“There is a great variation: we’ve had brain surgeons and students, 55-year-olds and 15-year-olds, but the typical camper is someone who is very focused on their guitar. Musically, they tend to be very broad-minded. They seem to be very open towards each other and many of them are a bit bohemian. But both the boys and the girls are complete guitar nerds. Most of them appreciate the fact that we only serve vegetarian food, and they like the concept before they even taste it. Me and my small crew have started taking over more and more of the practical matters. Before us, IA even bought toilet paper and milk for the camp.”
Fiffi has come to know IA from a different perspective, as her professional relationship with him is not directly connected to music.
“I think we’d need a whole congress to cover what IA is like. What you can say is that he is totally genuine. I don’t think I’ve met anyone who is more true and honest. He’d be the world’s worst actor, because he cannot fake anything. He’s very kind and generous and open. Sometimes he’s too kind. He’s obviously extremely focused when it comes to his musicianship, but he’s also extremely concentrated if he’s talking to someone, he might even forget about his own needs and plans. But if there is a lot happening around him, he may have trouble sifting out impressions and grading them according to level of immediate importance. He also has a tendency to take things literally.”
Music Theory Galore
ONE OF IA’S MOST REPEATED PHRASES is “Grow your own moustache!” This is in no way a gender specific encouragement, but a metaphor for musical individuality. Break free from conventions and find your own style. He urges his students to experiment; the worst that can happen is that it sounds like crap. Camper veteran Demian Andersen took this approach to heart and soon started investigating new paths. One of the things he focused on was playing Freak Kitchen songs in standard tuning.
“In the beginning, I didn’t want to re-tune my guitar, but I still wanted to play Freak Kitchen songs. What I had done earlier was to experiment with inverted power chords: playing with the 5th as the lower note. It was in this little experiment I realised how cool it sounded. Not to mention that there is a good reason a guitar is tuned the way it is. So with this kind of playing, you still keep the bass playing bass notes, and there is no turf war for the lower frequencies, as the guitar isn’t tuned down. It also forces the guitar and bass to work together in a new kind of context, as they don’t share the lowest note in any chord. I love that sound. And I’ve come to use it throughout all my music. This is one of many stories about how one idea I picked up at Freak Guitar Camp changed my personal approach to guitar playing.”
One of IA’s well-known trademarks as a guitar player is his frequent use of odd tunings. Tuning the strings differently makes it possible to play chords in new ways and reach low notes that would be impossible using a guitar in standard tuning. IA says that odd tunings help to encourage creativity since you’ll have to find new ways to navigate the fretboard, and quite often you’ll discover new chord shapes and scale patterns that you haven’t played before. Linus Abrahamson talks about some of the Freak Kitchen songs where IA’s choice of tuning is worth a special mention.
Paperdance
“This is one of few Freak Kitchen songs in standard tuning. IA usually favours the C#sus4 tuning (a half step down detuned variation of DADGAD tuning, often used in Irish music) and the majority of Freak Kitchen’s songs are in this tuning. Eb tuning (all strings detuned a half step down from standard tuning) and C tuning (all strings detuned two whole steps down from standard tuning) are frequently used as well. For a couple of songs – ‘Propaganda Pie’, ‘Razor Flowers’, ‘Heroin Breakfast’, ‘Infidelity Ghost’ and ‘Sick? Death by Hypochondria’ – he also uses a low Bb variation of C#sus4 where the lowest string is detuned all the way to Bb (three whole steps down from standard tuning, a half step lower than the lowest string of a 7 string guitar).”
Lie Freedom
“Here IA uses inverted power chords to create an illusion of heavily detuned instruments, when in reality, they’re only detuned a half step (Eb tuning). A power chord is the typical rock/metal type of chord where the 3rd (the interval) is left out, creating a chord which consists only of the root note and the 5th (the interval) and is neither major nor minor. An inverted power chord means that the 5th is placed underneath the root note, creating a heavier, chunkier sound, especially when played with distortion. However, it does not alter the function or feel of the chord, since the bass still plays the root note an octave lower than the guitar. ‘Walls of Stupidity’ and ‘Hateful Little People’ are some of the other songs that also utilize inverted power chords.”
