Dopplegänger & News

Monday 25th Feb...
Today we were a bit tired due to this never ending sequence of writing days; this meant that we just needed a few more hours than the usual to make our creative engines work full power:)
After we make it, we finalized 'Dopplegänger' as I previewed it and I'm happy that this track will have a double solo section with Mike and I shredding the boards...4:00 minute track and my bet for 'the single'.
Then we had 6 hours of writing for 'News'...uff, I have to admit that I arrived home brainless but what we did was something really special, I leave the description for yourselves when you'll listen it - i'm thrilled with this track!!!
It's a piece of music based on Mike's riffs and his "extraordinaire" Korg Oasys, the lyrics are almost finalized and on Thursday this track will be done for sure.

Time to rest now...

best
7hawk

Schedule

Here are some pics from yesterday while we were listening the new material as promised on the previous post.

Right now we are heading towards the final writing sessions - there is still 'Dopplegänger', 'News', 'Nanoworld' and 'Mind Over Matter' to order ideas and turn them into real music.
We are sure that tomorrow 'Dopple' will be done, we did most of the writing for it on Saturday's afternoon so tomorrow we will initiate another of the remaining tracks. We expect to close this writing stage in the following 2 weeks (incl. lyrics and experimenting vocal lines) and start recording drum tracks on the first days of March.

Snakepit

Today Sam, Mike and I finalized 'Racing the Hours' with a fantastic end...great idea by Sammy on doing an extreme vocal section, a clinical keyboard riff plus a cromatic shredding on guitars to turn it real, a great finale was done!No doubt!:)

On the afternoon, Nuno joined us and we worked around 'Doppelgänger' structure. This is a great single, it has the power of bands like Rammstein or Metallica and the melodic parts are very Joe Satriani- speaking from a guitarist point of view.
Later on our 'Snake' joined us and we had some time to listen and analyze new ideas; it's always great to re-listen our songs in sequence even without all tracks and production made, it reminded us one more time, that this is an album with big balls. We're sure that a new chapter on our lives is being written during these days...

I will upload the photos of today on my next post,

best
7hawk

Work in progress

Hello folks,

today Nuno, Sam and I arrived early in the morning on our studio and I've linked the unison to the last written sections, we did a new scheme of passages and recorded it up to the metronome...152 bpm, by the way;) This track is 9:30 minutes in lenght and has a killer instrumental section, really sick prog track - one of the album's highlights for sure!
On the afternoon, after some pizzas, Sam and I started 'Racing the Hours' clicktracks. Just guitar and drums and the song already kicks ass!

More posts tomorrow,

best
7hawk

Outside In Instrumental

In the following of our amazing creative monday, I've been working around a unison on guitars for 'Outside In' instrumental section and just ended it a few minutes ago, it's fucking hard to play it to the metronome...any I'm really curious to work it full band tomorrow, hell ya!;)

I'm almost 70% to the end on lyrics and now I finished 'Dopplegänger', so there's only 3 more tracks to work concepts and do research for lyrical content.

More posts tomorrow,

best
7hawk

Brains on Fire

A great day at the studio!

Sam and I had one of those magical creative hours with plenty of good heavy/progressive riffs going of our hats all day long...absolutely great*****

more news on Thursday night;)

best

7hawk

Claudine

The subject of this topic is a private joke between Mike, Nuno and I...well, sometimes when you we are more than 6 hours working non-stop our brains plays tricks on us:)

Today was another frenetic day, we did some bass recordings for 'Outside In' and then we worked around 'An Outer Body Experience' song structure. Mike and I eventually tested all possible chords (really all) and we came to a very beautiful end for this track...I had to change my lyrics for this part of the track as I previewed, man it was a good challenge!!! I'm sure Paulo will have a good time recording these sections when we went on studio. This is a track that completes 'The Hill' as a part II; all fans of Rush, Marillion or Dream Theater will like this track for sure due to it's melodic composition.

One of my faves for this album up to the moment!

Home sweet home

Wednesday 13th February, o1:34 a.m...

I finished the lyric for 'An Outer Body Experience', I'm thrilled to show it to the guys of the band and really curious to see the changes happening after we start to work it on studio.

