Indeed...

Rock the week

So, this has been a rocking week. The drums for the next Cain's Offering album are done and I have spent the whole week here at Lappajärvi with Timo and Jens, and we even managed to write two new songs. Not to mention had shitloads of fun doing that :) Actually the other one of the songs is so good it's a shame we didn't write it earlier so it could've been on the CO album. Well, if Strato doesn't use it you'll here it on the third Cain album that will hit the stores around 2021 :)

Tomorrow it's time to hit the road again to play the shows in Pori and Rauma. Still no rest for the wicked, but who cares when you're having this much fun doing what you do for work :)

CO drum recordings

Are done :)

Picture from the Studio57 facebook page.

Heavy metal bootcamp

Arrived to Lappajärvi last night, now we are going to spend a few days writing some metal music with Timo and Jens. Ought to be shitloads of fun :)

Today it starts

A new level

You know you've taken it to the next level when you get your own burger :)

Status update, or something like that

Lying here in bed, waiting for our show in Vantaa, which will start in 55min. Tomorrow Vuokatti.

Hurtsi sent me a message earlier today, he is healthy enough to play and we will start the drum sessions on Monday. 

Good morning to you all

I guess I'm kind of a cliché...

Writing lyrics in the middle of the night while sipping some red wine, I mean come on... Fucking pseudo-poetic bullshit :) In other, kinda related news, I finished the first actual lyrics for the album, so it's 1/11.

This is pretty much my method as well:

South Park on music production

A Slight delay...

Yes, unfortunately we've had to postpone the CO drum recordings a little bit. We were supposed to start laying down the drum tracks this Monday, but as fate would have it, Hurtsi got sick. It's flu and if it's the same strain that I had it is a bitch. He did send me a message today saying that he's starting to feel a bit better today though, and he is hoping we can begin the drum session during the weekend. Fingers crossed for that!

So, I did it

I updated the age there so you people can stop whining about it and shut the fuck up.

Quote of the day:

From David Gilmour in a recent Pink Floyd interview. This really stuck with me:

"People have very different attitudes to the way they work and we can become very judgmental and think someone is not quite pulling his weight enough, without realising that theirs is a different weight to pull"

This is both brilliant and disturbing...

...and do you know why? Because I had to fucking check if this is real or not. I guess the title of this post kinda gives it away already, but still, we live in a world where I have to actually wonder these things.

Butt Covers For Your Cat and Dog 

Can Reduce Pet Homosexuality by 43%

Last bounce

Took me 2 days to bounce the backing tracks for Hurtsi's drum session, this is the last one. Damn was that boring... Now everything is set to start the recordings next monday. I think I've deserved a beer tonight.

Viski

Aluehallintovirasto kielsi viski-sanan käytön yksityisissä blogeissa

Viski, viski, viski, viski, viski, viski, viski, viski, viski, viski, viski, viski, viski, viski, viski, viski, viski, viski, viski, viski, viski, viski, viski...

Whiskey, whiskey, whiskey, whiskey, whiskey, whiskey, whiskey, whiskey, whiskey, whiskey, whiskey, whiskey, whiskey, whiskey, whiskey...

I'm not gonna bother to translate the article and the point behind this, if any of you Finns there have the energy, feel free.

This is such a weird country sometimes...

It's true

Dear Folks and Folkettes

Sorry again for the longer-than-intended hiatus, it's been pretty busy here in Janiland. On Friday we flew to northern Finland to do (probably) the last Railio show for this year, on Saturday I flew back home and we had a pretty big party and got pretty damn hammered with a bunch of friends. Took me 2 days to fully recover from that, I guess my party stamina is not what it used to be. Must be the age kicking in.

But now to the stuff that you -hopefully- find more interesting: The drum recordings are drawing closer every day, I guess it's now 11 days and the recordings for the second Cain's Offering album officially start. This means that I have to spend pretty much every waking hour that I'm at home working on the material, but I am pretty happy with it already. I think it's stronger and much more coherent than the stuff on the first album (though even I have to admit that there were some truly great moments on the first one).

I've been asked a lot about my writing process, how I write songs. While that is way too large and difficult question for me to answer, mainly because I have no set way or formula of how I approach writing, I can now shed some light into what I've been doing now for few days and will continue to do until next Tuesday. I guess I could call it polishing the songs.

What I do is this: I have all the demos on all of my computers and also on my phone. I listen to them pretty much daily, especially when I'm travelling and can't really do anything else productive. Not to listen to how great they sound, but to find flaws and weak spots. If I start to feel like something is out of place or doesn't work in a certain part of a song I will write it down somewhere so I will remember it when I get back to my work computer where I have my stuff set up. Because lets face it, if I don't write it down I'm not going to remember half of it when I'll actually have a chance to work on them.

This way I will have all my previous thoughts and ideas always memorised. It might be that I find a certain melody dull, want to change a chord or a harmony or a drumbeat, or maybe I feel that some part of a song is not quite up to par with the rest of the song and the song loses momentum because on this. I've now gone through 2 songs in the last 2 days, and I have to say the songs sound a lot better now than they did before I made those changes.

In a fact, I'm going to wrap this up now, take a glass of whiskey and listen through all the songs, while making notes about everything I think is not quite right yet. Tomorrow I will wake up, make some coffee and then start fixing the things that bother me, it's that simple.

Take care dicks and dickettes, see you around :)

Some stuff:

Article in Iltalehti, in Finnish and mostly about Stratovarius, but covers some ground on writing as well, and has a picture featuring yours truly without the controversial facial hair.

Interview about Cain's Offering, featuring me and Hurtsi. Also has a short interview with Arion.