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

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A post from Martin Sköld but posted using Martin Roos' account:

Hi all the forum kids. I thought I should make a post here. It is NOT Stefan Boman you see in the picture. It is actually Bomfunk the 3rd.

Kiss/
Martin Sköld

I think this is the picture which he refers to (from the 'tisdag' post at kent.nu):
Onsdag-111113jo36.jpeg
I have no idea who Bomfunk 3rd is, it may refer to this group at wiki- but that's only a guess from a quick googling though...

[Reina]

Smaken är som baken = just an expression, don't know the English version of it if exists, but it just means that tastes differ. Thanks for the translations again!

Thought of Bomfunk MCs too there, no idea who he means!

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Thanks for the clarification on the phrase! I like it- I'll need to try and use it somewhere in Swedish.

[luckyguerin13]

Sooooo... new album in the making. Yes?

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yes!
see this post for more details.

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A post from Martin Roos:

kent on twitter. Follow: @KentTheBand

/best
Martin


Edit- if you would like translations of the tweets, can you let me know? (and I'll start a thread for them)
I'll try my best, but I can already see a word I don't quite understand (it's not proper swedish!), and as I'm not on twitter, I'm not sure I'll be able to keep up with them if the tweets are frequent. Anyone want to help?

[Reina]

I wouldn't mind helping, I usually leave the posts on the forum and website for you as I get the impression you enjoy translating them But if you'd want, I can translate some of those too, even though you've usually already done them before I get on here.

The tweets are slightly random and hard to translate though, I don't think I understand everything either. Even though I understand all the words in some of the tweets, I still have no clue what they mean

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You're right, I really do enjoy doing the translations even if it leaves me slightly frustrated sometimes!
I'm glad you're here to help me out when I'm stuck!
I've translated (what I can) of the tweets to date, so I'll start a thread for them- you'll probably laugh when you see what I've tried to work out what they are saying!

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Jocke responds to the kentlist from September 1st:

We didn't play Keane either if anyone wondered

Keane Stop For A Minute
Stornoway Zorbing
St. Lucia All Eyes On You
Toro Y Moi Still Sound
Lloyd Cole & The Commotions Jennifer She Said
Jordan Klassen Go To Me
James Blake What Was It You Said About Luck
Michael Kiwanuka I'm Getting Ready
M83 Midnight City
Kauf When You're Out
Yellow Ostrich Mary (alternate)

And from Jocke in the Album 10 thread:

Hi to all.
As everyone surely understood, we were back in Sviiden (Sweden) again late on Tuesday night.
Our sessions went reall well and tonight for the first time I will listen through what we did at La Fabrique.
Jet plane volume in a pair of really good headphones!
Want to have a little distance after 2 weeks total togetherness.

We still don't know exactly when the album will emerge, but as usual, you will be the first to know.
A homepage fells really old school now

We will continue with the recordings soon.
I feel that they will be magical!
The best we have done (as aslways).

And: It is impossible to get an idea about how it sounds by looking at pictures of the studio or that if I say it sounds 'nice'.
You will like it.
Have a good weekend!

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Ooops , I missed this post from Jocke last week, discussing touring/ album release schedules...

Nowadays it is probably so that the recorded music can be marketed before the tour.
It is difficult to relate to.
Perhaps I am just old fashioned.

But afterall it is the album/ collection of recorded songs which must remain afterwards.
Therefor an album must take more 'abuse' than a tour which (even if concert films/ youtube clips can be fun to watch) only can be experienced once.
I would say that it is more important than ever to make a really good album.
It is also extremely important that we lucky few who still have the possibility to record music in 'perfect' conditions, continue to do it.
A band in a good room with good technicians/producers, great mikes, good technique and above everything else with a little time to yourself to make that little extra.

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The following few posts are quite long, and mention some technical aspects of music / music theory. Please correct me if I’ve got any of this wrong...! (oh, and if there's any spelling mistakes, please forgive me, these translations have taken ageees!)

In the thread ‘How would you like the new album to sound’ Jocke says:

Something which is interesting with composition versus production is that the stronger melodies/ themes/ text compositions are, the less the production needs (or does) it.
The more concise and detailed the melodies are, the harder it is to float out (?) and experiment in production.
Sometimes the productions must submit to the song (it is called ‘serve the song’) and sometimes it is quite the opposite.
In short, experimental desire and flipping out sounds much simpler when the song structure isn’t written in stone.

Music which feels trancelike, hypnotic is as a rule, repetitive.
Check out Can and Neu & other krautrock for a good example that hypnosis can even be obtained in a fairly conventional band setting.
It was amongst other that which got Bowie & Eno & Iggy to travel to Berlin once upon a time
But of course there are shining examples to the contrary.
Alicia Keys ‘Try Sleeping With A Broken Heart’ (a classic!) is seemingly simple and hypnotic,
but has a truckload of chords with a fastidious and brilliant production. In principle just a beat and piano + vocals.
Possibly it can argued that the chords of the song works like a riff.

If you have lots of melodies and chords it is almost impossible to attain that trancelike state where the music becomes a feeling.
A world, a journey or a... situation which is our favourite description of a feeling which you sometimes wish to achieve.
It is something which we have wrestled with a lot through the years.
To get words and melodies and generally chord-rich songs that submit to that hypnotic pump.
We were really successful with ‘Glassäpplen’.
A lot of chords in it, but the song sounds ‘simpler’ than it really is.
That is not to say that anything on the new album will sound at least like ‘Glassäpplen’.

During the recordings of TTS, Röd and EPIS we looked into ways to get into the ‘hypnosis’ by minimising, but still trying to keep the pop melodies.
Some times you want to only play 2 notes for 1o minutes and other times you want to make a composition with nice chords which have a natural slow from beginning to end.
It is what you might call a more classic school in pop composition.
Nowadays it is more the rule than the exception that pop songs have 4 chords which repeat without changing through the whole song.
The most common chord progressions are (if the key for example, is G) G-D-Em-C, or (if the key is Em, G Major parallel) Em- C-G-D.
That is to say 'Major tonic -Dominant-Tonic parallel-Subdominant or Minor tonics-Subdominant-Tonica parallel-Dominant.
(can anyone with music knowledge confirm I translate that bit correctly?)
With these simple chords you can play 90% of todays (and yesterday’s) pop hits.
For a simple and entertaining demonstration see the youtube film Axis of awesome 4 chord song.
If there is any living person who hasn’t seen it already

But this here has not so much to do with how the new album sounds.
It was mostly an attempt to explain that what you believe is production in a recording is sometimes composition and vice-versa.
If anyone understands at all a word of what I ramble on about, you can name your price backstage after the gig at Peace & Love!

Happy holidays!

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In the same thread, someone asks (I think!): What do you think G-Em-C-D follows?

Jocke:
Major tonic-parallel tonic-subdominant-dominant

I like almost the best of the commonest chord progressions.
It was extremely common during the late 1950s and early 1960s.
I usually vary the final chord if I use the progression.
A favourite is to go subdominant parallel instead of the dominant.
If you play it in G it will also become G-Em-C-Am.
Otherwise I like to go back to the major tonics. G-Em-C-G.
Used it in ‘Utan dina...’
Although it was G-Em-C-D-G if I remember correctly.
It was really Americana.
To always strive back to the major tonics

A modern example of this questioned chord progression is Leona Lewis ‘Bleeding Love’.
F-Dm-Bb-C (transposed to G Major, which then becomes G-Em-C-D).
An American who is called Ryan Tedder wrote a song together with Jesse McCartney.
Tedder sings in the band One Republic whos mega hit ‘Apologise’ had the chords Am-F-C-G (if you transpose it to Em, it becomes Em-C-G-D).
ie, Minor tonic- subdominant- parallel tonic- dominant.
The absolute commonest chord progression in modern pop.
He also wrote ‘Halo’ for Beyonce.
It has the upcoming chord progression A-Bm-F#m-D (play it in G Major it bcomes G-Am-Em-C).
Major tonic- subdominant parallel- parallel tonic- subdominant.
It has become popular in recent years amongst songwriters and is widely used.
It is a little more open than the others and feels a little more ‘alternative’ for lack of a better word.
Another example of this progression is Katy Perry’s ‘Fireworks’.
Muse have also used it.

