Forwards through the greedy compressor

Some time has passed and yes, the SF package has been progressing as well. Based on quick count the current amount of songs with possible final vocals is 11. So it's already over halfway there. When it comes to recording some small guitarsolos, there are now 5 songs that contain additional guitar melodies and/or solos. More news as things progress.

It might well be that this release won't be ready during 2012, but it looks like it's going to be early 2013 release. If something can be stated as a fact, it's that this release certainly haven't been rushed at any stage. Which makes it pretty much a completely different case if compared to past SF releases (longest recording period has been under 2 months, from start to finish).

Sometimes the saying "worth the wait" has a deeper meaning. We feel this SF release is going to be something where that saying fits like ... a distant star into a distant galaxy. Far, far away.

Progressing

I've heard three demosongs with possible final vocals on them, rough mixes - sounds very good and enjoyable to me. There's even some "sing along" moments, heh heh ... but jokes aside, it feels nice that the package is progressing for real.

Oh, also something else. I was recording some guitar solos (or more like "solos" so far) to further enchance the material. It might be that not all guitar noise is used but we'll see. I only went through 4 songs so far, going to go all the rest through and listen if there would be good spots for some more guitarchaos.

More arrangements

I've been continuing doing the vocal arrangements, as well as writing some new lyrics (sources of inspiration ranging from space news into some scifi and less scifi movies, as well as games - not to mention imagination, oh and ... some zombies). Just finished recording the 15th vocal demo, so ... there are only 5 songs to go.

No lyrics done for the last 5 songs yet - we are hoping that Timo would find his (too well!) archived SF-lyrics. Lyrics that he's made already quite some time ago ... if he doesn't find those lyric bases, then I'll write the rest of the lyrics myself. Well, hopefully those archived lyrics will be found. Variation in lyrics' style never harms.

Arrangements

Some time has passed (and lots of real life things taking that time), but finally things are going ahead when it comes to Scumfusion. Recently I started finetuning and arranging lyrics, fitting them into songs - and making rough vocal demos myself ... so that it would be as easy and smooth job as possible for Timo to do the final recordings.

8 songs are ready for recording vocals currently and I'm aiming to continue with the rest during next 1-2 weeks. Hopefully we'll get this package completed still during 2012. We'll see.

Oh, and also the song count has dropped too. It's the good thing in this delay - I've had time to absorb the material more than enough and I've been brutally critical in what works and what doesn't. Four songs were dropped off recently, simply because they weren't good enough in my opinion. Total amount of songs will be 20 and it looks like the 30 minutes overall length will be quite close in the end. Fits us well.

Video session & status

I shot some more raw material for music video under plans, and it came out very nice. Took one frame out of the video materials and uploaded it into my Flickr account.

Timo is currently more than busy, so the work on Scumfusion is waiting its' turn. But worry not; that turn will come and when things start happening, it will be told here.

Bass tracks? Done.

Finished last bass tracks yesterday. Even Antti hasn't heard these yet, but I have a feeling he'll accept the sound choices I made  : )   Nice distorted edge with a warm low end, that should do the trick.

Next session coming, I'll start figuring out the vocals. This will take a lot more time, the bass was relatively easy, although at times challenging. The easiness was mainly due to the tabs Antti was kind enough to provide. A true timesaver!

Timo
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Coverart under works

I started finally working on the front cover for this forthcoming SF release during past weekend. Finally, because it was in July 2011 when I took series of pictures already SF album coverart in my mind ... well about a week ago I was taking some pictures again, this time not SF in my mind at all. When going through that set of pictures on bigger screen I instantly felt that one picture is definitely a pair for the July 2011 picture(s). So, I went on with trying how the two pictures fit together, one picture from July 2011 and one picture from June 2012. It was right away clear that it's a perfect fit!

The album coverart won't be so black this time, intentionally. It could had been very black since especially July 2011 picture was quite dark one - and June 2012 picture had very dark elements as well. But the idea is to make it different kind of coverart this time. The two pictures are main elements but some starscapes have been thrown in and some drawn manually, too. The colors of the coverart will depict Finland (our homeworld ... I mean country ;) while the contents of the coverart can be seen very much scifi, and you can see all kinds of things / shapes if you look closer.

