20 Mar 2015

The fourth of UNSHINE: Part 2



A very laborius period of work now in the holy grove of UNSHINE. The songs for the 4th album are basically ready - they are in their final demo form now what comes to all instruments and main vocals. However, little things matter - we rehearse now a lot in order to finalise all the details in instrumentation, this way everyone of us can bring their own views and perspectives. As the main composer of the band, I sometimes get stuck on details and can't see the forest from the trees.

Our drummer Stibe has a lot of work in arranging his parts. The drum demos I've done at Studio Churchboat are very basic and they are meant to give just the general idea of the percussions. It's probable that we will use two kinds of drum settings this time, one set-up for more acoustic performance and one for regular metal set-up.







Winter in Finland is very colourful, at least 50 shades of grey.







My guitar gear at the rehearsals.



This album has been created by making various kinds of demo and practice tapes. Nothing beats, however, the most ancient demo tape method - create the tune in your own head and if it's a good one, it'll stick there as an earworm. I've used this method for ages. Plus your inner studio follows everywhere you go.

From the most primeval versions to the final demos, all songs were first recorded this time with Apple's Garageband (instead of ProTools which I have used before). I have had GB as a free version in our studio mac and I actually discovered it only about two years ago - if I only could have heards about it before it would have saved some nerves in the previous albums. I think it's the most practical tool for musicians flooding with ideas and it fits well for making even very advanced demos. Before the actual recording we use lots of quickly produced rehearse tapes, like tapes with click and synth, but also tapes with demo drums and the whole band. GB is ideal for this kind of production.

In fact, I've loaded most of the forthcoming songs to a secret YouTube -channel, which is public only for us in the band...

Harri / UNSHINE