Finn Harald Røed - blog archive 2005


December 27, 2005
It's nice to finally have some spare time. I have finished three more songs the last couple of days: "If she can't sleep" (orig. 2004), "Read my lips" (2005) and "Du flyr avsted" (2005). Feels great to finally have had the time and strength to do some music again! :-)

December 24, 2005
Merry Christmas to all mankind. :-) I finished recording a brand new song this morning - "Lifetime". The musical style has in some strange way a very similar sound and feel to a couple of songs I wrote back in the late 80's, even though it lives it's own life. While composing, the song simply went in it's own direction without much of my conscious infuence, and ended up as a little 2:00 minutes piece. I feel it's sounds very "me". Anyway, the song is now uploaded to the MP3-area of this site. I'll probably make a new version later, but until then... it's Christmas! :-)

December 23, 2005
Another year is coming to an end. Soon it's time to look back and think it through. They say we learn by our mistakes. However, I've learned to understand that the oldest mistakes, no matter how forgiven, forgotten or buried they seemed to be, may be dug up again in another shape and in a different version as time goes by. I understand the principle in these wise words from the Scriptures: "Remember, my son, and learn wisdom in thy youth; yea, learn in thy youth to keep the commandments of God". How much less sorrow and sadness there would be, if we in our younger days could only sense and grasp the true relationship between action and consequence, both for our selves and those we meet. So why don't we? I guess, simply because of lack of experience and wisdom. Experience comes with experiences.

September 26, 2005
The last couple of years have been quite strange and turbulent in many ways. Even though I often think that hard times are great assets to get the creative side of me running, I have experienced that too much stress and worries definitely is not good for my musical creativity (and not for anything or anyone else, either, for that matter). Seems like every song or composition I start working on, halts when it's 80% done, and gets stuck on the studio computer forever.

I am currently making some adjustments to my everyday life situation, in order to find more energy and motivation. Thus, this web site hopefully will see some more new songs published during the upcoming winter. I have quite a few ones that actually only need to be finished: Some lyrics must be written, some arrangements must be improved (including instrument and vocal recordings). There must be at least 7-8 songs that are just about to be ready, if I only get that extra peace and quiet, emotionally speaking. By the way, I don't often get exited about new bands anymore, but I must say that the British band "Keane" impressed me quite a lot with their debut album. Very nice!

September 13, 2005
The red-green alternative won yesterday's election with 87 against 82 seats in parliament. I voted for one of the existing government parties, the social liberals (V), since I felt that no matter what happened, they wouldn't contribute to letting the far-right populist-nationalist, anti-immigrant party (FRP) succeed in their race for government positions. In addition, of course, I support most of the social liberal party's political point of views. FRP sadly increased their support with 7-8% compared to the previous election four years ago. At the same time, both the christian democrats and the conservative party experienced maybe their lowest support ever. This means that the conservative side of Norwegian politics all in all has turned darker blue; more far-right than ever. Let's pray it's only temporary.

I do relate to what the Norwegian actor, Johannes Joner, said before the election:
"We can't handle to become even fatter, greadier and more selfish now. Find the solidarity within you, and vote red/green!". To my excuse, the social democrat party (V) I voted for, is considered to be a green party. I am happy to see the growth this small party had this election. ;-)

Instead of ending up with a new far-right nationalist influenced government, I strongly prefer the social democrat alliance. If the existing government could have continued, that would be allright by me, especially if KRF in addition to V had increased their support and governmental influence. Another thing: This new government will withdraw the very limited Norwegian military personell from Iraq (mainly officers training the "new" Iraqi military), showing the USA and the rest of the world once and for all that we have never supported that war. I support this descision with all of my heart.

September 12, 2005
Election day in Norway. This time, the choice between supporting the conservative or the social democratic side of Norwegian policy has been really difficult to me. If the conservatives get the majority of the votes, we might end up with a far-right government (H and FRP), without the influence of the christian democrats (KRF) and the social liberals (V), which both are part of the christian/social-liberal/conservative government alliance of today.

The reason for this strange situation, is the fight for power among these four conservative parties, and the fact that most parties are very resistant to let FRP into any position of governing power. FRP (a far-right populistic, anti-immigrant nationalist party), is willing to do their best to vote against the existing christian democrat prime minister's government (KRF H and V), in order to gain political power, potentially forming a new government with the conservative party (H). These two parties are expected to get about 35% of the total votes, and therefore need committed support from other parties. The other parties in today's government, might feel forced to support this new right-wing conservative coalition, instead of letting the red-green social democrat alternative take over the power.

To avoid this potential far-right turn in Norwegian politics, I am considering voting for one of the parties in the social democratic (red-green) alliance, after having been a christian democrat / social conservative for many years. My point of views are in many ways best reflected in KRF and V, but I prefer the social democrats before the right wing conservatives. If the three red-green parties end up with 50% or more of the parliament seats, we will in any case have a new government, consisting of AP, SV and SP. The latest polls tell us this election will be a very close race, a thriller. I still have a few hours to make the final decision, and a few hours after that the election result reports will start coming in. I am very exited, and also quite worried, about the final results on what parties the Norwegian government for the next four years will consist of.

