Monday 30.9.2013 Studio Day 1:

Got driven to the train to catch up with Tommy just after 8 in the morning. To our surprise they don't serve beer until after nine. Maybe it was for the best ;-) After some 3+ hours we jumped off the train in Kokkola were Pasi picked us up. We had to make some short stops before we got to the studio. First things first; the music store to pick up some drum parts (don't ask me, I don't know) and then it was off to the grocery store and to get some wine. 

After a short drive we were already in the woods, were we had some lunch (check picture below) before we got to the studio. The day was spent emptying the van and setting up the drums and keys as well as putting the rest of the gear inside. At the moment Tommy and Pasi are going through the drums and I went upstairs to write this and listen to some Britney Spears.... read an interview with the guy who's done some of her mixes so I had to listen through some of  it and see how much I actually understood about what he explained, I did actually understand quite a bit, to my surprise.

Anyways, Elias and Tony will be here later this week. Tomorrow it's drum-mania. I took some pics as well ;-) These sessions are going to be awesome !! Yeah, I said it, AWESOME !!

cheers,

Henkka

The drums...or parts of the drums.

My keyboard corner, all setup and ready to go.

The M3 lost some of it's keys and is now a 61.

This is how my life will pretty much look like for the next 4-7 weeks

Let me introduce a new series: What I ate today, part one !

Friday 27.9.2013 Photo Session no.2:

Up in the morning and off we go. The guys picked me up just after 8 in the morning and we headed towards Oulu. Made a pitstop for beer and stuff on the way. Spent the drive playing some stupid finnish word game, annoying...but I'll probably get back to it next time Upon arrival we had some trouble finding a parking spot but eventually managed to park the van somewhere relatively close. The day was spent taking pics, this time it was surprisingly smooth and easy. Hope the stuff turns out good. We

found some props at the photostudio that we used as well. Here are some off-set pics, now it's time to enjoy the rest of the weekend and we will be back on Monday with Studio Day no. 1. A huge thanks to disturb.fi for helping us out with the clothes once again ;-)

Cheers,
Henkka

A drummer in the dark, hopefully the real pics will be a bit brighter ;-)

Tony goofing off...

Me goofing off...

Tried to take a pic that would show both me & Tony at the same time but as it turns out it wasn't as easy as one might thing. Used the Sentenced Platinum DVD thing as help...or tried to....

Thursday 26.9.2013 Leaving the rehersal place, ready for the studio !!

Ok, so today I took the bike to Tony's house again and then a friend of ours dropped by the SL, the rest of the day was spent packing the stuff to the rehersal place, driving there and emptying the van, and then going back to pack up the stuff we need for the studio sessions. A lot to do but not anything newsworthy for you guys. As for now we have all the songs more or less ready and we pretty much know how the album might turn out, it's gonna be a lot of fun to go to Studio57 and track everything. One more thing, the SL was actually and old church-congregation kinda thing that we kindly were allowed to use for one month. Since we'll anyways find some other rehersal place for the next album, see no harm in revealing that much. Here are the final pics from me regarding the not so SL anymore. The boys might tweet something still but as far as I'm concerned, I'm already gone. Tomorrow we'll be doing photos and I'll try to take some off-set pics to upload. Until then....

cheers,

Henkka

Some of the stuff for the studio....

Tony on the spot !

Tried to catch Pasi doing some rookie-work but he was too fast....

Some of the keys getting "home" to our warehouse/rehersal place.

Wednesday 25.9.2013 Rehersal Day 16 / Photo session no.1:

Today was probably our last day of band rehersals before the studio. We played through a 

couple of songs in the morning and then it was time to head out to take some photos outside. Kinda cold but I still remember the Reckoning Night photoshoot which was even colder and naturally every time someone talks about cold, Tony & Tommy remember to bring up the fact that it was -25 degrees celsius and windy when the promopics for Silence were taken. Well, be that as it may it was cold today too. Our first location was at the local mine, so thanks to Outokumpu for letting us take a bunch of pics there. The next one was another local attraction, the Taivalkoski dam. Since we didn't want it in the pics, I took some pics of it for y'all. We're gonna have another photosession in Oulu on Friday and

tomorrow is mostly reserved for packing our stuff and leaving the SL. Until then enjoy, these pics....and I'll get you some more pics from the photosession on Friday.

cheers,

Henkka

...and yeah this is old news but gotta love Alex Lifesons contribution to this thing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKuO1FpCWRI

Enjoy the pics:

Taivalkoski pt1

Taivalkoski part 2

Kemijoki

Walking to the location....without me ;-(

Managed to ambush our photo-dude Vesku....got ya !!

Elias...good to go, with the SA cloves and all...

On the way to the mine...or at the mine...or...whatever...

Down, down, down we go.....

Another view of the mine....

...and last but not least  "the new guy" , don't worry this will probably

not be his stage outfit....maybe....

Tuesday 24.9.2013 Rehersal Day 15:

I went to the SL alone to work on the keyboard stuff, dropped off some clothes from disturb.fi to Tony's house before that. I'll post some pics later with our brand new clothes on... At the moment everybody seems pretty much ready to get into the studio, at least personally I just can't wait to get working on this album for real. Tomorrow we'll do a photo shoot as well has rehearse a bit, Thursday will be the time to pack our shit in the van, and on Friday we have a full day of photos in Oulu. Next Monday will be the first official day of recording, starting with...you guessed it....the drums. As far as the keyboards go, I've pretty much gone through most of the files from the demos already, there's some really cool stuff in there. On top of doing keyboard tracks, I still have some piano playing, hammond as well as the solos & unisonos to do before I'm done, so I have plenty of stuff to occupy myself with in the studio witch is nice. Previously I've done all the stuff at home besides the hammond playing but this time I wanted to do it differently to get a change of perspective as well as a new vibe on things.....we'll see if it works out for the better or not Now I have to find some more shirts to wear tomorrow ;-)

cheers,

Henkka

Friday 20.9.2013 Rehersal Day 14:

Started a bit earlier than usual since we wanted to let the Southern boys get home in time for Friday night sauna ;-) Yesterday we decided to drop one of the songs we already had rehearsed. There were some parts that wasn't up to par so we'll see what's gonna happend with that. Today we went through a new song that Tony brought in, kinda upbeat feelgood vibe on this one. Got it together pretty fast. Next week will be the last week of rehersals and we might be working on our own the first couple of days and then have the last band rehersal on Wednesday.....all to be determined later...we'll see how it goes. At the moment we pretty much only miss like one or two songs so we can easily work them out in the studio if worst come to worst. 

Today I also got confirmation that the clothes we ordered from Disturb.fi are on their way and should be here early next week....not too much else to tell you, so far this has been really smooth and easy so on some level I'm just waiting for when the trouble begins but wouldn't mind if there was no hassle with this album.....on the other hand I don't see why there should be any inconveniences since we all know what we're doing and have a bunch of great songs to execute. Well, time will tell. This album is definately not going to be like the last one, but you probably guessed it anyways since we don't tend to stick with one direction for too long.

The guys didn't let me take any nude pics of them yesterday, as expected.... I think that there wouldn't even be that amazing posting pics of middle-aged nude guys on this blog. As far as Marko's school goes, I'm not sure if he wants it to be public what he is studying so harrass him on FB if you HAVE to know. It's in no way music related, I'll tell you that much.

cheers,

Henkka

almost forgot, clip of the day:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-ZlRl1_4Ws

...and Tony watched this one like half a dozen times a day when we worked on SGHN:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qGTjIcVDAU

try listening to it , 6 times a day at least for 5 days a week and 6 weeks in a row.... it's funny

but not THAT funny....sorry T.

Thursday 19.9.2013 Rehersal Day 13:

Went in early in the morning, the guys were still asleep, exhausted from the COB gig last night. Appeareantly they had a good time....and they also met up with Marko, who is doing great and is really happy with his school, in case anyone wonders about it. I spent the morning going through some more keyboard stuff, recording a couple of tracks and trying to figure out the best combinations of sounds etc. There's still a whole bunch to do before my part of the album is done but it's really nice to already get started on it and little by little work towards the end result. I'll probably play the solos last, while in the studio but until then it's inch by inch :-)  Tony was at home writing some more songs and we're gonna go over tonight for some sauna and to check out what he has come up with. Tomorrow we'll be back rehersing as a full band. Only a couple of days left on this rehersal thing since next week will be crippled by the photo-sessions and of course we have to pack down all the gear for the studio, and also bring some of the gear back to the rehersal warehouse. Maybe I should try to get some nude pics of the guys tonight haha...

cheers,

Henkka

Wednesday 18.9.2013 Rehersal Day 12:

Business, business....spent some time on the phone as well as sending e-mails to start the day. Managed to send out our order for clothes to disturb.fi , as we try to be as efficient as possible we have two days of photo-sessions set up next week....or actually it's more like one and a half. Anyways I'll tell ya more about it then. As far as the album progress goes we spent most of the day on the computers... I started to go through the keyboard tracks and Pasi made some rehersal mixdowns for Tommy. Elias and Pasi were talking about going to see Children of Bodom in Oulu tonight....follow their twitter accounts to see what kind of idiot things they will post ;-) .... if they get there...

https://twitter.com/Elias_Viljanen

https://twitter.com/SonataKemi

Btw since next year is the 15th anniversary since Ecliptica was released we have some very special things coming up, so some of the rehersal time will be spent on one of those things for the next week or so. As usual I wish I could tell more but....that's how it is. Lots of stuff in the works and lots of exciting things coming up next year.

Tomorrow I'll go to the SL early in the morning so I can work on the keyboard tracks at my own and then I guess I'll just head on home when the other guys starts to make noise.

Anyways, time to take the dog for a walk,

cheers,

Henkka

Tuesday 17.9.2013 Rehersal Day 11:

Another day, another song...or at least a new arrangement  on one of the songs. Tony picked me up in the morning, I was planning on taking the bike but I didn't want to carry the M3 module in a backpack when it was raining so....I took the easy way out and called him up instead. At the moment everything is starting to come together really nicely and we will be more than ready to enter the studio in less than two weeks. I spent some time going through the files for this album on my computer and deleting stuff that I don't need when tracking keyboards. So, any day now I can actually start recording basic keyboard stuff, I'm gonna leave the piano, hammond and solos/unisonos until the studio to get a different vibe on them but as far as the basic background stuff, I might as well get it "out of the way"at least to some extent....less stuff to do in the studio where time actually is money ;-) I took some pics but they're pretty much repeating themselves so I might hold off on those until the studio...or not. Btw found a bottle of white wine in the kitchen of the SL, appeareantly this was something Pasi brought with him, I wonder if there's any left tomorrow.

cheers,

Henkka

The M3 module found home and is ready for keyboard mania !

The breakout box for the RMI soundcard....and yeah, that's right no MIDI, at least not for now,

since I forgot the cables at home...haha....

The boys...wonder if we can convert Pasi from Warwick to ESP....

Monday 16.9.2013 Rehersal Day 10:

Started the morning out by laying down some keyboard tracks for an album that I'm playing on as a session guy. Since Elias train wouldn't be here until around 2 in the afternoon, I managed to put in some good hours and get a lot done. Tommy called in sick today, so we could keep the decibel levels quite reasonable, which was a nice change of pace. I managed to setup files for 7 songs on my computer so tomorrow or wednesday I can start to go through Tonys demofiles and check out if there's any useful stuff in there. Usuall there's a whole bunch of good tracks that end up on the album. Some stuff needs to be re-recorded and some stuff will end up in the trash bin.We'll see about that..... Tonight I still have to finish the session album thing and from tomorrow on it's all SA until mid-November when I continue to work on my second solo album, all the songs and most of the keys & guitars are already tracked so I'm still missing vocals, bass and drums before I'll hand it over to Pasi for the mixing and mastering. Anyways, another good day in sonataland and we'll be back in the morning.

cheers,

Henkka

Thursday 12.9.2013 Rehersal Day 9:

Worked on the "difficult" song and Tony brought in an shortened version of one of the earlier fast songs that originally was a bit too long. Now it works better. Found a couple of clips:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrnGP6DVOkg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vil-s82_LM0

...I think Elias tweeted at least one of them already. While the guys were going through some gtr/bass stuff I managed to set up my old computer a PC running Nuendo so that I can start to go through the keyboard stuff and make demos next week. Pretty laid back day and towards the end of it I started to feel a fever coming on...I hope I can dodge it. Oh, and I got a pic of Tommy.

cheers,

Henkka

OMG, Windows XP is back with a vengeance, forgot one of my M3 modules at home

better bring it in on Monday.

....and here is Tommy !! Happy as usual.....

Wednesday 11.9.2013 Rehersal Day 8:

Listened to some new stuff, still in the works, played through all the stuff so far...at the moment there are 9 songs, one of which was so difficult we decided to leave it for tomorrow....actually I think we just felt lazy, it can't be that hard. Finally we got the Alone in Heaven online:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1RxUyzSLvs&feature=youtu.be

That was the last of the SGHN videos, in the beginning of next year we'll do a couple of

videos for the new album but before that, no video stuff. Tomorrow we'll have another working day but we decided to take Friday off and give Tony some time to come up with some more songs for next week. We only need a couple more and then we have all the material together. I'll probably start demoing/recording keyboards already at the SL to save studio time. A couple of pics below....and if someone of you figured out where we're rehearsing, be so kind and keep it to yourself, ok ?

cheers,

Henkka

Found out I have a picture editing program on my phone, tried to make Elias look

Holy...Holyas...didn't come out so good...

Tried to take a nice pic of Elias but some weird bass player jumped in and ruined the shot.

Tuesday 10.9.2013 Rehersal Day 7:

No new songs today :-( , actually we did chart a new faster song so at the moment, I think

we're missing like one or two songs...or something. Spent the day playing through the stuff and making notes, talking about the order of the songs on the album etc. At some point I'll start to go through the keyboard tracks one by one and lay down some more ideas and demo-stuff. We also spent some time trying to locate the Alone in Heaven-video, it's been done since last christmas or something and now when it's supposed to be put online nobody seems to have it or find it. Everything got sorted out so if everything goes as planned it should be up for you to watch tomorrow or the day after. Somehow I get the feeling that this video was not ment to be since there has been so much fuckin hassle with it.Keep your thumbs up that this will be the last of the trouble with that one. Btw didn't remember to take any pics...sorry about that, I'll give it another shot. The twitter guys, Elias and Pasi probably got something up or will do so....like usual. Can't wait to get into the studio btw, this is gonna be one cool album to make. Then again we're always excited when we work on new stuff so....you never know if you gonna like the end result or not....be that as it may, we all find out soon enough.

cheers,

Henkka

Monday 9.9.2013 Rehersal Day 6:

....ah Monday mornings, gotta love 'em. Elias flight was delayed so Tony,Tommy & I started out the day a bit earlier than the other guys. Anyway, we managed to make the charts for the 10 minute epic and play through it as well....we also made charts of another fast song (152bpm, for those of you who care). At the moment it looks like we're only missing a couple of tracks, then we'll fine tune the stuff and start recording...btw this was kinda funny:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3DlDPeurRw

...slow day at work, I bet we get something more done tomorrow. Elias and Pasi were once

again left in the woods to record some demo guitars and basses....good luck boys, I'll be 

in the sauna if you need me. Until tomorrow.

cheers,

Henkka

Friday 6.9.2013 Rehersal Day 5

Hola,
not too much to tell ya about today. Went through the songs and it seems we have around 4 tracks to check next week and then everything will be more or less in order. Worked on the arrangements for the 6 tracks we already know and learned this week. I don't remember us working this fast like....ever. It's really nice since we're gonna have some time to check and double check and triple check everything before entering the studio in a few weeks. As far as the music goes I hear a lot of "old school" Sonata in most of the songs.....maybe we start to become a power metal band again ;-) Anyways this was a really productive week and on that note it's nice to start spending the weekend at home and try not to think about this stuff for two days. We'll be back on Monday when we'll try to tackle a 10 minute epic, destined to become a SA classic....I hope ;-)

Have a nice weekend, I'll try to take some pics next week.

cheers,
Henkka

Thursday 5.9.2013 Rehersal Day 4 (lazy bastards)

