Per Nilsson, known from bands like Scar Symmetry and Meshuggah, just ventured off on his own and very first solo spree. Kicking off this adventure is his first single “Blast Radius.” In creating it, he relied on Toontrack for drums and bass! We checked in to learn more.
Why did you all of a sudden decide to venture off on your own solo project after having been in bands for the past 25+ years?
I’ve been thinking of launching a solo project as well as start a Patreon community for many years but have never quite found myself in the right place to do it until now! It started with Strandberg Guitars – the guitar company that builds my signature guitar model – asking me to write a short demo piece to help them promote a new guitar model. I came up with a two-minute track that I liked so much that I decided to evolve into a full song, which turned into “Blast Radius” and I thought it’d be a great vehicle to kick off a solo project and a Patreon.
Will there be a full solo album?
The idea is actually to NOT do a traditional, full-length album. Releasing albums is such a lengthy process – first you have to write an album’s worth of songs, then you record, mix and master them, and after submitting the master to the record label it’s going to be something like 7-9 months until the album is finally released. I want for my solo project to be the opposite of that – I want to be able to write a song today, record it tomorrow and release it the day after that and get the immediate feedback and gratification. The members on my Patreon will always have early access to all my solo music and they’ll get other exclusive things like song stems, backing tracks, lessons, livestreams etc. Ideally I’d like to put out something like a song every month but I don’t want to overpromise; let’s look back a year from now and see how it turned out. If the songs I release are similar enough, maybe at some point I will bundle them up as a solo album.
In terms of gear, which Toontrack titles made it into the production of “Blast Radius”?
I used Superior Drummer 3, the Darkness library (from the Death & Darkness SDX) and EZbass (the “Clean DI – Pick” preset from the core sound library).
Aside from these, which Toontrack products do you generally rely on for your writing and recording needs?
For demoing, I go in between Superior Drummer and EZdrummer a lot, haven’t really settled on one of them for demoing purposes. I think a part of that is because when coming up with new music and new ideas, I also enjoy exploring the different sample libraries as well as the different work flows you have working with these two plugins, I get inspiration from that process. Sometimes the spark that inspires a new musical idea can be something as simple as hearing a snare drum that sounds amazing that I just know I want to create a drum groove with. Browsing through the MIDI libraries is also a great way to find ideas that can inspire musical ideas. I don’t typically use EZbass as a compositional tool; I mostly start songs off with a drum groove, a guitar riff or some chords on the keyboard. EZbass is to me a very quick and nice-sounding way of getting a bass part on a song without having to pick up an actual, real bass guitar. For most of the music I make, the programmed drums and bass serve to make great-sounding demos, only to be replaced by the real counterparts when recording the final album version. It’s funny, though, that it can sometimes be a bit of a struggle to get the “real” drums and bass performances to sound as good and consistent as the demo tracks, haha! With “Blast Radius,” I was so happy with how the Superior Drummer and EZbass parts turned out that I saw no reason to replace them and I think that a fair amount of my solo work going forward will feature a lot of programmed drums and bass parts. When I mix albums with real drum performances – for Scar Symmetry as well as for other artists – I often turn to Superior Drummer or EZdrummer to augment the drum sounds with things I felt were missing in the recording. Adding room/ambience samples to, for example, a snare drum can give a real depth to your snare sound while keeping the tone and the touch of the recorded performance. Doing a 50/50 blend of the tom mics with Superior/EZ toms can add a lot of punch and clarity while also helping to mask the cymbal bleed in the tom mics. It’s just a very convenient toolbox to have for these kinds of things.
Aside from this new solo thing, you’re busy with tons of other bands and projects. What are you working on now and what’s next?
Right now I’m spending almost all of my time with the solo project and with Patreon, but there’s also new Scar Symmetry music in the pipeline. In these past couple of years, I’ve also been playing live with Icelandic jazz/pop singer Stina Ágústsdóttir; her band is in constant flux as she likes to pick and choose musicians on a gig-to-gig basis, but some of her regulars include bassist Henrik Linder and drummer Morgan Ågren. It’s a nice change of pace for me to play that very improvisational style of music once in a while. At some point I’m sure those kinds of vibes will seep into my solo music as well!
Per Nilsson “Blast Radius”
Peak inside the “Blast Radius” project!
