Friday, November 23, 2012

"Future Basement & U-Suck"


Previously happened on "Stargate SG-1"

As you know, we are lagging in the schedule quite badly as the guitars got destroyed. So, another hit would be a death- sentence for these sessions. So the poor guitarists (and the respective bandmembers who have engineered the recordings) have done "quite" long days in order for us to make this possible. So, everyone was doing their best on wednesday. The guys actually sat there until 2:30 AM while Beast was recording at the point until they couldn´t do it anymore and went home. So, everything went smoothly and all the guys were definitely pushing their limits and doing their best.
And now, the conclusion.

*enter opening credits*





Thursday, Day 9.

Did you know that smoking can actually save lives? Or at least teeth. You see, when I rushed out of the controller room in a red- hazed rampage, so furious that I have no words to describe it here, Routa was very lucky to be at the downstairs at the moment.

But let´s rewind a bit.
If this is "too long, didn´t read" for you, here´s a spoiler. It wasn´t Routa´s fault after all.


While I was at the office, Routa was playing guitar at the studio. I got there about three- ish while he had already played from four hours and three songs. I edited some stuff and went straight to Kylskåp, on which song we agreed that I will play the both guitars after all. I had played Skrymer´s part on monday, and now it was time for the other guitar then.
So, I started to play. A bit "clean" guitar sound didn´t bother me at all, as I was used to hear the DI box (=clean sound channel) quite loud. I just thought that Routa most likely wanted to hear more of that while playing and I don´t mind playing with the same setup and sound.
While I had performed the other, newer guitar track to Kylskåp, edited and "glued" it together, I noticed that the guitars are not in tune together for some reason. So I deleted everything I had done today and started over. When it was finished, they still were out of tune. Then I realized, after trying and checking everything I could (even using Auto- tune on the clean signal to see how it analyzes the pitch) that the previous guitar track I had played was the one to blame after all. And of course lowering the pitch afterwards caused the sound to go totally fucked up due to technical shit I won´t bore you with (for the studio geeks, one word. Phase.).

"Well, I guess I know who´s to blame...", I snorted ironically and started to play the first guitar again. But using Tundra´s just arrived (15 minutes ago) tuner instead of Skrymer´s, because I knew that Tundra´s one is super. After I had performed the fourth fully recorded take for this one fucking song, the tune was super indeed. There are differences in tuners, trust me on this one. You don´t want to go with the cheapest when recording stuff.

Fast forward. Long story short, I also played Nexro´s other guitar. After I had edited, glued and blabla, I was very satisfied with it. At this point, it was already five o´clock and I was supposed to leave in 40 minutes. So, we started to do the bass sound. The cables and cabinets were rigged earlier in the afternoon, so we only had to put the microphone on, switch some cables and boxes and basically would be ready to start molding Tundra´s sound into something unintelligible. While I was still doing channels for bass in Pro Tools, Virta was rigging the setup.

Then I heard his voice.

"Ummm.....these guitar pedals are not on....what the hell?"
- what pedals, huh...., I mumbled while still occupied with the channel- creation.
"Noise suppressor [hum and noise eliminator, engl.note] and distortion...hmmmm"
-Whaaaaat?????, said yours truly, turning instantly around in the chair, suddenly not interested in the bass sound at all anymore.
"Are you telling me....no, you will NOT, PLEASE DON´T tell me...."
- Yeah...uhm, just how long have these been switched off?
- Well, I didn´t touch them at least before I started to play. I was continuing Routa´s takes and using exactly his sound.
 And now, let me re-phrase again something. Remember this?
"So, I started to play. A bit "clean" guitar sound didn´t bother me at all.....""A bit "clean" guitar sound...."
"clean guitar"

I grabbed Routa´s guitar instantly in a panic, accompanied with a loud "EI.....VITTU" (english translation would be rather desperate "oh fuck no") and pressed record, starting to play.
"Ok, switch the Noise Suppressor on", I said to Virta. He stomped it on, and it didn´t affect anything sound- wise. "Pheeeeew", I said and continued playing....."Ok, now the distortion pedal".
Time seemed to be running in half speed as I was playing the guitar, not seeing what Virta is doing behind my back.
"Please tell me you switched the distortion on already"
- Not yet....wait....ok nnnnnnOW IT´S ON!

