The first half of 2019 has been a rollercoaster of ups, downs and turn arounds. Starting out in a new course and feeling like I've just gotten over the hill of getting to know most of the classical students (or at least names and faces). My band, Charlie & The Keepers of The Groove (which I am currently managing) released our first single at the start of this year called "Saving Face" (link here). I had the great honour of participating at the Global Student Strike for Climate Action in Perth on the 15th March - performing our song with a crowd of over 2000 people. I've achieved great personal goals during this time, including music theory tutoring for high school kids. And somehow - amongst all of this - I've managed to keep close ties with my family and the friends I made in the music artist course last year.
Most poignantly - I've written many compositions; too many, probably. All of this has been a little overwhelming. It still boggles my mind to think that I was on the news this year (for the climate strike). I've faced some disappointments along the way. The delays and miscommunications with some collaborations have been dicey at times and I was let down by the 2019 WAM Song of The Year Award. However, plans for the future are in motion and there are many more things I've got to look forward to! GIGS & UPCOMING PERFORMANCES: My band and my solo act Call Me Charlie have got some pretty exciting gigs for the next few weeks / months. These include:
RECORDING & WAAPA WORKS: I am booked in again to work with the sound production students - for a band recording this time! It's always exciting getting to record with lots of people as it makes the process much more bearable and fun. I'll also get to have some fun asking around for collaborations with other students (which I am trying to get a head start on) for next semester's assignments. It would be awesome to work with a visual artist next semester as I am a very visual composer. I see scenes and colours and action when I write music, especially when it's very expressive music so I'd love to work with a visual medium and create something for it. MICELLANEOUS PROJECTS: At the moment, I am waiting for a response from Nanga Music Festival as to whether I was successful with my scholarship entry. I met with the coordinators several times over the course of this year as they were talent scouting when I was busking or performing around. From the sounds of it, they were extremely keen to get me engaged with the scholarship and sent me an email to remind me of the due date. Other projects I have waiting in the wings includes the "Saving Face" music video. The massive delays of the release for this music video has been both a blessing and a curse. I underestimated the stress of uni combined with managing my other music platforms, posting many promises of the music video but failing to upload it anywhere. However, because I postponed the release, I now have more footage from the student strikes I can to add to it. Some composing exercises and habits I try to keep up include writing and recording a minute's worth of music in an hour. This comes in the form of a deal I have with my brother. He is an avid fan of Dungeons and Dragons and has a long running campaign he plays with his friends. I'm not a big fan of role playing (as it's way too stressful to me), however, I do love the stories and scenes that arise from the game. So my brother has given me a list of scenes from his campaign which I can write a minutes worth of music for. I consider this little exercise as practice scoring for film / television, as that's always been a pretty big and consistent goal for me. You can have a listen to some of these tracks on this Soundcloud playlist here.
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My Ascousmatics composition for Sound Spectrum was a sound art installation titled "Summer Study". I came up with the idea for it thinking about studying and wanting to make a piece that was physical and self sufficient (didn't need me to run it). That came in the form of an oscillating fan with spoons hanging from it, gently gliding across full and half full mugs - of course. This was an interesting assignment that stretched my knowledge of art and composition, and allowed me to garner a stronger appreciation for ascousmatic works. A video of my installation can be found here (the blurb for the piece can be found in the description).
This composition is titled "The Tiger and the Butterfly Net". I was fairly excited that I could finally write some lyrics for a composition assignment. For this piece, I went back to a ye olde' story telling like delivery of lyrics (heavily inspired by Dr Suess' style of writing). The jazzy chord progression sold the subtext of the story of a woman (the elusive tiger) "uninterested" in the company of men being seduced by another woman with a softer approach to flirting (the butterfly net). The score can be found below and a recording can be found here. For this assignment, I wanted to work with an instrument I was unfamiliar with writing for; where I would have to consider its dynamic range in respect to the accompaniment. This was a difficult assignment but I was pleased with the outcome. The score is below and a recording can be found here. This ascousmatics composition was a field recording assignment. The composition needed to demonstrate an understanding of editing recordings using DAWs. In the end, I borrowed a field recorder from the loan store and walked around Bradford Street park to hear anything interesting. What I found was the juxtaposition of crows stripping bark and heavy machinery taking away trees. It was pretty poignant and so this became the basis of my recording. You can listen to the final track here.
The first assignment was a handwritten solo flute piece under 24 bars. My process for working out the initial melody was using solfege and consulting with a flutist toes if they'd be able to play it. We needed to hand in a handwritten score and and analysis of the piece and our compositional process. These can be found below: Here's the final draft of the song for the dance collaboration. The Soundcloud link can be found here.
Some of the problems I ran into when arranging and editing the song was that it felt too full and simultaneously too empty. I couldn't quite figure out how to fix this until I had someone else give me a second opinion. They said the low end needed some support as it was quite condensed at the top end. Another suggestion was the lessen the accapella vocals during the verses which was extremely useful. After going back in and reworking it, I ended up being much more satisfied with the final product. The footage of the full collaboration should be up in a few days and I'm pretty excited to see how it turns out! After sending Ayesha the acoustic demo of what I was planning, she sent back a list of instructions on what she liked, what she wanted to alter and what she wanted to emphasise. The email can be seen below. I was pleasantly surprised at how much positive direction she was giving me and that I understood what she was talking about. I have often been told that the dissonance in communication between musicians and their non-musician collaborators can be strained at times. However, as Ayesha has such a strong dance background and well founded love of music anyway, she knew exactly what she wanted me to do and how to say it in the best way she could.
All of these instructions and notes I took to heart and began working with them in mind. The assurance she had that I would know what to do to "fix" aspects of the song was quite touching. It definitely helped to fuel me further. |
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Artist SummaryI'm a WA Fremantle based singer-songwriter / composer. Here, you can have a gawk at my studies, compositions and performances. Archives
August 2022
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