[Puie:] covered on meadowmusic.se

Pär Berglund at excellent Swedish mp3-blog Meadow Music wrote a nice post about [Puie:] this Sunday. Meadow Music focuses on profiling the plethora of great Swedish music; released and un-so.

Read the post at meadowmusic.se.

Where's Ögonblick?

My collaboration with Ken Peel now has a name - "Ögonblick".

In Swedish, ‘ögon’ means ‘eyes’ and ‘blick’ means ‘gaze’ or ‘glance’. An ögonblick is the amount of time it takes for an eye to gaze, which is really an instant. Our tracks are like snapshots of different ögonblicks; miniature soundscapes that have their own sounds, harmonies, colours, shapes. The plural form of ögonblick is also ögonblick, it can mean one as well as many.

Ögonblick’s music is driven by spontaneity – drawing intuitively from our many influences, but Ögonblick is not just about experimentation for the sake of experimentation. We are seeking to create lyrical, memorable pieces of music that are spirited and enjoyable.

The first Ögonblick commercial release will be available late 2007 / early 2008.

In the meantime, take a listen at myspace.com/ogonblick!

Improvised whistling

The last week, I have found a new favorite way to compose - whistling an improvised melody. So, for "Progress", I added a hypothetical whistled melody. I also changed the bass sound and elaborated the rythm just a bit.

Now it sounds like this.

Progress

Since February, my music composing has been confined to my collaboration with Bristol-based electronica musician Ken Peel. So far, we have co-composed four tracks ("...going on fifth and sixth...") in a very effective and creative kind of process, to me, that is.

Last week, my designer friend Karin and I decided to launch the second project under our [Puie: Dsch] Collaborative-brand. I'm excited to take that collaboration further.

Yesterday, by the piano, I came up with a kind of chord progression I have returned to from time to time. To me, it sounds like a standard synth-pop-song-progression and I'm not really fond of it. The best way to get away from it is to use it in a track once and for all. So, to begin with, I played the chords with an automatic, blip-blop sound on a synth. Then, I added a bass sound with slight delay.

Maybe I'll change those sounds into acoustic sounds instead. Or I'll keep them. That would be a way to kill my darlings.

Here's the electronic version so far.

A melody at last

Yesterday, I completed "Track B" by adding a melody, at last. I chose the low whistle for the melody and recorded the whole track in two takes. I like the sound of spontaneity, especially if there are imperfections in the performance (I'm fascinated by the Japanese wabi-sabi concept).

Renaming it "Farväl" (which is Swedish for "farewell"), I consider it complete. Listen here: Farväl

"Track A" now has a name

I have finally decided on a name for the beforementioned "Track A":

"Numbingly cold brass"

It's a reminiscence of winter gigs with my town's marching band at the square, in the morning, with a temperature below zero Celsius and no audience. Romantic, isn't it?

A skeleton of a song

Bit by bit, track "B" takes form. Tonight, I added chords for a verse (played on the mandolin), a basstrack for the "refrain" (out of a melodicon downpitched two octaves) and the song structure (intro, refrain, verse, refrain, verse, refrain(s) and fade out). I'm still lacking a melody and I'm not sure on what instrument to play it, but I'll get there soon.

Here's "Track B, version 3".