Olivia godnatt? Well it's a title in swedish. It means Olivia good night. And it's a lullabye for my youngest grand daugther. Her older sister has a lullabye that I wrote back in 2017. But Olivia needs one too.
For Olivias sister I went for a long and repetetive song with just a little vocal in the beginning. I thought that it might work putting her to sleep. And it does. So for Olivia I went the same way. Olivia godnatt is almost 16 minutes long. But I wanted them to be different. So for Olivia i started out on guitar. All summer I tried different things and somewhere in august I knew how. But it took me until december to go to the studio to record. Once there i found out that guitar did not work, so I changed to the keyboard. Better. But I had a problem.
Olivia is a intense little girl. She is always on the move, climbing, running and testing. She has two wonderful blue eyes full of mischief on her way to her next escapade with a big smile all over her face and all sorrounded by beautiful red curly hair. So a lullabye for someone this..... intense and full of life? She doesn't like sleeping either. She usually fights the tiredness quite a lot before giving in to the sandman.
To catch her attention I put in a steady rythym, like the weels of a train or your own heartbeat, and paired it to a broad bass line. Kind of unusual for lullabyes. It also kicks off with a solo saxophone. But I think it works. And it suits Olivia. The saxophone stays in until the middle somewhere were I change it for a pan flute. And the whole song quiets down.
I was nervous when presenting her older sisters lullabye to her parents, our son Mathias and his lovely wife Camilla. You know, what if they don't like it? And think they have to play it just becaude it's grandpa's song. But it turned out well last time. So this time Olivia got the song as a present on christmas day. And it's already played once a day on youtube so... she likes it. I think.
In the video, in some of the last frames, I signed it "By Faffa / Gus Muller". Faffa is what she calls me. It's the 1,5 year old girly version of farfar, swedish for grandpa. So good night my darling. See you soon!
/Faffa - Gus