I think it will make a great and different colorart. Contrast and also a mirror to the music, at the same time.

Hell, yeah!

The cymbals are done. At least, the preliminary drafts. There might be some editing and slight fixing, but mainly, they're done.

Next stop, bass. I already received the tabs from Antti and it shouldn't take too much time to finish those tracks. The question is, when do I get to it. Expect more news right after something happens.

Great news

The problems with recording live cymbals were solved (I'll leave the technical details for Timo if he wants to explain them later) and all the songs now have drums pretty much completed. Yeah! There might be some fixes needed to be made, but nothing that would prevent this drum experiment from happening. And believe me, this will make a dramatic impact on how the material will sound. It gives a whole new dimension to the music. A dimension which already has a name; "antidroid" ...


What I've been doing during past few evenings with free time, is tabbing (making tablatures) all the 24 songs. Why? (Why not?) Because that will make the bassguitar planning & recording job much more easy for Timo.

Writing more lyrics and ...

I have now lyrics written for 10 songs. Recently I've been busy doing some heavy duty gardening stuff, but I still feel I might have a tale or two for some more songs. We'll see how it goes.

Something else happening as well; Timo has started drum/cymbal experiments. Good and bad news ...

Let's start with the good news: I already heard the opening song with bdrum / snare / toms as programmed ones, and all the cymbalworks as played by Timo. It sounded really good to me. For a moment I was like "yes! this is it! it will be maniacal ride!" ... until I heard more from Timo.

The bad news: The opening tune is pretty much a piece of cake when it comes drums (and tempo, too) if compared to what follows it. So unfortunately it won't be easy task to do all the cymbalworks just like that. We are working on it, combination of multiple smaller solutions so that the lunatic tempos with mad cymbalworks would be possible to record live by Timo. Hold your thumb(s) up for things to be sorted out, because this is a huge factor in the forthcoming SF package.

Writing lyrics

I started writing lyrics for the new material yesterday. Yeah, me. When was last time I wrote lyrics for Scumfusion? It was about 10 years ago! And I can say that those lyrics back in 2002 weren't exactly serious ones in the same way than these space/scifi lyrics I've been writing now. It's like a whole different world if compared.

Originally in this current case I thought I'd write just something like 1-2 songs' lyrics - and let Timo write most of the lyrics as in past few releases. But it seems we are going to share the lyrical burden this time. I'm having a great inspiration currently, ... and as a result I've got already lyrics written for seven songs since yesterday. I'll continue as long as I have good ideas - I feel I still have some more ideas I could use, so it might well be that half of the songs have lyrics written by me, and other half is done by Timo. That should bring some nice variation to the lyrics too, since our writing style is clearly different.

I've been drawing influence from some classic scifi movies (like Alien & Aliens), as well as the post-nuclear Fallout game series (I've been a big fan since first two Fallout games already), and I've been mixing my own space visions as well as using Timo's "tales of Lossidia" in some ways too. I feel that the lyrics I've written will fit the songs in a great way - and I'm as much looking forward to tales Timo will create for this package.

Nothing so far

I am studying until 1st of June, and there will (probably) be no recording until that date, I'm afraid. But as they say, all good things come to those who wait.

T

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Awesome progression

I continued working with the drums' "separation" tonight and I exceeded my expectations. I thought I'd get 1/4 of remaining drumworks completed and last 1/4 of drumworks would be left for tomorrow evening. Well I thought wrong ... in a good way.

Not only I managed to complete all the drumworks tonight, but I also finetuned and did some additional drum things into the drumbases. Like that wouldn't be enough, I also started doing the final bounce files from the guitars. Two guitar tracks for each song, left and right channel. I managed to go all the 24 songs through and prepare the final bounce files from all of them.

Sure I spent most the evening on this SF work, but I still didn't expect proceeding that much. To sum it up; I basicly did all that there is to do from my part at this stage, when it comes to the actual music. Now all these final sound files are on their way to Timo - who will then continue at his side when he has fitting mood and time for it.

Current mood in my case: extremely (grinnning - or grinding) happy.

Drums being prepared

I did keep two days break as I thought I would - and started doing the less exciting (and more work'like) process of "separating" the machinedrums late yesterday. I prepared 4 songs' drums yesterday and tonight I went through 6 more songs. About half there, and not nearly as tiresome process I actually thought beforehand.

What the separating means, is that I'm going through all my programmed drums, checking also just in case if any finetuning / work is needed for bassdrums, snares or tom rolls. The main thing is the separation; saving the different drum samples as separate wav files with whole song's length. Each song will get 4 separate files; bassdrums, snares, toms and cymbalworks. The important ones are bassdrums, snares and toms. Those will be in the final package certainly and for first ever time they will be mixed separately (instead of one "all drums" mess, a big difference methinks). But the cymbalworks are saved just as a guideline for Timo who will record them all with his real drums. The result should be exciting to hear, and hopefully great, too - half'programmed, half'live drums.

Anyway, with this rate it looks that I'm getting the drums' separation done by weekend.

The working list

Below you can see a list of the new SF songs. The song lengths aren't exact, nor final - since lots of songs have "guitar noise" in the end (some have as long as 10-20 seconds), for possible dark ambient sections / connecting the songs / guitars turning into alien soundscapes. Also; every song has about 5 seconds of silence before it starts for recording purposes - I'd estimate the package is notably under 30 minutes long currently. Perhaps 29 minutes. But the final overall length will grow from that I think - since I'm sure there will be some dark ambient moments here and there depending how creative Timo will get / how the soundscapes will fit the lyrics (too).

Just one fix (and then some)

I listened all the tracks through this morning in the condition they are right now (final guitars, machinery drums) and felt that two tracks had some details in guitars that should be fixed. The songs would benefit from the fixes. So I went and re'recorded some parts for the two songs - and the fixes were exactly what I wanted with pretty much first takes. And I was happy again.

Then I went into checking one song much more closely, probably the craziest song of the package - thinking that it should be as good as it's possible to get it and now that my right arm is in good condition ... I kept listening to the rough mix and compared it to other songs and made a decision. I'll re'record that whole song and probably end up having a tighter, more crazy sounding result. I thought it's no big deal, but in a way I thought wrong. Because it took me closer to 4 hours to get that song into final condition. 4 hours for song that's 1min 40sec long or so. Funny. :) ... it wasn't the manic guitar riffs that caused so much problems and took time, but that song has extreme tempo and numerous sudden riff changes, stops etc - I wanted to get it as perfect as I can with my DIY-skills so ... it just took a bit time.

Anyway, it was definitely worth the sweat. Now that song is definitely better sounding, even more furious than what it was. I can reveal that it's going to be second song on the package, right after opening piece. It's total scifi grind!

Now I'll try to relax for day or two and then re'listen the tunes - if it's all okay to me (I do suppose it is) then I'll start separating the drumfiles for the next stage. Which is quite probably recording the real cymbals, hihats etc - Timo will have two hands full of duty at that point, I think. ;)

Smooth saturday

The good vibes continued today as I recorded the last five songs' final guitars with ease (not bad considering I'm having a slight flu). I also decided that I won't change my mind about the originally 25th song which was meant as a kind of outrosong (slow doom'ish song with brutal grind ending) - it's out for good. The final amount of songs will be 24.

Now I'll have to listen the recordings and see if I'm perfectly happy with the guitars. If not, some fixes if necessary - but the next real stage is to prepare the drums so that I can give them to Timo for recording the real cymbalworks.

Anyway; one stage is now pretty much completed - all guitars are done!

Power vol2

It's hard to start this blog post, in a way. I was like "wow!" yesterday as I had such a great day when it came to recording final guitars for four tracks and digging the results. Well now ... perhaps it's partially thanks to third acupuncture session of my life which happened today, but the fact is that I recorded final guitars for seven tracks today! Seven. It feels unreal. Suddenly the situation is that I have only something like 5-6 songs to be worked at this point. 5 songs for sure, 6th one is bit uncertain.

