VANHAINKOTI - Recording Diary 001

This week I started recording new Vanhainkoti album/albums and I felt that it's my duty as a home musician and a frequent blogger to start a "Recording Diary". I think it is a good way to record the process to text files and share it with people and most importantly to make notes for myself so I can see what the fucking hell I was doing during those early morning hours with a lot coffee in my system and a weird mind. I don't know if people can get anything out of this or not, but at least it will hopefully show that it takes a lot of work to make a Vanhainkoti album and sometimes it doesn't. It's my other work, the one I do for free cause I love it.

There are 4 songs I recorded this week and they are mostly done, a little bit polishing here and there and they are done. I think I'll to about 40-50 songs and from them I choose the best ones for the new album and the second best ones for the new "Oidar" compilation and maybe with the rest I'll do a little bit of remixing. Why not?

The first song I did this week:
"Massive"
This song is almost fully done with Ableton Live 8's "Operator" synth, which I think has pretty awesome sounds. Messing around with the "Time" parameters I can easily do those "Minimal Clicking" sounds that I'm a very fond of. I made a huge low frequency "Bell Sound" for the basis of the song and I constructed everything around this one sound as I usually do. I used Operator's sound's to make snares and toms and hi-hats and two different sounds for making texture pad and noise texture. "Synth-Metallic IDM Pad" was the pad sound and "Ambient-Glasso Phone" was the noise texture that I did. I recorded both of these live on one-take messing with the frequencies and shit. These textures made the song more alive. Which is always nice...
For the bass-line I used rojalty-free "upright bass" samples which I slammed in to the Ableton's "Impulse" drum/sampler machine hell. I created 3 different patterns and managed to get an early Massive Attack vibe from them. On top of them I slammed Ableton's "Broken Antenna" effect which I used to get the low-frequencies. I recorded the patterns over the operator background switching between 3 different patterns I kept it simple and breathing. Worked out real nice! Little bit of cross-fading here and there and the song is done! It came out easily and it came out good. Just the way I like it! Definite ruler. In my opinion.

"Native Vibes"
This song I started with a "Snare" sample that I looped and slammed with "Chorus and Dirty Ring Mod" effect to make it sound broken and machine like. Also used "OTT" which is the same effect as "Broken Antenna" messing with frequencies to get lows and highs and mids just right for my taste. Then I pressed play and kept it in loop. I started jamming my Aria Pro II cs-250 guitar. A guitar that I loaned from my old buddy Juhis. It has this really dark and soft sound that I like. I recorded two tracks of guitar with "Acoustic Guitar Hall 1" effect on top of them for the reverb and softness. Played around with rhythm and melody. Then I recorded bass that followed the melody guitar part. I used Ableton's "Crystal Bass" effect to make it sound more alive. That being done I slashed two parts off to make brakes into the song, over those brakes I recorded a 3-note melody with Ableton's "Keys-Long Road(Tube)" sound from which I got out this "Mallet" like sound. Worked out perfectly. Song is done and it's pretty nice little tune.

"Whistle"
For this song, I made a beat with Ableton's "Kit-C78 Bender Dos" a 1 bar loop. I slammed a "Mda RingMod" VST-Effect on top of that and got out this really weird drum sound. Then for the bass line I used "Operator" once again. "Bass-FM Argor" with a "Bubbles" delay. I got this "Drill" sound with a very low-frequency. For the "Noise Texture" I used Operator's "Strings-FM Orchestra" with "MDA Vocoder" and "MDA Delay" VST on top of it. Recorded live when I messed around with the "Transpose" parameter and got out this "Whistling" sound. Very weird. I recorded pad performance on top of that with Togeo Studio's "Dreamscapes III" and got out this "David Lynch goes to sleep" sound. Finally I got out my Aria Pro II and hit it with "MDA RingMod, MDA Overdrive and MDA Delay" VST-Effects. Needles to say the sound was was pretty out there... Recorded a simple melody and messed around bit. Then for the final closure I cross-faded the damn song, every track and made it breathe once again. It's almost done, I'm not satisfied yet!

"Nirvana"
Today I started a new song and I felt actually kinda bored, but I needed to do something so here is what I did... I wanted to make a Nirvana song, so I started making a rocking drum beat with Ableton's Impulse sounds. What I finally got out was this weird "Electro...funk...thing...", I made few patterns and recorded the scenes. Now I got the structure, I got my Yamaha BB 4-String out and started jamming. Ending with a "70's Soul Groove" recorded the whole damn thing added "Bass-Preamp and Tone" to make it bigger. Finally for the guitar part, I jammed a solo and rhythm part on top of it with "Guitar-Rich Acoustic Guitar" effect. And that's it, the song has a lot of work to do, I think I'll record the guitar parts again with separate rhythm and solo parts to make it work. The song has something in it. I shall make it work!

And that's that. Recording Diaries rule.