We’ve Heard It All Before
“This song has quite an odd tuning where two of the strings are tuned to the same pitch (regular B and G strings both detuned to F#) as well as having the lowest string detuned to B (two and a half step down from standard tuning). IA says this is one of the reasons why they don’t play it live, since it would demand that they brought extra instruments for just one song.”
Porno Daddy
“The chorus of this song uses chord shapes that include open strings on the guitar which means that although all of the chords are different (and some of them even a bit dissonant), they still share an open string. In combination with the C#sus4 tuning of the guitar, this creates quite complex chords even though the fingerings are quite easy and logical. This little ‘open string chord’ trick is something that IA does quite often, and other examples of this are ‘Jerk’, ‘Burning Bridges’, ‘Spanking Hour’, ‘The Bitter Season’, ‘Michael & the Syndrome’, and actually all of the songs from Move, with the exception of ‘Nobody’s Laughing’. How much IA uses this trick varies a lot: sometimes it may be just two chords that share one or two open strings, but sometimes it’s an entire section of a song.”
Maggots of Corruption
“Both the verse and the chorus here are prime examples of the ‘open string chord’ trick mentioned earlier. You’ll also find open string chords in ‘Mussolini Mind’ and ‘Becky’. ‘Breathe’ utilizes the C tuning and the song is based around the open string chord idea, and in fact, every chord in the entire song has the same open Eb string in it (which would have been the G string in standard tuning).”
Freak Kitchen has been labelled a great many things: jazzy, progressive, Indian-influenced, gypsy-metal and the list goes on. They’re particularly difficult to define, and Linus explains why he just calls them a hard rock band.
“When people say it’s jazzy, they’re probably referring mostly to IA’s jazzy tonality, scales normally found in jazz. Other than that, I don’t think their music has much to do with jazz. Especially not the sound, and not the improvisational parts or the compositional structures either. When people say they’re progressive, they’re probably thinking of the complex time signatures. But I wouldn’t call Freak Kitchen a progressive band or a prog metal band, because prog metal is associated with keyboards and epic songs and complexity for complexity’s own sake. But if you look at the original meaning of the word progressive, I would definitely call them that. They incorporate elements which have not been used in that combination or environment before.”
Linus takes the Indian influences as an example. Although a few western bands and musicians have fleetingly touched upon the Indian sound or used Indian instruments, no band has mixed hard rock and Indian music to the extent Freak Kitchen has.
“Perhaps Shawn Lane and Jonas Hellborg came close to what IA is doing. But it’s difficult to use labels, as people have a very fixed idea about what different labels should or should not incorporate. Personally I’d simply call them hard rock and I think IA would agree. The songs, the riffs and the drums are still the important features: typical hard rock elements. Their songs often depend on the traditional structure where you have a verse-chorus form with a main riff which the chorus is connected to, and perhaps a bridge and/or guitar solo. They might then add semi-weird instrumental parts to make things more int
eresting.”
An unfortunate attitude in the world of more complex, or progressive, music is that it mostly attracts male listeners. Perhaps they’re just the exception to the rule, but Freak Kitchen seems to attract plenty of fans who aren’t male. So, if their sometimes brutally complex music is a hit with all sexes, it surely can’t be complexity itself which scares certain parts of the audience off. IA sees this both live and on Facebook.
“I have absolutely no idea why we have an unusually large female following. They’re obviously a lot smarter over all, I know that from growing up with sisters, but I can’t explain why. Perhaps it’s not enough to be just technically brilliant, perhaps it takes something more to impress women? I don’t know, a good tune, lyrics which actually mean something? If bands have problems attracting females, I don’t think it’s the technical side which scares them away. I mean, look at some of our songs: when we’re getting complex, it’s not because we strive to be equilibristic. If I play a riff which goes in 9/16, it’s not to show off, it’s because that’s how I hear it. And we always package even our most odd time signatures in proper songs, not displays for musical wanking. Some people will accuse us of being awkward techno-rock, but believe me, it’s seldom the female writers or listeners.”
