Studio Diary: Recording Drums

The First Chapter

We started the recordings of our upcoming debut album obviously with drums. We are recording ten actual songs plus intro and outro. So total twelve tracks to be included on the album. The recording team is the same as last time. Kalle Raijonkari of Ruho Productions records and Simo Pussinen does the mixing and mastering while Jesse acts as a producer. We felt that this team can achieve much more since we learned our lessons on the Delirious Tales. Everybody has gained valuable experience and knowhow that is now used in making the next Inkvisitor album.

Before we get to the drum recordings, let’s go back a year to the Delirious Tales recording session. At that time the band was young and only had done one gig. We had five songs to record and it was our first time in studio. On top that, the drum set on the spot was cheap and out of tune. Also Pete did catch a bad flu and felt that he was not rehearsed enough. The studio time was booked only for evenings and everything was recorded in a bit of hurry. The results were very pretty good, but the whole band felt that we could’ve done better.

This time Pete rehearsed more and we booked a lot more time to record drums and with no hurry. Pete had also acquired a new Pearl Session Studio set, Axis pedals and bunch of quality Sabian symbals. Brand new drumheads were put in place and everything tuned accordingly. So the gear was in top shape. The basis of the drum sound was in really good starting point. Pete also felt much more confident since he’d been rehearsing a lot.

Pete’s kit all set up

We used the first day to get the sounds right. We were using Aapo’s school’s studio, it was better than the last, but it was not perfect still. The initial drum sound was a big improvement compared to previous record. The whole bunch was happy with the results and went home with a good feeling to start the actual recording the next day.

As the morning came, the recordings started. Pete was in great shape and had no trouble at all. His legs worked fine and the playing was precise. Last time there had to be some editing to be done, but now we felt that almost none is needed.

The playing was so good that he managed to record total of six songs in eight hours. We had scheduled a whole week for the drum recordings and it was really uplifting to realize that we can do everything in a single weekend. It’s nice to be ahead of the schedule every once in a while.

Pete Thrashing

The next day Pete recorded all the rest and was very pleased with the works. No serious mishaps occurred and everything went better than the last time. Kalle goes over the drum tracks during the upcoming week and when they’re finalized we send them to Simo and begin the guitar recordings with Lauri’s parts. Stay tuned!

Kalle recording and supervising that the best takes are played