Markus Captain Kaarlonen

Me and @ollie_t_gtr last night in Lahti with our ”Echo Butterflies” routine! 🎸🎹 I’m currently struggling with an irritating cold and felt pretty horrible just before and right after the show 🤒, but somehow you always find the energy to play (and even have some fun on stage 🤪). Great to play in Finland again after a break of almost 2 years! 😊💪 Now some rest, and Helsinki next week! Thank you @jennnamaaarit for capturing the moment! 🤘😊

Requiem for My Harlequin is based on a chord progression that has a pretty cool name: The Andalusian cadence. I think we have used this progression in only two of our songs (so far), the other being False Kings. 🎼 The Andalusian cadence is a series of four descending chords: i–VII–VI–V (for example RFMH is in the key of A minor, so the basic chords would be Am-G-F-E). RFMH embellishes the basic formula a bit by adding some extra notes and chord variations. Describing how chord progressions "feel" is always somewhat subjective, but to me, this one always feels foreboding, dramatic and unstoppable, like it's inevitably stepping further and further down towards something sad or bittersweet, only to rise back up and start the descent again. (Note: The chord names can be written in different ways, but the ones in the video are how I like to think of them, with my zero days of music education... 🤓)

Here's some more Requiem for My Harlequin -trivia: The instrumental melody that starts the song was originally played with a piano in the early demos. It sounded ok, but I felt this is a song that really needs to push the drama over the top, so the melody also needs something, let's say more flamboyant. I experimented with different sounds, and the instrument you hear in the final song is a combination of several elements mixed together, including a xylophone, clarinet, flute, an acoustic guitar, some synth sounds, and a string ensemble pizzicato + staccato. 🎼

There's a little accidental (?) musical reference in Requiem for My Harlequin that I only noticed after the whole song was finished: Listen to the violin phrase at around 0:42, then the final 30 secs of Freddie Mercury’s The Great Pretender, and you’ll notice it contains a very similar violin. 🎻 And of course RFMH has ”the great pretender” in the lyrics right before that. The violin doesn't have that many notes, so could be just a co-incidence, or maybe it was my subconscious at work, but either way, it was still funny when I recently happened to listen to the Freddie Mercury song, and in the end I was like ”...whoa, wait a minute, that sounds familiar...” 😄 Well, if you are gonna borrow from someone, you might as well borrow from the best! (I recently posted this in the comment section on Poets' Instagram, but in case you missed it there, you are welcome!)

Our new single & video Requiem for My Harlequin premieres on Friday! Here's a little preview to get you in the mood.... 🎻

30 years ago, when I was just starting to make my own music, I composed a track called Space Debris on the Amiga computer. The song took part in a music competition in Sweden, and won the 1st prize! People still occasionally contact me to tell how they listened to Space Debris back in the day, or even today. You can now listen to a slightly remastered Space Debris (plus the Spacesynth Remix) on my YouTube channel, and I also wrote a little backstory on my website to go with it. Hope you’ll enjoy this piece of nostalgia! 😊🎼 Go to markuskaarlonen.com/space-debris for more!