Regarding how Freak Kitchen uses odd time signatures compared to straight quarter notes, is it more complicated than you’d think – or is it the other way around: is it actually simpler than you may be led to believe? Linus says it can be seen in two ways.
“It’s quite complicated in itself when they use odd time signatures and it occurs more often than you may think, but they’re very good at covering it up so you don’t notice it. They don’t make a fuss about it. They don’t choose an odd time signature just for the sake of it, like many bands in the progressive genre do, but they find a groove or a rhythm that they think is cool to build something on, and then they cover it up so it doesn’t appear as obvious – I think that’s the strength of it all. Quite complicated stuff like 9/16 can be squeezed in without an awkward result. So yeah, it’s probably more complicated theoretically, but perceived as less complicated than it really is.”
Linus has selected a few songs as examples of how Freak Kitchen make their complex elements more accessible.
Blind
“A perfect example would be ‘Blind’, the first song on the first album. Guitar and bass play a riff in 11/16, but the drums are all straight and play even quarter notes, which makes it very easy to stomp your foot or headbang along to, even though it’s a covered-up time signature. 11/16 is indeed quite odd, but when you get an AC/DC drum beat with straight quarter notes on top of that (even though the drum pattern also goes to 11, but with a quarter note division instead of the 16th note division of the riff), it isn’t perceived as odd. The guitar and bass riff aligns with drums again after the riff is played four times: 4 x 11/16 (riff) = 11/4 (drum beat). Music mathematics is fun!”
Jerk
“During the guitar solo in ‘Jerk’, there’s a tricky tempo shift illusion achieved by changing the subdivision of four 16th notes per beat in 4/4 time signature to every third 16th note, which creates a 12/16 time signature but feels like 4/4 with a triplet subdivision in a new tempo. This type of time signature shift is fairly common in progressive rock and metal, the intro to Dream Theater’s ‘The Mirror’ being a typical example.”
Taste My Fist
“In the main riff there’s a variation on the tempo shift illusion in ‘Jerk’ but this time only the drum pattern changes, and here it’s changed from an original triplet (shuffle/swing) feel to a straight beat by accenting every other/fourth note instead of every third/sixth note. In ‘Spanking Hour’, right before the guitar solo takes off, there’s the same type of tempo shift illusion.”
Proud to Be Plastic
“This is of those songs where you think it’s straight 4/4, but doesn’t add up when you actually start counting. The drums play a straight beat in 10/4 time while guitar and bass play a riff that’s divided into 3/4 + 3/4 + 4/4. The song then changes to regular 4/4 time for the chorus.”
Nobody’s Laughing
“With the exception of the vocal intro in 6/4 time and a lead guitar break in 7/4 time right before the solo, the entire song is in 5/4 time. The guitar and bass play riffs that are phrased as if they were in 5/8 time while the drums keep a steady quarter note beat in 5/4, which gives a backbeat feel to every other riff played by guitar and bass. This ‘every other riff in backbeat-feel’ phenomenon is quite common in Freak Kitchen’s music and it appears often because of their frequent use of longer and more straight drum beats over shorter odd-time guitar and bass riffs (mostly 1/2 or 1/4 the length of the drum patterns). The riff leading into the chorus may feel like it’s two bars in regular 4/4 time, but the riff actually starts on the third beat of a 5/4 bar – a neat little trick there!”
Humiliation Song
“When things get very complex and fast, and people have trouble following, they may instead focus on the drums which often have a straighter beat. For example, ‘Humiliation Song’ has a middle section where the guitar plays frantically in 9/16, and the bass smoothens it out a bit by playing 9/8, and then drums play some kind of quarter note pulse on top of all that, which smoothens it out even more.”
Freak of the Week
“This is a great example of a song with different time signatures masked as being in regular 4/4 time. The intro/main riff and the verse as well as the solo are in 11/4, the pre-chorus and the bridge are in 4/4 and the chorus is mainly in 7/4 (with two bars of 4/4 at the end). It sounds way more straightforward than it actually is.” When Björn joined the band, the quality of the rhythm section changed. Not necessarily from bad to good or the other way around, but a distinct change nevertheless. Linus throws some light on the differences in Joakim’s and Björn’s style of playing.
“The impression I’ve got regarding Joakim’s drumming is that he played quite straight, and the guitar and bass did their thing over that. Sometimes he did tag along, of course, but Björn somehow does both parts – he uses the drum kit in two ways, so to say. He sometimes plays both the complicated time signature and the more covered-up on top of that; he accentuates both parts. It probably demands a better technique to pull that off, or at least more limb independence.”
Linus also reckons that he can hear that Björn also plays other instruments, in his style of playing. Björn explains why this may be.
“I have spent a lot of time playing with guitarists, improvising along with their playing. I was a complete guitar nerd for so many years, just listening to guitar virtuosos. I went through all the Satriani, Vai and Malmsteen kind of musicians and actually concentrated very little on their drummers. And let’s not forget that I used to play the guitar and bass in various bands back home in Arvika. But I do like it when drummers follow a melody. With me, it goes two ways: sometimes I follow IA’s weird guitar adventures, but in the studio, sometimes I do things which IA wants to keep and changes his stuff to follow me. Live, we tend to ‘talk’ to each other by improvising and it’s great fun when you hear that the other person has heard you and responded with an improvisation.”
Björn describes the difference between his style of playing and that of his predecessor.
“I have a musician friend who said that Joakim’s style of playing was ‘falsetto’, a little bit breathy and up here and slightly fidgety. Great ideas sometimes, but not very steady. I think IA felt relieved that he didn’t have to be in charge all the time with me. He didn’t have to adjust his timing all the time. I’m not saying I’m a drum machine, but I do have some solidity in my playing. Joakim is a bit more ‘samba metal’, if you see what I mean. Listen to ‘Inner Revolution’, for instance.”
Joakim himself has been very negative when he talks about his drumming skills, but a closer look at the tracks and their time signatures shows that it’s not exactly the Status Quo rhythm section we’re listening to. Linus illustrates this through analyses of
three tracks.
Bull
“On this track we find a tricky time signature phenomenon. It can be analysed as being in 10/4 time, but where the drums play a combined pattern of 6/8 + 3/8 + 1/8 during the verse, which creates a twisted kind of waltz feel while still adding up to 10. Then it changes to regular 4/4 time for the chorus.”
Silence!
“There is lot of fun rhythmic stuff going on here. The intro and main riff is in fast 7/16 time where the drums play a 7/4 beat with the cymbals while accentuating the 7/16 riff with the bass drum and the snare drum, so the guitar and bass riff is played four times before they meet up again on ‘beat 1’ with the drums. This is a slightly more complicated version of the previously mentioned ‘odd-time riff with straight drums’ concept in ‘Blind’. The verse has a combined time signature pattern consisting of three bars of 7/4 followed by two bars of 5/8. The chorus is in regular 4/4. At the break right before the bridge in the song, the subdivision of the 4/4 time signature changes from straight 8th notes to a triplet (shuffle/swing) feel which is then cut off by the return of the fast 7/16 guitar riff before going back to regular 4/4 in the chorus.”
Shithead
“In ‘Shithead’, there are plenty of time signature changes. The guitar and bass intro riff is in 9/8, but the drums play in 9/4 with all quarter note beats accentuated on the snare drum, so the riff is played twice during the 9/4 drum sequence and has kind of a backbeat feeling to it every other time it is played. The instrumental section has lots of different time signature changes and the structure looks like this:
Riff 1A: 9/8 x4
Riff 2: 7/8 x4
Riff 1B: 9/8 x 2
Riff 3: 5/8 x 4
Riff 1C: one bar of 4/4, plus one bar of 4/4 with 8th note backbeat accents.”
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