Confessions of a Synth Lord

 Synths, day 3 - The End Game:

Kudos to whoever made this. God tier meme.

To be brutally honest arranging synths for Sepulchral Curse have been one of the most difficult tasks I've had in a good while. Not that the songs are overly complicated or progressive in nature, but our band's genre in itself limits the possibilities more than I expected. That, and my personal views and taste on what kind of stuff I'd like to do, conflicting with the following facts. Even though our music sometimes has these looser and somewhat easygoing parts, occasional folky melodies and chord progressions that scream for the Scandinavian melo black metal, our base sound still is downtuned and filthy death metal with guttural vocals ultimately meaning that if I'd play the synths as I wanted without giving a shit about the music itself I would water it all down and ruin the whole product. Of course I'm more than aware my band mates would show me the red light if I was going too much astray but I believe it is my responsibility to aim into an outcome satisfying us all in the first place and leave my ego out of the formula. After all Sepulchral Curse is a band, not a solo project. Even though I'm an antisocial, misanthropic bastard I respect my fellow cursed ones too much, avoiding pissing on their cups deliberately.

While writing this entry I realized we have been around for eight years now, which is just a blink of an eye if you are Black Sabbath but I'd say it is a strong start for a group nonetheless. Anyway, our line-up has been the same since the day one with Aleksi joining us after two years. That kind of stability is something I've never experienced before during my years in band activities and it feels kind of overwhelming in a positive sense. We have had our issues along the way and there will be more as the road progresses but I'm absolutely confident that our group of five will withstand all the pressure there is. There has been times when I've been thinking of ending things and I've even created some horribly difficult situations, that would've granted me a termination if the band was some other than Sepulchral Curse, but here I stand. We all have some faults in us but we cope with them together because,  you see, we are friends and brothers first, band members second. If this band was just another job or a mere project to begin with, our story would have already ended methinks. In the end I feel that we are bonded, spiritually linked to each other and if those ties were to shatter Sepulchral Curse would cease to exist in a split second, no questions asked. But as long as we stay true to ourselves and to each other, we endure and those who stand on our way will get fucked.

It seems that I proved myself incorrect considering a statement I made some time ago and I dare to say that sometimes it feels good to be wrong.

So... what about the synths? Well, check the picture the below. It's more than enough to tell what I did with the last song.

"Lucifer with the Syndicate on His side!"

The percussions to ruin your day with:

So, after the original studio sessions I spent a noticable amount of time and effort to plan and write a fair measure of percussion arrangements to our songs. Some additional floor toms here, some cymbal stack patterns there, maybe even some rattle of bones somewhere (sorry Clown, no beer kegs). Oh, yeah, it's all coming together now. As my next step I built a recording booth as well as I could with my low level home budget by hanging blankets and sheets around the ceiling, book shelves and door frames in the studio. The DIY spirit is strong with this one, said the green midget as the test takes proved my sound proofing rather effective. Lastly, I fine tuned the shit out of my floor toms to make them sound as epic as I could, cutting the necessary amounts of "boing" without totally killing the natural palette of the drums. This will be legendary.

Sounds From Below Studios, proudly endorsed by Marimekko.

I think even Sibelius would be pleased to see these sick notes.

It's a shame that every arrangement expect one sounded like crap. Not bad per se sound wise, but totally out-of-place and wrong. Despite trying to sculp them with EQ and various reverbs and delays, they just didn't fit. Like at all. I even re-tuned the damn drum skins THREE times and pitch shifted the track with animal bones just to accept the fact that any percussive extra elements in our songs just probably won't work. Damn fine way to waste time, dumbass.

Well, retrospectively speaking I could admit that it's a good thing I at least tried the percussions. It would irritate me more to have a finished record on my hands and wonder if the additional stuff would've made the songs even better. Sometimes being creative doesn't equal doing things right. Even though I might be a bit bitter, I'm happy I learned something about sound proofing which is something most of the bedroom producers tend to overlook, patting the mantra "fix it in the mix" thus making the actual mixing process genuinely worse than it should be. In fact, if the aforementioned phrase truly is your motto you are probably lazy and careless, and you should be ashamed and get your ass kicked so hard you can taste the boot. Do your own damn job so that the others don't have to.

At the moment I'm quite anxious to record all the vocals and throw the ball back to Tomi, but it is still nice to have a couple of weeks for my solo projects after a while. Oh, we have some plans on who we are going to ask master our EP and if everything goes well, there will be no end to my cheerful, even childish amusement of a fanboy.