Effect

I simply have to comment the test mixes publicly a bit. Simply to underline what Timo stated in previous post, about some things "sounding absolutely bombastic". That really is no exaggeration, not a bit. The test mix sounded massive and crushing. Total scifi doom metal!

The vision of scifi doom is taking shape, more than a bit. You can bet on that.

It might well be, if things go well enough, that this debut album will be ready for releasing during this March 2011. If not, it certainly happens in April. After few days I'll go for a trip, away for 1+ week. After that it will be listening the mixes worked by Timo, lots of commenting and into the final stages.

Test mixes already

I won't go into details, but because of my working method, I already had to make some test mixes just to see if some of the ambient scenes inside some songs work or not. Antti needs to hear those too, and after that we are surely somewhat wiser, as to where to proceed from here.

These mixes already proved to be useful as I spotted a problem with very few snare hits, as they open the bass drum gate here and there and I need to readjust the gate accordingly. I guess that's the thing with slow music and long spaces between "notes".

Even more synth was added in the process and some of the things sound absolutely bombastic, even if I say so myself! After Antti's approval or rejection I continue to work on the mixes and balance between ambience and slow metal madness.


T
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Cover artwork, vol3

Continued working with the front cover artwork few hours tonight, again. And progressed a lot, again, too. It feels now that the front cover is almost there. It could actually be the final version now, but I will have to sleep over it and look into it tomorrow evening, do some final tests to see if I could get it even more effective or not. If not, it's ... ready.

EDIT: Yeah, I know I said it in previous cover artwork post too, that "it's almost ready" but ... really, the artwork went forward big time. And actually the colorworld changed rather dramatically too - I'm not 100% sure yet if that color change is for keeps, but it could be. If it is, it's not exactly "cold" colorworld anymore, but the visual effect is still hardly "warm" even if it would be that color'wise. Confusing? Yes. Well, no. ;)

Shaping the shapeless

While Antti is busy with the artwork, I've spent the evening working on numerous synth-related tasks. I have an interlude for one the songs, which seems to be the longest one in this package. The song still needs one ambient section, so I can only guess what the total duration will be in the end.

Various synth passages were added to the songs and things are taking shape slowly but surely. I am still doubtful if some of the vocal phrases will make it to the final product. There are not many of those "on the edge" but maybe I will record something again, remains to be seen. Also, a couple of cymbal rolls need to be re-recorded for the interlude, but those will only take five minutes to setup and record. No big deal.

I also recorded some ambient passages to glue the songs together, but there are not enough of those just yet. The song order is still something I puzzle over. There are 2-3 possibilities that will work, but which one is the best...? Maybe the ambient things help us decide.

T
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Cover artwork, vol2

I've been continuing the work with front cover today for few hours. Progressed actually more than I thought beforehand; looks like the main part of front cover is about completed. It's (surprise, surprise) very much space'themed and dark, cold looking creation. Closer examination reveals some color surprises, which is quite fitting considering the music ...

No more vocals

No more vocals? At least all the songs have their main vocals now, I need to re-check if there is anything that needs improving or additional support from backup vocals, etc. Our last finished piece (song #6) is a megalomaniac attempt at describing the stupidity of humanoid life, and it is entitled "A century of interplanetary war". It sounds grand already and I think I will be adding even more heavy synth sounds to it!

From now on I will be concentrating on the synth side of things and the whole production, of course. After all the ambient elements are finished I can start mixing the songs themselves.

I've said it before, but this IS going to be one monster of an album.


T
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Success

I did the first "real" video edit experiment tonight, and ... based on about 30 seconds long test video where I combined both videoclips and pictures, I'm very happy to say that my pre'editing plan seems to be working out in the best possible way. I couldn't be more happy about the situation!

I could easily start doing the editing since in this song ("another species falls") there are no vocals right away in the song. But ... I won't start it yet. I will have to wait for Timo to get the bass and vocal video clips and only then get on with it.

The only bad thing in this video will be the poor resolution of it - as Timo's current videocam isn't exactly modern one, the resolution will be small (it was actually 350*270 or something, I've converted it into 640*480 to match my clips as I couldn't do smaller clips than that). It's going to be enough for youtube usage though with heavy processing and that's more than enough. And even with the resolution being really small, it's going to be nice little promo video anyway. Done with huge budget of zero, all shot by ourselves, editing done by me during freetime, with eyes bleeding out. True DIY spirit, ha! And I don't even like video editing (I used to say that I will never edit videos anymore), ... quite some combination, one could say. ;)

PS: I also updated the Scumfusion site a bit tonight, made it more like "Scumfusion & other projects" and thus giving space for Mood:Doom there, too.

