New Minuetum cd mixed and mastered by Timo Tolkki

[icecab21]

MINUETUM news
After almost a year of recordings over recordings, numerous demos and thousand of hours in many studios around the world it seems that MINUETUM's debut album "Eternal Twilight" will take its final shape in the next few weeks.


In this album we got some very special guests: Bob Katsionis of FIREWIND recorded all the guitars for "Eternal Twilight" (except of some last guitar solos that were performed by our new guitarist Jason Mercury of OUTLOUD).


The album was sent to world-class power metal musician Timo Tolkki (STRATOVARIUS, REVOLUTION RENAISSANCE) for mixing and mastering. Timo informed us that the mixing will be over at late August so probably our album will be ready at early September, almost a year after the recordings begun. We put some very hard work for this album.


For further info checkout myspace.com/minuetum (you can find there a medley of some parts of the demo version of our album -in Bob Katsionis mix- and some fan-art).


The official album cover and some promo mp3s of Timo's mixing will be posted in September 2009 in Minuetum's myspace.


PS. Some nice reviews of "Eternal Twilight"that are already out are for the demo version of the album (this means the rough mix we made with Bob Katsionis before sending the album to Timo in Finland).

[miditek]

I don't think that Tolkki will ever have a lack of work as a producer/engineer. He seems to have a knack for it. Doing that full time may well end up being his forte.

[AAAAAAAAAA]

And what of value has Timo Tolkki ever produced? The worlds largest sandwich!? :crazy2: :rotflmao2: :jump2: :puke:

...All kidding aside, I think nothing could compare to the full artistic process of writing and performing your own songs. And I still think RR is pretty good. I hope he keeps composing!

[icecab21]

Two of the guys in the band are reviewers for a Greek metal mag. it will be interesting to see how that shapes their music or if they fill it with what they criticize from other bands.

[NeonVomit]

Jason Mercury is a very good friend of mine, I heard some of the work in progress and it was awsome. I can't wait to hear the final mix!

[pneumonia]

It is a bit off-topic but generally it is not a good idea when the same person mix and master one CD, cause after mix you are getting used to how the CD sounds and during mastering you can't look on the cd by fresh ear and you probably won't hear some mistakes made in mix.
But maybe it was cheaper rather to send CD to Mikka Jussila or some other mastering engineer.

[Jason_Mercury]

Icecab? You mentioned earlier that 2 of us write in metal magazines here in Greece. (actually 3 of us). What do you mean by “how it shapes our music?” If you are wondering how many bad elements Eternal Twilight has, that we badly criticize in reviews from other albums, probably many. Due to some problems, time pressure and some bad moves we did as a band I can say that we made a few mistakes. As a reviewer I would probably have a couple of negative things to write about the album.


Now, about what pneumonia was saying. No, I don’t believe that its better to have someone else do the mastering. When someone does the mixing on an album, he always has in his mind how the sound my change with the mastering, and when the time comes to do the mastering you already know what direction to go. Also you have heard the album again and again with different sound approaches so you know better how to work on it.
And yes. It was cheaper than sending it to some other mastering engineer.

Anyhow. Timo said that the album will be ready by the end of August. So we are expecting it very soon. So we will have the final mixes up on Myspace in the next days probably, if you want check them to have your own personal opinion

-Jason

[icecab21]

2 out of three aint bad, I said two because I just knew that two posted on RR forum. I’m looking forward to the cd. By shaping the music I mean that I think reviewers might have a different perspective on composing and arranging their parts than people that only listen for personal reasons. I was just sort of wondering if you guys make sure you give the songs certain scores before continuing or if you even rate the songs at all in the process? This album seems to have extraordinary circumstances so I am looking forward to see how you guys do in the future and wish success.

[Jason_Mercury]

Hehe. I think you have opened a very big topic man

First of all, reviewers are not that much different from every other listener. The big difference is that you have to talk about an album from another point of view, letting aside as much as you can your personal opinion. Being a musician also helps a lot because your ear is already trained to easily detect some details and be able to judge each instrument on its own instead of just viewing it only as a total, and also understand what could be changed to make it better.

