The BF - In The Studio

In the spring 2000, the (then) members of The BF, Antti, Jani and Timo, decided to take the bull by the horns and go into the studio. This particular studio was located in Antti's school, and the guys had been able to book it for a couple of weekends for the recording and for a few additional days for mixing. Their idea was to record the drums at first and then do all the other stuff, guitars and what have you. A few days were also reserved for overdubbing and vocals.

All things are difficult before they are easy. The guys were more or less baffled when they were setting up Timo's drumset in the enormous film studio and trying out professional studio equipment. Lucky for them, there were a few professional people around to give them a hand and they were more than enthusiastic about having a chance to use all the studio equipment for something real for change. When recording the drums, for example, the guys used a very expensive stereo mic that no one had ever dared to use before. The sound engineer went out and moved the mic several times, so that "Timo's cymbals wouldn't break the sensitive microphone". Rock'n'roll!

(After all the initial hassle, )The guys came up with a clever way of recording the drums – when Timo was playing and recording a particular song, either Antti or Jani was playing the guitars of the song right into his ears, to create a proper "feeling" for him. It wasn't perhaps the most conventional method of doing the recording, but then again, The BF isn't exactly the most conventional band either. Some of the songs hadn't been practised much before going into the studio, so Antti and Timo usually made the arrangements just a few seconds before they hit "Record". An example of this is So Into You, which was given the finishing touch just before the second take of the drums, a take that remained final.

On the first day, the guys were able to record more than they had planned and eventually ended up with fourteen songs altogether. These included a couple of cover songs too, just for fun – Deuce by KISS and Stand By Me by Ben E. King. On the second day, the guys continued recording the drums, and also started moving recorded material from the drum recording studio to the main studio, where everything was going to be mixed. Two Jazz – disks were used to transfer the audio files, so the disk got used quite a bit.

Gimme some guitar, man

When the guys finally made it so far that they were ready to start recording the guitars, they came up with another rather interesting solution. At first, the guitars were recorded in a tiny recording booth that was barely big enough for one man and his guitar after all the equipment had been carried in. Antti played the backing tracks and sung the vocals to So Into You in the booth, and Jani was tortured there for over an hour by the merciless producers Antti and Timo when he was recording the lead guitars for the same song.

Because of certain talk back problems and also because of the growing boredom of the above-mentioned guitar players, the guys soon decided to record the guitars in the same studio (room) where the bass and the keyboards were recorded. Cheers to the school for the good acoustics! When everything was moved into the same room, the recording process became faster. Antti played most of the instruments, while Jani took care of those parts of the songs Antti couldn't get to work, parts that needed his touch. Timo was mostly taking care of torturing everyone mentally. J

After the (more or less) compulsory weekend activities Antti's vocal range was usually closer to bass than anything else – results can be heard in Perfect World and Fiilis, for example. And speaking of Fiilis, the song was basically written in the studio, apart from the lyrics. Antti, synthesiser and the guitar. What a great combination.

To eat at the studio and die

Working in the studio is quite energy-depriving experience, even though the action isn't too physical, not regarding the very physical "getting-in-the-right-feel" - thingy. But anyways, food is needed, and as all of you gene - enthusiastics know, food can kill you. The lives of the band were constantly at stake, as disks, remotly resembeling pizzas, were being orderd from the local pizzeria as well as beverages by a world wide company. As rare as it might be, the band was at the studio without a bottle cap opener (this never happens!), so the animal instincts took over while opening a cola - bottle. Antti grabbed the bottle in rage and mutilated his right index finger in the process.

It was blood, sweat and meat flying all over, and no first-aid-kits anywhere. A long piece of paper form the loo and wrap it around the finger. It didn't seem like such a big deal, until it was realized that Antti would have to play the guitar with that finger. Luckily for the band, it was the right hand, so Antti could play in the more rock - orientated songs with his index finger raised up to the skies, holding the pick with his thumb and ring finger. Blood, sweat and beer, baby!

Jani lived on cold meat pastries and warm cola. For some reason the other members managed to steal a few pastries, as Jani was the only one who remembered to carry some chow to the studio. Antti worked on cold pizza and Snickers bars, Timo ate what he could get.

Tune up!

Nobody owned a decent guitar tuner at that point, so the guitars were being tuned listening to the syntheziers. In few occasions the guitars had to be re-recorded, since the synths weren't in the same key as the guitars. Sometimes even the basic tracks had to be re-recorded. Perfect pitch would be a nice thing, too bad none of the guys has one... :)

With synths it' s too easy to get over excited, and The BF was about to turn into a techno band, as Antti was let loose near the keyboards. But in the end it wsa decided to stick to the good old sound, like warm orgnas or Hammond - sounds. They work on other records, why not on ours?

On of the things that came up during the recordings wass the lack of pipes. Couple of songs would've benefitted from a saxophone solo and the Aerosmith - brass - accents were pretty sparse. Well, you can't always get what you want, and in this case, it might've been better. At least it's all us on the tape, ans not some arrangers view of how we should sound with a brass band. "And now, Jazz trio Five plays an arrangement of Antti Iiskola'a composition "Perfect World". No thanks.

What did we get out of it?

Singing backing harmonies was definitely one of the funniest parts of the studio work, especially when someone always hit "Record" and then ran back to the mics, and then someone did it again and things were getting more and more absurd. The cool rockers were just about falling off their chairs laughing when singing harmonies, all together in falsetto. Then again, it was all too easy to sing totally out of key, and everybody was just about to lose it many times. But the result shows that perhaps it was all worthwhile.

Gallons of Pepsi, tons of cold pizza and even some alcohol was consumed during those spring weekends, but the result after sitting in that dark, windowless room was a bunch of great songs on tape. Unfortunately, half of them is still waiting to be mixed for the first time, and even the other half are far from being ready. But this spring, we're gonna try to get everything together… So catch you later!