Olavi Uusivirta: Elvis Istuu Oikealla

To celebrate the release of Olavi Uusivirta's new album "Elvis Istuu Oikealla" - produced, recorded and mixed by Julius Mauranen (me) right here at Studio Kekkonen - here's a little Making of-video of a few select tracks. You will notice something in common with some of the clips...

Enjoy!




More videos of the making can be found here and here...

Oh, the album has just been chosen "Record of the week" at YleX and has received a very warm welcome indeed from the press (for which both Olavi and the increasingly tired-looking character in the video are very grateful for indeed), here's a little round-up:

Helsingin Sanomat
Rumba
NRGM
Voima
Lily / Kuuntelija
KSML
Sounds of unknown


And for my part, thanks to Olavi and everybody who was involved in the making of the record. That would be Jiri-serkku, Jaakko M., Jaakko K., Olli, Kiiski, Juho, Janne, Tero, Pauli, Risto, Noora, Timo, Suvi, Saara, Paula, Joel, Riku, Sami and Vesi.

Thank you. You were wondeful.

Julius

A look at 2011... And next live session coming up!

Firstly, apologies for such a terribly long silence, there has been a lot of stuff going on and the blog has been sadly neglected! This will not be the case for long, as there's some cool stuff about to happen!

So the breaking news: Part two of our Kekkonen elää! - Live at Studio Kekkonen series is going to be recorded next week! And the artist performing will be the one and only SUVI ISOTALO! We're super excited about it!

As most end-of-year lists and similar have been released ages ago, we thought we'd join the party a little late and sum up the Year of the Rabbit by looking at what we've worked on in 2011. It's been a wild year with a lot of turbulence in the recording industry and life in general, but once again - a lot fantastic music has been made within these walls!

2011 - One hell of a year! 
(And one hell of a long blog entry)

So here's what we were up to last year, in roughly chronological order:

Julius finished work on Matti Johannes Koivu's highly acclaimed and successful album "Toisen Maailman Nimi". Most of the work had been completed in December 2010, but the finishing touches were given in January. That was a fun project! And intense!
(Matti of course visited us in October for an exclusive live session as you probably remember and if not, check it out here!)

Matti-Johannes Koivu - 80-luvun lapset

Mikko started recording the vocals and some instrumental overdubs for Leningrad Cowboys’ “Buena Vodka Social Club” which would continue on and off for the remainder of the spring with super talented vocalist Ville Tuomi and producer/multi-instrumentalist Marzi Nyman, as well as continuing work on recording the superb Mimmit album “Maailman ympäri”, a world tour of ethnic/fusion acoustic music aimed for kids. Mikko was also busy teaching a music recording course at the Theatre Academy Helsinki for sound design students, including a 2-day live recording session for the superb free exploration group Ma-A trio (Jone Takamäki, Otzir Godot and Tuomas Rounakari)

Mimmit - Panda

Janne was also working hard producing, recording and mixing the second Vesterinen Yhtyeineen album "Erikoismiehen jäähyväiset" (with Julius helping out engineering the band sessions) which was released in May. There's a slight case of déja vu here, as the calendar for January and February 2012 got filled with bookings for Vesterinen...

Janne was also asked to collaborate with Akukon Oy - the biggest acoustic consulting company in Finland. He was part of the design team (with Henrik Möller and Anssi Ruusuvuori) and an acoustical project manager, working on Logomo - a new multipurpose concert hall in Turku.

In February (cross-musical pun intended, even if you didn't think) Julius mixed Cykles' self-titled debut album, which was a blast. I hope the record didn't pass unnoticed, cause it's a great one. Read what NRGM thought of it in their review of the album. We did a rather unusual mastering road trip with Ilkka, the singer of the band to go see Jaakko Viitalähde and his Virtalähde Mastering at his new HQ in Kuhmoinen (yes, it's far away, but a lovely place).