For example, a very hot topic today is Cain’s Offering. An album that I personally didn’t like. Or to be more correct I don’t like it now! But the album as an album was very good. Songs like “Dawn of Solance” and “Stolen Waters” are true masterpieces and generally the music of the album was great. The problem was that everyone is used to listening to Janis music with Kakkos voice. Kotipeltos voice just sounds weird on the album dude to the power of habit, not because there was something wrong with the album.
Stuff like that is what a reviewer thinks when he writes a review. You get my point I hope

Now as a composer there are million more things you have in your mind. Its really hard to “rate” your own songs. They are your creations. They mean something to you no mater what. Something that I may have composed that means a lot to me and has some deeper meanings for me, for some one else it may sound as a stupid pointless song. There is no way to view your own song as a listener. The only thing really you can see is stuff like “I could have played this riff better” “we could have used a different sound here”

In any case. We are waiting for the final mixes of the songs and we’ll see how people view it

[DimitrisMel]

2 out of three aint bad, I said two because I just knew that two posted on RR forum. I’m looking forward to the cd. By shaping the music I mean that I think reviewers might have a different perspective on composing and arranging their parts than people that only listen for personal reasons. I was just sort of wondering if you guys make sure you give the songs certain scores before continuing or if you even rate the songs at all in the process? This album seems to have extraordinary circumstances so I am looking forward to see how you guys do in the future and wish success.

First of all, thanks Icecab for bringing us into Stratoforum And by the way, you all should also check OUTLOUD, the other band of Jason Mercury, their album was released yesterday by Frontiers and Bob and Mark of FIREWIND are also playing there.

Speaking of MINUETUM, since i wrote the music of "Eternal Twilight" (actually, every song begun like a cubase project of 10 keyboards channels to turn out to a normal song) i want to comment on the very interesting subject that Icecab talks about. As a composer my main goal was to make an album that first of all will be pleasant for my ears. The lack of good melodies is a disadvantage of many bands of today's scene. Some may think that this is not the most important element in the "recipe" of making good metal music but for my musical taste the basic rule of a good song is to make some melodies that "stay". If you got this, then you'll find the rest. Of course it's our debut album so many things could have been done better and of course some people won't like it... But at least i think that one positive thing about it is its melodies.

Btw, as a "reviewer" i took a very important lesson from the recording-experience: jujdging someone else's work is much easier than making it. Especially when you don't have a label behind paying the bills for the recordings. As for Timo Tolkki's help what more to say...I consider him as the most "complete" musician (that combination of songwriter-guitarist-producer is unique) in this kind of music, so having TT helping us on the mix is just perfect. Also our Greek FIREWIND fellow Bob Katsionis helped us a lot by playing the guitars at a point that we haven't yet found the appropriate guitarist (Now we're fortunate enough to find Jason). Bob also did a demo mix of our album, you can listen to some samples of these demos on our myspace page.

here is a demo we made before sending the album to Timo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgQ9nEQ1jWk

[AAAAAAAAAAA]

here is a demo we made before sending the album to Timo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgQ9nEQ1jWk

the melodies are awful, write better songs first

[AAAAAAAAA]

What did you expect??? They are Geeks...or was it Turks???

[icecab21]

Melodies are a very subjective thing i'll have to listen to this after tolkkis magic to really get a feel.

[exe knight]

Cool, I remember the demo song and it was plain awesome (atleast the instrumental demo version.)

Well though I'm not extremely sure if it's the same band, but I think it's supposed to be.

Edit: no it was not this song that was linked.

[DZach]

Melodies are a very subjective thing i'll have to listen to this after tolkkis magic to really get a feel.

I agree, everyone has his own point of view. And yes, we have to wait for Timo's magic touch!

[icecab21]

http://www.myspace.com/minuetum

the band has some samples of the songs mixed by timo tolkki up

[Babylonian]

Wow, the samples sounds great.