Kekkonen elää! #4 Joakim Berghäll & Aki Rissanen - "Bamboozle!" live at Studio Kekkonen

New year, new Kekkonen elää! session! Happy 2014 to everybody from us at Studio Kekkonen and our associates Soundtools and Luomustudio.

Kekkonen elää! #4

Joakim Berghäll & Aki Rissanen: Bamboozle!

This time we're proud to present you another jazz duet session, this time the fantastic saxophonist Joakim Berghäll and someone you know from our previous session, great pianist and keyboardist Aki Rissanen! The duet was - conveniently for all! - recorded on the same day as the Verneri Pohjola & Aki Rissanen session. 

The duo collaborated on Joakim's Dialogues I album (released in september last year, it's first in a series of duet albums) on the track "Bamboozle!" which they also perform here, although with a slightly different choice of instruments: Joakim plays baritone sax instead of the alto. Also, on the album Aki plays grand piano.

Enjoy!



www.studiokekkonen.com
www.joakimberghall.com
www.akirissanen.com

Performed by Joakim Berghäll & Aki Rissanen
Written by Joakim Berghäll

Recorded by Mikko Raita & Julius Mauranen
Mixed by Mikko Raita
Video by Luomustudio
In association with Soundtools

ABOUT THE RECORDING


The performance was pretty relaxed, Joakim & Aki laid down a couple of takes and chose their favourite. As this was a duet with only a single instrument each and no multitasking, it was a focused and concise session.

The setup was very similar to Verneri's & Aki's session (watch and read more about it here), as a matter of fact the piano setup was identical: A-B pair of Neumann CMV-563's in the back, a pair of AT4081 ribbon mics in the front side aiming at the hammers and a pair of workhorse SM-57's very close to the body of the piano in the back. Neumanns and AT's went through Knif Audio V804 mic preamps of which we have two at the studio.

Joakim's baritone sax was miked with our vintage crown jewel Neumann U48 just above the bell and a supplementary side mic (Audio-Technica 4047) to pick up some more body.

There were a pair of ambience mics: AKG C414 XLS behind Joakim and Line Audio CM3's facing away from the piano (see pictures!).

ABOUT THE MIXING OF "BAMBOOZLE!" (by Mikko)



The mix here is quite similar to the one we already documented earlier about mixing “Hyperballad”, recorded the same day and with the same piano recording, and again with wonderful world class musicians just doing their thing.



I actually started the mix by importing some mixer settings from the “Hyperballad” session, though obviously it had to be tweaked to work here where the whole arrangement is just the piano and sax. I kept the same master section (Vintagedesign SU-1, McDsp AC-1, Waves SSL, parallel DUY DaD Tape & L2007) as well as moderate HEAT processing.



For the piano, I had to tone tone down the large low end boost I had created for the prepared low end on Hyperballad for a more natural upright sound, though in the end Aki ended up requesting slightly more low end hype - their album version was recorded with a quality grand piano after all!

 To sweeten things I again used a hint of my EMT 140 Plate and Valhalladsp’s ValhallaVintageVerb, as well as some room mics. Here I ended up favoring the 414’s behind the sax despite having the more piano-centric Line Audios available as well - the 414's just had a nice combined room tone.

 Due to the full acoustic nature of this track I ended up dropping the KNIF Vari-Mu parallel compression I had on the piano in the previous mix, though I did keep slight group compression on it from the Masssey CT5.



For Joakim's baritone, I ended up using both mics with the low side mic -10db, from which I also cut some low mids to make it less boomy. I then grouped these and added very mild compression with both the Massey CT5 (actually added already during recording) and a Softube TLA-100A, as well as just tiny midrange dips in the 750 and 1900 Hz ranges. To “top” things off I added a few dBs at 10k on the Softube Trident A-Range.



For spatial effects I again used the prerecorded Stocktronics plate but also added some EMT 140 Plate as well as Softube TSAR & ValhallaVintageVerb, both at a darkish setting and hovering around the 2,5-3s range. I also used the “1970s” color preset on the Valhalla.