Hi there,
jumped on the bike in the morning and hammered my way to Tony's house and from there we went to the SL to resume rehersals. We didn't check out any new songs today but went through the Demo stuff that Pasi and Elias had recorded last night. Since the guys live at the SL while up north, the don't have too much to do in the evening so they decided to record demo guitars and bass for the 6 songs we've already made ourselves familiar with. Since it was Tommy's birthday (btw he's getting old these days, like 50 or something) we sung for him and welcomed him in the "we're dudes over 20"-club. Go figure. Anyways it was more about chatting, making plans, talking about the songs and arrangements than actually playing something. I bet we get down 2-4 more songs tomorrow before it's time to have our weekend break. I got a call from our manager about some exciting thing in the making and I'll of course let you know as soon as I'm allowed to. Next year will be superfun (no I'm not 16) with all kinds of stuff happening.....Be that as it may when I rode my bike home after the day at the office, it fucking broke down and I had to walk the last 500m, dragging the damn thing while smoking and cursing. Wasn't too happy at that moment. I'm sure this has happend to someone else in the world as well so...
...fuck it, I'll drive tomorrow. Feeling more relaxed now after a refreshing sauna.

Until Tomorrow,
cheers,
Henkka

Wednesday 4.9.2013 Rehersal Day 3:

..and good morning to y'all. I actually took my bike to Tony's house (around 6km from my place)...that woke me up nicely. Then it was time to got to the SL and start working.Today we managed to go through two new songs, a heavy one and a faster one as well as make the charts for another 2, so at the moment we more or less have figured 6 songs out that will be on the album. At the moment it seems like we've never worked this fast before, well when it's clicking there's no reason to slow down. Other than that the day was a reasonably normal "day at the office" kinda thing. Had some noodles for lunch, Chicken & chili was todays flavour.Decent but not superb. Funny that someone actually asked for pics of my keys on the day that I did take some pics of my rehersal setup for these sessions. Check 'em out below. Until tomorrow...

cheers,

Henkka

The whole bunch: SV-1, M3(76), Zoom G-1 (borrowed from Elias) my old Kawai mixer and the DX7 triggering the live rack (with another M3, Alesis Quadraverb GT & Boss SuperOverdrive.

The Zoom and the mixer, you actually can't see shit, I thought B&W pics with a retrocam-app would look cool but this really sucks.....haha...

...and in the background there's one of the bands MacBooks running Cubase and our trusty Behringer mixer...cheap and durable....excellent for rehersals.

Tuesday 3.9.2013 Rehersal Day 2

Watched some Z-Rock last night, funny stuff ;-) Anyways at around 10 in the morning we congregated at the SL and made a quick soundcheck before starting to work on the first songs. The first song we worked on was a slow and mellow one, we pretty much got it down in an hour or so. After lunch we managed to learn another song, this time something heavier and faster. I'm not gonna try to explain how our new stuff sounds because there's no chance in hell that I get it right anyway. Be that as it may, by the end of the day we had two songs learned and I'm sure we get a couple more tomorrow. Tonight it's time to head out to Tonys place as soon as I get the little rascals to bed. We're gonna have a couple of beers and some sauna to officially open the album sessions.

cheers,

Henkka

ps. Don't forget to follow Elias and Pasi on twitter:

https://twitter.com/Elias_Viljanen

https://twitter.com/SonataKemi

Monday 2.9.2013 Rehersal Day 1

Alrighty, time for another album. So let's get to it. I met up with Tommy around noon at the secret location (from here on to be called SL). We spent a couple of hours setting things up. For those of you who are interested: I'm using two M3's, one with 76 keys and the other one triggered by an DX7. On top of that I have my SV-1 and a D-20 for Tony, actually I'm bringing him a Fantom XR for tomorrow, so he can get some cool sounds. Other than that we have a bunch of PA equipment and Pasi brought his computer him and Elias can do some demo-recordings and prepare for the studio sessions.  Today we just put up the gear, listened to some of Tonys demos and played through Alone in Heaven and Cinderblox....and decided that the guys would pick up two more speakers for the PA system from our rehersal place. Tomorrow we'll start working on the first songs, let's

see what happends.

comic relief of today: http://www.stara.fi/2013/09/01/24-hulvatonta-kylttia-maailmalta/

cheers,

Henkka