Hi everyone...
This is the first chance I have had to share some news with you since we started out recording drums in the studio on Saturday.
Thursday: Stress and assembling the gear for use in the studio. I borrowed tons of gear from friends, customers and of course from the musicstore where I live. While I waited for the guy from whom we'd rent the drums, I put the studio within the studio together.
Friday: Arrived early at the studio. The owner went on tour with Nasum that same morning and had no time to clean the place up. I spent a few hours collecting garbage and wiping the floors both with vacuumcleaner and a wet towel. Really boring stuff, but It sets you off in a "we're gonna do this properly" vibe that will color the entire studiosession. Mr. Puka, the drumdoctor showed up with his Gretsch kit around 12 and he started chaning heads and tuned and stuff. We tried a trick with two bassdrums standing infront of eachother for maximum tone but after a few hours of moving and tuning I realized it didn't work out the way I planned, so we fixed and trixed and all of a sudden we had a kickdrumsound to die for!! Thanx Puka!! Around 17:00 I picked up my brother from our meetingplace (The studio is located in the same house as the recordcompany Burning Heart and can be tricky to find) About an hour after that Tom the drummerboy came around to start the serious soundcheck. Poor guy. He must've played solidly for like 4 hours!! Again, it was definately worth the trouble. The drumsound is already better than the final mix of the other three albums put together!! Came home late. Dreamt of the studio!!!
Saturday: Started around 10:00. Tom & Tom worked with some of Nouga's songs and before the day was over they had nailed three tracks, all good takes. Took a pretty early night and got ourselves some beauty sleep (In my case flavoured by still being in the studio in my sleep, of course)
Sunday: Yesterday went great. All trax, except for "The Shadowman" was recorded by Tom B. He even nailed a smashing version of "Nightfall Overture". It will be used for a bonus track or something. This new version is a lot better than the original version so I really wanted it to be recorded with this line-up.
It sounds great and we're all very excited!!
Well..I gotta finish shaving, because today we have some photosessions ands tuff aswell....I'll be right back
Monday: Tom recorded the drums for "The Shadowman" and it turned out great. He is such a talented mutha!!! After a break we got started on the guitarsound. After trying out various multi-amp configurations and miking procedure, we all agreed on a basic Marshall JCM900 head (the amp) + 2 SM57 (the micorphones) and one ambience mike to do the job. And man does it sound classic!!!
Tuesday: We realized that a few things needed to change with the guitarsound and after a few hours of mindbending fixing and trixing (God..it's sooo loud in the recordingroom!!!) we got it all set for destruction. Dag nailed a couple of songs the first day, with extreme perfection as usual.
Wednesday: We got the 12 string Fender Stratocaster (The same model used on Stairway to heaven and a lot of Mission recordings!!) Despide the difficulties to tune it correctly (We tune one halfstep lower than "normal") it was used for a couple of timeless overdubs!! My brother went home and I continued with my guitars. I recorded two tracks completely, only to realise that the guitarsound from my guitar was not as good as from my brothers...I cranked the amp to 11 and connected an EBS compressor pedal between the guitar and the amp and WOOOOOAAAAA!!!!! My fave sound!! Then I re-recorded the two tracks and the difference was incredible. Really ballsy stuff.
Got home around 23:30
Thursday: It's still early morning here, listen to the Bloodbath mix. Sounds great!! I will soon go to the studio and complete my rhythmguitars. Erik and Dag will be back later on today, and then we'll start with the bass. It will be a laugh...Dag and Erik in the same room always is...
Friday: Thursday night went great. We found a suitable bass sound using the Line6 Bass Pod Pro. I have developed an allergy for their guitar POD but this bass unit worked flawlessy thru out the session and suplied us with a great ballsy basstone. We had some tuning difficulties as usual (strings suck!!) once they were sorted out Erik nailed the songs real quick. Some of the tracks had new bassparts written in the studio, but Erik nailed them too with great precision. Great player! Stopped around 23:00, went for a burger and went straight to bed.
Saturday: The bass recordinging continues. We nailed a few tracks including "Shadowman" and the quite demanding 10 minute epic track known as the "progsong".
Sunday: Erik ended the session in style by nailing the remakes of "Nightfall Overture" and the "The End" section of "Alive Again". Nightfall is not for the album..just to have it documented in the heaviest and coolest version of it this far...
Packed us the gear and drove some of it back to the musicstore where I work. Went back to my place and had a coffee with my parents that came here to "return" my son John. It is my wife's birthday today so we celebrated her one day early...
Monday: Day off. I will go to the musicstore and unpack some stuff and pay for some rentals etc. Tomorrow I will go there and nail most of my leads- Dag comes back on Wednesday afternoon to nail his lead. The temp-studio setup at Soundlab will be transported back to my homestudio "The Room" on Frioday night and then I will start fiddling around with the keyboards and then..........zzzzzzzzzzzzz...............the lyrics!!!!!!! But it will hoepfully work out as good as usual..but it's so tough to get it all started..the idea of having like 9 lenghty lyrics to compose...yikes..
