The other week I managed to throw in three full days (days and nights that is) in a row in the studio getting some more work on my solo album done and after some awesome time off in the Finnish archipelago yet another two whole days. Really feels great when I get a chance to get this time-consuming machinery rolling. One might think, and wish!, that I’d be finished with the album by now but the editing, cutting and compiling of all the takes and tracks takes time, A LOT of time. I’m arranging it all as I go as well and that doesn’t quite make it take less time and as reality are now I only have a couple of days every month to squeeze in as studio time. But still, it’s rolling.
All the bass (there'll be exclusively fretless bass on the album) and all the drums are recorded now - so it’s a fact they will be entirely performed respectively by Andy “Drake” Mallander and Vesa Kallio. I believe all the guitars are recorded now as well, I will however be rerecording some of the vocals, to push up my performance that little extra notch, to get them all feeling just right and to really assure that I squeeze out the very best out of my vocal abilities anno 2015. There are also some additional (background or sideground?) vocals I feel I’d like to try out and then some amount of work with the compiling and editing left, but were certainly getting closer to the finishing line, even if it feels like we’re crawling there.
It’s funny (sad?) to see how things turn out, or rather how things are being pulled back when you don’t have a deadline and don't have anyone whipping your butt, and add a very packed agenda - Shit is bound to procrastinate for sure! But for me giving this up has never been an option, it has always been like: I will finish and get this album out, no matter what - I mean, it’s after all my album that needed to be done, the album I needed to do.
As now, pretty close to the finishing line, I sure live on the future hope that the making of my next solo album, which there will most certainly be one for sure, won’t be stretched over as long period of time, ‘cause it sure makes it so much harder to finish, but I need to finish this first one first.
Until next time I’ll leave you with a little classical piece I recorded between the solo album sessions, another “odd-song-that-doesn’t-fit-in-anywhere” of sorts. I see it a bit as a tribute and a salute to one of my #1 influential songwriters, or more correct, composers - THE #1 master composer Johann Sebastian Bach. I have written and perform the piece, finger picking (!) - one guitar, no effects, just my Segovia classic guitar through a Röde NT4 into a Apogee Duet and with some minor compression at the end to bring it up in volume a bit - That's it. I really had to work my ass off to nail it. I know the guitar makes its noises, it’s not performed on the best classic guitar, it had old strings and was quite out of shape and not perfectly intonated and the performance is certainly not flawless. It is what it is, it’s me and I can assure you it pulls the very best out of my classic guitar playing today. I named it “Passion” hope you’ll enjoy it.