Home sweet home, I really like to write lyrics on a cpu with a cup of hot coffee or some cold beer to bring some inspiration. I spent almost 6 hours today finishing the last part of the song and I'm really proud of it, I hope you all enjoy it while listening to this album in a near future...

I stayed at home to work more lyrics while Mike and Sam are on studio today recording more clicktracks, keyboard tracks, messing around with DFH and the new upgraded toy called Muse Research.

More posts tomorrow

best

7hawk

Building an album

Day after day the rhythmical base and song structures are being made for each song. Today we did "Outside In" and we got half of the tracks done - we are still working the new instrumental sections for it so we need more hours to bring it to a final version. The cool part of being a progressive band is the change of rhythms and measures, this track has 4/4, 7/4, 5/8, 2/4 and some of them are interlaced like in the 3rd verse (the crazy one) in which bass and guitar are in 7 and drums in 4 or in the next section in which bass in 4 and drums & guitar are doing a change between 7, 8, 7, 8, 7 at the same time... Those who don't know how measures works, it means we are sometimes together and sometimes on the up beat playing the damn riff.... aaaaargghhh!

Click tracks

Post of the day to leave some pictures and a debriefing of today's work. A sick with the flu Sammy, Nuno and I were on studio today recording the click tracks for 'Flashback', we did some takes and got it done with ease. I showed some more lyrical ideas to guys and that was pretty much of all we did today...next rounds includes the click tracks for 'Racing the Hours' and 'Outside In'.

have a nice weekend;)

Meters

Today Sam and I went to the studio to work around meters for 'The Hill'.

We did some serious arranjements to improve the already powerful low tempo beat which this song is all about. Very interesting rhythm analysis on this track also because of the hidden details from Sammy's drum kick and Nuno's fretless delightful passages. On the lunch break we got up with Nuno 'Strap', our bass player and we got the pleasure of the presence of Mr.Tiago Machado, an excellent musician(keyboard player), who got drowned in his neverending 'dourada' dish..."this looks like the bottom of the ocean" - laughs!:)

Nuno joined us in the afternoon and got time to work a great riff, maybe for 'Dopplegänger'...?- time will tell.

I, as usual in the last weeks, got myself in front of the cpu screen for hours working more lyrics for 'An Outer Body Experience' - Nuno's shredding on my side all afternoon was somehow inspiring, though completely out of creative frequency(lol) - I'm knowing myself better as a writer and this a fantastic world that pushes my inspiration and creative mind to a whole new level!

More posts tomorrow,

regards
7hawk

Progressive massacre...

Hi folks,

Just a quick mail to let you know that today was a very prolific day working around 'Outside In' instrumental sections.
We got plenty of riffs and way ahead rhythms for this song, we were totally creative and it was a revealing day: we are on our way to a great progressive album, that's for sure!
More work tomorrow, Friday and Saturday so there will be more posts during the following days.

Here is a pic of us at the end of today's progressive journey...what a fuckin' day!!!!

Midi, Meters and Lyrics

Hi folks,

We were back to our studio for more jams, writing lyrics, doing meters and planning the sequence of songs for the album.

Sam recorded the reference drum tracks for 'Flashback' and we are scheduled to do our parts on Wednesday - we also will work around the new parts of Racing the Hours both instrumental and lyrics. Mike has new sounds for his Oasys and they seem like big inspirational tools to my ears, he always has some cool tricks and crazy/beautiful riffs he throws down each time he put his fingers on keyboards - that's why I call him the 'Merlin' of keys. Today I heard great stuff for the end sections of 'The Hill' and 'An Outer Body Experience'...can't wait to put my chorused distortions over it!!!

We got our planning over 'Outside In', 'The Hill', 'An Outer Body Experience' and 'Doppleganger' so we already know what are the best and weaker parts, we will focus on them and try to apply our concepts - all of these will be the following tracks in which we will put our spider hands and brains on!

Here I leave some pictures of the day, there's a lot more to come in the next days...