From there, it was just a matter of balancing the 2 instruments with very small rides, mostly to get the end of the piano solo and the transition to the sax solo to really gel. I wish all mixes were this simple and enjoyable!

Kekkonen elää! #3 Verneri Pohjola & Aki Rissanen - "Hyperballad" live at Studio Kekkonen

We (Studio Kekkonen with our associates Soundtools and Luomustudio) are proud and excited to present you the beginning of "Season 2" of our live series Kekkonen Elää!

Kekkonen elää! #3

Verneri Pohjola & Aki Rissanen: Hyperballad

Extraordinary Finnish trumpet player Verneri Pohjola and equally extraordinary pianist and keyboardist Aki Rissanen are no strangers at our studio: Mikko has worked with both on numerous occasions, with Verneri starting way back in 2005 with the second Quintessence album "5 AM" and since then on a fairly regular basis. Curiously enough, Julius recorded Verneri even further back in 1993 in one of his earliest studio experiences, though the recording (un)fortunately doesn't exist any longer!
Verneri Pohjola's latest album "Ancient History", featuring Aki Rissanen as pianist was recorded and mixed by Mikko and released in 2012 on the ACT label.

The track the duo chose to perform is Björk's "Hyperballad" which is also featured on the aforementioned album.




www.studiokekkonen.com
www.verneripohjola.com
www.akirissanen.com
Performed by Verneri Pohjola & Aki Rissanen
Written by Björk, Nellee Hooper & Marius De Vries

Recorded by Mikko Raita & Julius Mauranen
Mixed by Mikko Raita
Video by www.luomustudio.fi
In association with www.soundtools.fi

ABOUT THE RECORDING

As jazz musicians generally feel most comfortable playing in the same space and leakage was not an overwhelming issue with trumpet and piano, we decided to record in the lounge. It's naturally quite a live-souding space so we damped the room with heavy curtains and a rug from our live room. After the initial setup of the room was done, it was time for some miking (and DI'ing!). Mikko - who was first-in-command of the session - presented what he had in mind for the recording and we set it up all together. Once everything was up and running, Verneri and Aki laid down three takes and picked the last one to be the keeper. Sounds easy, eh!

Verneri's trumpet was picked up with an Audio-Technica AT4081 ribbon mic (through our MS Audiotron desk) which he uses both live and in the studio and - conveniently for us - brought along his own. There was a looper pedal involved in the equation with a send from the control room that took a little while to set up, but during the keeper take it was not used. The performance is obviously largely improvised so there's always a chance that things can (and will!) change. It's an organic process by nature and the technology is there to make it happen, not dictate the rules. So no looper this time, folks!

Our Yamaha U3 upright piano was miked with three stereo pairs: Vintage Neumann CMV-563's in an AB formation in the back, a pair of the very same AT4081's as with the trumpet (provided by Soundtools) in front of the hammers to pick up the attack of it and a pair of the humble-yet-legendary Shure SM57's (AB as well) right in the back of the piano to pick up some body (this actually works like a charm). The Neumanns and Audio-Technicas had Knif Audio V804's for preamps and the 57's had Rantanen SSL clone pres.

There were two pairs of ambience mics: a main pair of AKG C414's (in omni) plus an extra pair (convenient little Line Audio CM3's) behind the piano, facing away from it to pick up some room ambience as the main ambience pair was a bit trumpet heavy.

Aside from the piano, Aki had a Micromoog for bass sounds that's been slightly modified to increase the filter range to the same as the Minimoog. The bottom end is indeed impressive. He also had a Native Instruments Kore 2 software with the controller as a platform for soft synths: the Reaktor GoBox drum machine with effects that he tweaks during the performance and Steampipe 2 with a layer of the FM8 synth. The synth is played with the tiny Akai LPK-25, which fits absolutely anywhere!

