So, the guy who was going to help me with the new video realized that he wasn’t good enough. So now I have to do it personally, again, even though I don’t have time for it, because I have to prepare new tracks for the drummer so he can keep recording his parts!
But I promised to post this new video five days ago now, and I really don’t want work to just lay around while I’m doing other things, so now I’m working day and night to make a better job at it than I first did. It has to be up this weekend.

I also have to make that American shop available.. Hmm.. Maybe I’ll have time this weekend. I’ll check out if it’s able to ship things to Asia, because I know that there are many Asians who would like their own FreddeGredde t-shirt. :)

Oh and about that, the first customer at my shop has received his shirt. Look how sparkly it is!

My new music video keeps getting delayed. I actually did finish editing last Sunday, but the results were not that great. I asked the people in the chat room, and most decided that I should redo the visuals to make it even better.

I really didn’t want to waste more time on it though, but luckily, I found a guy who was willing to try to do it for me! So he’s working on it now. I don’t know when he will be finished though, but hopefully this week! I’d be disappointed otherwise..

Anyway, here’s a short video of one of the harmonies/Fredriks that will be in the video (there will be lots of them, so there’s lots of green-screening involved):

It doesn’t sound very good now, but I promise it will sound a lot better with all the other harmonies. :)

This will be a geeky post, but there was a big Nintendo conference today, in which they announced their new home console; Nintendo Wii U! These E3 conferences have always been like Christmas for me, because new exciting games were shown and there was such excitement in the air. Obviously I’m a bit older now, so it’s not a big deal anymore. It’s a bit sad in a way, that I don’t think as passionately about these things as I used to.

Anyway, I think The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword for Wii looks pretty good! It’s always a huge thing when a new Zelda game is released on a home console, because it only happens like, every fifth year. So it’ll be great I hope, and I will definitely play it!
Oh, and GEncore in the chat room said I should show you some old video game songs I’ve recorded, now that I’m talking about video games, hah. So here’s a Zelda related song from 2005 or so:

After that, they showed a few games for the Nintendo 3DS, and honestly I’m not too interested. Mario Kart is always fun, and the new Super Mario game might be good, but at this point, they don’t make it worth buying the console.
Kid Icarus COULD be interesting if the gameplay is great, but I doubt it. 3 vs 3 multiplayer battles seems fun though, and the developer (Sakurai) has made the Smash Bros games, so he knows a thing or two about multiplayer battles!

Speaking of which, they announced Super Smash Bros for Wii U and 3DS! Wooo, that was the best news of the conference. I love those games. Here’s another old recording of the Smash Bros theme, from 2006, consisting of only me and a friend’s vocals, and some clapping. No effects except for reverb:

Finally, the Wii U. The “new thing” about it is that there’s a screen on the controller, so you can play the game without the TV, but still have home console graphics. Or use the screen as an item screen, or as an aiming device. It plays all the normal Wii games, and you can use the old controllers, so that’s good.
But I don’t know. I’m not that hyped about this one; it’s graphically around 360/PS3, and isn’t controlled that differently from what we’ve already played. Except for gimmicky tech demos, where you can move the screen around to see different angles of things.
But as always, it’s all about the games that come to it! So I’ll probably buy it sooner or later.

Yup, that’s it.

Capristarz from the chat room asked me if I couldn’t do a short post about my musical history, and I started answering her comment with “I don’t really have much of a musical history”. Then I continued writing for a good while with my reply, until I realized that I should just make a post of it. So here’s the rest:

My family had both a piano and a guitar around the house at different times when I grew up, but I don’t recall playing as a kid. I’ll have to ask my parents about it, but I got my first guitar and keyboard when I was around 14-15 years old. I know that the music teacher in school was surprised that I suddenly could play instruments in the ninth grade. Apparently I had not been able to before that, at least not what he had noted.

And well, I started playing with friends for fun, tried out different instruments at school, and performed a couple of times when I was around 16-17 years old. (I played in two bands at the same talent show once, and ended up on first and third place.) After that I lost interest in performing though, so I mostly just sat at home, composing, and trying to record things.
One of the best things I did back then was this:

I refused to sing though, because honestly, I was afraid to sound like my cousin, who sang all the time, but not very well. :D So I preferred to keep quiet.

My “music career” stood completely still until I was around 20 years old, when I decided to actually learn how to sing from scratch. I had a few private lessons with a vocal trainer, which might have helped me, but I didn’t really like it. So I just read on the internet for tips, and recorded myself singing over and over again, trying to figure out what I was doing wrong, and how to adjust my mouth and muscles to sing better. I think this one is the oldest recording of me singing:

Hehe, I did my best to hide all the flaws with filters and effects, but you can hear at several spots how I tried to paste together two separate takes of the same line, because I wasn’t able to do the whole line in one take. I never showed this recording to anyone.

In June 2008 I uploaded my first video to YouTube, playing Für Elise on guitar. No one even found the video, but when I uploaded Mega Man 9 Rock Medley and Wind Waker Unplugged, gamers started spreading them on forums throughout the internet. I got sort of popular!
And finally, in 2009, I decided to post a video of me actually singing! 32 Songs in 8 Minutes. I was really scared of what people were going to think, but it turned out to be a huge success, and the rest is sort of history I guess!

Update:
I still didn’t take my music career seriously though. I kept uploading 3-4 videos per year, because I hate stress and pressure, and I just want to do things in my own pace. In 2010, I felt that I was ready to make my own album, so I started writing for it, and in 2011, on the 13th of August, I had finished “Thirteen Eight”! The name confused people, but it’s mainly because I realized that most of the songs include the odd time signature 13/8, and those kinds of things really symbolize my way of seeing music. I like odd times and other creative technical ideas!

All in all, I’m proud of being able to make my first album, all on my own too. I never thought I’d get this far just a couple of years ago! And I still listen to some of the songs on it. I do believe that the fatal flaw was the mixing though. With a warmer and more organic sound, more people would have liked it, so I made a few bad decisions there. I still think that everyone should give it a try, because it will probably grow on you! :D

And there you have it.

As you may have noticed, I never uploaded my new music video yesterday. Well, I actually did privately, to let a few people watch it to see what they thought. I was personally really disappointed by how ugly the visuals turned out to be in the end (I don’t know what happened, it must have been the stress that made me overlook so many bugs and flaws), and although the people I showed it to liked it, some agreed that I should probably redo the video.
But I don’t have time for that! Luckily, I’ve found a guy who’s willing to try to do it for me. So I’m going to send the files to him, and hopefully he’ll do a great job!

Oh, and I want to thank the people who purchased something from my shop! 12 items were sold, which is probably more than I had thought! :) I’ll see if I can give the South American people a free shipping option when the American shop opens up as well.

I’m sorry to say that I’m not sure if I’ll be able to finish my new video today or not. There are lots of clips to put together as realistically as possible, and it will take ages to do it perfectly. And the rendering times are sooo looong.

I’ll be working with it all day though, so we’ll see! I’ll probably settle with the results I get today, even if it’s not perfect.. I don’t have time with this, I have an album to finish!

Oh, and this is the last day of free shipping from my shop! So if you’re in Europe or North America, seize the opportunity to get a nice FreddeGredde mug or shirt. :) Just add “FREDDEGREDDESHOP” in the voucher code field at the checkout, and you’ll get the discount.

This is completely irrelevant to music, but I figured that you might want to know a few things about what I’m doing when not playing instruments, so:

Yesterday was a really long day! One of my brothers passed his exams at Uppsala university, so I had to go to several family gatherings to celebrate. First we had food at my grandmother, and after that we went straight to my dad’s place to eat even more. His garden looked really summery, so we took a few pictures! The one to the left is of me and my two brothers.

After that, me, my brother and his friends went to my place to play some video game as a pre party thing, and they were supposed to go to some club after that (and I would go to bed, because I’m playing floor ball on Saturday mornings), but they convinced me to let them stay and record a song. So they stayed all night, singing, using me as a sound engineer. It was okay though, it’s always fun to record when people sing awfully!

UPDATE: Oops, sorry! Apparently it’s okay to order from the US and Canada from this current shop, and it is free shipping this weekend for you guys too! It’s only the South American people who got shunned! Sorry about this.

Slightly inaccurate information:
Argh. The people at the Spreadshirt company didn’t tell me until NOW that I have to open an American shop in order to sell stuff to North American and South American countries. That’s annoying. We’re setting it up now, so that people can choose EU or US when arriving at the shop, but it won’t be completed until next week.