Prolific

All signs lead me to believe this was to be a lazy day. Nothing of the sort! I improved our song #5 somewhat, did some ambient parts for two songs and even built an interlude to be included in one of the songs, or as stand-alone piece. Waiting for Antti's opinion, after that we make decisions.

This is going to be a monster.


T
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Videoclippin' once again

Got the rest drumclips sorted out tonight as I was hoping yesterday. I also went through rest clips of my own, and came up with few short additional clips which might find their way into the final video, too. Now I'm not going to touch the video thing until I receive the bass + vocal videosessions from Timo. When I get them, it's going to be final "chopping & clipping" part of the video project.

Then waiting for the final version of the song, possibly - though I have a feeling I could as well work (at least give it a try) with the current rough mix since the song structure itself is 100% ready.

Almost there

Almost "there" with the vocals. Two more songs need to have my lovely voice on them and if everything goes as planned, this will be done tonight. The texts are as ready as they can be, although some very small revisions may be needed. Already got a working plan, and it was cool to notice both me and Antti had the same vision of how these songs should be sung : )

When this is done, I will add the ambient scenes which are in the middle of a song. After that the songs will be mixed and thrown over to the mastering session where I will add the ambient parts between songs. At least that's the preliminary plan, subject to change according to situation and at whim : )

T
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Vocals

Can't resist but have to comment about the vocals Timo mentioned in previous post. I've listened his latest vocal recordings as rough mixes two times now, and I really like what I am hearing. Very fitting style this one vocal style (the album will have multiple styles, for different "roles"). It makes me think something like ... take something like Neurosis vocals, take maddest moments of Bongzilla vocals, and throw in some uniqueness of Timo's own voice. It's really effective, and the rough mixes sound great to me.

Hectic

While Antti is busy editing the visual side of things, I did demo vocals for two songs last night. Now it's my turn to be slightly puzzled, if not confused, as to whether the results are good or total rubbish. I think I'll let Antti decide this one for me, as I am still experimenting with new voices and vocal techniques and I have the feeling I'm getting too "blind" to hear my own mistakes and blah blah.

Anyway, if my calculations are correct and Antti doesn't reject those demos for some reason, I still have 2 songs left to scream and growl on. I might be wrong, but I believe shall be corrected in that case.

The last tune of the album got some piano (and other assorted synth-based things) on it, and I somehow like the way it feels. It could've been done in kazillion different ways, but this is the way it came out tonight.

T
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Clippin' within

Yes, the mad videoclip business continued again this evening. Phew!

I got about 40% of the drum clips sorted out. Good feeling about how this little sideproject called music video is progressing. If all goes well, I might get the rest of the drumvideoclips pre'edited tomorrow evening. Then I'll re'check all the short clips that I've created - and wait for Timo to record some bass/vocal videoclips. Then process those, and into the real video editing thing ...

And yes, that song Timo mentioned in previous post, it's certainly going to be quite some entertainment factor of the package. Ha!

Playing with time

Just finished recording vocals to song #7. We are talkin' ultimate experimental mode here, I can assure you! In any case, I've never heard any vocals like this anywhere. Later, you may be the judge whether that's a good or a bad thing... I think Antti was both surprised and confused, which I think is a very positive thing : D

As soon as I'm done with the vocals for all tracks, I will shoot one more video so Antti can go ahead and finish his ordeal at the edit table. Might take some time though. The recording itself is easy, it's just a matter of putting the words in the right order and the rest comes more or less naturally. It's a load of good fun anyway!

More reports here as soon as shit happens.


T
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More "clipping" done

Spent few hours tonight with going through the footage again. Got most of the guitar clips chopped into small sections and now there are over 80 short guitar clips. Phew!

Not much more to say than ... continuing this again tomorrow evening quite likely.

Videoclip madness

As I decided to avoid other kind of DIY-editing problems with the video clips - I decided to chop the clips I shot into tens if not hunders of smaller clips. Probably going to do that for the drumclips too, so that ... I might be able to reach the vision I have, to some extent. In addition to videoclips I have about ten still pictures depicting instruments in darkness, with starmaps mixed in. The idea is to slide from videoclips into occasional still shots. Perhaps not exactly original, nor professional - but it could be quite entertaining if I manage to pull it through in the way I hope.

