Wednesday, November 21, 2012

"Tentacle Jail"


Tuesday, day 7.


I didn´t cry. I didn´t even scream. In fact, my first reaction was laughter. Ironic laughter, that is. Followed with a very long sigh.

All of the recorded, edited and polished guitar tracks were gone for good.

It all started with a innocent, "...yeah, I´ll just start backing up the stuff and then we can leave it be and go home for the night". And then, something went horribly wrong and the guys were left with a stupefying expression on their faces. Backups had somehow being replaced by four days earlier backups and as a bonus, the latest versions were gone from the actual hard disk. I heard that Vreth was literally shaking when he realized that every single note we had recorded since friday evening had been blown up into cyberspace forever.

It could had happen to anyone, so I don´t give a rat´s ass who pressed any buttons at the moment they got destroyed. When the computer says "no", you fucking dance to it. No options.
Then the guys made the computer dance, but it was already too late. Nothing could be found for good. So they actually stayed the whole goddamn night AT the studio, trying to figure out what the hell can they do to restore the files. At morning, when Nino (the studio owner) got there, he was explained what had happened. Needless to say, he was quite frustrated for us. Especially as he know what kind of a battle it had been to record those guitars.

[studio_jargon]
Luckily, when I had edited and gone through every guitar part, I had consolidated them as 100% mixing- ready files with all crossfades and edits done. This would also help me to keep in track in what was 100% approved as I could see that if the file´s in one piece, there´s nothing that I should do to it. So, when we realized that if we can recover anything, we don´t do a flying fuck with thousands of "gtr_mesa1_57_fade.wav" files which last for 0.5 seconds each....until we realized that my consolidating was a gift from Gods at that point. If we could recover, we´d have the exact guitar tracks in one piece instead of thousands snippets. And on the top of that- if we could only find the consolidated DI- track, we could re- amp from that in case we´d miss e.g. Skrymer´s cabinet #2. 
(The tracks per guitar were Mesa + 57, Mesa + 421, Orange + 57, Orange + 421, DI). The only recorded songs I hadn´t consolidated yet were Blodsvett and Soutu, because they were played just before everything got destroyed while I wasn´t there and thus I hadn´t had any chance yet to check, edit and consolidate them first.
[/studio_jargon]

So, the guys started recovering the files with some software. After three hours, we found snippets from someone´s Orange amp miked with a SM57.... 1 minute of Halkodisko´s Skrymer- side and some years- old drums from some other band. And then, we found Piraatti´s guitars! Or, at least....the DI´s. So, we re- amped them and.....yeah, that´s about it. 40 hours of time wasted. Ten songs recorded, of which NINE were destroyed.

"Fuck", said Skrymer, and grabbed his guitar. "FUUUUUUUUUUU," said Routa, and grabbed his cigarette pack. And "FUCK MY LIFE", said yours truly and bummed a cigarette from Routa.
I quickly made some estimations, we thought a perfect plan how to proceed and decided that there´s no time for cursing, being cranky nor going all drama here. When the going gets tough, the tough get going. So here´s another plan for now.

We know 100% sure we can´t rescue Blodsvett or Soutu because I hadn´t consolidated, a.k.a "glued" those guitars together before the Great Destruction. (read the studio jargon- part if you want more on the subject) So, tonight´s plan was Blodsvett again, Soutu again and then Kylskåp and Nexro (of which both hadn´t been touched yet). And after that, the guys leave and leave a "deep scanning recovery" doing it´s job for the whole night. That will take MANY hours but might be more effective than the normal recovery they ran yesterday.
So, if the deep scan finds anything usable, great. If not, Skrymer starts to play his parts again from the beginning. It should be faster now, as he has already played them once and knows exactly what to do. And when Routa comes at the afternoon, he continues.
It´s going to be a 4- day job in two days if we want to keep the schedule even somehow, but it should be manageable. We´ll see what happens, but I can assure you this won´t be exactly a picnic.

There will be no shit captured, were it a hurry or not, so this may turn up quite a task. "This is good enough", is not good enough. And we have basically only today and tomorrow. But we can do this, because we are Finntroll. Wimps and posers, leave the studio, we´re here to CRUSH and no fucking hard drive failure will stop us doing so, even if it took us 30 hours per day.

Let´s see how this will turn out.

EDIT:
I just talked with Virta and Skrymer on the phone. Seemingly, the deep scan had found shitloads of files, yet NONE we could use. So, we´re back in saturday afternoon. Skrymer starts playing this moment until the point Routa arrives after 4 hours, and then Routa will play his parts to the songs Skrymer has recorded today. I´ll come to do editing for at least two songs at the evening with my son and continue editing tomorrow after office work. The plan is to have everything recorded and edited by saturday morning. Fuuuuuu.

5 comments:

  1. That sucks! Good luck with re-recording.

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  2. "No Tears Please, It's a Waste of Good Suffering".

    Instead, our suffering will be legendary, even...yes, you know the rest. The thing is that we can either sit and cry, watching the clock tick and be more late every second, or we can roll up our sleeves and get back to work.
    A little bit of "Perkele!" is all that is needed.

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  3. Technology sucks ass sometimes. Turn that frustration into pure metal POWAAAAAAH! Can't wait to hear the final result of all of this.

    shutupandtakemymoney.jpg :)

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  4. You'll make it, I'm sure. I keep my fingers crossed. It's great to have this blog, makes waiting for the new album so much more exciting! :>

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