Videos, Interview and Studio works

Hello friends,

yesterday Mike and I were on the FS base to wire all equipment and prepare everything to the pre-production we will be doing during February.

As announced on our website we have chosen Daniel Flores (Sound vs Science Studio) as our mixing engineer and Mats Lindfors (Cutting Room Mastering Studio) so our 3rd album becomes a masterpiece; has everyone who is a prog&metal lover knows, Sweden has been a big factory machine of high quality music productions.

I wanted to work with Daniel since the Snooze album and his works with Mind's Eye are the proof of his qualities both as producer and musician! The Cutting Room has been a place were bands like Rammstein, In Flames, etc have been mastering recently so...all said!

Today I'll leave here some links to Forgotten Suns videos at Aula Magna and the interview I gave for Via Nocturna Radio Show on 30th Nov 2007:

Interview Via Nocturna - 4 parts(portuguese only) : http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&VideoID=27030451

Mike's Keyboard solo on Senses: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R80f9aWJy94

Betrayed End Section : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ab03RQWqaT4

The band will be working on studio at high rotation during February, there will be more live dates for 08 to be announced soon...stay tuned!

Drummer from Hell

Today is a day off at the studio for myself and Nuno, Sam and Mike will be there working.

Yesterday we had a very prolific writing session which got us even more enthusiamed and confident for the coming month. We were working around the instrumental section of 'Racing the Hours' and we incorporated a guitar solo in the middle of what we had done previously - remember that we had written almost 70% of the album before Paulo 'Snake' joined in - we also worked the 3rd verse riff instrumental in a change of up beat/down beat at tempo...Sam spent some time working drums for all those riffs and let's say that we have a real vibe of metal in this track.

We also decided how it would end so this track is almost done and we are now heading towards 'Outside In' instrumental section for an upgrade, this is a track we have been performing live so we already know what we want from it.

Here is a pic of our Drummer from Hell;)

Instrumentals

Hello again, another sunny monday morning and we're heading to the studio.
Today we'll be working on the instrumental and end section of Racing the Hours as well as planning the month of February. There are still 8 songs left to work on, so February will be a very busy agenda for writing/pre-production.
The following track should be the pair 'The Hill' plus 'An Outer Body Experience', these two tracks were written has being a sequence for the album's end...let's see what happens in the next few days; anyway I'm working on more lyrics and there's a lot of work to top on the remaing tracks.

Just a quick reminder that Sammy and Nuno will be out during next weekend performing with Ava Inferi (KJB/Barcelona and Sala Live!/Madrid) and Timeless (Dvd Presentation at In Live Caffé) respectively.

Men on a mission - no comments

Picks, Lyrics, Riffs...somewhere in time

Hello there,

Sunday night, 10:00 p.m...
My weekend has been very relaxing and inspired in many ways ...I got more lyrics done for 'The Hill' and I'm very proud with the results so far. Right now I feel my writing skills improving each time I sat at the monitor screen - I like to write lyrics at the CPU with all internet favourites opened for references. All song titles have been inspired on internet resources so we can start considering this album has a product of the cyber world from the very beginning...

It's been quite a challenge to make high quality lyrics supporting our concepts compared to our previous albums, but, I've been preparing myself for quite sometime by reading a lot from books, magazines or newspapers...on my trip to London I got time to buy some books that would work as "investigation material" as well as inspiring from the artistic point of view; that gave me a lot of insight and confidence to simply...let it flow:)

I've been delaying the following part of the post due to the amount of work I have with (for) Forgotten, my guitar studies as well as my classical guitar teaching. But I wanted to mention it here since 5th December 07, a few minutes after our opening show for Fish and now it's the ideal time for it.

Forgotten Suns have been collecting fans for quite sometime, we have also collected some other type of listeners, though some are worth of mention and once again (I've done him reference here after our Santiago Alquimista show on September 06 with his mobile photos) I would like to thank Peter 'Pine' Pinheiro for his honesty, friendship and support and also for the gift he sent me - a Somewhere Else' Steve Rothery's blue pick.
After our first show at Aula Magna I remember to throw him my pick while we were leaving the stage so I believe this is some sort of kind reply, thank you Pedro - Steve Rothery is the super melodic guitar player and one of my biggest musical root references as you know...