Verneri triggered sounds from his laptop using Ableton Live with the Push controller - the thing with all the nice blinking lights that's actually a pretty powerful music-making tool! Verneri got this from Soundtools a few days prior to the session to get used to it.

To pick up the electronic elements we had a pile of DI's (BSS and BBE's we got from Soundtools).

ABOUT THE MIX (from Mikko)

Mixing of Aki’s and Verneri’s duo performance was quite a straightforward affair.

I opened the tracks of the session up into my “mixer” which is in fact a ProTools template that incorporates a hybrid in-the-box/analog master section as well as a collection of my most used effects as a ready-to-go virtual rack. It also has interfacing for my analog equipment.

The sound of the master section is quite important for me to get things to gel and make it “like a record” - I have a few different setups I pick depending on the project but here I went for the Vintagedesign SU1 Neve- style summing amp pushed quite hard, in addition to some additional mix buss push from a McDsp Analog Channel 1. 

The whole mix buss was compressed gently vith a Waves SSL “quad” compressor which I have found quite faithful to the original. I used some additional “analog modeling” in the form of DUY’s DaD Tape, mixed just slightly in via parallel routing (it is a quite drastic effect if not done like this).

I also added Avid’s own HEAT processing to the inputs of all audio tracks, with moderate/bright settings. I then finalized the master section with a Massey L2007 lookahead limiter with a conservative setting to apply mild limiting/normalization as this track was not going to be mastered separately.

For piano, I ended up using a mix of all of the mics, with the CMV/ribbon combo most prominent and a hint of the dynamic body mics and the “piano ambience”. I applied slight group compression via a Massey CT5 and used HOFA’s IQ-EQ V3 dynamic EQ to soften up the midrange. I also ended up with a quite liberal 6db or so EQ boost with Avid’s own EQ in the low end to emphasize the prepared piano bass sounds - here I needed to jump a few hoops to make the low end slightly more “grand piano-like” but the end result worked nicely.

I also added some parallel compression from my beautiful Knif Audio Vari-Mu compressor (Serial number #002!), as well as reverb from my beloved EMT 140 plate reverb as well as Valhalladsp’s ValhallaVintageVerb.

Aki’s Micromoog bass synth went almost unprocessed, save just a hint of added high mid Avid EQ.

For Aki’s laptop, I ended automating some low and high EQ bands as well as using a bit of Waves’ C4 multiband compression, as all of Aki’s virtual instruments were premixed to 2 channels and I wanted to emphasize certain elements at key spots, otherwise it was left untreated with just some volume automation.

For Verneri’s trumpet I used slightly more processing even though his source sound in combination with the AT ribbon mic is already very, very good. I added just a tiny bit of saturation and crunch via Soundtoys’ Devil-Loc Deluxe, and again used Massey’s CT5 for slight leveling as well as a mild HOFA IQ-EQ V3 dynamic midrange cut, topping it off with some high end boost from Softube’s Trident A-range EQ as well as some more high end and mid tidying via Avid’s own EQ.

For reverbs and delays, I had a prerecorded track from control room 2’s (Juppu’s and Janne’s) Stocktronic plate, but I used that just a bit because it was obviously pre-mix processing - due to my mix compression it ended up as a nice touch where it gets comparatively more loud when Verneri plays louder. But for the majority of spatial effects I again went for a combination of the EMT 140 plate as well as the ValhallaVintageVerb, adding a custom-made TL Space “stereo spring reverb” impulse I often use (Especially if control room 2’s Knif "K.Verb" Spring Reverb is not readily available which was the case here), topping it off with a hint of tape-like delay from Sountoys’ Echoboy.

After a few hours of mixing, and some passess of volume automation (also via my trusty ICON D-Command) I sent a version to Verneri and Aki who suggested a few minor balance tweaks to Aki’s laptop track, and after seeing the edited video we adjusted a few more balances but all in all, it was a quite swift mix despite some of the “tricks” employed.

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