I was thinking that it might be fun and interesting if you all sent me some questions today (any kinds!), via a comment or a private message, and for tomorrow’s post, I’ll try to answer all of them! :)
So, let’s do this!
Edit: Okay, enough. :D I already have way too many questions to answer now, so I will have to put a stop here, and see if I can fit all of your questions in tomorrow’s post. Thanks, I’m surprised by how popular this post became!
For today’s update, I had planned to show you some graphs of the opening amount of views for my videos, just to see how the Killer Queen cover is doing compared to my old videos! (Yes, I’m childishly captivated by graphs and statistics.) But It’s still a bit too early to say how it’s doing, so instead, I’m going to show you an old video game cover I did in 2007. It’s almost five years old now, so it’s a bit rough on the edges, but still!
It’s the opening theme from the NES classic “Solstice“. The intro was spectacular for being on that console, and it’s basically a prog rock song (my favorite genre), so I just had to try to remake it with real rock instruments. And here it is:
You can hear the original here.
Today is going to be a lazy day for me. I’ve been working too hard the last seven days or so, with the Killer Queen video, with the website, with various album related matters, and some private things.
So, I’m going to relax all day, and gain energy to be able to continue recording the remaining tracks of the album tomorrow!
Oh, and I’ve also fixed an American shop, which is up and running now! Besides the US, it can also ship products to Canada, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Brazil, Argentina, Korea, Japan, China, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand! So, enjoy your shopping. :D
Oh, and I’d like to win an iPod.
The poll happened to reach 1,000 votes today, so I figured it was time to start a new one!
These are the results of the old one. I like that the prog rock songs won quite comfortably, because that’s the kind of music I really like doing! I hope not too many chose it just because of the word “epic” though. :P
(Epic is more or less a term that describes the progression of a song, that there are different sections, and themes that are repeated in different ways.)
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.