The video editing takes time though, time flies even if it was or was not fun. It's tiring stuff at this stage, but we'll see how it goes. At least I got the job started with my guitar videoclips (now having about 40 usable short video sections for certain riffs / parts of the song). 2 longer videos were chopped tonight, and 7 remain out of my own video shoots. Then there's the full song, drum video by Timo. And then I should be getting still some bass/vocal video clips from Timo. Phew!

PS: I created myspace page for Mood:Doom earlier today (see links section, upper right in this blog). No music there yet, of course but ... going to be at some point.

Mood for ... video

As I got the operation "lengthen the end" for one of the songs complete, I started to prepare for shooting some video clips for the possible promo music video. I already got the drumcam stuff as shot by Timo, and it's good stuff definitely. The only minor (technical) detail was that since the drum video is 640*480 resolution, I was forced to shoot my clips with that resolution too. Well, the good thing is that luckily my cam had that resolution available. So it's not going to be HD, but actually - who gives a supernova, since this video will be made for youtube use.

The only thing is, that combining the video for the song in question will be quite some task. It's not a short song, you see. It's about 9 minutes long or something like that. Well, ... it could be that the "video edit" is like first half of the song. Or the second. Remains to be seen.

Doom continued Part II

I'm happy to announce that all bass and drum tracks are finished. The only thing I'm still contemplating, whether I should record or not, is some additional drums to an ambient "scene" in one song. It's a minor thing anyway, so no worries there, should be a quick one to record if we cannot live without it.

Last night I had some promising experiments with vocals and Antti seemed to like those as well, so I guess we have found one or two new voices to our vocal catalogue, so to speak. Hopefully these additions will help us avoid boring our listeners too much!

Now I really need to concentrate my efforts to the lyrical side of things, and start massive editing on existing texts. Things are slowly taking shape (although quicker than expected actually) and it looks like we have a very promising album coming up! And I think we found a name for it, too!

Recording continues

Both yesterday evening and today I've still been re'recording one problematic guitar part. It seems like a solution was found finally (simply finetuning very carefully), and now that song will be continued as well.

Recording guitars is still not finished though, since one of the longer pieces now feels like it totally needs longer ending, with vocals / story of the song ... so next up I'll be recording / continuing the song with some extra guitars for a minute or two, depending what fits it best. We'll see.

Doom continued

I received the updated files for the song #4 today and will probably work on them tomorrow.

Today I finished recording the vocals for the first song and these included some successful experimenting. New sounds on both vocal and synth recordings give much life to this song and we both seem to be happy with the results. Oh, and the intro track is almost finished too!


T
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Cover artwork

The cover artwork started to take shape today. I've been thinking about it here and there; how exactly would I integrate some deep space shot with a picture of my own. And with what picture of my own. I was thinking about some forest shots first (with blizzard, snowy views) but then I started to think that plain snow might actually mix better with some space picture.

And that's exactly how it seems to be forming. I mixed a graphic snow picture from march 2010 with a partial view of space picture (which was free to use). I instantly knew that this is the way. The logo fits in very well too, and the way the cold snow mixes with "cold, black space" ... it makes a very fitting front cover for this first release by Mood:Doom. The cover is not ready yet, but at least I now have a certain way to go with it.

The 7th son

Received the 7th song today with new improvements. Work on that will begin tomorrow. Looking very much forward to the completion of the bass and drums tasks for this release, so I can go ahead and start working on vocals and keyboards. I've already finished writing the lyrics for the first song. It's about a species who have been defeated and overthrown by their own technology. Not the cheeriest opening for an album but what can you do? : ) Titles TBA.

So, if all goes according to plan, drums and bass will be finished tomorrow.


T
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Some guitars re'recorded for the doom itself

Tonight I went and re'recorded the 7th song's beginning guitar riffs again. For two reasons; came up with much more fitting opening for the tune and to improve the early sections of the main riffs. Got that thing sorted out good, methinks.

Bit funnily we seem to be fighting with probably the most simple pair of riffs in the whole package, haha ... some minor details, tuning related. But these will be sorted out in coming days, no big deal really. Things are going very good anyway and progress is evident.

Towards impending (scifi) doom, that is.

Video

Last night i shot a video of myself playing one of the songs on drums. Later, Antti will do the same and after adding some spaced-out elements this might be released on YouTube, provided our video material is compatible. At least the song length seems ideal for YouTube!

