Etheric Media - Pursuit Of Excellence

The Essence Of Music

2009-06-10T21:57:00.010+03:00

Good morning.

Oh god, I'm so tired. I'm trying to change my sleeping rhythm back to something more human, that's why I'm up this early. Well, it isn't THAT early, actually, but early enough for me, at least. It's 9 o'clock now, but I've been fighting to keep my eyes open for over an hour.

So that's why I'm here. Just to do something to keep me awake.

I was thinking about a conversation I had with a friend of mine a while ago. We talked about music and how over-produced most of it is these days. Or at least how only the commercial type gets any media exposure. My friend is an excellent musician, but unfortunately also a sort of a musical purist - he hates the mainstream and sometimes contemns popular songs without even hearing them out first. Don't get me wrong, I get his point, it's just the attitude I don't necessarily approve of.

During the last 4 years my musical taste has widened and somehow I've really taken a liking to some of the mainstream stuff. For example, I really like some songs on Katy Perry's debut album "One of the Boys". Yeah, maybe it's generic and some might call it soulless, but I like it.

Anyway, this confrontation of musical tastes naturally lead to a pretty spicy conversation. My friend said, that if a song has been made solely for money-making purposes without any real feelings, it can't be good. He meant that if e.g. a love song has been composed by a person, who hasn't experienced love, the song can not "embody" the feeling. Therefore people listening to it could not take or "feel" the song seriously. At the time I couldn't come up with any good counter-arguments, but later I did.

I think, that the feeling is not in the song - the feeling is in the person listening to it. The person who composes a song simply uses it to mirror his/her feelings, and it only fully works for the composer (the way that he/she meant it, anyway). The song itself is only a careful request to "feel this, please".

Let's try a hypothetical scenario. Say, there is a song, that is SO bad, that no one can even remotely like it. The worst song imaginable. Ever. What if that song, somehow, gets played on a small local radio station, just once. And during that one time it gets played, a teenage girl is kissing for the first time. With the song playing in the background.

I'd say it is a safe bet to claim that the song has now become special to her. She still might not "like" the song, but every time she listens to it, it gives her a certain feeling. The song has become a part of the soundtrack of her life.

For this reason, I think that it doesn't matter why or how a song is made. It still might be awesome and/or important to somebody. And because there's so many of us here, it probably is. Of course, if a songwriter wants to compose a "timeless classic", it helps to be sincere, but I'm just trying to make a point here.

Fuck it, I'm going back to sleep.

The Kroisos - Panda Eyes -LP

2009-06-05T17:42:00.017+03:00

It's been nearly 4 months since I have written anything here. There's been a lot of stuff going on lately, and I have been too busy to update this blog. I've been sick and... and... nah, the hell with it. You got me, I'm just lazy. Even now I'm writing this just to escape from some other, less intriguing duties.

Anyway, let's get to business. Perhaps I'll write something about The Kroisos -album that I was working on earlier... I believe I mentioned it in a previous post.

We got the album finished a couple of months ago and it was just released by Osasto-A Records through Playground Music Scandinavia. It's called "Panda Eyes" (referring to black eye bags... I think that the "correct" choice of words is "raccoon eyes", but we thought that a panda bear has more character :) and it features 11 tracks of catchy pop/rock.

Here's the tracklist and the cover:

On The Road Of The Hero - 3:19
Panda Eyes - 3:39
Frozen Hearts - 2:49
NLC - 3:08
Someone To Hold On - 3:36
Could You Turn Me On? - 3:02
Look At Me Now - 2:56
Every Day Is Monday (Without You) - 3:39
Messalina - 2:57
Love Song - 3:58
Kill My Hope Today - 3:50

The first single "Someone To Hold On" got on the official Finnish download chart and stayed there for some time. Not much to brag about, but I think it's cool that my first "real" production is getting some visibility.

I am responsible for most of the arrangements (along with the band, of course) and I also helped with the lyrics. I even got to co-wrote the 2nd track, "Panda Eyes" (the chorus melody is my work and most of the lyrics too).

