Getting there slowly

So finally we had the second session for the album on last Saturday. This time we did vocals and rest of the guitars for the three songs we started last time. The tunes are Terra Fungus, Kutteri and Rats and Hatchets (or Hats and Ratchets, I never remember which way it is with the song). We started a little after twelve and got done at around six, so everything was done fairly fast.

First of we handled the rest of Tero's guitars. Those got done real fast, even before Peb got to the studio. Nothing really to discuss about them, same sounds and guitars were used as last time. There's a part in Kutteri where Tero wanted the attack of the guitar sound eliminated with a volume trick. Last time we were at the studio, T tried a volume pedal, then this time a take with just the guitar volume knob was done, and then we talked about making it work artificially with a computer. After a minute we decided on the guitars volume knob-take. It's got a natural touch to it, and that's something all of us wanted to keep, so although the transition might not be as smooth, it still sounded the best in that aspect.

When Perttu arrived, he jumped right on the hot seat and first of we tackled a piece of Kutteri that has a guitar melody that's matched with a vocal melody. We left it out on purpose last time, as P still wanted to fine tune the thing. This time he first hammered in the guitars and then started with the vocal performance. And absolutely nothing to add to the new melody and vocals. The whole thing now ends on a big note that everyone will surely remember, no way to explain it, but you'll know it when you hear it. P went all out on it, and it works like f*ck.

The vocals went in smoothly altogether. Little bit of tuning on pronunciation, as Perttu has a habit of mumbling stuff a bit on purpose to make the melodias more fluid. I just intervined with some stuff that wasn't making any sense anymore, but it was just something like a couple of lines here and there. About singing in tune, well, the man knows best himself. A few takes were just trashed straight away when P wasn't satisfied with'em. And I mean he still sings a helluva lot better than most while having a bad take. I though he might need some time to get his voice open, but Sami put it the best: "I don't hear the difference with the first take and the last, he sounds damn great all the time.".

The most inspirated thing all day came between some singing takes, as Sami was smoking a cigarette and Tero started jamming on an acoustic. Peb grapped a lapsteel and as Tero played an acoustic part of Kutteri, Perttu just started to improvise over it. Sami came back, we plugged the lapsteel in and Perttu nailed the little theme part with a couple of takes. "There we go, first time ever I played that instrument" was his comment afterwards. Straight on to the album - not bad.

After Peb was done with his vocals, Tero did his two vocal parts in a flash. It took a couple of takes to get his voice and mouth properly open and everything was smooth sailing from there on. The final guitar for the vocal/guitar-melody part of Kutteri was added by T, now that he finally knew what Perttu was playing. Last but not least Perttu rammed in some baritone guitar to get the songs really going. As Kutteri is probably ending up as the starting track, we really spiced the beginning, so that when the track starts you'll damn sure know that here we go.

We talked about some acoustic stuff that needed to be played, but no acoustics were in the right tuning. I actually kind of missed what happened next, but I got the image that the guys just kind of decided that Sami could play them in. It's just a few chords to be strummed in the background every here and there to add character, but still, it seems to me there might be something remotely resembling trust forming here...

On the ride home, me and P went over some cover ideas. It got a little out of hand naturally, but submarines, cities taken away by the floods and the magnetic senses of the hammerhead sharks were gone through. To quote a song everyone should know: "Learn to swim."