I have already been browsing my synth sound collection with this release in mind but no definitive choices have been made as of yet. Anyway, I prefer to do the vocals first, right after the drums.


T
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Last guitars recorded

Just got the last doom piece's guitars recorded and am really satisfied with how the song turned out. Already, even that it has only programmed demodrums currently backing up the guitars. Hah. Well, it is a different piece all right, that is safe to say. You could call it as the rocker of the package. That is evident from the song length already; I imagine it won't be much more than 4 minutes or so, even with space / ambient elements added.

Now I rest my case musically speaking and let Timo handle that side. I'm starting to design the cover artwork for the package as I seem to have time for it during the coming days. Logo is of course already available since I designed it during the Spring 2010, but everything else is open ... I've been thinking that it could be a collage of my photos, or it could be hand drawn space themed cover? We shall see what happens. I'll tell more about it when there's something to tell.

Evolved as..... well, six!

As Antti stated in his previous entry, there will be 7 tracks (+possibly one intro track, I might add) on the upcoming, yet untitled Mood:Doom release.

Except for the last track, all the bass tracks are recorded already and even some drums are finished. I have yet to receive the 7th song, but this should happen tomorrow, if not today. We have also plans of making a video for one song, possibly the first track. Remains to be seen.

I will resume recording tomorrow in any case, drums are missing from one song, one must be re-recorded and the 7th song needs both bass and drums. Then I'm off to planning the keyboard sounds and there will be lots of them on this one! From piano to choir and anything in between them. There will be lots of ambient elements as well which should fit in nicely with our "outer space" setting of this megalomaniac endeavour. There will be some key characters in our stories, too, but more of those later.

I imagine I will be spending lots of time on the vocals, as there will probably be quite a variety of them. Some preliminary experiments have proved fruitful and others are yet to be tested. Let's see when we get that far, stay tuned.

T
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7th one

While Timo is busy recording the drums, I started composing the last / 7th song for this doom package. Got the song more than well started, even that I had to tune down the tempo of my programmed drums a bit. Even with that this song will be clearly the fastest song of the package. Got about 40% of the guitars recorded for the song and will quite likely finish recording the guitars tomorrow evening.

30 degrees below zero (celsius) outdoors, how fitting is that for entering the world of scifi doom metal, tales of cold black space ...

The bass is doomed

All the bass tracks for the upcoming product have been completed. Some takes need to be spliced and edited slightly but that's all. Shouldn't take more than 5 minutes.

Next stop: drums!


Timo
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And the project steamrolls ahead ...

Today I composed & recorded the guitars for sixth song. Which is not exactly short and fast piece, since in its' rough form it's around 13 minutes long. Though there is black hole of some 3 minutes in the middle of it - space for space itself, in form of soundscapes & story.

We decided today that I'll create one more song for this package. Another shorter piece to balance the package a bit. So there will be 7 songs overall. Hard to say yet the exact overall length but I think it could be quite close to 1 hour or so. Depends on how the scifi additions will be done etc.

Fifth song just saw the daylight

I'm having quite a peak of creativity here, it seems. Late yesterday evening, ok ... around midnight ... I created drums very fast and got an idea for slightly faster doom metal piece (tempo 90 bpm). I came up with a main riff I really like, and then went to sleep. This sunday morning / midday went with composing & recording the rest of the song. And the end result is something I like a lot. About 5 minutes long heavy roller at this stage.

And I have a feeling that more new material might still be coming as I'm having a good, doomy vibe currently.

Beam me up.

Into the fourth dimension

Meaning that I put the last "great riff from late summer 2010" into real use today, and created the fourth song around it. Feels like a really good song, fitting one. And slow, very slow and heavy. Turns into almost fusion kind of thing towards the end, so there might be some spaceships on the way ... who knows.

And guess what's the length of the rough mix currently ... yeah, it's again around 9 minutes. Which means there are now 3 songs around 9 minutes of length (which might turn longer depending what kind of scifi elements get integrated and where) and 1 song where the doom metal part of it is around 5 minutes. But well, there is already a strong space flow developed for this one - and it could be around 8 minutes in the end. Or then not.

Depending how you look at this, this could be said to be an EP release, but it could as well be full length. It feels more like an EP anyway. Unless I create more songs ... which is possible, too.

Reshaping the doom one

After taking repeated listenings of first song that was recorded, we both felt it has potential to be a longer piece of doom. So I made seemingly simple structural changes, and as a result the song length is about 9 minutes. Could be longer in the end after all the space elements get integrated properly.

