Noisy Nights - Tre'r Ceiri

The wonderful Red Note ensemble have chosen to perform one of my pieces at their Noisy Nights gig on Monday 12th December.

http://www.traverse.co.uk/whats-on/noisy-nights/

Tre'r Ceiri is one of my favourite places, a bronze age hill fort in North Wales, with the peak of Yr Eifl just to the west and a sharp drop down to the Altantic beyond. One magical afternoon of waltzing with ravens overlooking the stunning Lleyn Peninsula led to a slow waltz - written on the whistle in the whistling air.

The line up of this Noisy Nights seemed perfect for the piece to develop an arrangement, Harmonium, Fiddle and Cello. I've used the harmonium sparingly to lay subtle drones through most of the piece, establishing a tonal stability before breaking off into a chordal procession under the spoken word. The cello and fiddle pass the melody between them in a slow game, a dance, an exchange, my waltz with the raven.

Writing for Red Note is such a rewarding experience, as I always know that they will make an outstanding job of whatever I give them, the sounds jump from the page and intensify what I imagined, a kind of technicolor for my ears.

Noisy Words

Hurtling towards me on the horizon is Red Note's Noisy Words weekend. 


This idea is to put 5 composers and 5 writers in a room for two days and shake it all about. There'll be a concert on Sunday night, if any of us are still alive. You'd be welcome to come down to see us and try to revive our ailing senses with wine. It's at the Traverse in Edinburgh at 5pm on Sunday 27th November.


So, writing a piece in 2 days is not unheard of for me, but usually I spend quite a lot of time just thinking, imagining before I write. With Noisy Words, I have no idea what the available instrumentation will be, or who I will be working with, or what sort of writing they make. So this really will be a scratch composition. 


It will be interesting to see how this works in practice. I'm fairly sure, having attended various Noisy Nights gigs, that my composing process is very different from many composers, I don't use paper, I don't even tend to use a key or chords, or well, anything. I usually start with some splatter gun approaches, and then select snippets which appeal to me and inspire me to develop them. So, I think my process will be challenged. My expectations are that although I work with text, spoken word and live instruments fairly regularly, this adaptation of process will throw me into a different style of writing. This certainly happened at the Distil weekend last year. Instead of starting with a melody or phrase, we started with beats, and worked upwards. The music I created was totally different to anything I had written before. 


The last few days I've been getting some practice in. I'm putting together a 5 minute piece for Noisy Nights 16 (or maybe 17 if we count Noisy Words?). I recently found some lovely archive footage of Tre'r Ceiri, a place where I walked and waltzed with a raven. I've used the footage and the raven waltz as the basis for this piece for Cello, Fiddle and Harmonium. I wanted to retain a feeling of the ancient nature of the hill fort, so have opted for simple melodies and drones. It's now in a bare bones stage, and I will start to shape and sculpt and finally, I shall scribe, so the Noisy people can play.


Have a look at Noisy Words http://www.traverse.co.uk/whats-on/noisy-words/ 


A little review in The Scotsman http://bit.ly/vvKzK3 

Quarter-tone Alto flute, Soprano and Electronics

Writing for Carla Rees is always in interesting proposition, and it usually leads me to write something completely different to what I intended. Carla plays low flutes, she has a quarter tone alto flute, a bass flute and access to a Kingma Contrabass flute, which is well worth checking out if you've never seen and heard it. It's drainpipe sized and reverberates so that you feel it coming up through the floor and resonating in your inner ear. 

So firstly I have to command Logic to give me a quarter-tone scale, something for which it was not built and doesn't feel entirely comfortable. For each instrument I need two tracks, one of which will have it's synth settings to +50 cents. Each time I want a half flat or half sharp I need to put the note in on this instrument. For notes in the chromatic 12 semitone scale, I use the other instrument. My score at present involves reading both as if they are the same line and imagining the half sharp and half flat signs. Later, once the piece is finished, I will merge the two and add the half signs by hand. 

I'm writing some vocals for Rosie Coad to sing, in Scots Gaelic. I've never written for classical voice before, and I've always felt uncomfortable about traditional music performed with classical technique - it's something about parity of esteem in terms of technique I think. So, I've decided to use Rosie's voice as an atmospheric instrument, rather than a voice. I want her to be the wind taking off the roof (all Uisters will know what I mean) gently and surreptitiously getting into the cracks of your mind.

At present the piece is taking shape in a very blind organic way. I really have absolutely no idea where this will take me, I just know that each time I sit down for an hour, it goes somewhere else. It's an intuitive approach which I'm hoping will make sense to the final sound. I want the piece to sound like it composed itself, which is essentially, what it is doing.  

To find out more about Carla and Rosie check out these links

http://rarescale.org.uk/

http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/arts/music/lessons/rosiecoad

The piece will be performed in September as part of a wider programme of contemporary classical music for low flutes, Soprano and electronics.

Noisy Nights Electrics Preparation

I'm trying something new at Noisy Nights. I'm planning to route the three instruments through Logic and manipulate them live using plug ins. The samples will be triggered by a max patch, set to a timer (with a cheeky over-ride button, of course). The MAX patch is done, it's a simpler version of the Sea Longing patch I used with Mr McFalls Chamber. The logic stuff is prepared and now I have an afternoon of testing, chasing faults and re-patching. Wish me luck.

If I get out of here with the piece intact this afternoon I can treat myself to a visit to the Border Gatherin' this weekend, with the fabulous Lori Watson, Innes Watson and Gordon Turnbull.

Check it out, maybe I'll see you there, or at Noisy Nights in Edinburgh on Monday.