Tuesday: I started out around 11. Got myself a wonderful leadguitarsound. That poor Marshall really deliver the goods!!! On 11!! I finished the lionpart of all my lead and harmony guitars. A lot more than on "I". There's plenty of "duels" between me and my bro this time. I belive that the leads are more interesting when you switch between 2 guitarplayers. I am easily bored with leads, but we have really nailed it this time...no fillers, all killers!!!
Wednesday: I got back real early. Did some Bloodbath remastering first, sent it off to the other to get their complains!!! I finished 90% of the "The progsong" then Nouga showed up and nailed all of his leads in a pisskvart...it's crazy how fast he can get a good solo going..
Thursday: Today we finished the progsong and my brother have started doing some westernacoustic guitars. I will nail my acoustic stuff for "Shadowman" after typing this. Tomorrow we'll bring the gear back home to "The Room" and start doing the keyboard stuff.
Thursday one week later:
SHIT!!! It's almost been one whole week since we got the gear into "The Room"....well, we have finished a lot of Nouga's stuff but I have mostly been doing horribly boring computer stuff like composites of drumtracks and re-writing files with different setting and bla bla...it's SOOOO BOOOORING!!!! But the reward for all this came a few hours ago when I tried a rough mix (without vocals of course) in our different hi-fi systems here at Fatbursgatan and HEY!!! IT TOTALLY ROCKS!!!! Best sounds ever from my fingertips. I will try not to wack it all up at the end this time!!! I will prepare a CD for my brother with some tracks that needs some additional boring editing, so I can start recording my synthesizers!! It'll be a blast!! I have been playing around with a few possible songtitles today.."Shattered Sky" and "Withering Dandelion" and I will try to come up with something with "Gate" in the title without making it sound too deathmetal. Gotta go now. Have some stuff to do. Tonight I will update the homepages!! First time since November!! Yeah!!!
DThursday
One week again!!! The editing is pretty much finished and I have soon completed the keyboards for my tracks aswell. The progsong have a name "The Foe" and another track might be called "Always be the one" one never knowz!!!!
I have been mixing the Bloodbath album aswell as rehearsing for a festival gig with Nightingale this Saturday...
See ya
D
This is the first chance I have had to share some news with you since we started out recording drums in the studio on Saturday.
Thursday: Stress and assembling the gear for use in the studio. I borrowed tons of gear from friends, customers and of course from the musicstore where I live. While I waited for the guy from whom we'd rent the drums, I put the studio within the studio together.
Friday: Arrived early at the studio. The owner went on tour with Nasum that same morning and had no time to clean the place up. I spent a few hours collecting garbage and wiping the floors both with vacuumcleaner and a wet towel. Really boring stuff, but It sets you off in a "we're gonna do this properly" vibe that will color the entire studiosession. Mr. Puka, the drumdoctor showed up with his Gretsch kit around 12 and he started chaning heads and tuned and stuff. We tried a trick with two bassdrums standing infront of eachother for maximum tone but after a few hours of moving and tuning I realized it didn't work out the way I planned, so we fixed and trixed and all of a sudden we had a kickdrumsound to die for!! Thanx Puka!! Around 17:00 I picked up my brother from our meetingplace (The studio is located in the same house as the recordcompany Burning Heart and can be tricky to find) About an hour after that Tom the drummerboy came around to start the serious soundcheck. Poor guy. He must've played solidly for like 4 hours!! Again, it was definately worth the trouble. The drumsound is already better than the final mix of the other three albums put together!! Came home late. Dreamt of the studio!!!
Saturday: Started around 10:00. Tom & Tom worked with some of Nouga's songs and before the day was over they had nailed three tracks, all good takes. Took a pretty early night and got ourselves some beauty sleep (In my case flavoured by still being in the studio in my sleep, of course)
Sunday: Yesterday went great. All trax, except for "The Shadowman" was recorded by Tom B. He even nailed a smashing version of "Nightfall Overture". It will be used for a bonus track or something. This new version is a lot better than the original version so I really wanted it to be recorded with this line-up.
It sounds great and we're all very excited!!
Well..I gotta finish shaving, because today we have some photosessions ands tuff aswell....I'll be right back
Monday: Tom recorded the drums for "The Shadowman" and it turned out great. He is such a talented mutha!!! After a break we got started on the guitarsound. After trying out various multi-amp configurations and miking procedure, we all agreed on a basic Marshall JCM900 head (the amp) + 2 SM57 (the micorphones) and one ambience mike to do the job. And man does it sound classic!!!