Cykles - Car Crash Daydream

In March Mikko mixed the upcoming album for Reversion, good old hard hitting progressive metal! Svante Forsbäck from Chartmakers did a superb job on an agressive master, look forward to that one, slightly delayed but coming! Oh, and in March Svante also did a great job on mastering My First Band’s “Mercury & Glitter”, mixed by Mikko in late 2010. Mikko also continued work with LC & Mimmit, also doing music post work throughout the year for the kid’s TV series “Mimmikoto” hosted by Pauliina and Hansu from the band on MTV3 Juniori.

My First Band - Baby You're Too Young (I Wanna Make Love To Your Mama)

Later in the spring Anssi Kela set to record a song collaboratively with a group of people over the internet, a project called "Biisirinki" and Julius ended up recording both Anssi's and the duet's second half Yona's vocals and mixing the parts submitted by the participants. It was a fun little project to do! Anssi reported the project pretty well in his own blog where I (Julius) babbled a bit about my part too.

In early spring, Aves dropped by to mix "You, Lucid" (that was widely noticed by the music blogging community). The release of the track happened around the same time we started this very blog.

Somehow in the midst of all these things Julius managed to find time to mix Wiidakko's "comeback" album, simply titled "Wiidakko". The first single "Seis seis seis" was released in the spring and Fresh Tunes Finland put out the album in December with "Odessa" as the second single.

Wiidakko - Odessa

In April, Mikko recorded and worked on the backing for the "live band rock” played by the actors for the upcoming feature film “Miss Farkku-Suomi”, based on the book by Kauko Röyhkä and featuring his classic songs. The session was supervised by the great Riku Mattila who had also played on the originals, a fun session! Mikko also mixed and recorded overdubs for Big Blue’s self titled debut, released worldwide on the prestigious Italian Cam Jazz label. Nordic jazz at it’s finest!

Big Blue - Mini-Male

Later in the spring, Mikko finalized the mixes on the Mimmit album and TV series and mixed a beautiful album he had recorded earlier, “Cathedral” by finnish Jazz Emma-award winners Oddarang, released in Finland and the UK by Texicalli & Edition Records.



Suvi Isotalo's second album "P.S. Maj'lle" already got a lenghty blog post of its own, but it was another great Julius project, so worth mentioning another time! And obviously, as mentioned, Suvi will do a session with us!

Early in the summer, Julius visited Mankku with Hope Comes in Many Forms, a great band who will release their debut album in the spring or summer of 2012!

Delay Trees released a new (fantastic!) self-released EP titled "Before I Go Go" as a free digital download and limited cassette edition (this would be a spot for another pun) in the summer. Julius mixed it, naturally!

The mixing of Black Twig's debut album "Paper Trees" was definitely another highlight of the year for Julius. The album was produced by our friend Nick Triani, recorded by Kia-Sofia Ryhänen and Nick and sees the light of day on Nick's fairly newly set up Soliti label, by far the most interesting record label in Finland at the moment. The record came out 11.1.2012! Go buy it, now! It's great!

In the fall, Mikko had one of his most enjoyable sessions ever with the recording and mixing of Verneri Pohjola Quartet’s “Ancient History”. Motto of the session: “Jazz-Narnia” - released worldwide on the German ACT music label. He also got to record and mix the Emma Salokoski Ensemble track “Kuiva Maa” that was featured in the TV song competition “Syksyn Sävel”, documented in the blog earlier.

Mikko also recorded and mixed a part improv soundtrack by the great Pekka Kuusisto for a video advert for the Finland Festivals organization and mixed Arja Koriseva’s classy christmas album “Rakkaudesta Jouluun”, as well as tracking a rendition of “La Cumparsita” with Olavi Uusivirta to serve as the theme song for the Canadian documentary “Under the Red Star” by Shebafilms. He also held a mixing workshop for the talented people at Nokia’s sound design team. B2B!

Our friend Kimmo Antikainen also visited Mikko's Control Room to mix the album "En vielä tahtoisi nöyrtyä" by the cabaret band Kitkerät Neitsyet.

