Kalmah - Web Gauge

Studio Diary - 12 Gauge

8.5.2009

In studio again! Two years has passed from FTR and we have been writing the material for this album about one year. We had to postpone the original schedule but no worries it was only good since I personally think the material got better and better. We even had a strange situation because there was 2-3 songs written in guitar but they ended up dead waiting for a better time. And now we have all in all 9 new Kalmah songs to record. How they sound like? Good of course.

And here we are drums are already in and we are heading for guitars and bass. Thousands liters of Kuisma`s blood sweat is drying on the studio floor but so far so good. He did great job as usual.

Pictures will follow very soon and we are shooting video material as well. I`m not sure how or when that will be published but we`ll see about that. Stay swamped!

- A.Kalma

12.5.2009

Drums ready. Once again Kuisma did great job and has improved his skills. Next in fire is Lede. Here is a short comment of the artist himself:

"Bass riffs are in their final form! Heading to studio... In few days many strings will snap and fingers will ache from blisters.
Am I ready...? HELL YEAH!"

Check out new gallery from this location!

- A.Kalma

19.5.2009

Hello folks!

Lede has now finished his parts. He will propably post some comments here pretty soon. From my point of view we had the best bass sound in comparison with all previous albums. And if you didn`t know the bass guitar is not an instrument you play it is an instrument you have to hit - at least in metal music.

Check out video part 2 below.

- A. Kalma

Kuisma posts details

Recording gear:

Pearl Masters Custom MMX 22"x18" Bassdrum
I don't remember this skin :)

Pearl Masters Custom MMX 10"x8" Tom tom
Pearl Masters Custom MMX 12"x9" Tom tom
Pearl Masters Custom MMX 16"x16" Floortom
EVANS EC2 CLEAR EDGE CONTROL skins

14"x5" Pearl Virgil Donati Signature snare drum
REMO 14" AMBASSADOR COATED

10 inch "crappy cheap" splash
14 inch Sabian HHX hi-hat cymbals
16 inch Sabian HHX crash cymbal
This cymbal has a good sound but I think its too quiet.

18 inch Sabian AAX crash cymbal
18 inch Paiste 2002 classic china cymbal
20 inch Paiste classic power ride cymbal

Recordings were pretty difficult for me. The biggest problem was my feet. I had to change some foot parts because I could not play them as good I wanted to. Reason for this is too little practicing. Our rehearsal room is too far away, so I think I'll have to buy some practicing pads to my home. Let's see what does the neighbours say...

Otherwise everything went really well and I'm satisfied with the results.

25.5.2009 Updates from Pekka AND LedE

Pekka posts following update:

All right! I´ve done my guitar parts and I have to say that I didn´t have to use as many swear words that I thought. The process of playing was quite painless and i think I could get a brilliant sound. Of course there were some parts that I had to redo several times but I had some great help. That´s because Antti and I played in turns and he gave me some parental guidance like ”Hey, you may play this part from here” and showed me the right grasps with his fingers. But however, we used one day for playing those basic guitars.

Now I am looking forward to torturing my throat! And that will be painful...

Well, if someone´s interested, here comes my technical data:

Amfisound Pro Custom Atrain hanuri guitar with
Seymour Duncan humbuckers
D´addario EXL116 strings

Lifelines Cables
Dunlop plektren tortex std 0,60 plektras

Rocktron Hush Super C
Various pedals
Peavey 6505+ Guitar Head
Peavey 6505/412 Straight 4x12" Guitar Box

And Lede continues:

For everybodys concern I’m done! As Antti said before that we got good bass sound on this album and we found it almost immediately. Maybe some credit goes to our studio wizard Ahti too.

This time I played almost every part scratching down, so that brought more balls to the sound. Time to time I had to tape my thumb because of blister, but that didn’t slow me down. The other way round it gave me more drive!

I’m looking forward for the outcome, how the bass sound fits in with the whole band and what difference there is compared whit earlier albums. In the whole sessions I changed only two string sets and broke five picks I think.

Here is information about my recording equipment: 5 string bass JAK Soittimet, Ampeg SVT-4pro series amp and Ampeg SVT-810 cabinet (aka “rantasauna” in Finnish), strings DR Lo-Rider 45-130 and picks are Dunlop 88mm.

28.5.2009 So far so good

Now all guitars and drums are recorded. We will continue in June with solos and vocals. Enjoy the studio video part 3.

For me the recording went fluently (as always...:))
Recording gear:
VHT Sig X
Krank Revolution 1
Krank cabinet
Various pedals

Amfisound custom Atrain DR strings

14.6.2009 Time for a holiday

Well, here we are. For now everything is done and we will continue in August. We still have keys, vocals and group vocals left but the target is almost reached. So far everything has gone very well as usual. We have never had problems in the studio and this time makes no exception.

In this month I did solos and Pekka put vocals on 5 songs. For me the solos are best that I have ever managed to create and I`m very satisfied. And Pekka`s throat keeps getting better and better. Vocs are very raw and that is the way we want them to be. At least we are trying to write metal music..:D

And that is all for now. Now we are heading to summer holiday wash our ears and get back to business in August. We will do the rest of instrument parts and then start mixing.

Check out the video part 4 below.

- A. Kalma

22.8.2009 Key point reached

It was time to get back to work this week. Keyboard recordings took place from tuesday to thursday. Rest of main vocals were done in friday. Concerning keys, nearly everything was nailed at this time. Solos, melody doubling and stuff like that will take place next week, as well as group vocals I guess.

On these sessions for the first time I used software sounds also, besides hardware modules. The basic sounds like Choir and Strings sounded really boombastic as custom made combinations. New sounds to previous Kalmah sessions, were for example horns, that added wider soundscape.

Listening to songs before soon-to-start mixing and I can tell that the album sounds already quite huge. The wall of music is almost unbearable, so feeling is very satisfied. Next week there might be also video material coming, so stay tuned in metal!

-M

3.9.2009 End of session

Cheers lords. Now we have managed to record everything and it is time for mixing things up. What can I say? Well the typical everything sounds great and so on. But this time it feels even better. The sound is very good, everyone gave their best, vocals sound more raw than ever and so on.

But anyway this studio diary is about to close. I will shoot some footage from promo pic shooting and maybe I`ll put some crazy video stuff online later so you`ll just have to stay tuned. But no worries I`ll keep you informed in the news section and the forum.

- A. Kalma