Tuesday: We realized that a few things needed to change with the guitarsound and after a few hours of mindbending fixing and trixing (God..it's sooo loud in the recordingroom!!!) we got it all set for destruction. Dag nailed a couple of songs the first day, with extreme perfection as usual.
Wednesday: We got the 12 string Fender Stratocaster (The same model used on Stairway to heaven and a lot of Mission recordings!!) Despide the difficulties to tune it correctly (We tune one halfstep lower than "normal") it was used for a couple of timeless overdubs!! My brother went home and I continued with my guitars. I recorded two tracks completely, only to realise that the guitarsound from my guitar was not as good as from my brothers...I cranked the amp to 11 and connected an EBS compressor pedal between the guitar and the amp and WOOOOOAAAAA!!!!! My fave sound!! Then I re-recorded the two tracks and the difference was incredible. Really ballsy stuff.
Got home around 23:30
Thursday: It's still early morning here, listen to the Bloodbath mix. Sounds great!! I will soon go to the studio and complete my rhythmguitars. Erik and Dag will be back later on today, and then we'll start with the bass. It will be a laugh...Dag and Erik in the same room always is...
Friday: Thursday night went great. We found a suitable bass sound using the Line6 Bass Pod Pro. I have developed an allergy for their guitar POD but this bass unit worked flawlessy thru out the session and suplied us with a great ballsy basstone. We had some tuning difficulties as usual (strings suck!!) once they were sorted out Erik nailed the songs real quick. Some of the tracks had new bassparts written in the studio, but Erik nailed them too with great precision. Great player! Stopped around 23:00, went for a burger and went straight to bed.
Saturday: The bass recordinging continues. We nailed a few tracks including "Shadowman" and the quite demanding 10 minute epic track known as the "progsong".
Sunday: Erik ended the session in style by nailing the remakes of "Nightfall Overture" and the "The End" section of "Alive Again". Nightfall is not for the album..just to have it documented in the heaviest and coolest version of it this far...
Packed us the gear and drove some of it back to the musicstore where I work. Went back to my place and had a coffee with my parents that came here to "return" my son John. It is my wife's birthday today so we celebrated her one day early...
Monday: Day off. I will go to the musicstore and unpack some stuff and pay for some rentals etc. Tomorrow I will go there and nail most of my leads- Dag comes back on Wednesday afternoon to nail his lead. The temp-studio setup at Soundlab will be transported back to my homestudio "The Room" on Frioday night and then I will start fiddling around with the keyboards and then..........zzzzzzzzzzzzz...............the lyrics!!!!!!! But it will hoepfully work out as good as usual..but it's so tough to get it all started..the idea of having like 9 lenghty lyrics to compose...yikes..
Tuesday: I started out around 11. Got myself a wonderful leadguitarsound. That poor Marshall really deliver the goods!!! On 11!! I finished the lionpart of all my lead and harmony guitars. A lot more than on "I". There's plenty of "duels" between me and my bro this time. I belive that the leads are more interesting when you switch between 2 guitarplayers. I am easily bored with leads, but we have really nailed it this time...no fillers, all killers!!!
Wednesday: I got back real early. Did some Bloodbath remastering first, sent it off to the other to get their complains!!! I finished 90% of the "The progsong" then Nouga showed up and nailed all of his leads in a pisskvart...it's crazy how fast he can get a good solo going..
Thursday: Today we finished the progsong and my brother have started doing some westernacoustic guitars. I will nail my acoustic stuff for "Shadowman" after typing this. Tomorrow we'll bring the gear back home to "The Room" and start doing the keyboard stuff.
Thursday one week later:
SHIT!!! It's almost been one whole week since we got the gear into "The Room"....well, we have finished a lot of Nouga's stuff but I have mostly been doing horribly boring computer stuff like composites of drumtracks and re-writing files with different setting and bla bla...it's SOOOO BOOOORING!!!! But the reward for all this came a few hours ago when I tried a rough mix (without vocals of course) in our different hi-fi systems here at Fatbursgatan and HEY!!! IT TOTALLY ROCKS!!!! Best sounds ever from my fingertips. I will try not to wack it all up at the end this time!!! I will prepare a CD for my brother with some tracks that needs some additional boring editing, so I can start recording my synthesizers!! It'll be a blast!! I have been playing around with a few possible songtitles today.."Shattered Sky" and "Withering Dandelion" and I will try to come up with something with "Gate" in the title without making it sound too deathmetal. Gotta go now. Have some stuff to do. Tonight I will update the homepages!! First time since November!! Yeah!!!
DThursday
One week again!!! The editing is pretty much finished and I have soon completed the keyboards for my tracks aswell. The progsong have a name "The Foe" and another track might be called "Always be the one" one never knowz!!!!
I have been mixing the Bloodbath album aswell as rehearsing for a festival gig with Nightingale this Saturday...
See ya
D
