An Outer Body Experience...

30th March 2008.
We're taking up this Sun(ny)day to rest some hours. We've been on studio recording and we have already 4 tracks completed with drums, bass and keys. I'm starting my recordings this monday and we're aiming to have 6 tracks done until next week. The rec times of our schedule are perfect.

So far we are really happy with the performances and the sounds.

C-ya soon with more news...

regards
7hawk

Bass recordings

Hi,

just a quick note to let you know that our bassman recorded 'Flashback' and 'Phenotype' during his first 5 hours session on studio. The bass sounds amazingly tight and there are new details popping here an there. Nuno is a fantastic musician!

During this weekend we're editing drum and bass tracks, next song that follows is 'Dopplegänger' on bass and keys.

I preview to attack my guitar recordings on the end of the week.

More news soon...

stay tuned;)

7hawk

Strings - 7th World

Hi,

today Mike is on studio recording keyboards for 'Phenotype', seems he did a great work on 'Flashback' which was recorded yesterday. I'm at home preparing myself for the new step which is: recording! This album has a different level of technique and precision so I'm burning my fingers up to the metronome:)

Today I also got my guitar strings for this album, D'Addario XL-7 string .009-.054

Pic of the day...the fucking strings:)

best
7hawk

Iron Cobras - the evil twins

We took the morning to rest a few more hours than the usual and we entered studio on the afternoon for 5 hours of work around drum tracks for 'Flashback' and 'News'.

Sammy is doing great and really fast recordings, today he closed 2 more songs covering 15 more minutes of music for this album. It's really cool and interesting to listen these drum recordings as being the bones of the album...I'm constantly wondering and singing for myself the yet unrecorded parts and this album is becoming a monster day after day...

While I was on control of recording drum tracks Mike took some time to work new sounds on his Oasys, in fact, he will record his first tracks on monday. Mike and I have scheduled "a duel at the sunset" when the solos recordings for this album arrive;)

Nuno will also initiate bass recording this week, he has great bass lines to register in all songs.

We're sailing big musical waves now, here are some pics of today...Sammy's Cobras on the beginning of the session waiting for another 5 hours of intensive pressure:)

The markers for 'News' and Mike tweaking and play new sounds...

stay tuned!!!

7hawk

Drum Recordings

On 10th March we started to record Sam's performances on his red drum kit, it's been 4 days and he got Dopplegänger, The Hill, An Outer Body Experience, Phenotype and Mind Over Matter...he's been recovering from a flu that striked him a week ago, so he's been a brave bastard and, let me tell you, that he's taking huge takes from these sessions!!!:)

More tracks will be done in the next days.

Everything is going according to our schedules, we took 2 entire months to re-write the album and lyrics and also pre-production. We're set to start recordings of both guitars and keyboards during next week until mid April and then Mr."Snake" will enter studio to do the vocals - there is a ton of work for us to cover in the following weeks.

It's been great times on studio, we're filming it and we'll make a director's cut somewhere in time...

all the best

7hawk

OFFICIAL RECORDINGS

Hello there,

We've been on studio all day doing some sound checkings and we will kick off with the first official recordings tomorrow with Sammy on drums.

It's been 2 months to make all writings/pre-production and we will develop 'Evil Twin' during this period of recordings, so eventually that would end up as the last track to be done...

We will now sound test guitars, bass and keyboards in order to prepare the 'harmony trio' to record after the first drum tracks are done. There a lot to explore on this album and we expect to deliver the best performance and production ever!

Meanwhile all lyrics are finished except 'Nanoworld', to be done in the next few days.

Our singer is also preparing his parts to enter studio on April.

The track list is as follow and not by any specific order:

- The Hill
- An Outer Body Experience

- Nanoworld

- Outside In

- Flashback

- Evil Twin

- Racing the Hours

- Mind Over Matter

- News

- Dopplegänger

- Phenotype

more news tomorrow

best

7hawk

Lyrics

Today I'll be at home working on the remaining, yet undone, lyrics. I'm almost close to end the writing lyrics process and I'm anxious to start recording guitars - I did some upgrade to my equipment with more software from Line6, I'll be working more sounds for the album and for my live setup on the following weeks.

Yesterday I also spoke with Sam and Mike and we're on our way to start recording the first drum tracks of the album during next week; looks everything is working full power on studio and the pre-production sounds really powerful.

I've finished 'Mind Over Matter' lyric at 03:00 a.m today and I'm on my way to finish 'News' until tonight.

Discipline+Excitement+Creativity+Passion= Great Music...my golden rule!

best

7hawk

Evil Twin

Monday, March 3rd.

Mike, Sam and I on studio finished the solos section for 'Mind Over Matter' we got all chords flowing and settle which parts are destined for each instrument.

Today we also started the writings for 'Evil Twin', we have already a great intro and we're developing it on the following days.

This is an instrumental track and it's a short nightmare to play to resume it quickly...190 bpm /8 our highest rotation until today.

Our devil drummer on the pic;)

more news tomorrow,

best

7hawk

M.O.M - lyrics and structures

We spent all day around Mind Over Matter, I'm almost 100% done with this lyric; this is a track with the same needs of big production like 'News', other tracks like Flashback or Racing the Hours are more "in your face" songs.

I got the lyric done while Nuno and Mike were recording their reference tracks, it came out really natural and once again Mike delivers some great sounding chords on verses:)

This track's end is probably the best combination of "symphonical power chords" meets "shredders on steroids"...it's becoming another great moment of this album!!!

more news on monday,

PS: Mike and Nuno preparing themselves for their backing vocal growlings on M.OM...

over n'out,

7hawk

Feeding from music...literally:)

After 4 days working we finalized more song structures - News, Mind Over Matter, Dopplegänger - all were reviewed and we are just working minor passages on M.O.M track. During these days we had some writing challenges with the above tracks but we achieved great results that will result in even better songs after the perfect recording & production. We will jump into Evil Twin instrumental during this weekend and that will close the writings for this album...I'm sure that many details, sounds, small passages and vocal lines will be re-shaped until and during the recording process.

Sammy will be working his chops on the first finished reference tracks and soon we will open the new stage: the official recordings!!!*****

There's some pictures of us on the writing sessions, I did 8 pics and here is some description attached:

1. Nuno 'Strap' Correia, iron fingers:)

2. Sam and I after finishing the 'News' song writing, smiling...

3. Feeding from music...literally!

4. Power chords during the recording of reference tracks

5. Snake recording vocals lines

6. Sam and Snake today recording reference tracks

7. Reference tracks

8. Mike staring at the camera after a great keyboard solo

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