Jun 17, 2009, LAST CHAPTER
While I write this I´m waiting for the first batch of records to arrive...yes I finished it :D hehehe. It was a long and painful mixing process since this is a very complex record and of course when you´re mixing your own music you become extra picky, but in the end it´s all for the best!.
Mastering was done at soundmaster studios in Canada by David Cain, the same studio we used for our first release.
On the artwork department we had the wonderful contribution of two great Costa Rican photographers: Rafael Azofeifa, who took all the pictures for the songs, and Pablo Cambronero, who took all the pictures of the band. Having their input and vision about the record was so nice and fresh for me when doing the artwork (yeah I don´t give myself a rest hehehe) beacuse your view can get really narrow once you work on a project like this for so long.
I must say that overall this was a great experience not only for me but for the rest of the guys as well, to be able to make a record in your own studio is priceless, not only because you can be a perfectionist, but because most of the preasure is taken away and you can concentrate on music.
So this is it my friends, the end of the first part of this journey...now please join us on the road and hopefully you can experience the same joy we had on making this album while you listen to it.
Yours in metal, LOL
Juan Pablo
Apr 21, 2009
Hello people!, long time no see!. These have been very very busy weeks for yours truly and our band's guitarists, lots and lots of solos and melodies have been recorded on their personal studios and I've been mixing like crazy for this past weeks. Everything is comming to an end and we're reaching the point of no return of finishing the mix which I'm still tweaking and tweaking, this album has to be perfect or I'll eat my veins out hehehe, not really but I'm putting all my attention into it and it's a lot of attention hehehe.
So Ari and Leo came yesterday to finish their work and I must say that the stuff that they wrote and recorded for this album is just insane!, you'll hear those solos bursting into your head or touching you softly with melody hehehehe.
So we've reach the very end of the recording process, it has been a beautiful and intense time and I would like to thank everybody who helped us, specially to my mentor Giancarlo Tassara, who's still helping me with the mix, we love you everyone!!!, more news on the mix and the rest of the process on the days to come!
Juan Pablo
Feb 17, 2009
So everything´s coming to an end.
Calilo came here to record his last couple of songs last week and he was done that same day in a couple of hours!. Great working with him of course and his arrangements for this record are just excelent. For the last song he recorded he used a fretless semi-acoustic bass which sounds very round and deep, amazing for this particular song that is a very emotional ballad.
Leo came to record his parts for this same song which includes all acoustic and all electric guitars, very very cool stuff with tons of feeling. He also recorded another solo and a melody for another two songs.
I myself recorded one more song and have only one more left for the whole thing and as we have no time to lose I started mixing the record right away and have a couple of
songs down already!
I´m also designing the cover art and package and some internet layouts for the record´s minisite and myspace....tons and tons of work! But damn I just love this shit!
So all that´s left of the recording are guitar solos and my keys for one song, we´re getting there!
Cheers!
JP
Feb 04, 2009
This has been a very intense week with soo many nice things on it! First thing was recording acoustic guitars. Ari and I started with the sixth stringed on a late night session on tuesday and we covered much of the songs that night and what was left was recorded on wednesday night and we wrapped it up at 2am...harsh but late night sessions always pay off hehe. What was left was some 12th stringed action which we recorded on sunday, almost done with the acoustic parts, which are a lot by the way!, only Leo´s missing.
One special thing ocurred on saturday morning and that was the recording of the ending chorus of the record, the same in which we have lots of vocal tracks from our special guests and ourselves, but we wanted bigger!, yeah size does matter...sometimes hehehe....soooo we asked some friends and fans who wanted to record their voices on the record to gather at the "Cine Variedades" in San José downtown for this very special recording session led by Giancarlo Tassara and Longhi with the help of our new drum tech Juan Carlos Pardo, many thanks to Jose Andrés Rodriguez for allowing me to use this beautiful place! we´ll come back there and play you can be sure!, and many many many thanks to everyone who showed up last saturday, you made this record even more special to us!
Calilo was here today recording his parts for the last song and the heavy heavy song hehehe, he did and amazing job of course and has only song and a half left on the record!, almost done on the bass department. But one who actually did finish is Francisco!, our beloved singer wraped it up last night with some amazing and I must say amazing vocal takes, he´s just getting better and better man!.
On my side of things I did some vocals last night and today I recorded two songs, only two left on my side...and of course all the mixing! hehehe, yeah I will be the last to sign the album cover hehehe.
So many thanks to everyone again! cheers!