Sorry about this. My advice would be that my American fans (including those from Brazil!) wait until the end of next week, when the American shop is up.

Europeans still have the free shipping option until Sunday though! Just insert the code “FREDDEGREDDESHOP” in the “coupon”-field at the checkout.

Anyway, have a nice weekend! :)

I was working on two videos today! One is a “real” new music video, and I filmed everything today, but it’s going to take a lot of work to edit it all, because it’s.. well, visually challenging!
I don’t want to spoil too much, but I hope it will be up this weekend!

I also made a short “informational” video about the album and the website! It’s really corny, and I hope that people will understand that it’s meant to be that way! Well, maybe not this corny, but anyway:

Another important thing to tell you: Starting on Friday, my shop will have free shipping until Sunday, to celebrate my new website!
Just insert the code “FREDDEGREDDESHOP” in the “coupon”-field at the checkout.

I hope those who might be interested in a FreddeGredde shirt or mug will seize this opportunity. :)

Ollie Oakman from Australia interviewed me today, about my up-coming album, and this is what the conversation looked like:

Considering the album is mostly recorded, how do you feel about the almost-final product?
– I honestly think it will be quite great! There are seven “prog rock tracks” which fill up most of the album, and I’m proud of those. Then we have a couple of slower ballad like songs, that I also think are good. Then finally there are two tracks I didn’t really want on the album, because I personally don’t like them that much. But I did a few surveys before deciding what 13 songs to have on the album, and some people really like these two songs, so I had to include them after all. One of them is Vampire Bride, and the second was my attempt at participating in the Eurovision Song Contest last year.

Can we expect to hear any classic YouTube hits on the album?
– Well, I don’t know about “hits”, but my three original songs from youtube will be on the album, but remade. That is, Beside Me, Vampire Bride, and a longer version of The Wayfarer.

Are you mixing and producing the album yourself?
– I have been recording everything at home so far, and I’m still waiting for the drummer to send me all his drum tracks, but after that, I’m gonna send it all to a studio here in Gävle and get help with mixing by a professional. We might add a few things there, depending on whether we think it’s necessary or not. I’m a perfectionist, so I will want everything to be perfect!

You play all the instruments yourself (excluding the drums). Do you feel this has given you an advantage in the music composition or not?
– It’s obviously an advantage to understand and be able to play around with all the instruments when composing. And recording everything myself, I can make sure to that it is exactly as I want it! I guess the disadvantage would be that the instruments will stand out slightly less. For example, a different bass player might have added his personality into the mix, and it could have made things a bit more interesting.

Considering the entire process of making the album, in your point of view, what was the most difficult part?
– Definitely the lyrics. I’ve always been all about the actual music, and I’ve never even cared about lyrics when listening to my favorite bands. So it’s been really hard to come up with those, and getting help with them has also been harder than expected. There are still a few songs with incomplete lyrics, but I’m getting closer and closer.

Does the album name have any context or meaning behind it?
– Yes, it definitely has! I don’t know if I want to give everything away, but I realized that most songs on the album include the time signature 13/8, so I felt that “Thirteen Eight” described pretty well how I view music, that I like the technical part of it, with odd time signatures and experimental progressions.
After that, I just added lots of details based on 13 and 8. And some things just happened to work out, even though they were far-fetched. The F and G in FreddeGredde for example! F is the sixth letter of the alphabet, G is the seventh. 6 plus 7 is obviously 13! There are lots of references in the artwork too, and obviously the release date, 13th of August.

We’ve seen many improvised instruments in videos such as “Wind Waker Unplugged”. Do any odd items appear throughout the album?
– Yes, they do. There’s one track with similar orchestration as Wind Waker Unplugged, so all those instruments will appear again, like the water glasses and oven pan! It will mostly be “rock arrangements” though, focusing on drums, bass, guitars and keyboards. And the occasional accordion.

Where will the album be available for purchase?
– That’s not entirely decided yet, since I still have to decide for a label. It will definitely be on iTunes. Hopefully in most music stores all over the world, but who knows.

Well thanks Fredde for answering my questions! I’m sure your fans will be happy to have a sneak peak into the album and your direct work with it!
– You’re welcome! If anyone ever has any questions, I’ll gladly answer them anytime. :)