Border Gatherin http://www.bordergaitherin.com/

Noisy Nights http://www.traverse.co.uk/shows_noisynights.htm

Red Note Ensemble and Noisy Nights

I'm really excited to have my piece Chapels with Splendid Glass Windows chosen to be performed by Red Note Ensemble at their next Noisy Nights gig. The piece is a follow up to my recent string piece Sea Longing. Chapels is written for electric violin, electric cello, electric guitar and electronics.

In case you've not heard of Noisy Nights, it's a really exciting project run by the wonderful Red Note Ensemble. It's held bi-monthly, and each month has a different line up - 3 cellos, baroque recorder and harpsichord, electrics etc. An open call for scores is posted and composers write to the brief. Red Note then pick a selection to perform. The performers get one rehearsal on the day of the gig, with composers popping in to support and guide where scores may not tell everything. Then at about 7.30 the bar starts to fill up and we get to hear around 10 brand new pieces and chat to the composers at the bar in between.

It's a really good opportunity for new composers to get their work played and recorded, a chance to get feedback, meet other composers and more importantly, nick their ideas.

The gig will be on Monday 6th June in the Traverse Theatre Bar in Edinburgh, it would be lovely to see you there.

http://www.traverse.co.uk/shows_noisynights.htm

http://www.rednoteensemble.com/Red_Note/Current%20Performances.html

Mr McFalls Electronics Day

I arrived at this wonderful space, through an avenue of overhanging beech trees, gently brushing the roof of the van in welcome. The studio space has a breath-taking view of the Scottish Borders, and it is a gentle, and welcoming space to work in. 

Meeting with the players and electronics people from McFalls I feel instantly, well, um, welcomed and so very happy to be here. Robert chats happily about Anna-Wendy and her fiddle teachings, Brian is colourfully trying both violas, and I am blessed, as he chooses the heavier and trickier but with a richer sound. Ricks bass guitar is swifly replaced by the most gorgeous looking acoustic bass with pick up. This bass looks like it has been resting at the bottom of the sea, singing siren songs with the slinkies, with armada gold stashed inside, telling tales of canon and pirate. If I ever coveted an instrument, I cannot have coveted it like this.... sigh. Su-a comes fresh from doing a gig for babies, all energy and focus with the wonderful hair up down up down up down up. 

Martin and I set up and have a look through the patches, discussing whether we think they will work, what the issues might be and ways that we could approach those issues. He is a Max wizard, clicking through the patches, and deftly tweaking and typing. Alex Fiennes is on the sound, taking the feed from the live musicians and our laptops and producing gorgeous mixes. Occaisionaly Martin and Alex speak to each other in fluent serial number. 

The first piece we work on is Sea Longing, inspired by my time on the Uists, facing the sea, at once enveloping and spearating - feeling as though I am experiencing all the centuries overlapping each other. The electronics work! This is a joyous moment. Brian's viola is happily triggering the samples whilst the laptop people just sit and babysit the Max patches. The patch is designed to listen for certain notes in a certain time window, and upon hearing these notes, to trigger the samples. 

After lunch we have a look at Dochas, or Uaimh na h-Àrd-Eaglaise. This piece is more seat of our pants. It involves building loops on top of each other, each player has several loops to pile up. The structural issue would be that the opening of the piece is very slow, so even a milimeter's nudge either way will cause the whole house of cards to tumble later on in the piece. We adjust the max patch in some mid afternoon frantic wizardry and finally get the piece to fly. The delays are added manually, as we're running out of time. We wanted to get the musicians to play with number generator toys to randomly affect the delays... ah well. next time.

Alex is making some wonderful mixes from the day to put on the McFalls website, which you can find if you click:

here 

I am sitting here as the light dies, a pale turquoise sky against the black of the trees, a mellow jazz noodle rises into the air like cigar smoke as Rick is on the veranda playing his bass.

Max Patches & Other Mountains

 I'm not sure which was more of a challenge, the MAX/MSP programming or climbing Yr Eifl at the weekend. Yr Eifl is a lovely mountain on the Llyn Peninsula in North Wales, a few miles from my Great Grandmother's village. We chose a warm, sunny and very blustery day to climb. As we ascended and the coast dropped away below us, the outline of the peninsula became visible, then, appearing over the pass, the Snowdonia range and Anglesea. The summit was triumphant and all the Westerly Welsh Winds agreed, they encouraged us across the eastern flank to the deserted hillfort of Tre'r Ceiri. In celebration of our walk I wrote  

two tunes

a celebratory 5/4 for Yr Eifl and a more reflective 3/4 for Tre'r Ceiri, the beautiful hillfort separated from Yr Eifl by a meadow of bog cotton and heather.


In comparison, the MAX programming was more of a scramble, with no discernible path and a crumpled map, with only online fora for gps. I've had to dust off my programming fingers working on the two max patches for the Mr McFalls pieces. In case you've not come across  

MAX/MSP 

it's "an interactive graphical programming environment for music, audio, and media". It has been a while since I used MAX and so I've been exploring and experimenting to rebuild my knowledge. The patch I've been working on so far listens to the live performers and is set to trigger various samples if it hears a particular frequency in a given time window. The summit is eluding me, just as I think I'm there, I turn a corner and there is another stretch ahead. I'm sure the view will be exhilarating once we get into the studio.

Mr McFalls Chamber & Electronic Workshops

I’m very excited to have been invited to work with Mr McFalls Chamber at Heriot Toun Studios in May.


Mr McFall’s Chamber www.mcfalls.co.uk have invited five composers to submit new works that involve electronic instruments and live electronics to be developed in workshops with live electronics composer Martin Parker and sound engineer Alex Fiennes. The workshops will take place at Heriot Toun Studio in the Scottish Borders www.heriot-toun.co.uk.


The works will be developed in a workshop situation, in which we will take documentary recordings and to blog the progress of the works as they develop.


Can’t wait to meet everyone and get going!