Making this album was a long and hard process. I made a lot of mistakes but hopefully also learned from them. For example the timetables got screwed up pretty well...

We started recording with no deadlines what so ever and the only goal was to make the record as good as possible. At some point, the record company was introduced to the mix, and suddenly we were in a hell of a hurry. I worked 24/7 for weeks, and finally, on the second week of mixing/synth programming I got really sick and couldn't be there to finish the album.

I had only finished 4 tracks (Panda Eyes, Someone To Hold On, NLC and Messalina) before having to give it up. This wouldn't have been a problem if the arrangements had been somewhere e.g. as MIDI, but unfortunately all the synthesizers, FX etc. were only in my head. And I was too sick to work.

I called a colleague to fill in for me, and he and my boss got everything done on time. Of course, the remaining songs turned out different than I had planned, but under the circumstances they did a very good job. Overall the album came out pretty well.

I've got a lot to learn of this business, but I'm learning all the time. I just try to remember to listen more than I talk and stay as humble as possible... I mean, I try ;)

Currently I'm working with Decended, a young metal band from Joensuu. We're making a promotional package including 2 songs, graphics, band pics etc., the whole nine yards. It's my thesis, so I am putting a little bit of extra effort into it.

Tony Turunen, Nightwish's ex-vocalist Tarja Turunen's brother, joined the band a while ago as the lead singer. Decended just published a new song called "Rock 'til The Dawn" with Tony on the vocals. You can check it out on their MySpace page (the other songs are from the earlier EP and do not feature Tony). If you dig it, please follow the instructions on the page and vote for them to give them a chance to rock out with Nightwish in Olavinlinna!

That's all for now, see ya!

Sonic Chronology

2009-02-12T12:53:00.023+02:00

Hi there. Again.

I was pondering for quite a while what should be my first actual post. Couldn't think of anything interesting. Sure, I've got a session going on at the studio, but I don't want to start babbling about something that's been going on for months now. Hell, I can't even remember all the stuff we've done so far!

So. Because I am an unimaginative bastard, I'll just do what my friend Harry did - a musical chronology of myself (sorry D fast, this will be the last time I'll rip you off. Honestly.).

OK, here we go:

1985: Year of birth. Born 02/09 to a non-musical family in Joensuu, a medium sized town in eastern Finland.

1992: 1st grade of elementary school. The city conducted a test, which was designed to measure children's musicality. My score was so poor, that they said I might even have problems learning to read...

1996: 5th grade. I joined the school's band club. Started out as a drummer. Later that same year I started taking drum lessons at a local hobby center.

1997: My first gig. We played some Eppu Normaali (an old Finnish rock band) -covers at our school's gym hall and got detention for playing a drinking song called Baarikärpänen (Bar Fly).

1998: Junior High School. Kept on messing with the drums in the School's music class.

1999: Attended the entry exams of a local conservatory. A part of them was a certain musicality test - the same one I had flunked back in 1992. This time I scored 100/100.

2000: This was an important year for me. I switched my hobby center drum lessons to the conservatory ones and started studying music theory. I started hanging out at the local youth center with some metalheads from the school. I got my first electric guitar, and got introduced to Impulse Tracker, which lead to my first compositions.

2001: The summer of 2001. Good times. Went to a band camp and joined my first real, serious band, which at the time was called "Sacred Wound" (the name referred to a story from the dark ages in which Satan cut off women's penises before they were born, thus creating the female genitalia. Don't you just love ye olde Christianity?). I got my first drum set (which I still own) and in the fall we started practicing in the youth center and playing gigs. Also started high school this year.

