Just got the feeling that I need to write here something.
It's been while when we have played a real ROCK show and you can imagine how excited we're when we jump on stage tomorrow. Last week we had acoustic show here in Tampere and it was quite fun, though I felt something was missing... you know... Sammye turns his balls shaking sound to volume ten and Anthon screams with his guitar... and Vince is throwing around the mic stand in a way you'd better look for cover behind the drumset.
It was in November when we had a real rock show before this and I can tell you that I've really waited this day to come again. It's great that we've recorded new songs for upcoming album and almost mixed all the material but these are the long days when you realize that you belong to stage.
Hope you still have patient to wait new WF album and album release tour even though we have been in silence for a while. I think we'll rock harder than ever before now when we've been of the stage and gathered all our strength and energy. At least I got that feeling!
Good morning to everybody in the world of White Flame and sorry that there has been so long silence. To be honest, even there’ve been lot of stuff to do we are lazy people to write. Well, but now I’m glad ‘cause the mixing sessions have been finally started. We did lot of recordings between August and January. As we told earlier we worked with sixteen songs and now fourteen survived in the mixing room.
There’s still missing horns, but we will record ‘em in the next week and after that ALL THE TRACK IS DONE! Well, I can’t believe that.. ;)
We’ve spent so many hours and days in the Deerhouse studios, specially me and Vince, but I can tell you that you will hear why (at least I hope you can) and it was worth it. Now we moved back in the Seawolf studios where the final magic happens. The mixing, post-producing, all the little hooks you know and the mastering. The biggest problem will be to decide which songs end up in the album and of course the singles. Anyway during this month we have a completed master tape in our hands. And let me tell you, that’s cool! I’m so happy! I can’t wait to introduce that new shit fo’ U! The art work is move ahead really great and we have the title of the new album, excellent! Unfortunately You and we still have to wait the releasing date a little while, but don’t be worry, you will hear it pretty soon. Stay tuned!
Okay and now little bit technical information ‘cause some of you might be interested how I do the guitar parts in the album. The basic setup was almost same that in the Yesterday’s News album. Stereo guitars (L&R) is taken with two different guitars, amps (Laboga, Mesa) and cabinets (Laboga, Marshall) with the three microphones which are pretty same in the both setups, usually =). Of course there’s a lot of variations like gain rate, pedals before amp (like boost, compressor) and sometimes different preamps, but usually when I started the guitar parts I do these main rhythm guitars first. Basic White Flame rock songs needs humbucker pickup, so I use pretty much different LesPauls in the basic rhythm parts. Jem’s Dimarzio pickup sounds very good too, specially with LesPaul so I used Ibanez also. If I remember right I used more different LesPauls in the Yesterday’s News album and now I replaced another LP track with Jem. Well anyway the setups etc. are introduced in the end.
This time I fell in love with the Fender Stratocaster so I play lot of tracks with it. In YN album there was clean/low gained Telecaster tracks, but now I found so brilliant sound with the Strat. that I used it pretty much in rhythm parts and solos. Mostly I like to use LesPaul and Jem in solos as I did. And everybody who has record with LP knows the troubles with fine tune, so when I fucked up with that, then I use PRS. They are something that you can trust with that kinda of problems, so I played some lead stuff or solos with them and little x-tra tracks. Slide stuff I did with Tokai LP and all the acoustic parts with Cuenca. Some freaking with guitar synthesizer and cool double tracks with baritone guitar, that is lot of fun!
In my case I like that there is two perfect main sounds and guitars. It’s also important thing to make recognizable basic sound for the band and of course for my self. By chancing amplifiers, different sounding guitars and put it along with other elements I can make more interesting and bigger sound, I hope. Okay, sometimes it’s good to remember that you don’t have to do the “guitar wall” in every song or from the start to the end. That’s why it’s good to mix different setups.
You thank your self if the recorded sound is already that good that you don’t have to fix it in the mix. Of course we cut the “bad frequencies” etc. to make it fit, specially ‘cause we have a bad obsession to make so many bg-voc/choir tracks, guitar tricks, keyboards, horns, strings, percussions what ever that sometimes it’s a challenge to mix it all together. The main equalization and sound is the balance of the three microphones. It’s important part of the sound. Then there’s is a 6 or 4 band EQ with Low/High Pass Filter and some tracks will go trough the external three band compressor. Some extra tracks or solo tracks are taken only with two microphones ‘cause there no need to make it so large.
In the mixing process we also do the final delay, echo and special effects. Some of them have done already in the recordings, but specially the delay/echo and very radical stuff is more safely to do in the end in my opinion.
For example I love the EH memory man deluxe kinda of delay sound and some tape-delay stuff so Line 6 Echo Park –plug-in or Tel-Ray –plug-in works for me!
Well, here is the list of the equipments that I used in the recordings. If you got some questions in your mind (ok, maybe after you’ve heard the album) feel free to ask.
Now let’s finalize the next masterpiece ;)
Take care, hopefully we all stay health and happy New Year to all of You!
-Anthon
Anthon’s Gtr-Gear in Studio 2008
Guitars:
Gibson Les Paul Custom 1970
Fender Stratocaster 25th Anniversary -54/-79
Ibanez Jem7VWH
Paul Reed Smith Standard 22
Paul Reed Smith CE24
Tokai LoveRock Les Paul with Seymour Duncan pickups (slide tune “A”)
