Adopt a Composer Project with Making Music 

The launch of Adopt a Composer saw a beautiful crisp autumnal day. As I hurtled towards St Martin’s through the familiar tunnels bisecting London’s rich clay, I felt nervous and excited about this new challenge. On more than one occasion it has dawned on me that I have said yes to something about which I have no details. Who? What? Where? When? How? All are blank. It’s like I’m travelling blindfolded, through these dark tunnels. I blearily alight into the crisp autumn sun and after a few moments of steeling myself, descend into the crypt.

Scary things happen in crypts, but this was not one of them. A lovely bunch of people who, in all honesty, only have one thing in common, and it’s the one thing we are not allowed to talk about! Discussion quickly descends to puppies and the buffet.

Making music provide a warm welcome and a broad introduction to the project through videos, talks and Q&A sessions, all the time we are waiting excitedly and nervously to see who we will be matched with. I have an inkling, as earlier on I had broken the coat rack (oops) within eavesdropping distance of a warm Welsh accent. True to my guess, these tones belonged to Charlotte from Ty Cerdd.

Ty Cerdd are a really interesting organisation, spanning the whole of Wales, with an emphasis on community and education music. Charlotte was really keen to involve some form of intergenerational aspect to the project. I had been considering a walking based composition, based on the landscapes. Some of my previous works are based on 24 hours in a given location. I fold in research about the social history, my impressions of the landscape and found sounds which I record and electronically manipulate into the music.

I had to have pity for my wonderful new mentor David Horne, sandwiched between two enthusiastic Welsh women trying to get a word in edgeways! Sometimes you meet people and ideas just flow, this was one of those. 45 minutes since we had met, Charlotte and I had started to sculpt something which incorporated our two ideas, looked practical, and exciting.

Our project blurb was drawn up to cement the ideas.

Cerdd/ed - (working title)

Cerdd/ed is the collaboration of Ty Cerdd with composer Amble Skuse. 

Cerdd/ed links local primary schools with community ensembles to explore local history and create a tailor made composition, drawing from the stories of the local environment, inspiration from walking and found sounds generated by the children. The piece will be available to the 'audience' as a site specific piece as part of a local history walk. 

Amble Skuse will work with the community music group to explore their memories of their town, using their photographs, stories, memories and old newspaper reports, we will create a locally generated memory map, based on the locations. In collaboration with the group, Amble will develop a walk around sites of interest, mapping memory, and retaking old photographs where possible. This walk, along with the source material will form the basis for Amble's composition.

Ty Cerdd will create a teachers pack for the partner primary school to explore ways in which sound and stories can generate musical material. It is envisaged that the community group will perform a short assembly to the children to introduce the partnership, and then the teachers will work through the education pack, exploring found sound, and making poetry from landscape and stories. 

The children will then set out on the walk trail, with hand held recorders to bring back snap shots of exciting sounds they find along with way. The children will also be encouraged to take photographs, and write down any phrases which strike them from the landscape. The teachers’ pack will support classroom teachers in creating 'contemporary' compositions in the classroom from the inspiration found on the walk. 

The material generated by the children, will feed in to Amble's composition, using the found sound, and processing it into electronically generated location specific noise. Amble will write a piece which allows the community group and the school to perform together, along with the electronics. 

The performance of the piece will be recorded by Ty Cerdd and turned into an mp3. 

Amble will create a website, detailing the route of the walk, along with interesting social and oral history relevant to the town. Alongside this will be photos, old and new. The route will be downloadable as a PDF map and directions, with 'treasure hunt clues' which will lead the walkers/audience to a series of geocaches. At the geocaches, walkers/audience will find the links to the mp3, along with snippets of oral history. This will allow the walkers / audience to listen to the recording in a site specific way through a G3 enabled phone.“

We retreated to our geographical locations to begin working on the project, Charlotte to find groups to work with, and me, to design the website, prepare the group materials and do some serious Welsh research. It’s such a blessing, this project as it enables me to rediscover the landscape and history of the country I call home. I’ve been gorging on history books, Gwynfor Evans, walking books and old photographs of the Rhondda, a friend even sent me a dragon cookie cutter (although I’m not sure how we can work this into the project yet!). My Tonypandy Mam is most excited and can’t wait to get on the phone to the relatives about it all.

