The Days of Epic Guitars 5.-9.10.

So, after Ilkka ja Hannu had finished their drum n´ bass recordings it was time for dynamic guitar duo of Ville and Tuukka to start their own quest in the land of music. On Friday Hannu laid down the last of the bass lines and we started to record the rhythm guitars. For the rhythm guitar sound we used the following setup: Mesa Boogie Single Rectifier head with ESP Eclipse and Peavey 6505+ head with Gibson Les Paul Studio both through ENGL Vintage cabinet. This package gave us a nice warm, but crunchy sound. Tuukka gave his best shot to start plowing through the field of rhythmic guitaring and in the end of the day we had done guitars for two songs.

Stuba delivering a harsh pickslide. Ville approves.

On Saturday we continued the work on the rhythm guitars with our weekend engineer Markus Salo and with a relative ease we managed to do all the guitar parts. I must say that the rhythm sound is exactly what we hoped for. At this point Tuukka and Ville would like to thank our friend and new guitar tech Matti Vaaja for superb job on the fine tuning of our guitars. Usually we’ve had some major issues in the studio with the guitar intonation, but this time it has been a pleasure to play the riffs and lead melodies because the tone is so much better and for the same reason the working process has been somewhat swift. Thanks Matti!

Ville wreaking havoc with ESP.

Andy found something funny in Internet. Maybe a new Grandma joke.

On Sunday Tuukka started work on what was to be a day of acoustic mayhem. Acoustic parts are essential to Noumena songs and the next album will be no exception on this regard. Actually there might be a bit more acoustic stuff on the album than before, but not very dramatically. And at this point I must thank Hannu Unnbom for lending his Breedlove AD25/SR Plus acoustic guitar. Again, the recording of acoustic guitars can be a pain in the ass, but this time it was less painfull. With a quality guitar like this there was no need to worry about the tone of the guitar. It was only matter of the player himself to deliver the right notes on tape. We actually used more acoustic guitar on the songs due to the fact that we had a proper guitar on our hands and it sounded great. Well, the playing itself was a fullday job as usual, but after a days hard work I had done all the acoustic parts on the album except one song which will be done by Ville later on. I’m really happy how the acoustic parts came out so I hope you also will enjoy them in time.

Our talented guitarists full of spirit and virtue.

On monday we started on the lead guitars with Jarno back as the engineer. On lead guitar sound we used the Peavey 6505+ head with the ESP and Gibson guitars. I started on the leads first to make sure I get my stuff on tape in time before I head back to Joensuu on Tuesday afternoon. The recording went quite smoothly though when you are in the studio you always hope to be just a little bit better player than you actually are. Anyway, I’m pleased how the leads were played and how it sounded. On Tuesday we continued on the leads with myself playing just a few harmonies on the leads and Ville playing the rest of his parts. It’s hard to compare the guitar stuff we’ve done here to the earlier songs we’ve done, but I can say there will be some trademark Noumena guitaring on the next album and on the whole the songs are starting to sound somewhat great at this point of the recordings.

The most important moment of studio day ahead: eating. Hunter's bread it is.

Hannu knows how to grease guitar heroes to play even better...

I will be heading back to Joensuu and will leave the other gang to finish the job. Expectations are growing high on this album as the work here progresses and I’m sure no fan of Noumena will be disappointed when they get their hands on this album. The wait has surely not been in vain.

- Tuukka