Since I received it from Rita(my wife) after we left the stage and since we didn't saw each other since then...here are the pics and some photos of myself while writing at home with my 6th string Bo-El.

all the best
7hawk

Bass & Guitar

Hello again!

To wake up early and to be on studio at 10.00 a.m was our goal, we had a few hours available to work the riffs and harmonies of 'Racing the Hours' and I came to found a blonde bassist recovering from a flu attack, his eyes were half closed...oriental type, anyway we were really enthusiastic about working our riffs and having a definition about this song structure.


There's no doubt about the opposition and progression that this song has itself compared to the 4 minute lenght approach like we have on other tracks (Phenotype or Flashback).

In the next few days I'll be working the lyrics for other tracks and preparing more riffs to work out this friday when we got ourselves back on studio again.

C-ya
7hawk

Racing the songs

Hello dear internet surfer,

this night post comes from a "mind full of riffs & odd signatures" guitar player who had a sick day on studio writing one of the most fantastic Forgotten Suns' songs ever - Racing the Hours.
It's funny, Sam and I got into the studio today almost in the same mood like we were in the first Racing the hours session, on which we wrote all the original sections, and guess what?Yep...we did a very interesting face lift to it, kind of a 5 times better track now, I'm thrilled just imagining to play it live...;)

Inspired by the new rehearsal place and by our small jam, I got a groovy riff that decisively changes the whole structure and the new chorus is nothing but pure dinamyte!
I'm doing some homework now for lyrics and vocal melodies and will work out a clean guitar part that will be a small and smooth feather falling on Hell - the type of contrast I really enjoy;)
I think this album will be something very special and this song...

Dinamic duo

Hi,

while on studio today, Sam and I got the recording machinery working properly for the following work of setting meters and record song structures.

We got "Flashback" drum and guitar tracks in a 'flash' and we are now heading towards "Racing the Hours" - while cheking my guitar sound I felt hugely creative and got some riffs in the vein of Flashback, maybe we will have some new sections on other tracks, or maybe who knows...a new entire track:) Anyway, we record them for what Future reserves.

This weekend there's a lot of 'homework' to be done; we're back on business on Monday.

Cheers

7hawk

Pre-production

First New Year’s post.
We've been thru a long period of writings, a demo, rehearsals, then some concerts during the last 6 months - it's been an enriching time for us.
Now we’re about to go for the final writing details and pre-production; what we’re doing is to prepare the whole song structure & metronome foundations on which Sam will lay his drum tracks so the other instrumental parts can follow next.

I've been thru a very creative day, last 29th December, and got my cell phone at hand all day long recording all the riffs that came to my mind...it's the result of go on short holidays without a guitar:)

Sam and I will be on studio today (I’m on my way there while writing) to plan the whole process and to define the last details – it will be our daily job on the next few weeks so it’s something we are seriously committed to.

I’ll keep you up with more news during this period,

Happy New Year 08!!!
7Hawk

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year 2008!

Dear folks,

the band wish you all a good time during the Christmas and New Year festivities; we hope all your wishes turn real during 2008 - we're sure it will be a great season for us all.

Peace & Trust

Ricardo, Mike, Sam, Strap & Snake;)

Opening for Fish - a brief encounter

Hello friends,

Today, 13th December 2007, I got some time to sit down on my desk with a cup of coffee near me and some refreshing 10 hours of sleep backing me up. I've been into UK after Fish concerts on a short vacation period just arriving on Tuesday morning - London is a milk-shake of cultures and a beautiful land. Got some good time there and as always it was a cultural enriching experience. Despite the terrible weather (rain and freeze) during the weekend it's a must have trip for anyone. While there, Led Zeppelin gave a concert at O2 'The Bubble' which I was not available to see since I got my scheduled tickets for Tutankhamun exhibition just 400 yards away from the O2 venue...

