Jocke's, Martin's and Sami's posts translated to English

[.namnlös]

Yeah a stab is another commonly used term for quick/aggressive hits or notes in music so that also makes sense. In the case of Ensamheten, there are a few sounds in the verses, after each of Jocke's lines that sound like synth stabs (there's 4 after each line). Then in the build up part (as he's still singing) this (i *think*) is replaced by single single chord strums on a floaty sounding electric guitar.

[stjärnor]

Yeah a stab is another commonly used term for quick/aggressive hits or notes in music so that also makes sense. In the case of Ensamheten, there are a few sounds in the verses, after each of Jocke's lines that sound like synth stabs (there's 4 after each line). Then in the build up part (as he's still singing) this (i *think*) is replaced by single single chord strums on a floaty sounding electric guitar.

Thanks .namnlös, I'll need to go and have another listen for these stabs. I love discovering new things in songs, once you hear them, they're there forever!

[stjärnor]

All three translations come from the 'Album 11' thread. A slightly long explaination for the translation of Jocke's first post, bear with me....!

Back during the press conference for JÄIRFM it was mentioned by one of the band (Sami?) that there was a song they forgot about, a forum member wonders if it will resurface on the new album in some format. Another forum member says that 'Ingen kunde röra oss' was the forgotten song, and the original poster says that on kent.nu it was stated that 'Ingen kunde...' was written on December 17th & 18th (and so couldn't have been the song mentioned at the press conference on April 24th 2012). Another forum member say that the forgotten song was 'Ett år utan sommar'. Jocke clears things up:

No it wasn't.
It wasn't 'Ingen kunde...' either.
It wasn't written by the press conference.
It was another song, but it is already used.
For something completely different.

-------

A forum member would love to have unreleased songs on singles like the good old days. In the Shoegaze style, like My Bloody Valentine. Or ValKentine, as they wrote. Jocke replies:

We cannot think of anything more boring than sounding like MBV.
They EXIST already, for fuck's sake.
We find it better to focus on the number of new songs which are strong enough to put out in any form than hold onto the extremly boring categorisiation of song as 'b-sides' and 'singles'.
It is what we like and are pleased with and have relevance for us is what we bring out.
Otherwise not.

--------

A forum member thinks it would be nice to have a 'campfire album' with acoustic guitar, piano, strings, but realise that the band wouldn't think that this would be a good idea. Jocke responds:

Presumably such an album for us would have huge potential to be very successful, provided that the songs were well written.
Swedes have since time immemorial, loved singer songwriters who sound exactly like singer songwriters (from America), who already exist.
The only problem is that we think an 'unplugged-arrangement' (which is what I think you mean) of OUR songs is the most boring kind which there is.
We want to dress the songs in other things than strings & horns, .... (ackar/ acoustics?), mandolins and double bass.
The above mentioned are boring when applied to our music, WE think.
Although we love it with other artists.
But when we do a Harvest*-thing, a form of tension is lost which can be 80% of the reason why you are doing this.


*Harvest, is a reference to the Neil Young album of that name.

[.namnlös]

Would love to get on top of this lingo, but these are great. The fact that Jocke so actively posts gives a pretty revealing insight. I can only think of a handful of other bands with that level of interaction.

On the B-Side thing, I can only guess it's swings and roundabouts for bands. Back in the day it was often clear which bands were pure gold by the quality of their B-Sides. I imagine that they were a contractual obligation, which in the early 90's often meant 2-3 extra songs per single at least.... so essentially another albums worth of music. With the digitization of music, where and how a song comes out is slightly less important as the format is implied, and then the listener tends not to have the physical copy to hand. That said, in the main, artists are tending to put out solitary tracks as singles which devalues them slightly if they are attached to an album (unless that song comes out before the album.) B-sides and EP's are still great in their own right. What this means, hopefully, is that the band can focus their attention 100% on say 12-15 songs they truly love without that obligation to then make more music to fill CD singles.

[stjärnor]

Would love to get on top of this lingo, but these are great. The fact that Jocke so actively posts gives a pretty revealing insight. I can only think of a handful of other bands with that level of interaction.

On the B-Side thing, I can only guess it's swings and roundabouts for bands. Back in the day it was often clear which bands were pure gold by the quality of their B-Sides. I imagine that they were a contractual obligation, which in the early 90's often meant 2-3 extra songs per single at least.... so essentially another albums worth of music. With the digitization of music, where and how a song comes out is slightly less important as the format is implied, and then the listener tends not to have the physical copy to hand. That said, in the main, artists are tending to put out solitary tracks as singles which devalues them slightly if they are attached to an album (unless that song comes out before the album.) B-sides and EP's are still great in their own right. What this means, hopefully, is that the band can focus their attention 100% on say 12-15 songs they truly love without that obligation to then make more music to fill CD singles.

Re: the loss/ decrease in B-sides, I remember back in the 90s (and early 2000s) it was common for bands and artists (or to be financially correct, the record companies) to put out CD1 & CD2 versions of singles, each containing (as you mentioned) 2-3 extra songs, being either standard new song b-side tracks, live tracks, acoustic versions, radio session tracks, etc. A small independant record shop near me (now long gone, sadly), often had these singles at 99p in the first week of release. I often bought both versions, so for the grand sum of £1.98 I got the main single (x2) and 4-6 new tracks. On the first 2 Travis albums, each single released had this 2 CD single format, and the number of b-sides filled both sides of a 90 minute tape- I know because I made one, just of the b-sides! This is great if you have an excess of decent songs waiting to be used as b-sides which won't make it to the next album, but I can imagine the pressure song artists & bands must've felt to make sure the singles had some extra content demanded by the record companies and eventually fans.

Yes, it's nice to have extra or unknown tracks from bands that didn't make the album, but I no longer see the point of releasing 'digital b-side' tracks, because really, who wants to buy a digital download of a single you already own on the digital (or CD) album just to get the extra song. I'd rather extra songs (if they're good enough) were put out in EP form if artists don't want to use them for furture releases, or released as a non-album digital single, rather than the modern music industry curse, the 'New-Extended-Re-Issue-Deluxe-Edition' of albums that come out a couple of months after you've bought them with 3 extra tracks and a live version of the 'huge hit single'.

And yes, I guess most people here on this forum appreciate that Jocke takes the time to come on here and post and explain things related to the music. He doesn't need to. He doesn't need to come on here and respond to the 'it should have sounded like X' or 'Y album was better' or 'I would have done it like this' or 'You're a sell-out for working with ...' comments. I can understand that occasionally some of his posts have a less than friendly tone about them, because if I was reading the type of comments I see on here about something that I had worked really hard to create and produce, and loved, then I guess I might get a bit nippy sometimes too. I know that not everyone is going to like everything the band create, I know that there will always be negative comments about any new music, but do you what? It's music. We all react to it differently and if you don't like it, don't listen to it. Go and find something else you prefer.

I enjoy reading about how songs have come about, about the music theory behind some of the songs, about how things were recorded. Personally I'm honoured that Jocke spends the time explaining these things. I've learned things about the songs/ albums/ recording processes I wouldn't have had any other way of knowing. So, tack Jocke för att du kommer här och hänger ut med oss ibland. And apologies if I sometimes butcher your words in my translations...

[.namnlös]

Ah yes the 99p thing! Completely forgot about that. Unfortunately the split over 2CD's looking back seems a bit cynical, unless you were there in week one. I seem to remember the bands (rightly) put 2 new songs on one, and then remixes on the other in many cases, so it could/should have been less work. So many bands do have undiscovered gems however, yes, the pressure to deliver double the work must have been high. I think many bands gave nice hints as to future directions etc on these B-sides as they stood in isolation, which was quite good. Obviously now that has less value, so things have to be a bit different.

I know what you mean about the re-issues, however like the B-Sides, a lot of the time the band don't have a huge amount of control over these things. Again these do seem slightly less popular these days with people holding out and simply buying one off tracks from iTunes, avoiding the need to get the album twice.

