COZHE

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Pressure Fractures: mixing the album





You may understand better the challenges in the mixing: we had about 16 tracks of drums. Harri plays with massive Tama-kit ( or I would say Tama-factory ) and Paiste-cymbals, double bass, 4 small toms, floor tom....4 cymbals with all hi-hats, snare and everything. Dave also used "ambient" type of miking for the drums, and also sub-bass mic for both of the bass drums.

Only mistake, from Harri´s point of view was that he allowed Dave to change the metal snare to wooden one. Even it sounded better "as it self"...It would have been better solution to use the one that Harri was used,  the metal snare would have been more clear-sounding compared to wooden. But that´s sound issue, not so much musical itself. Better luck next time.

Drums had to be spitted into the groups, so that in the final mixing you don´t have to control 16 different tracks but groups like "toms" or "bass drums" or "middle cymbals", challenging but rewarding. Some limiting/gating/compression was used, but I do not want to bother you with the details, standard studio work, you know.

I wanted to have Harri involved into the mixing process, but not before we would have done our base work. So, the guitar tracks were essential for the "basic mixing".

Harri had already in his mind when to "raise" drums, when to soften the beat, etc. Really valuable information, when you start to mix the tracks. Create a goal in you mind, and do it ! I had  lack of ideas for the mixing, so I was basically trusting to Harri and Mac and Joni, some additional keyboard ideas I had in mind, but just a few.

I was now more into the "effect tracks" like the beginning of the "Cave" and arranging the extra voice for the "Intro" and "Pressure Fractures, prt3: Music School "...I called to my friend Heikki Aalto, who has been a long time friend of mine. We knew each other from the childhood piano lessons, we had common music school for many years.

Later, in his maturity, Heikki has been able to evolve into classic music, specialized in opera style as deep baritone. I wanted to have his voice into this recordings, since I knew he would be perfect "voice actor" for the specific roles in the "Pressure Fractures". Of cource I was curious to see how our co-operation would work. I have a lot of ideas where he would be just perfect !

Using Heikki was of cource very special case, normally I would not take any changes into any projects in the last mile. Specially, when it is a question of new people. But everyone accepted this, so it was worth of trying. Well, almost whole month passed. I tried to arrange time for Heikki´s studio session, but unfortunately we had to skip the idea of using him in "Intro". So, I just had to "act" the part of the "ringmaster" at my home studio.

next phase: mixing sessions in the Mac´s studio