Himlen i min famn

My first recording in Manchester.

This apartment — a studio of almost cube proportions, besides the entry, bathroom, and kitchen, and with a floor-to-ceiling window of almost 3m width — is about as bad as it gets for acoustics: before I moved my furniture in, every whisper echoed.

Since moving things in, it has become better, but because I still don’t have my hammer drill, I can’t install the heavy curtains I acquired; I made do by draping them on the open doors of the two wardrobes I bought a few days ago, and then hanging my duvet off the kitchen door, and placing some cushions behind the microphone. A truly hacky setup, but the result was acceptable, even with neighbours talking just on the other side of the glass.

The AKG P170 was mounted on my Gorillapod, which must be coming up to 13 years old by now: this was all I could travel with, since I didn’t have space in my suitcases for the AT-2020 and shockmount. I brought the Shure Beta 57A as well, but in my rush to pack didn’t actually bring the mount for it, so I can only use it handheld for now — far from ideal, acoustically, and in any case that microphone would not be so suitable for this kind of recording.

It has been so long since I last sang in Swedish that my pronunciation has almost completely gone; it sounds so hard and muscular in comparison to the Danish-style pronunciation that I somehow keep leaning towards.

I could have recorded this in Danish as well, but decided to do the original Swedish first.

I’m sure it will bother me forever that I so grossly mispronounced “hjärta”.