As probably anyone who has ever created anything from nothing, a song, a book, a play, etc..would know the satisfying feeling of accomplishment when it all comes together.

That was how we felt as we reached the last leg of our first songwriting journey.

“Tokyo”, our very own original song was almost finished, recorded and ready to be sent into the universe. The very proof of our band’s accomplishment and right to exist. No less.

Lithuania had given us the structure of the song. What it needed now was the rhythm section. The bassline we would come up with ourselves. Håkon took his first musical steps with the bassguitar(not entirely true, piano came first, but more on that in later posts). The drumsection on the other hand, would be handed to one of our good drummer-friends.

But first, the bassline, and that called for an allnighter.

Friday night and Kathrines livingroom were transformed into a practiceroom \ studio. Which is fairly easy as her livingroom is set up more or less as a musicroom. Move a chair and you’re good to go. In fairness it’s probably more precise to call her livingroom a practice room with a dining table.

Guitar and vocals were quickly recorded into Studio One. Time for the low end to come to life.
Håkon put his Warwick Corvette to work(also nicknamed “The Fishbass”, but, another story entirely)
The night dragged on, the bassline not quite there yet. It was almost like it was eluding us just in the last moment, like playing hide and seek with our creativity. We almost had it. Then concentration started to slip, and we started watching musicvideos instead.(damn you youtube rabitthole).

It is a weird thing, the idea of setting up a schedule thinking like »friday night, we’re going to be so creative». But what happens often is that nothing comes to mind, and often, the mind is being distracted by whatever else there is. Like youtube. Instead, it’s more likely that you’re suddenly having an eureka moment while you’re doing the dishes, painting the house or out searching for polarbears, then creativity hits you with a hammer, and you come up with »the greatest song in the world»
The lesson here, if any, creativity can’t be planned.

Come morning and our creativity had awoken rested and with new ideas. Or maybe it was the coffee? Either way, we managed to fit the last piece of the puzzle and our bassline was now a reality.

The bassline ended up with two parts, one intro and bridge part, that we thought had a certain »eastern» sound or feel to it. The other part would be the main bassline.

Next piece of the puzzle was the drum section. Here we had to lean on our good musical friends, as none of us, at the time, played the drums(this has changed since then)

We reached out to our good friend and also former \ present bandmember Johan Christian »Finni». The happiest and friendliest person on earth, »Finni» is a smile machine, and always ready to help. An excellent drummer and brewer of the most excellent beer. When we asked him he said yes without thinking, ready to go at the drop of a hat.

A day was set for us to meet at Kathrine’s workplace, where they happen to have a musicroom with all the gear necessary.

Unfortunately, we were, and still are a bit lacking in studio equipment. As anyone who’s into musicgear knows, it costs a lot. At that time our studio equipment consisted of our soundcard for the DAW and Håkon’s Aston Origin condenser mic(a most excellent microphone btw).so miking up the drums was not possible. The choice of drumkit fell on the electronic one, which was not a good choice it turned out, but what could we do.

Poor equipment seem to be the rule for bands in their early stages, and as if the drums weren’t bad enough, the piano was not great either. Sounding cheap and digital, but it was the only piano we could get our hands on. In fact, that crappy piano led to Kathrine deciding to pick up playing the piano again, and so she later went out to buy a new and slightly better Casio to get started. She’s come a long way since.

We plugged the e-drum kit into the soundcard, fired up Studio One, and off we went. Håkon playing the acoustic guitar, Kathrine behind the piano and singing. Bassline playing off the DAW, and Finni laying down the groove.

As we were short on time we had to wrap it up as soon as we had a fairly decent take. What we didn’t know at that moment was that the e-drumkit would clip and fall out here and there, this we discovered when we got into mixing the track.

But, we had arrived at the final stage, the mixing. We were now so close to having our very first song ready.

A professinal producer \ mixing engineer will mix a song like this in no time, we on the other hand spent at least a month tweaking, never completely satisfied. Mixing a little bit, then come back to it with fresh ears the next day, tweak a little..and so the days went by turning in to a months worth of tweaking.

But, we got there in the end. Of course, the drums clipping here and there was an issue we tried to amend as much as possible, but we couldn’t fully fix it. The other solution of course was to go back and record it again, but being both busy and impatient, eager to get our first song out, it was of out of the question.

Finally, we had our very first original song ready. We were over the moon excited. Our little musical project had come to an end, or was just getting started, depending on how you look at it.

Now, a few years later, in 2024, we have decided that we need to revisit »Tokyo» and record it properly, in studio. But before that happens, we will make a few changes to the song. And of course, no electronic drums this time..

So, here it is, our very first original song, we hope you like it..