A Journey to One Day

One Day is an instrumental Album filled with guitar melodies and guitar techniques, the Album is a journey. It starts with Sunrise, the opening track, and ends with Moonlight, hence the name One Day.

The songs are arranged to set an interesting vibe that captures one’s attention immediately, it is important that every restaurant in the country should have One Day on their play list.

I love cooking to music. I’ll play an Album while I’m cooking and the feedback from the meal gives me a sense of how engaged I was with the Album as a whole. My wife reckons I should cook to One Day every Sunday.

Pieter Toussaint, Franco Jamneck, Riaan Van Rensburg, Rika Du Plessis and Johan Scheppel did an amazing job. I really love this Album, it is original, true and honest.

Liza-Marie Snyman did a great job with the artwork, the moon and the sun, the car driving to the forest. One needs to listen to the Album to understand the connection between the artwork, song titles, music and vibe.

I am not going to spoil this Album for you, there are a couple of surprises on One Day and it’s fun when you realize it and everyone with a soul and love for music can relate to this genius piece of Art.

I just could not understand; why an instrumental Album, and then it hit me. If a skilled session drummer created a beat instrumental Album, you liked it, and you needed a session drummer, then that drummer would be highly considered for your needs.

Pieter Toussiant is a guitarist of note. He plays in many different bands with different styles of guitaring.

One Day is a Great Album created by AWESOME musicians and might just get Pieter a SAMA nomination or Award, in my opinion.

I had a beer with Pieter Toussaint and asked him a couple of questions:

How does your Album One Day relate to past Albums you worked on?

One Day only relates to past albums because I’m playing guitar on it. This is the first album where I wrote and arranged everything and had the overall responsibility for the sound, look and feel of the album. Ok, I could have said my first solo album.

How long did it take you to create One Day from the idea to the Launch at Rockwood Theatre ?

It was a long journey... In December 2016, just before Christmas I started writing songs, at first just to get some ideas out of my head. One song became many and before I knew it I had 25 tunes to choose from. In April we started recording, in December 2017 everything was mastered and again just before Christmas I had the physical CD’s in my hand. And the launch is the 24th of February...

Can you describe the meaning of the mood of One Day ?

When I had most tunes written and named (and I just gave them names from the mood and feeling they gave me) I noticed many songs were named after a time of day or a place. That’s when the idea came up to bundle everything into one day, from the moment you wake up till the end. And the mood changes a bit, depending on what’s happening at that time of day.

Do you have any plans on taking the album on the road to promote it in all the provinces ?

Not completely yet. The band that I’ve put together consists of full time pro musicians which makes it difficult to take them on the road because they are involved in so many other projects (as I am myself), but we are performing One Day at Strab in Mozambique. I guess if the demand is there, we’ll be able to do more.

Does the Album sound the way it sounded in your head when you had the idea ?

Very close. I had already worked out all arrangements of the songs so all concepts were there. But then the musicians (Franco Jamneck - bass and trumpet, Riaan van Rensburg - drums and percussion, Johan Scheppel - violin and Rika du Plessis - cello) came in and they performed it so much better than I could have imagined....

Why an instrumental album when you have so much to offer and a great voice ?

Awww thank you! Well, there’s one song with vocals hidden somewhere on the album.... when I started writing the tunes I was planning to put lyrics on, but when I had written around 8 of them and played those to a friend of mine, he convinced me to leave them as they were since the arrangements were already so nice. My next solo album will be song’s with lyrics, I promise.

Can you tell me what guitars where used recording One Day ?

Sure! For all the acoustic guitars I used the one that Luthier Sjak Zwier in the Netherlands built for me. I absolutely love the tone and playability. Quite the same story with the electric guitars since Sjak also built two electric guitars for me (they look like Gibson SGs) and I used both of them on the album. And then there’s one song where I use a Fender Stratocaster.

Are there any behind the scenes funny incidents that happened in the making of One Day ?

Throughout the whole process we had enormous fun but most of it was focused on work. Then again, the people I worked with (the musicians and Illimar Neitz where we recorded) are extremely pleasant to work with so we laughed a lot. The funny bits are usually the extra bits. For example when we recorded the intro for A Journey, microphones around my car whilst I was holding my cellphone and then acting natural.

Can you give up-and-coming guitarists a few pointers on creating an Album, and what mistakes they can avoid ?

I think the most important thing is that you should only enter the studio when you know exactly what you’re going to do. So of all the songs you must know the individual tracks you want to record and not only start arranging in the studio. Thank goodness I had everything ready.