JP
Jan 30, 2009
Fun week!, hi there!. Week started with me doing something I've always wanted to do which was recording my pianos on a real grand piano!. I've been searching for different options and pianos and in the end the chosen place and instument was the Eugene O'Neill theater in San Pedro which was the place where we first played A Relative Moment of Peace back in 06. Many thanks to the staff there for letting me drag the piano around the stage to find the perfect acoustic spot to record and for letting this metal keyboard player use their piano hehehe. Many many thanks (again) to my great friend Giancarlo Tassara who helped me with the mic placement and setting up the recording gear for this particular situation.
Another great thing was to have Eduardo Oviedo from the Costa Rican celtic music band called Peregrino Gris, same in which Randall Nagera, the violin player for our first record, plays. He's one of the most amazing and warm hearted persons I've ever met and his playing is equally amazing!, he played whistle, low whistle and Irish bagpipe on three songs, man this record is giving me goosebumps every single day!!.
That's all for know, next update is about acoustic guitars and some keyboards hehe.
See ya all!
JP
Jan 18, 2009
Big update!, lots of things have happened. First Ari finished recording all of his rhythm parts! that´s a hell of a lot of work because, of course, in a metal album there´s tons of guitar tracks hehehe especially when you want them to sound heavy. The last thing he did was recording some feedback tracks for a section in the heaviest song of the record called "everything`s not lost" as you can see in one of the pics here. He also sang in that big vocal section that you are all imagining right now hehehe.
Calilo recorded the whole of the long song and almost finished his parts for the 5th song on the album called "backhome" this time we´re mixing more and more the sound of his 6 string and his custom 4 string, wonderful sound we´re getting.
I did all my recordings for the long song also, on my part I have 4 songs done, yeah I´m a little behind of the other guys but hell! I´m recording and mixing the thing! hahaha I deserve the patience of the audience!.
Adriana came down and finished her parts on our record, she did an amazing job of course ;) as always!.
Another nice thing for me was having my little sister Mari, who´s not so little anymore hehe, sing with the rest of the guest singers, she has an amazing voice and hopefully will become a pro singer herself!
Busy week ahead! stay tuned!
JP
Jan 06, 2009
Carlos came here to record his bass parts for the long song. This time he brought along with his Ibanez 6 string a custom made 4 string which sounds just amazing! very rocking bass! ideal for the second section of this song which is very alternative-alice in chains like song, sounds beautifully powerful! hehe, you´ll have your heads banging on this one for sure!.
Another nice thing is that my good friend Julio Nájera the singer from a great fellow costarican band called Akasha came here to sing as a guest in one song of the record, this is the last song on the album, the same for which Oscar and Adirana sang, you´re getting the picture ;) hehe.
So here it is for today! take care!
Juan Pablo
Jan 03, 2009
I know I don´t rest...some people say I should but anyway I love making records hehe. So Longhi came down on tuesday to record the long song but he ended up recording two songs!! that long one and the one in which Leo recorded his parts, amazing job also, he´s just incredible. We had also a visit from our light-designer Tato who came down to check our progress, he´s a very good friend of mine for years he even played drums in a band I played with back in 97, he´ll be lighting our shows for this next album of course. On wednesday Longhi recorded some of the vocal parts of the last song on the record because I had scheduled one of our guest singers to come down to the studio, the guy´s name is Oscar Blanco who´s the older brother of Esteban who recorded some harmony vocals for us on Walking Towards the Sun. So Oscar came yesterday to my place to record his parts: background vocals for this last song, second harmony vocals for Gone Into the Mountains and some very important spoken lines ;). Oscar just nailed those lines, we were off in about an hour, great voice which sounds great with Longhi´s vocal lines.
Take care
Juan Pablo
Dec 30, 2008
Yeah I know....a long time without an update, but hey! it´s holidays!! hehehe it´s been hard to get everybody into the studio for some time, this time of the year is just crazy!, lovely, but crazy :D.
Anyway let´s get into business. Ari has recorded almost two other songs: the long one, which is not that long, around the 11 minute mark, and the rhythm parts for the one after that. The long song it´s actually the song that we wrote the record around, it´s called "the tale of the sun and moon (dandelion)", beautiful song which goes through a lot of different kinds of music so it was very challenging recordingwise because you have to keep the dinamics but change guitar sounds a lot...don´t want to think yet how´s going to be mixing this one....tough work ahead for yours truly. The other song is one of the two heaviest songs of the album, called "backhome" has kind of an Opethish sound at times hehe but of course still sounds like us.
Yesterday Leo came to my studio to record his parts for a song called "Gone into the Mountains" that is perfect for him. He brought his arsenal of new pedals which he´s very proud of heheheh, actually there´s kind of a sick relationship between them LOL. He did an amazing job!!!, his sound is out of this world and fits perfecly on the song.....probably ithanks t was all due to his "careful with that axe eugene" shirt hehehehe.
Well that´s it for this year I guess, on behalf of the band I want to wish you all a very very nice new year, full of love, joy and peace of mind!
Juan Pablo
Dec 09, 2008
Calilo came on monday to record his parts for the third song, very very good session. This is a different song from the other two he´ve recorded so far and it is gona be a surprise for you all hehehe ;), lots of nice grooves and electronic drums.
Today Longhi came to record his parts on this one too and the hardest part was that he had to record me singing my parts too, again, hehe. We weren´t that satisfied with the vocals on the guide tracks we´ve done for the demo so the first task for today was revisiting those tracks and making something that we were completely satisfied with and after a some time we did hehehe, very nice warm vocals along with very nice harmonies for the chorus
Dec 04, 2008
Another simple bass recording session hehe....or not!. Calilo came here to record the rest of his tracks for the second song after having a hurried morning at his place, he had lots of problems with his car and came rushing into my place very late in the morning with just enough time to record the rest of the song. But he was faced with the most difficult sections on it LOL, so he had to really focus to nail those 16th and 32nd notes in weird patterns. Life is not easy for a bass player!
Cheers!
Juan Pablo
Nov 27, 2008
Hi everybody!, recording keeps happening here at my studio. We continued with the second song, Calilo came here on monday to record his parts on this one, this is one of the songs that we wrote with a specific groove from the beggining so our dear bass player had to make that bass lines his own to add his own flavor so to speak hehe.
Longhi came on tuesday to sing his parts and man! this time he was amazing from the very first note! he nailed the whole song in two hours, lead and harmony vocals! and they are incredible, he reached such high notes with and attitude I´ve never heard from him, our boy is now officially a metal singer LOL!!!
Yesterday I recorded my keyboard parts for this song that it´s called "Second Time". My aproach on this one was to combine both traditional sounds with much modern sounds, so you will find Piano, Mellotron and Hammond organ along with industrial leads and apreggiators ;).
That´s all for now!, see you soon!
Juan Pablo
Nov 18, 2008
A lot has happened since last I had time to write you. First we´ve been very busy rehearsing for a very nice gig we have next friday a long with another Costa Rican band called Parque en el Espacio, they´re kind of a trip-rock band, very very nice, so that´s the main reason I haven`t being able to write here in the diary.
Well, enough excuses and let us cut to the chase :). Last week Calilo was here recording bass tracks for the first track on the album and he´s done with them with very very nice results, this low end is turning out really nice! along with the fantastic sound we´re getting out of the kick drum. I must say Calilo impresed me with his ability to hit those 32nd notes that Ari throw at him hehe, he just went for them without mercy!.
Ari also recorded his parts for the second song on the album, we´re just missing a few melodic lines but the bulk of the song is pretty much done and both of us are very pleased, we played the tracks to the rest of the guys at rehearsal and they completely loved them, so we´re on the right direction with this one.
And finally I nailed all my keyboard tracks for the first song, just missing some piano sounds that I plan to record on a real acoustic baby grand, so of course I´ll have to wait for the rest of the songs to be done so I can go and record all the piano tracks at once in another studio. On my side of things you´ll find of course a LOT of mellotrons hehehe, I just love the sound of it!!! (that´s for Mr. Darren Mora who hates the mellotron with all his heart! hahaha) and of course lots of analog stuff. For the keyboard geeks out there this time I´m recording with just softsynths, except for the piano and hammond, that means all digitally built on the computer, since that´s what I´m using to play live nowadays there´s no point in bringing hardware stuff into the mix, plus those plugins sound just amazing! there´s just a few workstations and synths that can give me the flexibility that I´m getting with the computer.....enough geekiness for today hehe.
So to sum it up, we have one complete song and the guitars of the second one, plus of course all the drum tracks.
See you soon!, I promise!
Juan Pablo
Nov 12, 2008
Today it was singer`s day. Francisco started his part on this project with, of course, the first track on the album. Our goal is to have one complete song every week, so by now we are just missing keys and bass guitar.
Recording Fran was, as always, a very nice experience, He´s fond of being a perfectionist with his performance so it really blows my mind away the way he tries different things for every section of a song, just amazing.
Last night we tried the song for hours without any satisfying result until we recorded harmony vocals hehe, at that point some switch kind of jumped in Francisco´s head and he was like: lets do the whole thing again!, and I´m like: are you damn sure???, I of course as the trusting person that I am hehehe, agreed and to my surprise he re-recorded the whole lead vocals in half an hour with an stellar performance and lots and lots of feeling!!! his voice is out of this world!. It also gave me time to do my own vocal takes for the song which I think turned out very nice, it was my first time doubling a vocal take so it was also fun and challenging.
So that´s all for now people, see ya later this week!
Juan Pablo
Nov 09, 2008
This was an interesting day since it was yesterday that I was sitting on my studio working on producing vocals for a great Costa Rican band called "The Last Void" with their singer Adriana. Turns out that she`s one of my best friends and as some of you know she sings with me in another project called "Memory of the Willows" that we plan to release some day hehe. Anyway she has a beautiful voice and has the very nice plus that she´s a grunter! yeah, hell yeah! so I of course asked her if she wanted to do some very sweet girlie harmony vocals for a song on the record plus a nice scream from the depths of hell!! hahaha
Nov 07, 2008
First day for the guitars.
So Ari came to my place around 11am on friday very excited, armed and ready. We started by trying different guitar cabinets with his amp and we ended up using Leo´s Carvin Legacy 2x12, it sounded very tight and clear for the fast and precise riffing that we were facing. Then we miked it up with 2 Sm57s on one celestion vintage 30 speaker (for those as geek as ourselfves hehe).
It was decided that on the guitar department we´re going to work following the track order of the record so as with the drums we begun with the first track on the album that by this time I can reveal that it´s going to be called "8:03pm (these streets)" so there you have it hehe.
Very hard song for the guitar player, lots of 32 notes on this one, but at the end he nailed them as we knew he would, Ari is just great!!, and such a great friend too. We just love this song hehehe.
It was great too that I was having a party at my place that night so we could show the progress to our best friends :), some of you will recognize some of the faces from our local prog rock scene hehehe.
will come back soon :)
Nov 04, 2008
Drums finished!!!!
So yeah, at last everything's done on the drum department, a wonderful experience and one that I was looking forward to do in my own studio, which has been a pain in the ass to finish, but at last all it's up and running.
Yesterday's session was basically checking out that everything was exactly as we wanted it and recording some tribal like toms for a section in one song. For that Jorge used the same tom setup that he used for the record plus a bigger floor tom, everything tuned lower than the regular tunning for the kit.
I must say also that it was amazing to produce the drum parts with Jorge right into the studio, he has a great sense of what the song needs and he has a keen musical sense for drum parts.
So that's it for Jorge, at least on the recording field!, this week we start with guitars, vocals ans keyboards!
See ya people
Juan Pablo
Nov 02, 2008
Big progress!!
We basically finished the drum tracks for the album, just have half a song left which we're aiming to finish on today's session, by the way this is a very very very very heavy song...did I say heavy? hehehe, you metal fans are gonna break your headbanging necks on this one! as Jorge's drum stick broke up yesterday.
The other songs we recorded were another heavy song....not so heavy though, kind of progressive, and the "long song", of course we had to have one hehe, not so long as you might think though.
That's it for now people, will come back with the drum wrap up update hopefully tomorrow
Juan Pablo
Oct 30, 2008
Three and a half songs down! for drums anyway, it´s been an incredible and creative time for us, the posibility of creating most of the drum parts right here in the studio and being able to take our time with the arrangements is the best thing ever.
We've finished the first and last song on the record plus the second and half of the third one that we're planning on finishing tomorrow and hopefully the fourth song also.
Many thanks to Pablo Montero <Pox> for filming and taking pictures of the sessions and for the beers and pizza of course hehehe.
I'm also very very impresed with Jorge's precision, and the fact that he plays with ballet shoes!!!! hahaha the man is a machine! he's hitting those drums in perfect timing and rocking very very hard!, this record has some heavy and I mean HEAVY riffing, metal fans will love some of it.....we hope LOL.
Anyway I leave you with some pics of today
Take Care
Juan Pablo
Oct 28, 2008
Today we recorded the drum tracks for the first song on the album and I would like to say that we chose it beacause it´s the beginning of the journey and blah blah blah hehehe, but it was actually me asking Jorge which song he would like to try first, and after going through all of them he said: "you know what, let´s start with this one, where is it on the record?" hahaha, sounds like him.
The drum sound we got in my studio is excellent, my little room is behaving as I expected so we´re very happy about that and thankful with my dear friend Giancarlo Tassara who really gave us a lesson on how you should mike a kit! especially the 4 mics on the snare!, he´s the master.
So here are some pics of today, hope you like them
Oct 26, 2008
First day at last!!!. So we started by setting up the drums in our new studio at my place called Bushido Studios. Jorge basically figured out which kit and cymbals he's gonna use for this new record and set them up in the recording room. Tomorrow we're gonna mic everything up and make everything happen for the drum sound....this is going to be a killer, mark my words! We feel so happy about starting this whole thing!
Back to you tomorrow! cheers!
Juan Pablo
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