Traveling Song

First single from the album is now out!

Get it below (click):

Credits for Traveling Song

released September 27, 2019 
johan davidsson - guitars, piano 
james whife - bass 
hannes obers - drums 
anna thorstensson - cello 
alfred strand - piano 
daniel örtegren - saxophone, clarinet 
martin lindell gilleberg - guitar

produced by johan davidsson 
recorded by jonas jönsson at tambourine studios, malmo/sweden 
mixed by björn lindberg (bjorn.li) 
mastered by jon rinneby (jon.rinneby.se)
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Single and album release!

I’m happy to announce that on the 27th of September the single from the album “Traveling Song” will be released. And short thereafter, on 12th of October the whole album will be out on all thinkable digital platforms.

An update about the blog: In my last post I wrote a little about the mastering of the music. Obviously a lot has happened since. Things like distribution, album artwork and naming the thing. When I have time I’ll write about that to but for now I just wanted to give an update that the music is coming soon!

Here’s a taste from “Traveling Song”.

Video : album teaser #2 (single release promo)

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Final mix done!

We have arrived at the final mix! Thanks Björn for your patience and work on this music. I think we have went through about 4-5 versions so it’s been a few weeks of back and forth, listening and finding a good sound as well as some touch-ups here and there. My thinking around the mixing was that I wanted it to be quite raw sounding. Not to much of a makeover in terms of effects and the alike but more focus on the levels. And I think it’s fair to say that this was the result (even though there certainly are some FX). I’m looking forward to sharing it and I’m working on making some small preview-snippets from the music to share here, perhaps with some video but I haven’t decided on how to do that yet and whether it’s a good idea to put anything at all out there before it’s been mastered (?).

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Day 2 in the studio

The first (of two) recording-weekends finished! The second day we continued with both recording the bases for the songs as well as doing lots of overdubbing. It feels like we got a lot done this first weekend and managed to come a long way on 10 songs! One or two of them are probably completed altogether. I’m really happy also that Karolina Almgren could join in on soprano saxophone on one of the songs. For most of the songs, we record a kind of base on duo/trio setting and then add on instruments afterwards. For a few of them however, we recorded everyone together - like the one Karolina joined in on. Alfred also joined to record piano on four songs.

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Drums, cello and more rehearsing

Now it is only one week until we start recording. I’m really looking forward to get started and also a bit nervous I must admit. As a result, and as time aproaches, the classic burst of thoughts arise -> “Have I prepared enough? Rehearsed enough? Should I’ve picked other songs?” etc. As this project is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time, I was kind of suspecting this and it feels kind of normal so no problem there. The most important thing for me is to get the music out there and enjoy the whole thing, so thats what I want to focus on. The last few days we have done some rehearsing. First with these two gentlemen:

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Easter egg

Hello and happy easter. I’m pleased to say that the focus is now shifting. From mostly being by myself, writing and practicing music to meeting up with, and rehearsing with the awesome people who I’m lucky to have join me. The one and only James Whife, one of my favorite people, is one of them. James (on double bass) will undoubtebly be the one featuring most in the recordings a part from myself.

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Friendly music with a little bit of blues

Just a short update about the project today as the things I’ve worked on regarding the project are somewhat semi-interesting to write about. I’m basically refining and going through the 11 songs I’ve picked to prioritize and have prepared for recording. I started doing some sloppy demo recordings at home to help me make sense of how I want it to sound later on. When doing that I’m experiencing that it is quiet easy to become obsessive about deciding the form of a song. When that happens I often need to just stop at some point and decide because there always seems to be “better” idea around. Not a new problem by any means. Anyway, all of the songs arent completely finished so there’s that to. In the clip below I play a bit from a song I finished writing today. Not sure what to name it yet, but it seems to be one of the most friendly sounding songs I have.. almost cute? Thankfully I was able to get a little bit of blues in there (as I try with all my songs =)).

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Keeping on

Hello. First I just wanted to mention about my last post that I was happy to see some interest in get-a-grip and I’m looking forward to work on that more when there’s time. Otherwise just a quick update on the project process today: Since last I’ve been mostly arranging and practicing piano/guitar. In general I would say that my music is quite simple in many ways but there is in particular one song that has some weird stuff going on and I need to practice a lot to be able to play it.. especially the piano part as that’s not my main instrument. I don’t have a demo of that for you at present but I’ll instead include part of another song below that will be recorded, hope you like it! That’s all for today. Over n out /Johan

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Almost announcing get-a-grip

The time I’ve put into the project this week so far has been mostly about logistics and planning for the recording and not so much working with the music. Perhaps not the most fun week… However, something that was fun was that I did a little work on the guitar-learning-tool I mentioned in the last post. So I thought to write a few words about what I’m talking about in this post:

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Traveling song

Hello. Today I have been working a bit on finishing and puzzling together the song in the video below. I like the sound of mixing the sounds of electric and acoustic guitar so there will probably be a fair amount of that in the finished recording. So things are moving along and I’m also awaiting and working on setting dates for studio recording. I’ve also been working on a little side-project that I hope to share here soon. It’s a learning tool for guitar (or basically any string instrument) in form of a small web-application. But more on that later. Other than this I don’t have that much more to share today. Take care, hope you like the clip! / Johan

Video : traveling song

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Second cut

Back home again! I have now selected eleven songs from the first cut and so this week I’ve been starting preparing and arranging them. Some are more or less complete and its more about figuring out what instruments that’s a good fit, others need a bit more fixing up before they are ready for recording. Anyway, now the real fun begins and I’m pretty excited about it. The pieces shared in previous posts (here and here) have I now basically completed to start recording along with two others. So the coming time I’ll make my way to prepare all of the eleven songs and decide where and when to record them. Until next time I’ll leave you with some loop-pedal jam.

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Sidetracks (part 2)

Back in the day (and still) I used to love film music, something that is obvious listening through old recordings. Here I have collected just a few of the film-music-like pieces. They were all recorded using midi soundbanks and Reason (DAW).

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