Little Wing

I have had a habit of recording some sort of a cover song in the summertime if I don't have other projects going on at the same time. Now that I have finished with Synkissä Väleissä, I decided to do something fun. At least fun for me, I'm not sure about you.

I bought an used Line6 Helix LT lately and sold my SansAmp, so that was something I wanted to try out. To do something else than what I've been used to do. I also wanted to experiment with minimalist style of recording drums. So what could be better than doing something from Hendrix? So, Little Wing it is! Maybe not the most original idea, but something I had not tried out before.

So, I started the project by recording the drums alone (as usual). This time, however, with only a single small diaphragm condenser microphone placed two drum sticks from the snare. So, the classic Bonham setup without the bass drum mic. I used all three toms in my Genista kin, Mapex Black Panther 14x5 snare, and very thin Amedia cymbals (23" and 19") with Istanbul Mehmet Turk hats.

After that I dialled in a very raspy guitar tone (Hiwatt DR-103 model with some booster pedal + Ownhammer Mesa 4x12 IR if I remember right) and played the backing tracks with my Warmoth "Les Paul" using SD p-rails in P90 position. For the bass, I used some Helix cab and amp with minor modifications, and for the vocals I used the same mic I used for recording the drums. Very simple.

I am very pleased with the results. One single mic captured essentially everything I needed from the kit, and to my ears Helix sounds very pleasing and lively without any high-end fizz that I have associated with digital modelling amps. So, here is the final result:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/z9mx7qtegxq8j1g/Little%20Wing%20master.wav?dl=0 

Attention all planets!

Well, the album is finished, and I published it online June 25th. Done!

https://darkintervals.bandcamp.com/album/vi-synkiss-v-leiss

I wondered about the cover for some days, until I spotted a really nice abstract photograph that had been taken by a friend of mine. He promised me to use it freely, so that problem was also solved quickly!

Almost finalized

I think that the album is 99% finished. I will listen to it for a couple of times more and fix what there is to be fixed, and then I'll call it a day. I'm not the kind of person who has patience to tweak the album for too long time. Therefore, it would be better if someone else did the mastering and mixing and fixed the obvious bugs, but as I consider it also part of the fun, I have to accept the fact that the album is not going to be very polished.

So what next? I think I need a cover for the album, although it does not seem very likely that I would ever produce a CD copy of it. I have been thinking about using a real artist to paint a cover (something in the spirit of Nocturnus' Thresholds), but on the other hand it would be cool to do it also by myself. Let's see.

The main publishing forum will be most likely Bandcamp.

To do -list

Back from hiatus, premix done

I have been working as an expat in China for the past three months, and it means that I have had no chance to update the blog or do too much about the album, either. Anyway, now it is time for an update.

So, while in China I listened to the premix I took with me quite a lot. I also worked on it in mastering basis, meaning that I processed only the stereo track and not the mix. I eq:d in my opinion the nasty frequencies out, and took notes what that means from the balance point of view. For an example, I took almost 6 dB away from upper mids to compensate the nasty peaks caused by the cab impulses I used for the drums and guitars. On the other hand it means that I could bring the vocals up a bit as the nasty frequencies that peaked also there were gone.

Oh, by the way, I run vocals, guitars, bass and drums through different amp and cab simulations. So, all of them go through stuff like Fender tweed clean channel simulation or so. New approach for me, but it brought me a fresh angle to the music I needed.The drums especially seemed to benefit from the treatment

What next? I will listen through the mix for a couple of times, and if I'm happy I will split the album into songs. Everything is now in one large project, and basically I'm starting to run out of processing power. I need to do song-by-song adjustments to delay times and add some special effects to songs, so it is better to do it without automation.

I will also need to record some falsetto vocals. Also, I thought I could add some Black Sabbath magic to some of the songs by using Geoff Nicholls' old synthesizers I happen to own :).

Anyway, here is a link to audio file:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/5wol79kgjh9c4yc/levyn%20testimix%208.wav?dl=0

Pre-mix of the whole album

Following Vega's suggestion a long time ago, I decided to put a premix of the whole album public for you to listen to. It is not a mix as such, but more a template or canvas where I work. I will leave for a work trip within two weeks, and I will return to this project probably in June. Some falsetto vocals are still missing, but otherwise everything should be in place.

So, this is not a mix. All songs are on one big editing board and share the same roughly adjusted effects. Therefore, in the last song the quiet vocals are almost inaudible, delays are not synced to anything, there is no reverb anywhere but a dull hall that is applied to everything, and so on.

Yes, I dropped one song completely off. Therefore there is no drum solo anymore in the album :(. On the other half, the album is now much smoother to listen to, and lasts suitably a tad over 40 minutes.

EDIT: To save space, I needed to delete the file from DropBox, but I put a new link in the next post.

Main vocals done!

I have recorded 95% of the normal lead and backing vocals and 0% of the falsetto vocals for the album! I went to a doctor who changed the medication for the reflux disease, and my throat problems started slowly disappear. Voice is not yet perfect, but I have to remember that it has not been perfect in the past, either. I'm pretty happy with the results. Finnish sounds surprisingly good to my ear, and I was able to pull some stunts again with my high head voice.

Next, I'll let my voice recover for a week or so, and start doing the falsetto parts for the album. I think it won't be too hard, as I am very experienced in singing with falsetto and know my limits there well, and I'm not trying to do something that King Diamond himself would not dare to try. I think falsetto won't be in a big role in this album, just some spicing here and there.

I feel very relieved.

I have to leave the mixing of the album for next summer as we are planning to travel in March-May and I do not have proper equipment to mix with. But everything should be ready by then and I can start mixing with fresh ears and ready material.