I am still on a break from the studio, until monday…. Can´t wait to go there again!
Then we will finish the whole album including mixing. And Christoffer has his deadline on midsummer, it is the 20th of June. It feels like we´re gonna make it, as long as he stays well, and is not too tired from all his other work. But it is good for him when I am there because he is free to do it his own way and rest when he needs it. We have 5 backgrounds with vocals recorded that just need to be finished with additional sounds, and polishing the programmed drums. We can finish 1-2 songs a day. And then we will record 2-4 more backgrounds and vocals to work with. So I think we will make the deadline!
Before Monday Martinique and I will go to London for fun and inspiration- I have never been there and I think it will be amazing :o)))
I want to show you the children of “Vitnos” (”Whitenose”)! They live in Christoffer´s house. Their names are Mirran, Lillnos and Findus- have you seen anything cuter?
I would like to have a cat or two but I live in an apartment just by a big street and on the 3rd floor with no grass outside, so I think we must wait. But when I lived in the countryside we had a lot of cats, I think they are great animals. You can´t tell them what to do and they really know how to enjoy life, sleeping in the sunlight and doing what they want! I have never had a dog so I am a little afraid of them, once I was hunted by a big black one and one other time I was bitten in the thigh. But I think that dog was just playing but still she made me scared. Maybe it is because I am not used to dogs. I have heard that if I smile and my teeth show, a dog might think I am angry. So now I can´t really smile in a normal way to a dog and it makes me a bit tense of course and I know they sense that very quickly! But Martinique has had both dogs and cats (once they had 8 cats at a time :o). I think he would be great with a dog. He thinks Rhodesian Ridgeback is a very beautiful kind. Maybe one day! Have a great week end and I´ll see you soon!
s
y
Yesterday at 18.00 in Konsthallen restaurant (the art gallery restaurant) of Malmö was my lucky day!
A foundation called Sparbanksstiftelsen, give away scholarships to young (didn´t know i still fit into that category :o) local artists- and this year I was one of the lucky ones! The honour is enormous and the prize helps me so much to support myself during the recording and promoting of the coming album. A short inspirational trip to London where Martinique and I will see the musical “Billy Elliot” will be something to remember this lucky night by! Thank you thank you thank you Sparbanken!
I was honored by my mother Margareta, my father Per Olof and my friend Hanna, and Christoffer Andersson my pianist and friend. You can see them all on the photos. We played one song from the coming album and it felt great, I was just so happy I almost cried…
a
And here is the motivation from the jury:
“Helena Josefsson is a left handed, firm woman who has decided to take at least one risk a day. This has led to the brave step from working as a shop assistant to concentrating fully on a carreer as a singer. She has already met a large audience during her tours with Per Gessles group Son of a Plumber. Also, she has sung on recordings with Andreas Johnsson and The Ark. But above all, she has her own carreer, where she gets to show her precise sense for lyrics, melody and singing. She puts strong feelings of love and longing to life, but also a fantasy world inhabited by fairies and trolls. She is delighted by the theatrical, but her personality and stage precense is always enchanting and disarming.”
Now I want to show you what the studio looks like! It is an old stable that Christoffer and his wife, architecht Ylva Lundquist, have turned into a studio. The house on the picture is where the family lives, and on the left side you see the barn (the studio). With a symbol of good luck on the door!
The studio has buttons and machines that you can only dream of, but still the machines would be nothing without Chtistoffer! This record is mainly done by computer so this is what it looks like when it comes to life. I remember the first time I came to the studio and saw Christoffer , he looked like a brownie with his beard and running around in the snow with his clogs :o)
This violet button is my favourite lamp, diode, in the studio! Nice isn´t it ;o ) Here you can also see the drum-room.
This is my view from the listening-sofa!!
Two days of recording last week. This is what I do when Christoffer needs to go for a ride on his moped to clear his head- I can sit in the garden and look at all the flowers!
Here you can see my view from the hammock! The birch and the golden flowers, and on my right hand, the studio entrance, with Christoffer´s moped outside.
It is only Christoffer and me now in the studio, he plays all the instruments except for the drums that Erik has prepared. We had so many instruments on “Dynamo” that now we want to do the contrary, as few sounds as possible! We finished three songs and they felt energetic and simple. We were surprised to find how little sounds you need to make it feel complete!
Day 2 included water pistol war with Christoffer´s family and I and his youngest daughter Agnes played while Christoffer worked with his tweezers. We made a house to the wooden mouse Muffi and a king´s crown and a cloak for him. And in his little cardboard house we made a cave with a bat in it and a tunnel, and some stairs and so on. Until she fell asleep in the sofa listening to the drum machine going round and round and round!
Martinique surprised me by borrowing a car after his job, and by 22.00 he came to us in the studio to pick me up, oh what a great surprise! He brought some liquorice, fruit and water that tasted great because he knows that the water in the studio has a strange taste that reminds me of something that comes out of your bottoms. He had his new perfume on too! Then he listened to the three finished songs. To my delight he was very happy with them but unfortunately we didn´t get anything to listen to at home. Then we went home to Malmoe as I fell asleep in the car…! Now I don´t have any time booked in the studio until June 2nd but then we will work for three weeks straight. The dead line is June 20th, when everything will be mixed and finsished! In the mean time Martinique is making the artwork for the album!
The next session was singing-time! Eight songs including backing vocals, on three days- Jippppiiii! I had four different microphones to choose from and a “puff-skydd” you know the thing that makes sure the s´s and the p´s aren´t too noisy. I call it a Piff and Puff skydd, it means it protects me from chipmunks. They appear all of a sudden and then they bite my nose… No, but the piff and puff skydd is good ´cause it stops me from going to close to the mic. And that is what I normally do, just stand closer and closer because then I hear better :o) But it´s a big no-no! After all this singing (you know I love backing vocals, it has to be a LOT of it!) my voice was not in a very good shape :o) I think it is because of all the breathing, it dries the throat out! But a couple of days and cups of tea later, it was back to normal.
Look at the forest outside the studio, full of white wooden anemons! This is the view from the kitchen door in the studio.
And then I wrote a bridge to a brand new song out in the back. Can you see the little blue cottage? It is where Christoffer´s daughters like to play sometimes, isn´t it sweet?
The sun is here oh how lovely it is!!
I am sorry that I don´t know how to turn the pictures right, but from now on I will only take photos lying down, so you don´t have to turn your computers, it is not so easy to do with some…!
Oh I am so grateful for this life, for music, for love, for nature! I wish everyone could feel it…
The first session was three days at the beginning of February!
Let me introduce the hard working producer, technician and musician Christoffer Lundquist, and his car! This man does the work of three people, at least, and his ears never fail to focus. Just a little nap now and then and he is like new again! I call him “Skalman”, it is a turtle in the Swedish cartoon “Bamse”. He has an eating- and sleeping-alarm clock and when it rings you know what happens. And Christoffer is like Skalman who can pull anything you might need out of his shell. Christoffer he knows all the buttons in the studio, he knows where all the cables go, and he always makes things beautiful, even the not so beautiful songs become white pigeons in his hands.
Here he is recording his car for one of the up tempo songs… We needed an “ost-bil”, a cheese car so to speak. Oh you don´t know what it means? No I didn´t either, until Erik Hjärpe, the dancing drum guru taught us about it. It is when you play music really loud in your car, and that is what Christoffer and I did. It became really fine, even though it has nothing to do with the song itself, but as long as it´s fun! :o)
And here he is, Erik aka Voz Vibrante! He made drum programming for about 7 songs. Some songs he really liked and some he didn´t. But he made drums for them all anyway! I think he mostly likes the groovy songs. I have never seen anyone working in such an intensive manner. I had to force him to drink and eat sometimes but then he ate in the same intensive way :o) I have never met anyone who eats faster than I do but Erik is the king!!! And you can also see that I was most relaxed, listening, having a cup of tea in the studio sofa-
No actually I was working my ears off too! I had my own little workstation down in the kitchen where I made a demo of a brand new song! And the two gentlemen liked it, so it was recorded the day after.
Or the drums were.
After these three days Erik and I were totally blank in our heads but Christoffer kept working the next morning with his other recordings- some kind of drug must be the secret… or maybe it is just the love for music?
I would like to tell you a little about how the new album is proceeding!
So stay tuned!
Now I have collected loads of inspiration before the recording- first flamenco dancing in Jerez, Spain!
And then skiing in Funäsdalen, Sweden! And now I´m so energetic it hurts!
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