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! :)

Sorry that I haven’t been updating in a few days! I’m surprised that I managed to do it daily for more than a month, but once I forgot one day, I just never got back to it.

Anyway, so it’s been super busy the last few days, like always! Trying to get the drum parts done this week (won’t happen), and I’ve been trying to finish my own parts this week (won’t happen either), and I’ve also had some people over because of the Getaway Rock Festival, which is in Gävle this week. At least, I got them to help me with taking some pictures that could be included in the album booklet! None turned out that great though..
So anyway, I’ll keep working hard to make sure everything is ready to be mixed by next week. It will be tight to get it in time for the release date, but it should be doable!
Oh, and about the pre-orders: I’ve had 35 pre-orders so far, which is great, considering how far it is until the release! I really appreciate it. :) I won’t have time to make drawings/surprises for too many people though, so only the first 60 customers will get one!
After that, you can still pre-order normal signed ones from me, but yeah, no special surprises.

Alright, now I’ve uploaded a pre-order section for Thirteen Eight on the website! This is only for the personally signed copies though, so if you plan to buy a normal CD or a digital download, don’t mind it.
(Although, I guess you could still check it out, just to get some new bits of information about it!)

I thought this would be a good time to properly announce who’s going to play the drums on my album! I’ve already mentioned him a few times now and then, but I thought I’d give him some more credit than that!

So, his name is David Schlein, he’s a young Swede living in Stockholm, and he’s actually the second most subscribed Swedish musician on YouTube! (Me being the most subscribed one, hah.)

He doesn’t usually play the kind of music I do, but he’s got the right chops to be able to play even the most complex drum parts on my album! Very speedy and technical drummer, and it’s fun that he’s on YouTube like me, so that’s why I asked him, and luckily he wanted to be part of the project! Nice guy anyhow, so I hope you’ll like his playing on the album. :)

Here’s his latest video in case you want to see what he’s like, even though the song he’s playing is heavier than anything on my album!

The people in the chat room wanted me to post some drawings I made a while ago with the Graffiti application on Facebook. The fun thing about it is that you can hit replay and see every brush stroke made, so it’s best to just click on the links and see them there:

– The fox (Just clicked around randomly to see how the app worked, and then turned it into an ugly fox.)
– The frog (After the fox, I tried something a bit more planned.)
– The manly elephant (And then another one.)
– My friend Hanoi (And then an attempt to draw a real person.)
– The two cats (The most detailed drawing I made, before I got tired of the application.)

Yay, my FreddeGredde T-shirt finally arrived today! The first thing I noticed was that the quality was nice. The second thing was that it’s too wide. Maybe I should have gone with the small size instead.
This is the first time I’ve ordered clothes from the internet, and I now understand the risks! :P My dad said he was interested in buying a T-shirt though, so maybe he can have this one, and I’ll order a new one!

Here are some other people’s shirts and products: