Rocking the metaverse@MetaPlace

When I started to type this I was at a concert in the virtual world MetaPlace. The event was a cross-world tour arranged by Koinup, a social network for people interested in virtual worlds.

It was the biggest concert so far in MetaPlace, with four performers and a special-built (fantastic) venue.

The artist on stage where Dizzy Banjo, Grace McDunnogh, Slim Warrior and Doubledown Tandino. I’ve met Grace a few times before, as she prepared for her first show THE first show in Metaplace, in FolkNCoffee – a place built by yours truly (yay!). I unfortunately missed her set that time, so I’m glad I got to hear her now. She was really great! Dizzy was good too, played nice mellow tunes, campfire style. SlimWarrior smittened us with her lovely music (and highly contagious laughter), it was really wonderful. Missed the end of the DJ DoubleDown Tandinos set, but he spun great tunes with a little jive-vibe going on the part I was there for.

I might have something more insightful to say about this in a later post, but for now, here are some photos from the event!

Can’t escape youtube

So last post was from Pettersson & Fredrikssons myspace blog. The reason for re-posting this is that I found some Otyg-related stuff on youtube, wich made me really nostalgic about those old days:

Metalband covering “Fjällstorm”, an old Otyg song. The band is better than the quality:

Turkish metalband trying to cover “Trollslottet”:

Guys with acoustic guitars busking and playing “Trollslottet”:

And finally, people dancing weirdly to, yes, Otyg:

Past sins I

When I was in 9th grade I was a dedicated metal guitarist, really into black/death metal and similar stuff. Favorite bands were At The Gates (still a favorite), Dissection and doommetallers My Dying Bride. I played in a band called Obscured, wich changed name to A Funeral Pyre (still proud of that name, referencing the Doors and all…). Expect more about those bands in a future Past Sins post.

But at the same time another genre had caught my interest – folkmusic. There was something alluring with that music, something mysterious and magic. I had heard dronerockers Hedningarna and Garmarna, old 70th bands like Kebnekaise and some modern World Music like Enteli, and I soon got into the solofiddlers. It really spoke to me. And then some guys from a band called Blackburning Evening wich we shared rehearsal room with approached me about starting a new band wich would merge folkmusic and metal in a really cool way. And so Otyg was born.

After a few years we were signed by Austrian record label Napalm Records and recorded two cd:s for them. Around the year 2000 we moved to different cities and rehearsal got hard to pull of, and the band slowly dissolved. The third album never got recorded.

We didn’t play alot live – we did a nice tour in the Netherlands and played some smaller festivals, but we did get lots of people from all around the world who really liked what we did. And there’s still modern folkmetal bands citing Otyg as a major influence. So I’m kind of proud to have been a part of that whole thing. And we had a blast!

Myspace-fanpage:
www.myspace.com/otyg

Napalm Records:
http://www.napalmrecords.com

This was a repost from the blog of my current band Pettersson & Fredriksson

The joy of looping

I am first and foremost an accompanying musician – my best skill is to lift up, or add new meaning to, an existing melody with arrangements and stuff. But I have for many years nurtured a dream of doing something solo. I found by accident an amazing video of beatboxer Kid Beyond doing his thing, and then also learned that my teacher Totte Mattsson from Hedningarna was into it. What thing you ask?

Live looping. To use electronics to record and play back your music in real-time, letting it loop as long as you need, play over it and add new layers. I really got the idea and felt compelled, but also overwhelmed by the techy side of it. I had it in the back of my head for many years but never really got to it – there’s a lot to take in, especially when playing an acoustic instrument and not normally using a lot of digital effects. I finally managed to convince my music partner to get in on the action. We first got a laptop and Ableton Live (“yay, just like Kid Beyond!”), but soon decided it was to clunky, to difficult and risky to be fiddling with audiocards and software while on stage. We lowered our standards and got ourself a Boss RC-50 pedal. It was awsome, easy to use and quite flexible even though not as much functionality as some high-end loopers. Wich was all for the best, cause in the end there was very little live to the looping left – we ended up mainly using pre-recorded loops since it fits the music better.

But a few weeks ago I started fiddling with the RC-50 on my own. And DAMN how fun it is. To stack your loops cleverly, adding layers and making them shift meaning depending on what you play, it’s really very satisfying when it works. I have a long way to go before I have something to show for, but I’m aiming at putting together a full soloshow over the summer with just me, my mandola and a little willow flute. I’ll post recordings of work sessions as I progress.

A glorius day

I’ve been making music for a long time, and have a few records under my sleeve. When my first record on a swedish label was to be recorded, I joined the Swedish Performing Rights Society, STIM. Without being a part of STIM, you don’t get to make records, it’s as simple as that. This is because they have collaborations with all the cd-printing companys to prevent people from printing other peoples music I guess.

I was happy with being a member, got some modest payouts each year and otherwise didn’t really think about it. Then artists started releasing their music for free on the web, under “Creative Commons” licenses. I thought it was such a wonderful thing to do, and I wanted to do it too. Perhaps not for all my tunes, but a handful of them would be nice to share. That can’t be a problem, right?

Wrong.

I soon learned that STIM won’t let you decide much about your own music. As long as you are a member of STIM a big chunk of the rights to your tunes are in the hands of the organisation. The right to collect the checks from users. The right to distribute those checks, part of it to you and part to STIM. Also, you have “responsibilitys”. You can’t let anyone download your music for free, ever. And you definitely can’t release any music under other types of licenses. Ever. So I was pissed off, and have contemplated giving up my membership for several years. But I do like to make records, and I do like to get paid from airtime on the radio.

But, as of today, STIM has finally come to their senses and allows for individual tunes created by their members to be released under a Creative Commons license. Unfortunately there are restrictions, such as it has to be in “non-commersiall” context – you can’t use it in a place with ads, in example. Wich means you aren’t allowed to upload your CC-tunes to myspace?

But it is a glorius first step. It opens up lot’s of possibilities for songwriters, and gives us a little more freedom to do what we want with our music. Stay tuned for some CC-tracks to download right here!

Why "Silkwood"?

This blog is called The Silkwood Journals. I’ll tell you why.

It has nothing to do with labor union activist Karen Silkwood, or that movie about her. Neither is it referring to anything in Illinoise. It’s not even a “very long, hot shower taken to disinfect and decontaminate oneself from environmentally acquired smells such as smoke or food”, wich Kate Perry has taken.

No.

Silkwood Music is the name of my now dormant musical enterprise. When trying to find a wicked name for the company I was reading a book about the history about chinese signs. The two signs that together made the sign to symbolize “plucked instruments” where, yes, “silk” and “wood“. And since plucked instruments is exactly what I play, and the sign was beautiful, that’s the name I chose.

But in retrospect, wouldn’t it be way cooler if it was that shower thing…

Why “Silkwood”?

This blog is called The Silkwood Journals. I’ll tell you why.

It has nothing to do with labor union activist Karen Silkwood, or that movie about her. Neither is it referring to anything in Illinoise. It’s not even a “very long, hot shower taken to disinfect and decontaminate oneself from environmentally acquired smells such as smoke or food”, wich Kate Perry has taken.

No.

Silkwood Music is the name of my now dormant musical enterprise. When trying to find a wicked name for the company I was reading a book about the history about chinese signs. The two signs that together made the sign to symbolize “plucked instruments” where, yes, “silk” and “wood“. And since plucked instruments is exactly what I play, and the sign was beautiful, that’s the name I chose.

But in retrospect, wouldn’t it be way cooler if it was that shower thing…

Hello world!

So. My name is am Daniel Fredriksson . I have blogged on account of my band Pettersson & Fredriksson for the last year now and have lately felt an urge to occasionally write about other stuff then our awsome music. Stuff like my other music projects, the fantastic virtual world building platform Metaplace, music that I think is awsome or important, ethnomusicology (<–Slightly embarrasing essay on black metal from 1998…), folklore, videogames, archives and random, useless thoughts. And all of those things shouldn’t be in the band blog – so I haven’t always written them.

Hence this place. Anything related to Pettersson & Fredriksson will be posted both here and in the myspace blog, but stuff that shouldn’t go there will only be here.

I bid us welcome, and I hope we’ll like it here.