moving just a little
hello. I’ve been making far more music for myself and putting it up on soundcloud and I’m having a blast not worrying too much about it all, so I thought I’d talk about them a bit. following that, a small brief update of general work and progress, I guess there has been some? Maybe?
This was made as a last minute piece to score a video I made with Tanna Chamberlain (who has a phenomenal mind https://tannachamberlain.com/) we were making something low effort, so the music in that respect is low effort, Just some simple ol arpeggios, on three different instruments. sounds pretty childish and I guess it is? it does feature a plastic whistle that cost me 25p. its cute and suited the video (which you can find here https://youtu.be/L-lhUQJe7wc?t=45)
this was a small response to a video that was sent to me by Maya-Leigh Rosenwasser. (we have a duo now, I’ll mention it more either later or in another post, either way it is very exciting). the video was some edited stock footage of musicians playing various instruments and that sort of translates into the music, the 4 sections are very obvious, ranging through recorders, gamelan, percussion and violin. but the video was an accident due to a technical error, so the response was an error too i guess? I played guitar far more than I ever did viola during my teens, but never felt comfortable composing for it except for the odd riff, and I find it near IMPOSSIBLE to improvise with. but I’ve been relearning some old favourite math rock tunes so my cheap ass guitar is always in reach for a quick response and I really like multiple guitars doing similar things (check out des clarke’s music for miniature landscapes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEo85FuUro8) feeeling a bit more free in this area, but also really struggling to make it do what i want. it is so hit or miss, like it could really slap or really be the opposite of what i want. Anyway this piece does exactly that throughout but i really like the beginning and ending alot.
a leveret is a young hare. its also the title of a short dance film alex kaniewski made (viewable here https://akaniewski.wixsite.com/alexanderkaniewski/leveret) this was very different from what I started off with. I now realise all of these are based on visual material… I’ve had very little experience with it, but it doesn’t really feel like composing for film/video. it’s more like performing a response? that sounds interesting maybe I’ll not explain that. I intially was doing like narration of this dance film but alex kind of intervened and told me more of what he wanted, which is refreshing. I’ve made music for a couple of plays at university and they kinda took my music and just went with it with little to no pushback. but alex is a serious artist so he takes his work seriously as maybe we all should. the music again uses the ol guitar, i like fingerpicking and i felt it reacted well to alex’s movements. melodicas always sound nice and even a little broken and childish (mine definitely is) when the viola enters about 40 seconds from the end is the aaaaaahhhhh moment for me and I’m really bad tat holding back the bits that work, but don’t work if they are there the whole time so maybe its a good lesson.
(I’m missing out the next track which is from an album i just dropped with ray brien, which may or may be talked about later or on another post, maybe i should you know, have the energy to write more about these important things)
too many drams not enough time
boy boy i have some things to say about this. first up I’ve been hella inspired by the work of marco caricola (https://marcocaricola.com/) and èvia (https://evia.bandcamp.com/music) both of whom are wonderful people. marco took some samples i sent him and spat out this absolutely incredible beautiful mess of a thing made out of marble even though all i gave him was rusty brass and rotted wood. it made me realise more about music making should be about making what i want to hear, not what i think people expect me to make because of what I’ve previously done or who i am? I made this track super quick, and spent half a sunday just ediitng it down. it was a good 4 minutes longer but this one section that you hear is the only one that really made sense to me, the ending is trash though. I listen to this track reguarly. I like it. shouldn’t composers do that? I read on twitter Nick Reinhart from tera melos (an incredible band https://teramelos.bandcamp.com/) that he doesn’t listen to his bands music. so why make it dude? I’m confused. this track confused me. what was i doing, how does this fit, how the actual shit do you do anything on ableton (i bought it i promise) how do you mix things?
So yes there is some information about my recent soundcloud additions. not much more to say, maybe there is who knows. this post is massive, I’ll save the other things for another post, but just quickly.
i made an album with ray, we are in a duo now
i’m in a duo with maya-leigh rosenwasser and its very exciting
I attempted to write a review and failed miserably, but now i take complete pleasure in the freedom of how i write these blogs.
I’ve made many many things and I’m not happy with much of it and i think that means I’m an artist now.