MNEMIC - CHECK IN WITH 2nd STUDIO BLOG: GUITARS

After a week of recording drums at the Antfarm studios, we moved back into our own studio.

This week we are starting recording the guitars. For this process we have tried out some heads and some different cabs. Apparently it was all in the cabs. We are using 3 different cabs, and actually one of them is the first Marshall cabinet that i bought when i was 17 years old. We even tried Line 6 cabs, but they have this canned sound (yes, they sound like shit), compared to the Marshall, they didnt stand a chance. Randall cabinets sounded pretty good too, but in the end we ended up using one Randall cabinet and 2 different Marshall cabs. Its weird considering that the same units are to be found in both cabs (or maybe all? i dunno).

I have never been a sucker for gear, well at least not when we started the band, i always found it boring, but thats how it is when you are young, naive and like to party and have tits and ass on your mind 24/7. My point is that i learned the hard way about gear over the years, bad sounding shows forced me to look more and more into my gear. I always loved Machine Heads sound, and after playing with them a couple of times, i got into their gear as well. Both guitarists used old 5150s and i never understood how they got this massive sound, untill i asked Rob about it, who solved the mystery by telling me its all in the Tubescreamer… i guess everybody knew that, except for moi – as i said, i never gave a shit about gear, i always fiddled around to whatever sounded good to my ears.

During last year i had the opportunity to buy a 5150, a Tubescreamer and i have never been more happy about an amp or sound – guess what? We are also recording with it. For most of the times we have used Mesa/Boogie, which everybody is using, not that they are sounding bad or anything, but why not try to record with something that you actually can replicate live?

As far as recording the amount of guitars, we are trying different combinations, all in all to make it sound more dynamic. This means, instead of recording with the same amp for an entire song at the time, we are combining 3 different heads for different parts in each song. The majority of the rhythm guitars are recorded by Rune, who is doing a great job. First day nailed 3 songs, and now its my turn to try and fuck things up. We’ll keep you updated – in the meantime, check out some photos.

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Mnemic - Studio Blog No. 2 -Sons of The System

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MNEMIC - CHECK IN WITH 3rd STUDIO BLOG: BASS

So happy we are all done with guitars for 15 songs, its been really heavy, heavy as in sitting hours and hours recording to perfection, listening and being focused. I totally forgot how much work there is when layering track after track, bouncing and listening. 2 years ago we actually got really tiered of spending hours and hours in the rehearsal and made the smart move of investing in studio equippement for everyone in the band, and voila, everyone in the band works with ProTools. We are probably the last band on earth to have done this, but in the end, and as you probably know, it makes the whole process easier, as we can work whenever and wherever we want.

Well, moving on to the bass parts, today we setup some of the new gear we got in from our friends at T.C. Electronic. Again we are trying to go different ways, as we always recorded with Ampeg but now its time to try something else.

We setup both the Ampeg stack along side T.C.’s RebelHead 450 bass amp for comparison, and came quickly to the conclusion that the RH450 had a much more raw but clear sound than the Ampeg. As all digital processor units are trying to emulate tube based amps and analog units in general, we must say the DSP took us by surprise in the RH450. By comparing the two we quickly decided to try out the RH450, and it did give us a more clear sound but a very thick sound, which was satisfactory to record. So we trashed the Ampeg, and we’ll go digital all the way, as for the basslines.

The RH450 is quite cool, it even has a build-in chromatic tuner, the knobs on the interface are the basic tone-controls that every amp has, but the cool thing about it is that they are also semi-parametric, in which its possible to change where the tone-controls grab your bass sound. More importantly, as all digital processor units, it emulates a tube-amp, a nice warm tube sound, and without kissing too much ass to our beloved sponsors, we are actually and honestly quite impressed by this piece of wonderful hardware that we are using for the Sons of The System.

We have begun tracking the first song, this one is called "Climbing Towards Stars," not much to say about it other than its mid-tempo, heavy, and all in F# more or less.. so yes, its heavy. Should Tomas nail 15 songs in 2-3 days, he will definitely come out as a hero.

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