I'm going to start working on the song number 4 next, perhaps tonight already.

Progressing again

It feels that lot has happened in such a short time, since last writing (and when was it, yesterday? yeah). Let's see ... well, first of all, I just finished recording the main guitars for third song and I'm really happy with how it's turning out. I had a clear plan for the song, but as I had some peaks of extra creativity, the plans were improvised here and there. Thus the song length grew, again. Now the rough mix is getting closer to 9 minutes ...

I'm not the only one who has been active; I heard some scifi soundscapes made by Timo, base soundscapes for at least one of the songs, and it sounded really good to me. Those ambient elements will be worked further quite likely, make em more interesting and fitting, without revealing all the details right now.

Then the major thing; Timo already had some recording session with drums (and also bassguitars) and I heard mixes of first two songs with drums and bassguitars added. Sounds are what they are still (far from the final I bet) but I must say that I felt really, really satisfied how those tracks sounded. Very heavy, very doomy, very "trippy". And they don't even have the scifi soundcapes yet, not to mention vocals ...

It looks like Timo will have more recording sessions next week - I myself am having such a good creativity peak that I will continue working towards next song(s). I have at least one great riff from autumn 2010 left to be worked with. Not to mention that I think I have some new riff ideas, too.

Towards the third one

Tonight I started working on another massive riff from late summer 2010. First I programmed simple set of drums, and the idea started to shape further already at that point. There's going to be a space section in the middle of the song. Currently it looks like this third song is going to be something like 8 minutes long.

After drumworks I started recording the guitars. The task turned out to be notably more demanding than what I thought, even that this is very slow and heavy piece (dejavu?). Took me something like 2-3 hours to get the guitars recorded for something like half of the song or so. Well, the recording phase will continue tomorrow evening.

We chatted quite some about this doom project on general level, with Timo - it sounds like we found a very strong vision for how the vocals will be, emphasizing the thing that this will be scifi doom metal. Also some more lyrics are forming already.

Third session

Recorded the rest guitars for second song tonight. Surprisingly demanding piece in a way, to be play it slow enough. The song has both distorted and acoustic guitars. Very heavy, very doomy piece. Ethereal, kind of. I can see it turning into some scifi soundscapes towards the end already at this point.

I have riffs & sketches forming for at least 2 more songs. And I've had one extra idea, so it looks like this could be 5 song release? We'll see.

Here's pic of me from tonight, recording them doomguitars.

More forming already

I went through the riffs I had recorded during autumn 2010, and I found out one very desolate sounding riff that felt very inspiring. So I played the riff a bit, then did simple structure with drums (like doom, doomier, doom, doomier ...) and started recording. The song will quite likely turn out to be the closing song for the package. Originally I thought it's an instrumental for some specific reasons, but I came up with idea to combine real life events into space realm. And tight set of lyrics were formed fast, too.

We haven't yet really decided what kind of vocals there would be. It could be very low growling, with perhaps some robot effects added or ... something. Not really a decision making moment yet for that. First the music will be created. This weekend was even a better start than I thought beforehand.

First recording session

I practised some riffs for first song yesterday, and did some minor test recordings. Also some talking with Timo about how the teamwork will be done, as it's first time we do cooperation this way; me doing simple sketch of drums with machine, and Timo recording the real drums for the songs then.

This morning I made up the structure for the first song, built the drums. Listening to some Reverend Bizarre gave me an idea and extra inspiration - and the structure came out fast. Then I started doing first real recording (guitars) for the song, took some ~2 hours overall to get the two guitar tracks recorded. It's not complex material (it's doom metal, remember?) but I got some really good vibes as the sketch turned out pretty good. Rough mix with machinery drums and guitars looks like it's 5+ minutes long song in its' current form (which might see changes still).

Well, it's a real start anyway, not just planning about it anymore. Feels good to get this finally started.

Some time has passed

Lots of  other things happening, both in so-called real life as well as musical things (like one Scumfusion compilation and new album by Focus Minus, as well as EP building up in the Cauterized camp) ... so some time has passed. How fitting is ithat for doom metal project? Very? Well, I don't mind really. This project is different to me personally, in many ways.

Anyway, recently I've been activating myself with the doom project; starting to plan the first release in form of EP. Few songs, not many - especially as supposedly they won't be short ones. Not gigantic lengths either, I think. I have riffs built for at least 2 songs, perhaps 3. Gotta look how far they will lead. And there's also idea for instrumental outro, ... can't say much else about that.