long Gone. We have never played it as a full band. I’ve only played it with Eppu when we did arrangements to it and recorded demos for this album. It's a quite straight forward song with nothing unnecessary in it. Comparing to our other songs you could say it's a mid-tempo song. I Like the chorus and I think the verse sounds different from what we usually do. I remember Mr. Saksa commenting that some how intro part reminded him of latin music. That was interesting.

-Bob

Day 1 (15/1/2010): Bob's drum set-up

The time was 9.00 a.m. when I arrived at the Sound Supreme studios in Hämeenlinna. I had my drum equipment (cymbals, drumsticks, pedals, snaredums etc.) with me but the drum kit we were going to use in these recordings was already in the studios. Slightly after me our producer/engineer Janne Saksa arrived at the studios.

First we had to decide which cymbals to use. We end up using the following setup:

- Zildjian 14” K Custom Session HiHats
- Sabian 21” AAX Stage Ride
- Zildjian 17” K Custom Dark China
- Sabian 18” AA Dark Crash
- Sabian 19” HHX X-Plosion Crash

Then we tried couple of snare drums and this time we chose Yamaha’s 14”x7” Birch Custom Absolute. It’s actually the same snare drum I currently have in my live set-up.

Drum kit was Kumu’s birch set with following drum sizes 20” BD, 12” TT, 16” FT and 18” FT. Drum kit is handmade in Finland and custom made for Sound Supreme studios. Well, I guess this is enough of all the equipment details. I don’t even know who actually is interested in this kind of stuff. Maybe some other drummer, so this is for him/her. I also use Tama Iron Cobra pedals and Balbex sticks. And if you have connections to the above-mentioned companies I’m waiting offers for endorsement deals.





-Bob

Drum recordings are done!

Last Friday and Saturday we got all the drum tracks recorded for the upcoming album. Everything went well and there are now few alternative versions of some songs. Bob had a videocamera with him in the studio and we'll try to update some video material here this week.

- Eppu

Welcome everybody!

This blog is all about showing you boys and girls what is going on in the studio. In case, you found this blog by accident, here is the idea in a nutshell:

We (a band called Edward) are recording our debut album at Sound Supreme studios in Hämeenlinna.