Studio Diary of "Chronicles of the Dead" Sessions

March 1st
It's Saturday, the first day of the recordings of the new Falchion album, entitled "Chronicles of the Dead". The band has been working hard on the new material and now it's time to get our hands dirty, at last! We started the day with hauling our equipment to the studio from our comfy training premises. Everybody was excited to begin the studio sessions, including the friendly and professional staff at Adamantium.

Getting the drum mics in place.

Juho was still working with the songs and came up with ideas for the guitar parts. By average, the guitar goes either fast or faster!

Some quick playing going on.

Lots of buttons, controlled by the engineer Jukka Ruostila

The actual drum recording began and Matti was able to finish three songs already.

March 2nd
Cheers for Teräsbetoni for making it to the Eurovision song contest! May heavy music succeed again.

Guess the song!

Yesterday Matson did the drum tracks for tree songs, and today we continued the work with the drums. Today, after replacing a broken optical cable, we managed to get both Juho's and my guitars plugged in to the board's inputs so that Matson was able to get both demo guitars to guide his playing. The drum sound was great!. First, we did the rest of the songs that require no separate click track. Then, after lunch break, Jukka started programming the click tracks for the rest of the songs and the work continued. In the end of the day, only two songs remained that had drums yet to be recorded for.

A pointy axe.

We are now a bit ahead of schedule here, which is nice. If everything goes smoothly on Monday, it looks like we're going to have the drum performances done. Then, Jukka will be doing some editing work on Tuesday, and we'll begin tracking the rhythm guitars on Wednesday.

Jukka taking notes.

Hehehe!

March 3rd
It was Day 3 for the "Chronicles of the Dead" sessions. Matson played the rest of the drums today. We continued working on with a couple of the trickier parts. There were no problems however, and in the end of the day, all of the drum parts were in the can. Great! As planned, editing will take place tomorrow and it's a day off for the band.

You better do as Kekkonen says.

Today we started planning the album artwork a bit as well. As recommended by our record company, we contacted an experienced German artist whose past work looks excellent. We're sure that the Falchion album will not only sound great, but will look very good as well. We were joined by a studio trainee today, Jussi. He will be helping Jukka out with the recording work.

The twin-guitar attack of Falchion!

March 4th
Day off for the band members, as Jukka and Jussi were editing and setting up stuff.

March 5th
Editing continues. Tomorrow is the first day for guitars, Juho will start his rhythm guitar recordings around noon.

March 6th
Today we started recording rhythm guitars. Juho started with his rhythm sound earlier in the day, and began with the first song.

Sharp playing going on. Jussi is behind the desk.

It didn't take that long to set up a killer guitar sound, for both players. You can trust that the sound will be totally crushing on this one! We're using our own equipment, with the expection that we both use the same speaker cabinet.

The 5150.

Krank on the floor.

The first song (not necessarily the first song on the album) proved to be quite a tricky one, that required some extra precise playing and double and even triple tracking some parts. We spent almost the whole day with that one. We were happy with the results, although we absolutely need to pick up the pace for the rest of the songs.

Miikka playing some rhythm guitar.

We'll be having a break now until Monday, as Korpiklaani will be heading south all the way to Spain for a gig. Next week will be a very busy one!

March 10th
Rhythm guitar recording continues with a 12 hour day. We got 6 and a half song's worth of tracks recorded, a very good result!

From left to right: Juho, Jussi and Jukka. Notice the cola bottle. It's recommended for all who wish to play fast.

The new theme for the recordings is: kuikka! We must have lots of kuikkas whenever possible (as long as they do not end up on the record, that is).

Juho was hoping to record some kuikkas, but the rest of us didn't allow that.

In the end of the day the studio guys experienced some problems with overheating computers, so we had to take a little break to allow the things to cool down. It probably was unavoidable after recording guitars for a song that's so hot. We're not telling which song it was, hehe. The break was no problem for us, there's always some time for extremely low quality jokes and similar stuff that causes neverending laughter...

March 11th

Jukka is pondering his next move.

We did the last of the rhythm guitar tracks today. By the way, there's one short bit on the album that has some lower chording from a 7-string guitar, maybe you can detect where it is, or can you?