2002: In the beginning of the summer we got a new place to practice. I've heard that the place has been used by many bands since the 80's, including the Finnish rock pioneers Hassisen Kone. I played drums to an EP for a hard core -band called HC_lihamylly (HC Meat Mincer). The EP was called Teurastamosivilisaatio (Slaughterhouse Civilization) - damn that sounds cool in English, I never thought of it :) Our band changed it's name to "Reflective" and continued playing gigs. We tried to record our own demo, but it didn't go very well. We finished only one song, and it never got released. Only after 6 months of practicing we got kicked out of our new training place. A fire-inspector had visited there (the first time in 20 years) and he ordered everyone to get the hell out of there. All 5 bands were forced to leave.

2003: Yet again, a great summer! After the winter without a place to practice we rented an old bomb shelter (I still run that place, and during the years it has been used by numerous bands, including Inso mnium and Discard). Reflective got a new singer and we finally got our first demo recorded, which was given the name "Erasing Memory". It was recorded at our high school studio by Veli-Pekka "Ogre" Kuronen. It was during these sessions, that Ogre gave me the nick-name "Hermo" (Nerve). I still sometimes use it, as a sort of a producer alter ego (easier to remember, I think.). This was also the year I stopped going to the conservatory, because I was busy finishing high school.

2004: High school ends. Reflective works on new songs, but after our guitarist leaves for his 6 month visit in the Finnish Defense Forces, activity slows down. I start playing guitar in a death/thrash metal -band called Mutilation Nation aka MuNa (Cock, in English), which releases one 3-track demo called "Bodypart Penetrator". During the fall I work as a band coatch in the same youth center we used to practice our selves.

2005: My turn to visit the army. The longest 6 months of my life, so far at least. MuNa plays one gig and slowly disbands. I start playing drums for a friend's band called Crystar, but only as a session musician. In the fall I move out of Joensuu to start my music business/audio engineering studies at Pirkanmaa Polytechnic. Practicing with Reflective gets really hard, and we decide to call it quits after a 2nd demo. I play drums for Crystar's demo, but after all vocal tracks vanish into the bit space, it never gets finished. Drum recordings for Reflective's second demo start in December and go fairly well.

2006: Reflective's "Ghost Logic" is finished in the fall, and the band finally gets buried. Gigs at an indoor festival in Russia and at the releasing concert of Nightwish's "Once" in Kitee remain as the bands greatest achievements. Our class arranges the gig of Maj Karma and The Cyan Velvet Project at Pakkahuone, Tampere. I start working with an 80's metal -band of my own, but it never finds a good enough singer.

2007: I work the whole summer as practical trainee in Studio 33, a small recording studio in Kuopio. We do a couple of demos, Shade Empire's Zero Nexus -LP and some live gigs, including the 3rd stage at Ilosaarirock '06. I start my first production, a demo EP for a young power metal -band from Joensuu called Decended.

2008: Decended's "Trough The Valleys Of Hate" -EP is finished, and it gives the band somewhat of a boost. I return to Studio 33 in June, not anymore just as a trainee, this time. I record, mix and master Raven Claw's "Orders Of Helljester: Cyanide Edit" -demo. I also work with Road Ravens and do a couple of radio ads. I start producing an LP for Kroisos (a Finnish pop/rock -band) with my boss, Kimmo Hämäläinen.

2009: Working with Kroisos' LP continues.

That's about it. I might have remembered some dates wrong, but I'm pretty sure it's accurate enough. Maybe next time I'll have something to write about the present.

Until the next time, bye!

Introduction

2009-02-11T21:49:00.005+02:00

Hi there.

Damn. This is harder than I thought it would be. But maybe it's just the start. Today I found out through facebook that one of my good old study-buddies had started a blog here. I figured that it might be an interesting thing for me to do as well. So here I am.

Surprisingly enough, I'll probably be using this blog to do almost exactly the same as Harry. As I mentioned, we went to school together and have the same profession. We're both fresh-out-of-the-oven music producers (OK, we don't have the papers yet, but we will, soon...), and this blog will be dedicated to giving you, the readers, a glimpse at my personal pursuit of excellence in the field of music. Sure, there might be some things about me in general as well, but I'll try to keep professional, at least for the most of it.

So bare with me, if you please.