At that very second it became extremely clear to me that everything we had recorded today, EVERY SINGLE NOTE AND EIGHT HOURS OF WORK (including me playing Kylskåp three times which seemed like a slap in the face at that point), was unusable because the day´s first player (whose responsibility it would had been)  hadn´t turned the pedals on when the sessions started in the morning.
My heart made two extra pumps. Then it missed four. I grew two years older in a fraction of seconds and lost probably ten years of my predicted life span.
I started screaming. Or rather, roaring. First Routa´s guitar flew into the couch from my lap. Then, flew the chair. And then there was a cry of war. A huge, distorted cry of war, accompanied with me storming out of the control room, looking for Routa to punch his teeth in, to violate him most brutally and bang his head to the metal door. Luckily for everyone, he was at the street, four floors down, having a smoke, completele unaware what is happening upstairs.

Roaring and outbursting my rage, I leave you also unaware on the not- very- nice- things I yelled and the amount of stuff that flew throughout the studio. Not the mention the studio´s metal door at all. Lucky thing it´s made from metal. Thick, solid metal.
After about half a minute of that sort of rampage that would make Donald Duck´s rage seizures look like a sloth on Ritalin, Skrymer said something.

"Dude, DUDE! Wait! The DI box- sound! Fuck, we can RE- AMP IT!!!!"

And there was silence. Accompanied with "OH...MY....fucking.....god....... eivittujätkäonneroeijumalauta.......aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa". This would mean that we could actually just drive the clean DI- signal through the amps, this time with the distortion and use everything we had recorded after all. So, only 30 minutes waste of time instead of 8 hours. Also, please note that after the earlier guitar- mishaps, this really was the last straw that snapped the camel´s back for the sessions. We would had been seriously fucked for good if we had wasted one more day and would had probably cancel the mix and postpone it for months.

I jumped two meters up and hugged Skrymer for at least five seconds. And that´s a lot for a brohug.
Nevertheless, I was very fucking pissed still at Routa at that point, so when he came back up, I said to him what was happened and told him to fuck the horse he rode in with. He said that he was EXTREMELY SURE AND ANAL that everything had been switched on when he started. In fact, he even checked battery levels and everything. So, "fuck you too".

I apologized him quite a lot and we started to think what the hell had happened. The only possible explanation was that someone, while rigging the bass in the afternoon, had switched the pedals off- either by accident or on purpose, in case while forgetting to put them back on when he was finished.
We know by now who was behind it, but it´s not really necessary information to badmouth people here. Especially, as technically, it is us who´d have to notice these things even though there wasn´t any suspections that something had changed.
What happened, happened and the most important thing is that it can be fixed.
And no, it wasn´t Routa. And not Virta either, because that´s what you´d think next. Let´s just say that it´s a big studio with a lot of people coming in and out, and people are sometimes in a hurry and things may get fucked up if you do them too quickly.

After I had restored my balls from somewhere between my navel and throat where they first jumped when I realized what had happened, we calmed down (or to be honest, I was rather the one who needed to calm down) and started to mold Tundra´s bass sound. Seemingly the Gods of Karma were pitying us, as we nailed it in 10 minutes. Tundra started to play his parts very excitedly, and I had to leave to pick up my son from my parents.

2:21 AM I received an SMS from Tundra.

"Let´s start about 1PM- ish. Just got home from the studio.
Zzz..."

I just have to lift my hat to these guys´ work ethics. Let´s see how today´s turning out!








4 comments:

  1. Ei hyvä helvetti, tää sai verenpaineen kohoamaan täälläkin. Taidan pitää aika tiukasti sormet ristissä tän päivän, ettei mitään vastaavaa enää pääse sattumaan. Lycka till!

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  2. I think that "eivittujätkäonneroeijumalauta" may have become my favorite word/phrase.

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  3. Ohfuckdudeyoureageniusohbloodyhell. Feel free to spread the gospel!

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  4. Where it mentions you will play guitar, does this mean for the finished version for the album? Or is this part of the recording process, in working out what goes where with regarding each part of the song? :-)

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