Altering the recording environment creates better results
By Adastra Guitarist Olli Anttila
First of all, a brief introduction should be in place as we’re a relatively unknown band. I’m Olli Anttila from Adastra. We’re a traditional Heavy Metal band from Helsinki, Finland. We’ve released two albums so far through Violent Journey Records and one EP by ourselves: The Eyes of the Night (2006), The Last Sunset (June 2007) and Death or Domination (December 2008). Our music could be described as a mix between Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Metallica and Megadeth.
On this blog I’ll be discussing the recording process of our second album, which we recorded throughout the summer of 2008. I’ll be including some techie stuff here, so I apologize at this point if some of the latter stuff doesn’t ring a bell. But back to the new album: we did it totally differently than all our previous demos, EP and the first album and the results are great (at least the band and those who’ve already heard it think so).
We had done everything else before Death or Domination in a studio environment with an outsider engineer recording everything. This time we decided to invest some money to get ourselves a portable recording studio. This “studio” was a laptop, a Presonus Firebox recording interface, Cubase 4 recording software, DI-Box and a GT-8 guitar effects processor. First of we did MIDI versions of our songs which had the correct tempos and all, and then we used them as a ghost track and recorded the drum tracks in a proper studio. Jussi (the drummer) used a vintage Tama drum set on them. After this expensive two day project the engineer made mp3 versions of all the drum tracks and gave it to us. Then our bass player played all of his bass tracks with a nineties Charvel bass back at my place and at his own pad through the DI box. We continuously recorded two tracks at a time with the bass and guitars: one modeled-track with effects and one totally clean track with no effects at all. The purpose of the DI-box was to get down the clean signal of the instrument in question, but since it’s stupid / hard to play a totally clean signal and imagine that it’s a distorted bass or guitar we used the GT-8 or a computer plug-in to help ourselves.
After Mr. Vauramo was done with the bass tracks, I took the “studio” with me to a rented cabin, where I was enjoying my summer vacation with some relatives and family. I recorded all my parts there, in a little wooden cabin at the shore of Lake Saimaa with only one customized Ibanez RG-3020 FMT. It was great: I worked a couple of hours at a time, and every time I started to feel tired, or frustrated, or felt that my playing was not energetic enough, I went for a swim / sauna / beer / fishing / reading or just plain sunbathing. Our other guitarist Jari Hartman also operated quite similarly, with the exception that he worked at home and definitely didn’t sunbathe at all, cos he’s the most pale guy ever. Eventually only four different guitars were used on the album; my customized RG and slightly modified JEM 777 BSB, and Jari’s ESP LTD and I believe some really old Tokai.
After the bass and guitars were complete, we moved to our singer’s tool shed. As he lives about fifty kilometres from Helsinki, he has a house, a huge yard and a tool shed right there in the middle of nowhere. So finally, after we had spent about three to four weeks recording the bass tracks, clean guitars, rhythm guitars, lead guitars, solo guitars, synths and some guitar effects it was time to do the vocals. Ville (vocalist / handyman) built a booth, some thermal insulation and acoustic panelling inside the big shed. Then we just kept on recording vocals, track after track. When we were done it was September already and fucking cold, and every night we finished up the shed would be surrounded by very thick fog. Creepy but highly suitable for the atmosphere.
It was pretty clear from the beginning that we wouldn’t be using the modeled tracks for the final album, but instead just re-amp the clean tracks. Re-amping is (I believe) a relatively new studio technique. It’s simple really: basically the computer which the clean tracks are on is plugged to an amp of the musician’s choosing, then the desired sound is dialed up, the cab gets miked-up and then the clean tracks are just played through the amp and so the final sound is created for the album. As these computer plug-ins keep on becoming more real sounding all the time, they’re a considerable option to be thought about too. Finally we ended up using a Mesa Boogie Dual Rectifier for the rhythm guitars and various plug-ins for the lead and solo guitars and the bass. We even used some tracks which had the GT-8 modeling (after some post-production). The results can be heard on the new album, which I think sounds great. It’s got a pretty cool, rather organic sound in it. Powerful rhythm guitars, loud and big guitar solos, very present bass, and no drum triggering. Probably it’s pretty eighties sounding to you lot, but we love the eighties so our job’s done then, right?
