Hi, I'm Per Ulfhielm and I am a guitarist, composer and producer based in Stockholm, Sweden. I am currently involved with prog/jazzrock band OddGrooves together with ridiculously talented drummer Magnus Brandell and cover band Soul Village.
The Odd Side of the Groove
New Year's resolution
In 2010 I'm going to GET THINGS DONE. No more procrastination. No more excuses. There, I said it! Feel free to quote me and please shove it in my face should I fail to follow through. So, I'm hereby declaring 2010 The Year of Getting Things Done.
I'll start tomorrow.
OddGroves @ Stampen
A couple of videos from a recent gig att Jazzclub Stampen in Stockholm. Magnus Brandell on drums, Claes Andberg on bass and me on guitar.
There are three things that smell like fish...
One of them is fish. And the other two... reside in my new compressor pedal, the Celmo Sardine Can. It sounds wonderful.
Sthlm Jazz
Nostalgia time again! This time it was Tower of Power at the Stockholm Jazz Festival. I have seen them in concert five or six times before, but yesterday it was over ten years since the last time.
Smokin' Hammond player, boring guitarist, Garibaldi completely off beat the first tune and the rest was pretty much like they always sound. Groovin!
Lukather
Yesterday evening Nostalgia came to town. Nostalgia in the shape of Steve Lukather, an artist whose guitar playing I have a love/hate relationship to. Why love/hate, you ask? Well, Luke was a major influence when I was in my teens and early 20's. I learned nearly all of his licks and solos, and as a consequence grew kind of tired of his style. Now I can enjoy his playing in small portions
So what about the show? Luke gets major kudos for playing Talk to You Later by The Tubes, a tune he wrote (together with David Foster if I remember correctly) and having the balls to play a Toto song so shortly after announcing the group's demise (for the record the song was Live for Today and not one of the big hits like Roseanna or Hold the Line - THAT would have been weird!). Pretty much all of the show was OK, until the last encore, which was Shine On You Crazy Diamond - a song I have loved since my early teens. It started out okayish, but soon deteriorated into a tasteless wank-fest with nothing but fast, boring soloing. Which is a totally inappropriate treatment of a classic such as this.
I ran screaming through the streets of Stockholm, wishing that I had been wise enough to leave before the encore.
Iron Maiden
Yesterday I went back 25 years in time. I was holding the LP cover of Iron Maiden's Piece of Mind in my hand for the very first time and the sound of Revelations was coming out of the speakers. Pure euphoria. That's how I felt anyway when Maiden entered the stage at Ullevi, Gothenburg. And it sure seemed like the other 57000 people in the audience felt the same way. Awesome!
Making Grooves in Odd Meters
Trummange Studios
Magnus is concentrated
13/16
Do not mess with 13/16 time or your screen might get dirty...
Today was fun! Drummerboy Magnus Brandell and I made a bunch of spanking non-danceable prog/fusion grooves for OddGrooves' upcoming MIDI library OddGrooves Crazy Drumming. We managed to cover 13/8, 15/8, 13/16, 15/16 and 19/16 time over the course of four hours. Now, if that's not crazy drumming then I don't know what the hell is.
Magnus played his ass off as usual and showcased a couple of Black Page Moments that gave me goosebumps, but he did struggle just a bit with 13/16 (see pics above) before getting it right. But after 13/16 it was all easy stuff like 15/16 and 19/16. Piece of cake :-)
I'm not sure what time sigs we will do next, if you have any suggestions please leave a comment below.
Later,
Per
OddGrooves.com is alive and kicking!
OddGrooves' new website, www.oddgrooves.com is finally online! If you are a composer/producer-type of person in the progressive rock/fusion genre and at times find yourself short of a good drummer, you owe it to yourself to head over there and purchase our excellent MIDI libraries Basic & Advanced Drumming. And if you don't match that specific profile, just go there anyway.
Per
Music Update and OddGrooves Preview
Warmoth telecaster
Black Korina hollowbody, rosewood/ebony neck.
Great sound for fusion!
I have uploaded an OddGrooves tune creatively named "OddGrooves Fusion" to the Music Page. This song features the soon-to-be-launched OddGrooves product line of odd meter MIDI grooves. The drumming is taken straight-out-of-the-box with nothing added, taken away or (god forbid) quantized. Toontrack EZ Drummer with the DFH expansion was used and I applied some EQ, compression and reverb during the mix.
The MIDI drums are played by Magnus Brandell and the rest is me, myself and I. I play the beautiful guitar to the right through a Lehnert Rambler as usual.
Stay tuned,
Per
Hello World & Magma Talk
Today's music related subject is on the topic of Magma, the french prog band that - besides inventing their own language - released a couple of excellent albums in the 70's. I first heard Magma in my mid-teens (some 20 years ago or so), a time when I was heavily into all sorts of progressive rock (starting with Marillion and going back in time from there to discover the REALLY good stuff). Well, Magma was not my cup of tea, to put it mildly. I hated what I heard. I didn't understand any of it and quickly went back to listening to Genesis and Rush. After that I didn't listen to Magma for 20 years, only to re-discover their 1973 album Mekanik Destruktiw Komandoh about a year ago. I still wasn't convinced, but something about the music intrigued me and I soon listened to it every day. The intricate vocal and horn arrangements, the mix of prog with jazz and contemporary classical music - all great stuff. The next step was getting Kohntarkosz and Magma Live and then I was hooked.