We’ve sketched out a few dates for a visit, and my next job is to design myself a programme of activities, interviews, visits, extracts, questionnaires, and walks to do while I’m there. Now I just have to see how many more Welsh language lessons I can squeeze in before my trip! Gyffrous iawn!

Love triangle electronic tango poetry - Como Sera?

Something about this week has rubbed off on me, into my subconscious and out through my ears. Friday saw me working with Mr McFalls Chamber in a strings, harp, piano, electronics and poetry performance for the Distil Showcase in Stirling. Sunday, I was lucky enough to see McFalls doing their Viva Tango! thing with Valentina Montoya Martinez (voice) Victor Villena (bandoneon) and Cyril Garac on Violin. 

So when Red Note put out their latest 'Noisy Nights' call for Violin, Cello, Accordion and Tape scores there was nothing I could do but yield to the call of electronic tango poetry. Using a beautiful poem called 'Como Sera' by Amado Nervo I began creating a 3 way contrapuntal tango between Violin, Cello and Accordion. Describing a love triangle which will never be resolved, each of them dancing to their own melody, weaving in and out of each other yet never submitting to the will of the others to dominate. The melody ends on the submediant, never allowing us a resolution.

A gentle F minor piano loop pins the poetry to the ground, with the words longing for the taste of spiritual kisses and immortal delights. The poem beautifully suits the darkness, passion and longing of the tango as the poet yearns for a time after departing this life. 

A trip to Red Note's 'Inventor Composer' on Wednesday night added some dramatic electronics to the piece, with disturbing sub bass, teeth-grindlingly uncomfortable bitcrusher crushes and high frequency audio tingles provided by cut glass resonances. 

This piece is built from my first week as an Edinburgh resident, parcelling up the musical gifts which have come my way into something new. Something which tells the story of relocation, of uncertainty, of endings and of new beginnings.

The final stages of the Distil process

Several times I've considered writing this blog, documenting my Distil process but each process has been so wildly different from the last that it felt like I needed to wait until I was nearly done. And I am. Nearly. 


The piece is for the wonderful Mr McFall's Chamber, plus Jenna Reid on Fiddle, Fiona Rutherford on Harp and Alistair Paterson on Piano, plus myself on Electronics and the wonderful Ben Seal on Sound. (If you've not seen Ben's alter ego Benofficial, I highly recommend checking him out on Youtube.)


So with a line up like that (self excluded) there was a certain level of pressure building, add to this the fact that the lovely people at Distil have already supported and invested in me and I want to do them proud. This piece starts to have a reputation in my head before it's even begun. This is also the first time that I've written for something 'on spec' meaning that in previous pieces, I've written them before being selected. It's a different game writing something to order once the gig has been announced. But, dealing with the demons is part of the creative game.


But, I'm sure you didn't drop in here to examine the contents of my tiny mind, so on to the music. 


Earlier in the year, I had met with poet Angus Peter Campbell to discuss the possibility of working together on a bigger project. We decided that we could trial run this collaboration by working together on the Distil piece. After having discussed several ideas, we decided to work with his poem "The Great Maiden of Corrodale" which deals with tradition, time, and tide. The poem is set in the Hebrides and links very clearly with my own themes of isolation, communication and time. 


I wanted to explore the idea of our present being a lens through which we view the past. All we can know of the past is imbued with our current perspectives and cultural assumptions. This impacts upon traditional musicians in where they choose to position themselves on the scale, from 'gatekeeper of tradition' to 'innovator'. Each of these terms being contentious of course. 


So, the piece contains a traditional tune from 'Shower and Sunshine' a traditional Devon song about love, loss and the sea. But this tune is adapted, it moves into 5/8 time and develops from a clean rendition to an awkward harmony, to a series of delays and distortions. Added to this tune is a new melody I wrote called The Maiden which references the character in the poem. She is dancing, flighty, collecting nuts and wild garlic though woodland. This melody also dances through a series of delays, sub bass and jazz chords to our contemporary ears. Both these melodies are primarily carried by Fiona on Harp. I love to write for Fiona and her deftness of touch can really portray this character, at once long gone and alive for us.