Julius crammed in a small mixing project for a yet to be launched Japanese group with producer Yoshio Tamamura. Also, mixing for the upcoming Suvi Koivu album began late in the autumn! Mikko also started yet to be unreleased mixing projects with the very talented "Voice of Denmark" competitor Bjarne Langhoff and the amazing duo Eva & Manu.

The remainder of the year Julius has spent on producing and recording Olavi Uusivirta's fifth album, also documented here. Pre-production and recording happened between September and New year, mixing was completed in early February. It's definitely one of the best projects... Ever? Quite likely. The album will see the light of day in March, so be prepared for something very cool!

Oh, and although Janne was extremely busy most of the year with the Logomo project traveling between Turku and Helsinki, he also designed quite a few nice studios: Rähinä records’ studios, Atomic Spa, Das Båt, AV-studios for Jyväskylä University and Heltech, a radio studio for GBMM, a functional workroom/studio for Timo Kämäräinen, few home theatres, a film studio for Janne Jankeri, modifications for HIP studios and Promix recording studio in Azerbaitsan, Baku.

And of course, our assistant Kia-Sofia Ryhänen was helping out with Vesterinen Yhtyeineen, Hope Comes in Many Forms and Olavi Uusivirta band sessions as well as recording the forthcoming Kiki Pau release!

Olavi Uusivirta album in the making + thoughts about freelance engineers

As some of you may have noticed, I've been keeping myself extremely busy producing and engineering Olavi Uusivirta's forthcoming fifth album.

So far (and looks like this is unlikely to change [touches wood]) it has been a thoroughly enjoyable and otherwise fantastic project. Olavi and I have worked together in the past: on Soma albums and his own first two albums where I've done a little engineering plus featuring on the debut album (recorded, mixed and co-produced by our very own Mikko Raita) with - believe or not - my thighs. I'll tell that story another time. Back to the album!

I won't go into any details on what kind of an album we're making or any of that stuff. I think writing about it during the process is a bit silly - cause we as the makers of the album really only know what kind of an album we're making after it's finished. Also, it gives people some sort of a preconception on what they will hear, but I hate to say that it's usually completely distorted and weird. Fellow artists, producers and musicians can't really get a good picture of the record if they're given only a verbal or written description and for the layperson (whatever that means) it can be seriously misleading and even harmful.

So let's say we're really excited about the album, it's going to be fantastic and we're working our skinny arses off to make it fantastic!

Well, this wouldn't be a proper teaser if I just wrote that "I have a secret, but I'm not telling you". That'd be a bit unfair. So I give you a little snippet of one of our working days. This was not recorded at Studio Kekkonen (as you can see), but at Finnvox where we were recording grand piano for a day.

The video is shot by Olavi himself and portrays the almighty Jiri-serkku (better known as Jiri Kuronen) performing a piano track, which in fact is a keeper. One can spot yours truly producing the track by waving my arms around in a very producery way (that's what is taught in audio engineering schools: hand signals), but my part of the dialogue is cut, which IMHO makes it a much better teaser!



For the recording geeks: The piano was recorded with two Neumann FET U47's near the hammers (for some attack to cut through in the final mix), two DPA 4011's outside the instrument for a more natural sound and two Beyerdynamic 160 ribbon mics - this was a mono setup for another track. Also, I had a pair of DPA 4006's as ambience mics. The ambience mics went through the SSL AWS900 preamps and the other mics went through AMS Neve 1081 pres with some EQ. I tried the UREI 1178 compressor on the close up mics, but decided to rather compress the piano in the mix as one instrument (i.e. all the mics grouped together) rather than compress a single pair of mics. So no compression was used.