September 1, 2005
The Summer will soon be over for now. Autumn is just around the corner in Norway, with it's inspiring transitions of color, smell and air. Summer has never been a creative period for me. I strongly believe new material will appear on this site during the next few months.

As I've mentioned before, composing is to me in many ways a question of allowing feelings to transform into sound and words. To do so; to be able to abstract a feeling like that, I need to be in touch with my thoughts and feelings. If I'm too busy, to sad or too happy, that basically never happens. However, when the combination of good and bad is right, it's just a matter of minutes until the main structure of a meaningful song is born. Just like with "I replace myself" or "The world is changing". Just a thought.

August 16, 2005
Just read a funny comment from someone who was attacked by a spammer, sending his wishes to the spammer: "May you grow bald, and seriously sunburn your head". He, he. :-)

August 13, 2005
Did some adjustments to the "I replace myself"-video, and uploaded a web edition wmv-file to the website (15.9 MB). It's available on the video-page. Just keep the Media Player window small, and the quality will appear allright. :-) The sound is CD-quality.

July 29, 2005
Added a new page with a list of various musical instruments and equipment I have used since the mid 80's. How I miss some of those pieces... especially the Alesis D4, KORG 01/W and actually also the Ensonic Mirage. They really did offer some important sounds and textures that formed my musical expression 10-13 years ago.

July 27, 2005
I was playing with a word game while being on holiday in Sweden a few days ago, putting words together to sentences. Suddenly I put together three small words, saying "A real goal" (Norwegian: "Et virkelig mål").

It made me think, "Do I really have any real goals in my life anymore, or have my life stagnated into circling around routines and obligations only?". It seemed to me, and still does, that we're all stuck in our personal box of ideas and doings, to such a great extent, that most of us don't even have the time nor energy to stop and think about it. Funny enough, it seems that most people, no matter how divergent their views might be, have convinced themselves that they deep down know better than the rest.

How big is that personal box we're each locked inside, and is it possible to get out? What is on the outside? A deeper understanding, or just another alternative box with different views with another set of limitations?

July 10, 2005
Finished "version 1.0" of a music video for "I replace myself". Being my first music video ever (except for videos from concert performances), I am pretty excited about it. :-) It's a rather simple and straight forward video, which I feel resembles the feel and emotions of the song. It's created with DVD-quality, but I'll see to that a smaller wmv-file will be available on this website soon.

July 8, 2005
I'm working on a music video for "I replace myself" these days. Expect it to be ready pretty soon. :-) A Sony DCR-HC42E with a Carl Zeiss lense is used for the video recording.

June 14, 2005
Made the downloads page password protected. Uploaded all the songs from the "Moment in time" MC-release from 1994. All in all, 73 of my songs are now available.

June 11, 2005
I performed Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Love changes everything" in a wedding today, singing on top of my own playback recording with piano, drums etc.

June 3, 2005
Another 11 songs uploaded, both from the Kingdom X period and some older material.

May 31, 2005
Uploaded another 14 songs (demos from the 80's and early 90's), giving a total for now of 53 downloadable songs in mp3-format. :-) Added some syntehtic strings to two of the oldest 12-string guitar + vocal songs; "Red roses" and "I hate to see you cry".

May 30, 2005
Uploaded "Cathrine & Tommy", a song written for and performed in the wedding of two very good friends in June 1995. This recording is from 1996. In this wedding, I also met the girl I married about one year later for the first time. :-) That particular meeting made me write the song "If we stay together" in September 2005.

May 23, 2005
Uploaded 14 songs tonight, including some more tracks from the Transformation album, and some older demos from the early 90's. The download page of the website now has 38 songs available in mp3-format. More will come in the near future. I also still plan on making video clips available.

May 22, 2005
Uploaded "Magical Graphic Color Scheme" and "Promises of tomorrow" to the website tonight. The verses on "magical" were written and recorded / mixed today, while the rest is about two years old. "Promises" is a new mixdown of a complete draft recording from last Spring.

May 20, 2005
I have wanted to give a local concert for a few months now. Had scheduled for tonight, but canceled the whole matter before it was advertised in the local newspaper, and before flyers etc. were handed out. Things need to be 100% right, not only when it comes to what songs are the right ones for such an occation.

When I'll finally do a concert again after all these years, I need to feel that what I'm doing is something special, new and different, including the decission of where to perform. I don't have any interest in simply doing a concert dealing with only one narrow musical style. ;-)

Despite of years without giving a full length concert, I feel I have a musical approach to things that is a bit different now then what it used to be. I would like to show the audience, big or small, the many sides of my music, while still being able to present a show where the repertoir is presented as a whole - where the songs are related to each other, even if they differ in style. The styles are nothing else than different ways of sharing the same feelings with different sounds, expressions, words and emotions.

March 14, 2005
Went to the Circus tonight. Was quite an experience to watch living Elephants again. What impressive creatures they are!

February 08, 2005
I have written a couple of new songs with Norwegian lyrics lately. Life keeps me busy with so many things, meaning the main project - or the next chapter of the Transformation-album - is moving very slowly ahead (at the most). However, I WILL get there sooner or later. As for the Norwegian lyrics stuff, I have an idea of putting together enough songs for an album there, too. It's all a matter of time. :-)