Who cares about the quantity really, but I'm very satisfied, extremely happy with how the guitars came out. Not just technically but I added lots of little twists here and there, playing was smooth for my style I'd say ... and that one track I mentioned yesterday, thinking it will be changed dramatically - that's what happened. A song that was almost happy-sounding blaster now sounds like twisted, weird grind piece. And in case if you couldn't guess, it came out like that very naturally. The only part of that song that didn't get changed is first few seconds of it, as the opening riff still sounds quite close how it used to be.

Anyway, I couldn't be happier with how this package is going. I felt really good while recording the guitars and I think this package is also going to be true definition of "scifi grind" ... that's the vibe I'm getting personally at this point. "a Lossidian threnody" did start the space trip and I liked it a lot (and still do, of course) but this will be like jump to hyperspace. ;)

Power

Wow. Talk about having a great, energetic day for guitar recording!

I recorded final guitars for four songs today. While recording I made once again some finetunings here and there. One song didn't change at all, while two songs got some nice improvements and one song got fully reworked opening section (I felt that would happen before recording already, the change came out nice and naturally). I already know that there's at least one short blaster ahead which will get lots of changes ... perhaps that's ahead already tomorrow, if this good mood for recording continues.

Very happy with how I got the songs' guitars recorded today.

Healin' hands

After two acupuncture sessions and few weeks rest my right hand has been recovering in a great way (acupuncture being the biggest reason for quick recovery, I recommend). So good, that today I picked up guitar first time since the last recording happened ... and already recorded final guitars for two songs. Just listened the latest recording and am really happy with how the guitars sound. Rough and smooth (enough).

PS: Also got a pic taken while I was recording the first song earlier today, just for this blog.

Unexpected

I was intending to continue this week, recording the guitars. Very much so.

Well, it turned out that my right arm didn't get pissed off because of guitar playing - nope, not at all. Instead it's work related problem dating back to last summer. So, I was forced to be away from dayjob this whole week, having a physiotherapy session on friday. Playing guitar totally out of guestion as well. Planning to get some acupuncture sessions in coming days / weeks so that this nasty hand problem would be cured for good.

So instead of playing guitar currently, it's more like watching them guitars being played by others.

Session with pain

Waking up today I was surprised; my picking hand, especially around thumb / wrist was so sore. And it still is. Gave some ice / cold treatment to it and took a painkiller - wouldn't had guessed yesterday's recording sessions would result into such pain! Weird. Perhaps it tells something about the material. Or then it tells something about the lack of my playing skills. Hah!

Well, what better way to kill the pain than ... continue recording? Yes. Before I took painkiller and had some cold treatment, I went and warmed up, jammed and then recorded final guitars for one song. Turned out very good - and I couldn't feel the pain while recording, either.

Gotta give the hand some rest now. Hoping to continue during next week though.

Good vibes

I recorded the final guitars for two more songs during today. One during afternoon, one during the eve. And how do I feel about the recordings? I feel great! Things went so good, both the actual recording and that how I've been "finetuning" the riffs during the recording.

Remember that I mentioned in past that I have a feeling that the songs will be reshaped a bit during the final recording of guitars? Well, that's what has been happening and it has been happening very naturally, through jamming and feelings of the music.

First song I recorded didn't really get huge changes, but I had few neat ideas for certain spots, getting more punch to the riffs (pinch harmonics and stuff). Second song has more changes, some nice twin guitar action and lots of small additions and the result is very nice.

Probably not continuing the recording tonight anymore, but tomorrow - certainly.

Onwards (the greedy compressor)

Finally continued recording tonight, with recording the likely guitars for song#2. While the recording over 1 month ago was quite an easy job, this song was really on the limits of my personal guitar playing skills. I first kept jamming the riffs and playing them over and over again, but ... well, it's grindy material slightly said. ;)

I made one decision though. Instead of seeking and trying more and more guitarsounds, I'm sticking with the one I mentioned late December - the one I recorded the first songs' final guitars as well.