lördag 27 augusti 2011

Violins

After we recorded all the instruments and vocals, we realized we would not have much studio time to record the violins. So we decided to do that a few days later at Walter's apartment. Unfortunately, although Walter did a great work setting up the microphone and everything else needed to such home recording, the violinist's performance was not up to our standards.

We had to made the hard decision to not use the violins recorded in Stockholm for the Ep.Then we had a big problem in our hands and lot's of questions: how to find another violinist? Will we find another violinist? Should we not use violins at all?

So we started to contact some musicians that play/played in other Doom Metal bands asking for help. And the saving recommendation came from one of my all time favorite Metal violinists, former My Dying Bride member, Martin Powell! Unable to do the work for us, he recommended the talented Elle Torry, who  promptly accepted to do the job.

Elle Torry
From the moment I heard Elle playing I had no doubt she would do a great job. She was very easy to work with, incredibly fast (only 4 days from the very first contact with her to the receiving of the track files), and she understood exactly what she should play even with the scarce amount of information I gave her. A real professional!

Yesterday we took some band pictures to be used in the Ep's artwork. Mixing and mastering process ongoing. We are almost there!

/Paolo

tisdag 2 augusti 2011

Studio Day 4 - Vocals and Solos

Our last day in studio began with Walter recording the vocals. As always he did his job very well, and, apart from a very few small harmless discussions between him and me (due to the fact that I am obsessively picky regarding the vocals on Morito Ergo Sum), everything went smoothly and fast.

Unfortunately we were so focused on the recordings that there is almost none pictures or videos made with Walter. Here is one of the very few ones:

Walter Basile during the recordings of the vocals.
Right after the vocals were done Pablo began to do his work. Differently from Morito Ergo Sum's first demo, that contains no guitar solos, this time all the 4 new songs have solos, and I must say all of them sounds pretty freaking amazing!

Pablo doing his solos.
Being such a good guitarist, Pablo's recordings also went faster than we expected. He even managed to come with some great new ideas on the spot, and added a few impressive improvisations!


We finished the day drinking some beers with Mike Wead while listening to the results of these 4 days of hard but fun work in the A.R.T. Studios. Now all is left to do is to record the violins, but this will be done probably at Walter's home next week.

We are all extremely happy and proud with the results. Personally, the final sound of the songs are exactly as I have imagined in my mind, and I cannot thank Mike enough for his great job!

I leave you with a picture of the band and it's producer right before beginning to pack everything up and going home:

Mike Wead and Morito Ergo Sum
/Paolo

måndag 1 augusti 2011

Studio Day 3 - More guitars, more bass.

This was by far the most productive day! We recorded a whole song, put a few details in previously recorded songs, added all the clean guitars, all melodies, some more bass and fixed some feedbacks.

Pablo Magallanes recording.
Even with the busy day we had I managed to film a little bit of Pablo doing his parts:





Listening to what we did so far last night put a HUGE smile on our faces. It sounds great already, even before the mixing and mastering, and that was exactly the idea: to make all the instruments to sound as good as possible during the recording process, giving a more natural and old school sound to them. Mike Wead really knows how to push those buttons, that's for sure!

Today is our last day in the studio, and we will record the vocals and, hopefully, the guitar solos also! 

/Paolo