There was a bit of kuikka every now and then as well, but it's getting better (read: less kuikkas).

Feedback. That's the thing you hear when a guitar starts making that high-frequency squelling kind of noise that's very unpleasant to hear. And that's exactly what we need for some songs' endings. It was Miikka who got to go the the guitar amp closet with a guitar to get that feedback noise. You see, one must have the guitar in a near proximity of the amp to get that noise. Obviously he had left the earplugs at home. Oh well, one lost hearing ability, feedback tracks for three songs. Fair trade.

Matson paid a visit this afternoon to hear the songs.

Janne begun his bass takes today with Jussi as his recording engineer. Mighty good work for both guys, the result was finished bass tracks for four full songs.

Guess who's actually not drunk...

While Janne was doing his bass thing, Miikka recorded some melody lead lines for a song in the other room. It was very convenient to be able to record both guitars and bass at the same time. We kind of doubled our productivity!

Getting some low-end rumble recorded.

March 12th
Today's job was to record more bass and melody guitar tracks. Miikka finished his parts already, and Juho started his. Janne continued with the bass and was able to finish them all. Things are progressing at a very good pace, although we are a bit late.

This thing keeps track of the progress. Very high-tech.

You're the weakest link: "Play better!"

The producer was busy with the phone a big part of the day.

Here's a task for you: find out which song on the album has these elements in it: Jesus riding a donkey (aasilla ratsastaja), a postman (posteljooni) and a motorcycle (moottoripyörä).

March 13th
More melody guitar recording, and some bass touch-ups. This album will be quite a bit guitar-oriented. We've at least double-tracked everything, and more.

March 14th
Juho finished his melody guitars today, and started with the solos. There'll be double-tracking and harmonies and other very nice stuff!

Fast playing.

An odd thing happened during doubling a guitar line. After recording the part and listening to it, the guitar sound started to fade in and out. After a moment of wondering, Jukka noticed that Juho had played the second guitar part so precisely with the first one that they canceled each other! Never happened before.

March 16th
Juho recorded solos the whole day.

March 17th
The rest of the guitars were recorded today. They were mostly solos and acoustics. Juho started with the vocals finally as well. Lots of takes to get the best possible aggression and quality! As Jukka is a singer himself, he knows the tricks how to work with the vocals well.

Acoustics were recorded like this...

...with an extra mic for the reverb.

A title for a new song came up today. It's called "I Hate This Song And I Hate This Guitar Blues". Now we're dragging behind the schedule a bit, and most of the vocals will be recorded after the trip to Russia.

March 24th
Day for the vocals.

Only one song remains, and all vocals are done.

There'll be an extra element on this album that was not expected, not even by us! In two songs, there are actual orchestra parts that were written and performed by Tapani Siirtola at Adamantium. Don't worry, Falchion isn't going for the symphonic metal direction, hehe. The orchestra supports classical guitar parts. That's right, we have classical guitar on the album instead of the regular acoustic guitar sound.

March 25th
Everything is recorded, finally! Now it's editing and mixing time until next Monday when mastering will be done. Let's hope Jukka has enough time to make the material really shine. Fortunately Jussi will be around to help with the editing work.

Juho having a good time.

March 30th
The band except Matti were at the studio to listen to the final mixes. Crushing! We ended up making some minor adjustements to a couple of songs, but we were very happy what we heard. At midnight, the CD containing the final mix ready for mastering was burnt.

March 31st
Mastering day. Miikka and Juho went on to the trip to Helsinki to Finnvox Studios. It's the most famous studio in Finland, and the well-known mastering engineer Mika Jussila works here. The session went surprisingly quickly, and after about four hours we got the master CD in our hands. It has to be said that it felt very good then, to have the actual finished album finally ready.

On the other hand, the whole album recording process didn't take that long really. We entered into the studio in the beginning of March, and during the same month we got the album mastered. Not bad, eh.

A rough-looking building.

We took the master CD to Adamantium so that the studio guys got to listen to the finished product. They seemed to be quite happy with the end result. So this was it, recording "Chronicles of the Dead" is now over.