Leading up to the release of my debut album, Thirteen Eight, I decided to have a little contest. The winner will get a free copy of my CD sent to his/her home in time for August 13!

So what is the contest about then? Well, you can create anything related to me (FreddeGredde), like a drawing, a cover of any of my songs (or an original song maybe?), a YouTube video, a poem, or whatever you feel like!

Send your contribution through the contact form, or give it to me personally in the FreddeGredde chat room. The deadline to send things in is August 6.

Good luck!

Oh, and I made a FreddeGredde with mustache:

Madonna, Bono, Elton John etc don’t write their real names when signing stuff, do they? They write their artist names! So, I’ve been practicing on writing “FreddeGredde” instead of Fredrik Larsson now, so that I’m prepared to sign millions of things in the future!

What do you think, does it look okay, or would you be disappointed to have your CD signed with this?

Today, I decided to just relax and do nothing, because the album is recorded, and the music videos don’t need to be up until the end of the month. So all I can do is wait for the sound engineer to finish mixing!

So I went to the park to spend some time in the sun, because it was a really nice day! I brought my new pencils too, and tried them out a bit. There are lots of drawings to make for the people who pre-ordered the album, but I was just daubing a little this time, just making random lines and then tried to make characters of them.
Not sure if anyone would want it sent with his/her album, but tell me if you do, and you’ll get THE VERY FIRST drawing I did this year! Seems like something of a collector’s item, no?

Here’s a blurry photo of approximately 30% of the paper I drew on:

Today, my brother was here, and we filmed the Solace Distant video! He’s the director, so I’ve no idea how it will turn out, and I’ve just been following his directions all day. I think it will turn out great though!

Here’s a random picture from the filmed material:

Last week, the last bunch of recordings were sent to the studio and sound engineer that I’m working with, so now I’m officially done with that! I’m hoping that the mixing and mastering will be finished this week, but we’ll see. It’s also important that I’m happy with the results, so it’s hard to say if it’s worth risking that people from the other side of the world won’t get the physical copy in time for 13th of August.

Anyway, now starts the work with the three music videos that I plan to upload at the same time, by the end of the month! I’m not doing them all entirely by myself though. We have:

1. A “traditional FreddeGredde split-screen” for Lonely Starlight, which will be sort of like Beside Me I guess. I’m doing this one on my own, like I’ve always done with my videos. (Except for Vampire Bride.)

2. A slightly more typical music video directed by my brother, which is for the piano driven song Solace Distant. This one will be a bit more artsy, with different angles and shots and possibly black and white.

3. An animated video for The Star Song, which is a really cute song about a girl who finds a star! A guy named Oscar Baldwin is making the video, and it’s looking great so far! Here’s a little example, although it looks much better in motion!

Oh, and I’ve had so many pre-orders with requests for drawings and secret surprises now, so for future pre-orders, I can only give you a signed album and a signed photo with it. Thanks a lot! :)