Check out this version of MDK, from a show in Paris in 2006:
Seriously powerful stuff indeed. Besides looking stark raving mad, Christian Vander is still an authority behind the drums. It's not extremely tight, but the groove and energy certainly makes up for it.
And speaking of mad-looking drummers, here's Magma 1977 - De Futura. Vander kind of reminds me of that guy in the Cronenburg film "Scanners" right before his head blows up.
Pretty scary stuff if you ask me:
Talk to you later,
Per
OddGrooves
OddGrooves is a progressive rock/experimental fusion outfit that consists of ridiculously talented drummer Magnus Brandell on (you guessed it) drums and yours truly on guitars, keys and bass. OddGrooves' music has been described as "The idiot bastard son of Mahavishnu Orchestra and King Crimson, conceived at a Led Zeppelin concert".
And besides being a band, we also make drum grooves for popular drum sampler formats, such as Toontrack EZdrummer and Superior 2.0. These are sold online at our website www.oddgrooves.com. Go there.
Here is a video clip from an OddGrooves rehearsal. CMagnus Brandell on drums, Claes Andberg on bass and me on guitar. Keyboards are pre-recorded.
Soul Village
Band Members
Karin Ulfhielm - Vocals
Susanne Wörhmann-Hill - Vocals
Claes Andberg - Bass
Magnus Brandell - Drums
Per Ulfhielm - Guitar
Cover band Soul Village plays party music at corporate events, weddings, parties etc.
We mix rock with funk and soul and play tunes from artists such as Stevie Wonder, Lenny Kravitz and Rush (yes, really!).
As mentioned above, the band started out playing only covers, however we are currently writing and recording original material for a possible upcoming CD. Stay tuned for more info!
Check out a collection of Soul Village gig photos from 2007 here!
Gear
Bad photo of a good guitar - My Warmoth telecaster:
I'll try to keep this section brief, as gear talk may be perceived as terribly boring to most people. However, many musicians tend to share my passion for guitars, amplifiers, stomp boxes and studio equipment. So for the gear geeks out there, here goes:
Guitars
Mostly Warmoth and Allparts strats and teles. I could go on about pickups, wood selection and neck profiles for ages and bore the hell out of you (just ask my wife!) but that will have to wait for a while.
Amp
Lehnert Rambler 25 watt tube head (PTP, Class A and any other buzzword you can think of). It sounds great. Check out Ola Lehnert's website here
Pedals
Lots of Boo-Teek overdrives and fuzzes. My favourite at the moment is a Barber Small Fry. I also like octavia sounds, so I often use a Foxrox Octron II.
Studio stuff
For recording I use Logic Studio on a Mac with lots of nice little plugins that have replaced almost all of my hardware synths and outboard effects units.
Background
I started playing piano at age 10, and guitar 3 years later. My mom's old Beatles records, and hard rock groups such as AC/DC and Deep Purple were my inspiration at that time. I soon discovered progressive rock with bands like Genesis, Rush, Pink Floyd and Marillion as my favourites.
In highschool, one of the first bands I played in was Club Marquee, a band that among other things performed Pink Floyd's The Wall in its entirety as a musical theatre. Playing the ending solo in Comfortably Numb in front of a large audience is the ultimate ego trip!
Various hard rock and fusion projects led up to the birth of the band Silly Walks in the early 90's. Silly Walks was a really fun band to perform with as lots of unrehearsed stuff constantly happened at our gigs, such as audience participation in various forms. Our repertoire consisted of farily standard cover material in often unrecognisable arrangements. We also used to do a Zappa medley and a 15-minute version of Little Wing.
Circa 1996 - 2004 I was a member of the 10-piece soul/funk coverband Wind Up (which is short for Wind Up Working in a Gas Station - the old Frank Zappa tune). Wind Up played music by Stevie Wonder, Tower of Power, Brand New Heavies, James Brown and similar artists at corporate parties, weddings etc.
In early 2002, I joined the Celebration Gospel Choir for a brief period to record the CD "Colors" and play a couple of shows around Stockholm, including a gig at Jazzclub Fasching.
In 2004, I became the guitar player of the progressive rock group Phantomime.
In fall 2008 I played bass, keyboards and some guitar on the EP Immortal Deadbeats by Mountain Mirrors.
I also play piano on a song by Swedish fusion guitarist Magnus Olsson. It is scheduled to be released on a compilation album winter 2009-10.
Current bands are Soul Village and OddGrooves. Read more about them at the Music page.
Influences
Artists that have influenced me as a songwriter are Frank Zappa, Kevin Gilbert, Stevie Wonder, Miles Davis and Peter Gabriel. And many more.
As a guitarist, the following gentlemen have made a lasting impression on me: Frank Zappa, David Gilmour, Al Di Meola, Mike Keneally, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jimi Hendrix. And many more.
Favourite keyboard players are Chick Corea, Jon Lord, Bill Champlin
Bassists: Tony Levin, Stanely Clarke, John Wetton
Drummers of choice: Vinnie Colaiuta, Bill Bruford, Billy Cobham, Steve Gadd, Gavin Harrison, Ian Paice
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