5th December - Aula Magna - Lisboa

Everything set to return on a venue we love since some of our biggest influences and best artists performed there in the past - Dream Theater(Scenes from a Memory), Steve Vai(2 times), Fish(Misplaced Childhood 06) or Pat Metheny Group. Stepping the same stage where all of those great musicians were too is always something very rewarding - for me is a growing up feeling and kind of a happy nostalgia too.

Mike and I went to the studio to check if everything was ready to go; there I got in touch with our singer who was in deep suffering knowing that he was still under a flu attack, and completely lost his voice or to say the least, 90% of it. Anyway it was an important move and we all decided not to cancel the shows.
When we arrived there, Fish' band was already doing their sound-check and it was possible to see that the PA and lights were better than last year show; also Fish got more equipment to this tour: video projection, more back up guitars, keyboards, everything was upgraded, that was a positive influence for us too. I think JDO Productions and Mr. Nuno Silva should be proud and congratulated with that.
Our sound-tech crew was amazing since the first minute, great vibe between us!

In the backstage and dressing rooms we came to shake hands and speak with Fish, Frank, Steve and everyone else. They also felt it as a re-encounter, we have some pictures of it and we're collecting more from friends and people who post them on the net during the following days.
The band mood was great, Paulo was a bit worried because he knew that these two concerts were seriously compromised by his vocal problem though, with great courage we walked into the stage and we did our best.
It was a chronological set.
We started with an extended 'Betrayed' version from the Fiction Edge album, then we went to the 2nd album with 'Senses' and the last part we did a new track, which is on our myspace 'Phenotype'. To end also new tracks 'Flashback', 'Nanoworld' intro + Jam Session.
The aftermath was a time to recover Paulo's voice and protect him from the cold weather. Tomorrow it would be a new day.

6th December - Europarque - Stª Maria da Feira

One O'clock p.m we were on our way to the north. Strap, Sam and I along with drummer Miguel Samora (he is Sammy's brother and he's been an important drum tech/mental support on our last shows since we got Paulo with us) got some cool chat about general music and individual perspectives. Miguel share the same progressive mind though we live it on a different way - Music is a never ending world!
We were very surprised with Europarque conditions, it's a beautiful venue and acoustically well prepared. We realized it better when on stage during sound-check. We did it quickly and while arriving to the restaurant something was about to happen...

It is clear that when a band is on stage performing everything can be heard on the back stage hall and rooms. It did happened with me, I listened the whole Fish' performance at Aula Magna in the back stage, loud and clear.
I believe that Fish was aware of Paulo struggle both physical and mental to do a 2nd round within 24 hours - doing Aula Magna in that way, showing up for some of our oldest fans, being a new member of the group...it was not a kid's stuff. I was chatting and moralizing him during the walk until the restaurant so we both entered the restaurant side by side when we heard a Scottish accent calling us...

- "Hey, what's happening, what's the problem?"
- "I'm recovering from a flu and somehow I lost my voice...it hurts when I try"
- "Is it a chest or head pain?"
- "Both, it has been terrible days for me..."
- "Ok my friend, don't worry. Before the show just go to my dressing room and I'll give you some of my own vocal healers. I know what you're going through and you shouldn't worry, everything will be all right!"

Before the show Paulo went to Fish dressing room and he returned to our room very surprised with the power of Fish' treatments, it looked like his voice had improved in just a few minutes and he was smiling, ready to hit the stage.

This is a gesture of a noble person, a true professional and a great man.
We have to thank Fish for everything and for his true care and support of Paulo and the band.
We felt it and we did a great performance that night. In fact everyone felt it, in the backstage there were congratulations from everyone and the techs loved it too. Fish' road manager told me: "It takes a lot of character to play like this, I'm in this business for many years and you guys were just great, congratulations!"
After everything was set to go home, we enjoyed the show on the front seats and listened to Frank's incredible solo on Cliché and Incommunicado to the very end.
Nuno 'Strap' Correia and Steve Vantsis took some pictures and talked about Spector basses, Frank and I got some time to talk about his set up (we both use Line 6) and it was a cool mood in the air...maybe we see each other sooner than the next Fish release...for now it was just a brief encounter.

Thank you to my long time friend Filipa Bastos for these wonderful pics;)

Sound-check at In Live (29/11/07)