On the last day of my visit to London, I had a very nice photo session with Paul Harries. I have been lucky to find him, because he really always makes me look ”pretty”.

It has been wonderful in beautiful and sunny London these last two weeks. The weather has been just perfect, chilly at times, but full of light.

I HAVE GOOD NEWS my friends. What Lies Beneath is finally recorded!!!!!

Only waiting for some guests that will record few parts and send them over.

It was a great last vocal session. I am grateful that everything I planned was accomplished. Also the things that we decided on the way have only improved the songs making the overall picture clearer in the end.

First of all the experience in the ” Wetten Dass..?” Show was just amazing.

It was great to sing with Scorpions, of course! I have to tell you that these guys from the band are SO kind. They were treating me like a queen and I was very delighted of their support and trust.

The trip to Los Angeles was very successful and the songs that needed orchestra and choir arrangements are now ready to be recorded.

It is very exciting indeed to imagine how everything will sound in the end when these two important elements are recorded.

This time we have decided with Jim Dooley and Tim Davis who will conduct the orchestra, that the recordings will take place in few days in Bratislava. Slovak National Symphony Orchestra and Choir will be playing on my record.

I am very happy with the work of Jim who put his heart into my songs. I got again very emotional by listening his work. It’s unbelievable how gorgeous gift of music he has. You’ll hear pretty soon what I mean

I arrived to LA few days ago. It’s a wonderful spring here and the sun is shining. It was tough in the dark Finland in the last weeks, so I was already starting to miss the sea and the sun. The least I am going to miss is the snow work…

This trip is not a holiday trip though. I am working with Jim, Slamm and Bart at Remote Control Studios again. We are getting the orchestra arrangements ready and we are starting to discuss the mixing process with Slamm. He is going to be the one to mix all the orchestral tracks. Other mixing engineers will mix the rock/heavy tracks, but I’ll tell you more about that later

I am happy to tell you that I have been very busy recording vocals in the last days.

Six songs are now ready with trillions of backing vocals and Tarja choirs.

I recorded my first ever piano tracks for “U” and “TAOLD”! The grand piano in the studio is Bechstein which sound I truly love. Bechstein is very moody piano in general. I have the same brand at home as well. In these songs you will easily “recognise” me playing the piano parts, instead of a professional pianist.

So if I don’t consider myself as a piano player, you shouldn’t do that either

The feeling in these songs is the most important matter and I think I captured it. It has been really nice experience for me to work with our engineer Jetro who has been so supportive and a great help in my “troubles”. He has good ears and is very, very fast and talented.

Still feels awkward to be playing an instrument (rather than my voice) in songs where Mike Terrana, Doug Wimbish, Will Calhoun, Alex Scholpp, Christian Kretschmar and Marzi Nyman are displaying their talents.

Yesterday was a quiet day. Only Jetro, Marcelo and I were working in the studio making edits for the songs already recorded by the band.

It’s great to be able to realize that some of the songs are already ready, just missing my vocals…

I was using one microphone that I very much liked in my previous recordings, but when we started asking for it long time ago, we couldn’t find that microphone in Finland at all!

So yesterday we went through quite many microphones that we had here with us and it was very useful. There can be really big differences between microphones and from my experience, the ones that are usually used in vocal recordings, are not so good for my voice.

Some of you were wondering that 17 songs is quite much for an album. Not all the songs are going to end up on the actual album.

We need bonus tracks and b-sides for different territories and singles. In the worldwide release, there are always countries asking for bonuses. On my album you can expect to have around 11-12 songs. I am lucky though to have more than enough material.

Last night Alex finished his guitar parts and today he returned back to Germany in the morning.

We said goodbye to Doug Wimbish in the morning. He finished all the bass parts last night with success.

Including a beautiful solo for “The Crying Moon”.

It’s so funny to read that some of you got nervous because I didn’t write in two days…come on. I am working here !

The photo session went really well and Jens Boldt did magnificent work again. Some of you will love it, others will freak out

Few days ago I needed to say goodbye to lovely Will Calhoun.

Is time to congratulate uncle Mike. He finished his parts yesterday and did a magnificent work.

I guess from now on, he is going to sleep very well

Mike is going to chill out now and have some fun with us. Perhaps enjoining some red wine as well.

The song nailed yesterday by my two drummers is called “Crimson Deep”. Wow! It just sounds exactly like I was expecting it to sound.

I love challenges and since those times are long gone when somebody really was working like that in a daily basis, I thought why not to give it a try. And it worked!

We are having FUN!

The house is getting packed now, since it’s crowded with Americans!!!

Doug Wimbish and Will Calhoun arrived here yesterday night. The lovely lady from the farm went to pick them up from Helsinki airport.

Last night we were late up, so it was a bit tough to get back to work early in the morning. The red wine did it’s “thing” you know…

Max came to the studio to work with us some songs and it was nice to have him around.

I slept like a baby last night. It’s so quiet here that it even feels scary at times. But it’s beautiful to work like this.

After Mike finished recording one song in the morning, we had some guests in the studio visiting us. Pete, our live sound engineer came to talk about next shows.

Alex and Mike were sleeping long this morning and while they were having their beauty sleep, I was working with Jetro in choosing the best keyboard tracks for some songs.

It was not too shiny weather today, nor that cold, but since we are completely surrounded by snow, we still had quite a lot of light, which definitely helps.