[stjärnor]

I'm probably split about 50/50 on buying CDs and digital downloads. There are some artists I'll always buy the CD version of the album (kent being one example) and other bands/artists I just get the download of the album from Amazon. One thing that I have noticed on Amazon, maybe it happens on iTunes too, is that sometimes a certain track will be 'album only', meaning if you only want that track, the only way is to get it is to pay for the whole album. And unfortunately, this 'album only' track is the biggest hit, or the one that featured in a TV ad, or something similar. Granted, I've mostly noticed this on Greatest Hits albums, but it's not a good ploy by either the record companies or Amazon (I don't know who would decide this), as it'll only end up turning some people to 'other sources' to get the song, meaning no one gets any money anyway. Wouldn't they rather have my 89p than nothing at all? I'll never download music (or tv, or films) illegally, because I believe people should get paid for their work.

Actually, this lets me link to something I came across a while ago, on a website called 'Information is beautiful'. They use interesting graphics and diagrams to show statistics and figures. Sounds boring, but is actually quite clever. (.namnlös, you might have seen this, you being musical and graphical!) This one shows how much music artists earn online. Assuming the figures are still correct (2010), it takes a solo artist over 4 million plays on Spotify to make enough money to earn minimum wage ($1160 a month in the US). I'm not slamming Spotify, it's a great idea, but I do feel the artists need to get more per click from them. Anyway, instead of me waffling on, here's the link if anyone wants to read it.

[.namnlös]

Bit of a can of worms topic when you get me started (yup oh dear!) but I think this is an issue not only confined to music.

I think the problem has long since been that the business model of "content" whether that be music, films, TV or books, since the dawn of this digital era is very easily copied and spread quickly. If you give people the opportunity to do this, paywalls will only do so much to stop it and its better to embrace the needs of the people, especially if illegal services offer an alternative service. I think the better attitude is to accept that people want to access content risk free and on demand. The problem comes that with a stream, you don't "own it" so the price can't be high otherwise people wouldn't bother. The question is, what is the value of that content over time? If you watch a TV show 100 times, but pay for it once, rather than micropayments for each viewing, then you can see why subscriptions might make for a better deal for popular content over time.

I have seen that graphic you mentioned, but having put an album on Spotify myself, I believe it is now out of date. The correct figures are based on subscription level. So you have Free; $0.005 per play, Unlimited; $0.0075 per play and Premium; $0.015. This could be different for signed artists though.

I can understand the Spotify model to some extent, as this hasn't changed radically from when it began and I believe at this moment they are actually making a loss. Spotify is something the record labels should have come up with themselves back when they ignored the likes of Napster and were falling over themselves to put record prices up as fightback. Spotify could argue that their service is cheap (or free if you like) and helps bands stuff get heard without the stigma of an illegal download which is better for everyone. I would say however that the balance of payout might need to be looked at in terms of more for the artist. According to my last.fm I have played 41,096 songs since 2007. Now that isn't accurate in any way (it would be that x5 at least) and most of these songs were either bought MP3's or rips, so I paid for them. However, if they were all Spotify plays on my Premium account, that would be $616.44 in royalties to the artists. If, as a premium member, you listen to a song more than 50 times, the artist starts to earn more than if you bought the song for each play (obviously only slightly.) Realistically though, this is not all that likely. However if you factor in the fact that someone who will never buy you record will actually have to pay a small amount for playing your music then you can see how sometimes the streaming model can work. They need to bring that payment to the artist to a higher level per play.

What to me seems absolutely wrong is the pricing for a digital album. Let's say an album is £8 on both iTunes and physically.

The UK CD sale is split like this: £2.40 record company, £1.36 VAT, £1.36 retail, £0.72 manufacture, £0.64 distribution, £0.48 copyright, £1.04 artist.

Now technically, in internet land, that means there should be an extra £2.72 per release to share among the interested parties. There are no manufacturing, distribution or retail costs, except the cut that Apple takes. So that extra money is going to either Apple or the label, and none to the artists.

Do you remember rushing to buy limited edition CD's? Now there is no need, because rarely (unless the band is small) are limited things a good idea. So many bands are trying to get heard, the idea of a limited release seems silly, so what you get are very often limited versions of a generally unlimited release, so the hardcore fans can have something nice in their hand. I stopped buying CD's regularly in 2010, and I more often than not listen on Spotify for some time and then buy a digital download. Very, very occasionally i buy a CD if I really care or if I'm at a show. My absolute preference would be to buy my very favourite records on vinyl at the end of each year but I have not got the space for that!

