Time is money, friend!

I´d love to write this blog more. In fact, I find writing very therapeutical in a way that at least my head is not occupied with music when I write. As you can see, it´s been goddamn quiet on that front lately- and the reason is not surprisingly mostly Moonsorrow.

The last 2 weeks especially have been constant work as I´ve done approximately 14- hour days since I returned from my short summer vacation: first doing my regular job and then going home and continuing with Moonsorrow from the moment we get the kids to sleep. As my time is very limited- usually being able to work with the stuff after 21:30 onwards or occasional time on weekends- I haven´t been able to do almost anything else. But I´m not complaining- I need to get this done because I want to. "Woe is me", said the artist and expected everyone to pity the poor soul.

But when you´re as fixated on things as yours truly, at some point it actually becomes a burden because you don´t know when to stop. Or YOU might do, but your brain just isn´t obeying it. I even lost my sleeping abilities completely in June and either stayed awake for hours in bed or woke up in the middle of the night thinking of the arrangements of the songs. Or in some cases, went to my studio room to compose music 3 AM. But it´s like this for every Moonsorrow album. I remember completely flipping right before Verisäkeet, staring at the computer monitor in tears, screaming on the screen until I went to the rehearsals of which I have a complete blackout until I remember going home from there. I take my shit seriously, it seems.

I am a fucking professional composer. I should know how to work. But suddenly, when it´s about your soul and beliefs squeezed into a musical journey, all the aspects of professionality disappear and you become Odin hanging on that tree...with the difference that it´s not over in nine days.
Besides, Moonsorrow´s music is trying to combine the both sides of structured tonality and unstructured chaos. Without chaos, music becomes dull, boring and predictable. But without structure and tonality, you lose the very core of the idea of the composition itself. Unless you´re Bestial Warlust, though. The more professional and organized I become, the more hard it is to just "go with the flow" and I end up overthinking everything to death. And this whole spring and summer has been fighting that overthinking.

Now it´s been a bit less hectic lately- it seems that when I got the first song nailed the rest of the songs are molding noisily on their own in my head. I just finished the second final demo yesterday evening, which was a battle in itself though- I was fighting over drum arrangements for hours on three evenings until the guys convinced me the constant kick drumming does not bother them at all. Now I´ve made myself a strict schedule I´m following which means that as of today, it´s two weeks per song and then it´s onto the next one be it ready or not. We´ll figure it out in the rehearsals together before the studio if I can´t make it done on time by myself.

As I´ve said before, it´s not about the material. We got a fucking TON of it. But it´s the problem about "what parts to keep" and "what kind of direction we want this song to take". Finding the right balance between everything while still keeping the song interesting AND having enough time for different parts to evolve is fucking hell with this band. It´s been always like that since Voimasta ja Kunniasta. The first two albums were rather simple. But as you evolve as a musician, you tend to grab more challenges. Until at some point, it comes to this:

First you play part X for eight times. Then you play part Y. Then you realize you´re having parts X, Y, Z, ÅÄÖ and so forth each played once and the song is a mess. Remove Z, double the amount of Y. "But I liked Z! It´s better than Y!" Hmmm....what if I took Y and made that the main riff? "But the main riff is quoted on the riff Ä and if we take that away the whole purpose of Ä is obsolete."

Then I realize it´s 23:30 and I haven´t progressed anywhere. And when I go to bed, the arrangements play simultaneously on top of each other in my head.

As I´ve now finished two songs out of five completely, these problems seem to have diminished greatly as mentioned earlier. As I work only seeing the whole album with Moonsorrow (the songs are just manifestations of the bigger whole for me), the more there is "confirmed" material means that I don´t have to fit those parts anywhere else. As an example- one song has now a certain kind of acoustic part I wanted to use in the album. I know now that I don´t have to stress about fitting that element to any other songs, as it is already in the album somewhere.
One of my biggest issues as a composer is that I have a fixation in uniqueness- I absolutely HATE to repeat myself especially in the same context. Sure, we all have our own trademark gimmicks as composers but using the same ideas on purpose is just a slap in the face of creativity and self- respect. Writing a theme/ leitmotif- driven score is a completely other thing, though.

Speaking of scores, the Curse of the Witches´ Blood (the soundtrack is already out and is freely streamable here) just got FINALLY out of the sound edit last week. As I promised to the director to do the final sound post- processing myself, I´ve been spending some of my days at the office working with that whenever my workload allows it. It´s a great counter for creative composing to work with something more technical which still gives you the same immersion that great music does. Besides, I always get ideas from that to my sound design on our albums as well.
For a fun fact all foley FX, dialogue recordings and pre- processing were done by Esa Orjatsalo, who is also known for being the live audio engineer for Korpiklaani. And who is also going to record the newest Moonsorrow album in two months, so the circle is completed.

While I´m typing this, my daughters are playing in the floor besides me and we´re listening to martial industrial music. You know, that stuff all little children love to listen with their parents. And as soon as I get those little hellraisers to sleep, it´s going to be Moonsorrow tiem again.