This trip to Finnvox reminded me of the old days, before we had our own studio. Back then, a mere few years ago, there was a legion (OK, not that many, but a whole bunch) of freelance recording and mixing engineers who hovered from one studio to the other depending on their personal tastes and availability of the studios. Most of us had preferences over what to use, but generally we worked in a variety of "big" studios: Finnvox, Sountrack (now turned E-Studio), Petrax, Sonic Pump, Seawolf, Mango (now turned Mankku) and HIP. I may have forgotten some. Before we entered the recording industry, this was normal practise, but additionally a lot of engineers had actual permanent jobs as staff engineers in studios (very few have that nowadays). Anyway, engineers were freelancing and the big studios were happy as they had a clientele who block-booked the studios for weeks. We as the freelancers were happy, as we had no debts to pay and studio rents to pay.

All that has changed now.

In 2005 when we started building our studio, there were signs of a lot of engineers building their own studios or developing close bonds to one big studio, doing practically all their work there. At some point, in 2008 or so, I kept hearing the big studio owners saying "Business is kinda ok, but it's more and more short projects and no block bookings and by the way, why have we not seen you here for the last two years?". That kept becoming more and more common and in 2010 we and some of our closest colleagues and friends thought of all practising proffessional recording and mixing engineers we could think of (there's not THAT many and we know practically all of them) and came to the conclusion that there were only two or three real freelancers left. Everybody else had built their own little place or exclusively used one studio. The big studios were and are still used regularily for large sessions with whole bands, or just drum sessions, grand piano, string ensemble or other session requiring a large space with good monitoring options, some special instruments (such as Hammond organ or grand piano) and a large collection of mics. But usually this is for only a coulple of days, maybe a week. After that, the project is moved to a smaller place, typically the producer's or the engineer's studio. Or rehearsal room. Or home.

Obviously, there are many reasons for this development: record sales are declining, so budgets are smaller. The amount of work for any given album has stayed constant, so work has to be moved to more affordable places. This is a no-brainer. At the same time, more people have made investments to build their own studios - just like we did. And when done right it's really not cheap, I can assure you. So either the studios are insufficient in quality (which results to poor-sounding records) or the owners have to take a big risk by investing a lot of money on the building.

So to be able to make records and make a living out of it, the producer/engineer (a very common combo these days) has to jump through some hoops to make the budget work in order to pay his bills. But to maintain high quality, this means expenses.

Bummer.

I could go on and on with this, but I want to conclude it by saying that I love having my own studio. It's an absolutely fantastic place and it's set up exactly how I want it to be. By having built it, ran it for five years, developed it to what it's become, I've also developed myself professionally to a completely new level and will continue to do so. I wouldn't change anything about that.

At the same time, I kinda miss my freelancing days, when I didn't have to worry when to switch to a new version of ProTools or when do we have enough downtime to do costly maintenance or who's turn is it to go to the wholesaler to buy coffee and toilet paper and where are all my receipts for the accountant and how much did that cost again? Those times when I worked at Soundtrack for a week and then at HIP for two weeks. Meeting colleagues in the lounge of Finnvox.

Ahh, the good old days.

OK, OK, I'm not YET old enough to really say that and feel entirely credible.

A lot of the stuff I miss from those days has to do with the element of change - which I find can be an inspiring and powerful thing. It can also be really annoying as it brings an element of (bad) randomness along with it. I'm talking about "Hey, where's that compressor that was here last month?" or "How was the patchbay wired here again?" or "Is there too much bass in my mix, or is it this room?" not to talk about "What was the security code in this studio again?".

In the end, the fact is that those days are gone and aren't coming back and that's OK too. I'm really content with the way things are, as said before, I love our studio, it's a fantastic place and I wouldn't go back if I could. But I do wonder sometimes how the new breed of engineers are going to learn to appreciate the notion of sonic quality over budgetary constraints and the idea of limited but sufficient studio time. In my part-time stint as a teacher of microphone techniques, mixing and ProTools trickery at Metropolia University of Applied Sciences I try to pass on the general idea and I'm sure that as long as there are ambitious aspiring engineers, there will be truly ambitious work done in the narrow field of recording and mixing music.

Julius