Acoustics done; Just add solos

All acoustic tracks (save for one middle section) done, no major obstacles came up and everything sounds great. Now, a lunch break for 2 hours (a bachelor(ette) party crew has booked the studio for “something funny” so we’ll get out of their way for a while) and then back for the missing acoustic part and basically all the leads and solos. A lot of work still, but then again leads are fun to play and you don’t have as many constraints as with rhythm stuff.

Almost there,
Jari / Embreach

Rhythm guitars done

Woohoo! Finished the last bunch of rhythm tracks late last night. We actually re-did most of the guitar parts in the pretty epic track that’ll be the last track on the album. It’s a slightly slower song, but has some tight parts that are actually harder to play right than many of the faster riffs. Especially one of the really heavy riffs was kinda rushed for both guitars in the first take, slightly ahead of the beat, so we simply turned up the metronome and played it really nice and tight. Everything flowed nicely last night, and we also ended re-doing the chorus parts for both guitars: when we first recorded them, we were kinda struggling to get both guitars to sound both tight and 100% in tune (some big chords there, they can easily sound out of tune on an electric if you’re not careful) Last night, we nailed them down on first (well, re-)takes!

Having finished the rhythm stuff, we had a little live jam session in the studio with Jake on piano and me on acoustic, mostly improvising around a theme we have planned for the outro of the last song, and thus the whole promo – some of it may even make the final cut Just jamming around and having a couple of glasses of red helped bring our stress levels down nicely, and today we’re ready ad eager to fill in the blanks: first the remaining acoustics, and then the leads and solos.

We should be finished tonight!

Jari / Embreach

An even quicker status update

All vocals done. All rhythm guitars done save for one chorus. Tomorrow’s the day for acoustics and solos, i.e. the fun stuff, hopefully Looks like we’ll get everything done by Tuesday and have a the shit mastered on Friday, already booked a session at Finnvox. Feeling relieved! The new songs kick so much ass!

Stay tuned,
Jari / Embreach

Quick status update

Bass tracks are done! Great job from Jaakko, considering this was his first time in a studio ever. Over half of the clean vocals are done, and we are currently recording growls for one of the tracks as the day draws to a close. Plenty of guitar tracks to do still, all the solos and most of the acoustic stuff etc. Looks like we’ll have to put in one extra day during the weekend, although we were planning on completing all recordings this week to be able to mix the album on Monday and Tuesday next week. If all goes well, we’ll be mastering the record on Friday next week! That should keep us right on track for a release date real soon now!

The stuff we have finished is absolutely killer. Everything is top-notch, from Jake’s drums to Sami’s vocals to Jaakko’s bass lines. Hopefully the guitar tracks won’t be bad either I actually recorded an acoustic guitar solo for one of the songs just today, a nice little touch.

I’m le tired now, but have to keep on going for a while still. Found a nice little Thai restaurant here in Hämeenlinna, the food and a couple of beers is making us a little drowsy right now.

Stay tuned.
- Jari / Embreach

First session with vocals

First vocal session finished. We started off with microphone selection, which was easy for the clean vocals since we just used the best condenser microphone available. For the growls we tried out three different options, my own Audix OM-5, a Shure SM-58 and an instrument mic from the studio. The instrument mic was ruled out fast, but the OM-5 and SM-58 sounded fairly similar. In the end we decided to go with the good old SM-58.

We only had one song that we could work on since the other songs were missing some crucial guitars. The chorus, which is a rather high raspy clean, was actually recorded fairly painlessly. In the verses, which are in a low growl, Janne had a few very good pointers on which vowels to stretch so that pronunciation sounds right when sung. Great stuff. Altogether we recorded that one song in less than an hour.

A very good start for the vocals. Next session with Janne is tomorrow and it’s going to be three hours. Hopefully we can then concentrate on singing all the clean vocals for all of the songs.

Added a few photos to Flickr.

Also, here’s a few clips:

-Sami / Embreach

Siso for the win

Recorded some geetars last night. Through Edu’s Krank first, but listening back to the tracks today, the sound was a bit too harsh for our purposes. We tried the Krank through 2 different cabinets (the Mesa in this pic and a Marshall 4×12″) but couldn’t find the sound we wanted. This morning we scratched our heads for a while and ended up switching to the Peavey 5150 head (“Siso”) and the Marshall cab with three different mics (Sennheiser 441 & 421 as well as a Shure 57) picking up the goods. The sound turned out great! Modern and clear. Think Soilwork’s Figure Number Five.

Jaakko’s currently getting geared up for recording the bass tracks. At first, he’ll probably be going direct to the mixer, with sounds dialed in from the computer. Jaakko has brought his brand new Gallien-Krueger head along as well, let’s see what will get us the best sound.

On this record, we’ll be recording acoustic guitars for the first time in Embreach history. On our two previous promos, there have been some clean electric guitars but nothing acoustic. We just set up the mic and should be ready to add some acoustic touch to the songs. My Yamaha had a nasty spike in the middle frequencies when miked so we ended up using the Charvel acoustic found here at the studio. Luckily, it was already tuned to D standard which is the tuning we’ll be playing the acoustic parts in.

In addition to the instrument section, everything has also been set up for recording Sami’s vocals. Must say, the couple of verses he just sang as a test sounded GREAT!

From the sound department,
Jari / Embreach

Photos

Some photos available at Flickr.

Drums done for all songs.

Lyrics almost done. One song is missing a few crucial lines.

-Sami / Embreach

Drum heads they are a-breakin’

Last night’s results: drums done for 2 songs (save for little fixups) and almost done for one more: the bottom snare head broke in the middle of recording, so the sound went sour gradually, took a while before we noticed. No we have to do some retakes. Jake also recorded drums for the remaining song (with the highest tempo and craziest double bass stuff), but it proved to be a little too much after a looong day of work. Now he’s hard at working at re-doing the song from the top. Must say, the drums sound awesome! They have a _lot_ of punch and low end, can’t wait to hear them with the whole band playing.

Next up, we’ll be working on finding the perfect rhythm guitar sounds for the album. We have a general idea of what we want, but we’re no experts with recorded guitar sounds, so we have a playlist of reference tracks at hand if needed. We’ll probably use Edu’s trustworthy Jackson RR for the rhythm tracks. The sound will hopefully be huge and modern, yet still organic, with not too much but just the right amount of distortion to make things roar and still be distinctive. Although there are plenty of killer death metal -style riffs in the new songs, there’s also guitar stuff with lots of different dimensions and big chords, so we won’t just crank the amp up and boost it to high heavens. Let’s see what we come up with!

Jaakko the bass guy is joining us today, and we’ll have to whole group together for the next 2 days. Should be a lot of fun. An extra pair of ears is always beneficial.

Jari / Embreach