[stjärnor]

Thanks for the update on the (your) Spotify 'pay per play' figures. Still paltry, though! As I said before, I love the idea of Spotify, which (as you said) gives listeners a risk-free legal way of hearing music. I don't have an account, the last time I tried to sign up it wanted a Facebook account (which I don't have), I have noticed that it now lets you sign up with an email address, and one day I will get around to it. I know I'd probably use it much like yourself- listen to new music and then go and buy the album (either digitally or CD), that is what it is perfect for, as long as the artist gets a fair amount from it. At my last job, we used to listen to music on Spotify (the free version, and the ads we ok, as we only listened a couple of hours per day), for example, we might listen to the album by an artist who had a good song on 6Music, and eventally decide to get, or not get the album. I don't think I could use it as a replacement for a record collection, though.

What is not ok, however, is the split for an iTunes/CD purchase, and no amount of moaning will change it, because that is how the industry works, it's never been on the side of the artist. The 'invisible £2.72' that seems to disappear on a download to someone other than the artist seems to have been forgotten about, and needs to be sorted out. But again, it's fighting the industry, and the small guy never wins.

A rather wierd anomaly I've recently noticed at Amazon, is often the download is more expensive than the CD. And sometimes it's just a couple of pence, other times its a few pounds. And here's the wierder bit- if anyone doesn't know, Amazon now have 'Auto-rip', this means when you buy a qualifying CD from Amazon (and not one of their marketplace sellers), you also get the download of the album for free. So now you can get the CD AND the download for less than the cost of the download itself.

Here's an example, the Kings of Leon album Only by the night (this is just a random pick, as I'm listening to their new album at the moment), the CD (brand new) costs £3.00 and comes with Auto-rip, but if you only want to download the album, it's £5.49. WHY? Here's a screenshot just to prove it!

Bifogad fil 9194

I like the idea that vinyl is becoming popular again, there's something nice and 'physical' about it. My friend has recently got back into vinyl, and it's lovely to look at the artwork, and feel the weight of the 180gm re-issues that are now appearing. It feels like how it was meant to be. I'm sounding like some old hippy now! I'm clearly of the CD generation (ie, my teenage music discovery years were during the 90s!), and vinyl was seen as old and fiddly and bulky when I was getting into music, so never appealed to me. Record companies need to really jump on this trend again. Re-issue those albums that just missed 'vinyl' years, or were when it was dying. HMV/ Fopp have really got into vinyl again since it has been saved, and it's lovely to browse the racks and 'ponder' over music/albums/artwork that I missed. And I say ponder, because I don't have a turntable! At a recent record fair my friend got a near mint copy of The Doves 'Last Broadcast', which I have on CD- and its sooo good to see the artwork 'full size'! Late 90s/early 00s vinyl is so hard to find, and record companies need to exploit this- just look at what people are paying on eBay for it. They also need to provide a digital download too- I know some do this already, Sub Pop for example, because Amazon also provide Auto-rip with their vinyl purchases too.

PS- thanks for the interesting discussion, it's nice to talk about (other) stuff even when the band isn't active!

[.namnlös]

Yes one of the issues with pricing is that generally a physical object has value, which either reduced with use, or drops over time as newer more desirable things replace it. With digital music, the argument re-appears, but it's difficult because nothing is ever second hand. For example an old song can be revealed to a new audience and is therefore worth full price again, but sometimes digital albums are on sale which has no relation to the physical disc. Weird.

I have to say one thing that bands can earn (rightly) the major percentage of the money from is playing shows and merchandise. This can in very positive cases make a healthy living for a band, as long as they don't need to drop millions on a stage production etc. Again though at the bottom end of things I know of many (smaller) bands who don't/won't tour again because the costs of making that happen are very high. Same for making records. Yes, you can now do sensational things with a mic and a laptop, but practice rooms cost money and these go up and all the other associated costs are still high.