Conspiracy geeks are here in full swing.

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Someone also asks: A question I wondered about is how much you (or you plural) use your theoretical knowledge of music when you put together songs? Many chords you know of course work with each other, but for me, for example, the last chord in the chorus of Max 500 is very random and I can not insert it in my own (very limited, haha) musical knowledge. Do you try things out or do you know that this will be a this or that? Would be fun to know!

Jocke:

Of course, soon we will have been playing together for 22 years.
It is clear that you learn a huge amount on the way.
I am still learning masses every time I play or write something, with the band or with someone else.
Which is the whole point, and it is that makes me think it is still the most fun which exists.
I like music theory and am usually interested in the song writing mechanisms at all levels.
But hey, it is my profession so that’s not that unusual.
But (musically) rules are not so very important.
We have learnt a lot about chords, keys and to write and arrange and we use it the whole time.
But the only thing that really matters is how the song feels.
And we love melodies.
So many melodies as possible with as few chords as possible is great.
We also like when a song doesn't take the usual road, but now and then takes a left turn over a unexpected chord change.
But you can’t fool your gut feeling.
If the music isn’t felt in the body, it doesn’t matter how nice the chords are or how well formulated the text has been.
Above all else, it is totally uninteresting if a song is ‘cool’ or not.
Every song we rehearse/ record it goes through 10 chord changes, 3-4 key changes and a few different tempos before we find home..
Sometimes we never find it at all.
It is no guessing game, but you often feel like the song has great potential, but you don’t really know if it will hit the mark.
Trial & error.

In Max500 I really like the progression at the end.
It is great to the song melody and totally not expected.
It took an hour or two to get it right.

Then it is important to add the chords that are totally uninteresting.
It is the top melodies changes over the chord progressions which makes it felt in the heart.
Even if the chord has been used 1000000 times by a world of artists, you can still find a great melody over the most banal of chords which no one else has properly found.
Sometimes you find the exact same as someone else and often don’t even know it yourself.
We usually listen carefully and it helps to find the steals and similarities.
We find them and change them as much as we can.

There are so many thing which make music extremely fascinating.
Theory helps a lot on the way, but it is only the feeling which counts.




Dear Jocke,
Thanks very much for today's intensive Swedish and music theory lesson.
My head hurts, but it was very interesting all the same.
A bit like the space physics programme I watched last night with professor Brian Cox 'A night with the stars', I didn't quite understand it, but it was good to know how all those atoms and things worked.
✩✩✩

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In the thread about copyright and file sharing, a member puts forward the idea that musical work is just an idea, and by that reason copies cannot be theft. Jocke replies:

Here we go again.
A musical work is ‘just an idea’?
So you are saying that I practise some sort of telepathy when you listen to my songs?
How and by what means do you think they get on to your computer?
Harry Potter’s magic wand?
I will not get into this again because there’s no point.
Now you have spotify...
You who don’t want to pay for music, do not do it, so I don’t understand what you are moaning about.
We don’t care that we don’t receive any payment for recorded music any more.
We don’t get money from Spotify, and commercial radio payment is also shit.
It is interesting but not particularly surprising.
But it is when you make it sound like that it is like big stakes to make the copies is like writing and recording a song is why I get irritated.
Get a fucking grip dude.

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In a thread speculating on what the new album’s ‘colour’ will be, Jocke says in response to a temporary cover at bengans.se:

There is no cover and you should think that this is clear.
But you cannot have everything in the world.