These islands of melody are linked by calm, threatening and turbulent seas of string sections, we survey islands of the past on the horizon but can never possess the boat which will take us to them, we carry them in our imaginations. 


Technically, so many processes have been used, and whether this is of interest to anyone I am not sure, so stop reading if not... The piece began as a series of improvisions on Logic, painting with sound, finding melodies, adjusting, linking and building harmonic structures underneath them. Added to this were a series of delays to create the effect I was looking for. In terms of structuring the piece, it was a fairly organic process, I knew that I wanted to move through different feelings and moods and so built some slow moving string chords with gentle piano delay as a recall phrase. 


Once the piece had been 'sound painted' in Logic I needed to score it. I use Sibelius for this process and although there is a nifty way to import scores from Logic to Sibelius, I've never found it to be quicker or easier than just inputting the whole thing from scratch! 


Once the dots are in, the fun begins, choosing dynamics, techniques and expressions which are denied to me in Logic, eyes closed, re-listening, drawing on my score then updating. Sounds, longwinded doesn't it? It is. But it's a lovely thing to do. 


Once the Sibelius score is written I can then work on electronics plotting. Back in Logic, checking the automation that I've written in and working out how this will translate for a live performer. Working out which channels can be 'statics' (i.e. the signal will be consistently processed), which channels need effects to be linked to pots or faders so that they are adjustable throughout, and which channels have several different presets and so will require splitting and then live switching from preset to preset. 


I can then bounce down my samples, and mark the trigger points onto my Sibelius score. The samples are loaded into the ESX24 sampler on a multichannel to allow for separate EQ's and compression (depending on the sample source). I can then start to map the LX cues onto my Sibelius score print out. I do this by colour coding the effects (delay is pink, sub bass is green, sample cues are blue and 'states' are yellow). I mark the cues onto the score and start to do some 'phantom fader' rehearsals, listening to logic and moving the faders as they are scored. This gives me a sense of my role in the performance and gives me the chance to troubleshoot fiddly or busy sections in advance. 


The final aspect is preparing a blank Logic Mix window waiting for the live signal feeds on Thursday. Each channel either goes to the static plug ins and on to the stereo output or is routed to a bus, and the fader for that auxiliary channel assigned to the USB controller I've been practicing on. A few more run throughs and it starts to feel possible, performable and nearly complete.


Tomorrow I will meet with Fiona and have a few hours working on the harp part together, then the print shop will make my 8 pdf parts and scores into real pieces of paper. On Thursday morning, me, Fiona, the van and the harp will be wending our way to Stirling and we get to see if this is going to work. Cross your fingers for me!

McFalls Electronics Project II

Today I am writing the MAX/MSP patches for my piece Chapels with Splendid Glass Windows, which will be workshopped by Mr McFalls Chamber on Thursday this week. I'm feeling pretty lucky to have another opportunity to work with these amazing musicians. My part of the project last year focussed on my piece Sea Longing, with Gaelic poetry by Sophia Dale.

Chapels with Splendid Glass Windows has several layers of electronic wizardry which we will explore throughout the workshop. The initial layer of electronics can be achieved through the use of pedals, phasers, delays, octave drops and reverbs achieve a sense of space and texture. The next layer of wizardry involves routing the signal through Logic and using the automation of plug ins to achieve the effects. Should this prove successful this is the point at which the patches will be tried.

The patches will connect a series of usb gadgets and toys to the automation in Logic. The idea behind this is that the musicians will be able to control and manipulate the effects on their sound. In practice this may be more complicated than is sounds, as the musicians will be using several of their limbs and a fair amount of their minds to control their instruments. Luckily, I've left a fair amount of free play in the bass part so I'll be enlisting the technical talents of Mr Rick Standley while he's counting those rests.

I've also made another one of my gate trigger patches for this piece. These gates will open for a given time frame and listen for the audio cue, as long as we are reasonably on time and in tune, the samples should automatically trigger.

So, I must move on and pull all this technicality together. I'm sure the McFalls website will bring more blogging as the week unfolds. Louise Rossiter and Malcom MacFarlane will also be working on pieces so there will be plenty of new music and experiments. Don't forget to check in and see how we're getting on.

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!