The same would apply to say Kent if they decided to come to the US/UK again. The costs are high and the return on tickets would be so low that the band would make a loss, which is understandable.

Interesting discussion though I'll leave it there otherwise that's a full on thread derail!

[stjärnor]

Getting us back on topic is another post from Jocke in the Album 11 thread. A few technical terms in this one, hoping everything makes sense!

A forum member asks if work on the album is already underway, or if it will be recorded like Metallica recorded their Black album (BA)- which I think (if I've understood correctly) is first recording the drums and then every guitar and bass part is then recorded individually. Jocke replies:

Metallica's recording of BA is a very eighties way to make a 'big' album!
It was recorded in '91, but this was still the method used if you had lots of time and cash.
Then you often did channel by channel starting with the drums.
A studio build, quite simply.
Hagnesta Hill is mostly made using this method.
We certainly saved more from the live takes than Metallica did because we didn't have the resources to sit in the studio for 5 months and mess about.

Since D&JD kent have worked according to the method that the band record live a fairly simple demo take of things that we can't record 4 people (doing?) at once, or things we like from the demo which we don't want to do again.
Typically synth, perhaps beats/percussion, a good slush () song (mostly so that I don't have to put down the vocals straight away if it becomes 15-20 takes) and piano/ strings/ brass which we will record later.

Example: When we did 999, the first day at La Fabrique, Sami and I first recorded 2 acoustic guitars together with a take of demo vox (vocals) and a click. (click track)
The tempo and key and the approximate arrangement we have rehearsed in the weeks before the recording.
Then I sung a better vocals on the new acoustics.
Think we also did piano and an organ with a bit of bottom to simplify and prepare the dynamic construction.
After this we decided on a final form of the song which everyone liked and above all could get a grip of
Then we recorded the band, 2 electric guitars, drums and bass live on this tailored skeleton.
We made probably around 5-8 takes and used, if I remember correctly, take 2 or 3 in its entirety, probably with a little 'patching' of some mistake cut from another take.
After this we recorded a new song* (because the expression of the voice changes considerably if you sing over 2 acoustics vs full band) + a little rattle and pling (percussion).
The backing vocals we put down in the bunker probably 4 weeks later.
Then it was ready to mix.
The whole of JÄIRFM was done like this, of course with differences in the skeleton of what we recorded live on top of contained.

*I've translated sång here as 'song', but I'm not sure if 'vocal' is meant, ie a new vocal part for 999 to replace the one recorded over the 2 acoustics, or if a different song was recorded at this point.

[.namnlös]

Not that I know the Swedish and just as a small guess, is "slush" possibly "scratch"?? A scratch track is a common term for a base for a song that is built up into the finished recording.

I think the latter sång is more than likely a final vocal as generally this is last to go on to a recording.

[stjärnor]

That sounds a bit more correct than slush! The word used was 'slasksång', slask translating directly as 'slush'. But yeah, I think understood the meaning (if not the word!), more of a vocal pattern/ rhythm track to be used to get the feel of the vocals?

Thanks

[.namnlös]

Interesting to hear non the less. I've done recording in both manners, live and built. Building takes longer but allows a greater freedom to sculpt the exact record you want. I think the way Jocke describes the current way of recording just makes common sense. These days with computer recording, a decent demo is fairly simple to achieve, and sometimes if you have synth instruments there is no need to redo them at all. Effectively then you might even build the final track around this, just simply re-recording the other parts. When a band plays together in a room, as long as the engineer can capture the drums separately and the other instruments, you can very easily "patch" bits in and out if you prefer certain takes. If the song changes, then a scratch track with the changes makes sense and you can then build the final song around this.

Personally, from my experience, I like the sound and feel of the live recordings much better but they do have some limitations.

Some singers will do many many takes and the feeling can be very different on all. Vocals are probably the hardest to judge without having the finished recording, which is why they are often added last.

[stjärnor]

Oh, thanks again! I imagine there might be more of a 'vibe' (horrible word, but my brain refuses to think of another) between a band recording live, rather than parts which are individually recorded/built.
I can see doing it the live way would possibly be much less time intensive, assuming all the parts are played correctly!