The first section of my recital is more reflective and introspective compared to the other sections. It should feel intimate in a way that is sweet but almost intrusive, like this is music meant only for the writer / composer. To help to lull the audience into this mood, they'll enter the performance space with my first piece already playing. Over the easter weekend, I borrowed a field recorder from the loans store and did a sound walk to record the morning bird sounds from in Manjimup, where my Dad's family is from.
As someone who frequently experiences bouts of insomnia, watching the sunrise and listening to early morning bird calls is quite relieving, 1) because they're just pretty sounds compared to the eerie and still night noises, and 2) because it means that I can warrant being awake finally. The second layer to this is that back in 2020, my Grandmother passed away. My memories of her are hearing her waking up before everyone else in the house, early enough to hear the morning bird calls and to see the blue wrens hopping around Manjimup and Pemberton in October. Doing the sound walk in Manjimup was partly for her, and partly to try and connect the my roots of my family's lineage of advocating for environmental conservation. So these sounds are really special to me, and by putting the audience in the middle of a spatial piece, I'm literally putting them in my shoes. Once the doors to the theatre are shut, all of the lights will go down and the audience will be able to experience the rest of the piece in the dark. This will then transition into my first song "Until It's Easy", a song written about the anxiety and existentialism I was experiencing during the last few months of 2020. The bird sounds will fade out over the course of the song's intro and finally, a spotlight will come up on me as I continue to play (solo at first for the intimacy of it, but the final chorus will include a cello and potentially a viola). This seamless transition from music for the audience to enter, into the performance itself will limit the need for a spoken introduction, which I feel would throw off the atmosphere I'm aiming to build for the first section of the recital. Below are the drafts and notes for the spatial piece.
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, I've been working with Alice Humphries this semester to work out my recital. She's given me some great advice as to how to tailor my creative workflow, using lead sheets as a way to workshop my pieces before writing up a more detailed version of the score. For my recital, I'm planning to do a performance structured like a concept album. It will be split into 3 different sections with varying moods: 1) Reflective and Introspective 2) Lively and Performative 3) Cathartic and Freeing. This is shaped to explore the dynamics of intimacy in music performance. Sometimes, music is written for the writer and other times it's written for the audience and that's something I want to explore in this performance. Right now, I have 5 songs already written. They will be arranged for a band and (hopefully) an 8 piece string arrangement. 1. Until It's Easy 2. Golden Trash 3. I Suck @ Video Games 4. Matter of Time 5. Oversaturated / Carrington Street So far, I've written the lead sheets for Golden Trash and we have rehearsed and workshopped it with the band. The PDF for these can be found below. I was also able to use this song as a test for using my recording studio for my special topics unit project.
This is the live recording we were told to do for replacing our 4th year Semester 1 performance. These will also be my main band members for the recital, however, I'll have to find a replacement for our electric guitarist who had to quit after realising his schedule conflicts.
The final arrangement I'm hoping to have is lead vocals, 2 x backing vocals, acoustic and electric guitar, piano, bass guitar, drum kit, 4 x violins, 2 violas, 2 cellos and an alto saxophone. These performers will be on stage for the whole performance as the songs in the 3 individual sections will likely flow one into the other. Over the course of semester break, I plan to finish the lead sheets and to start work on the string arrangements. For the opener of the recital, I've done some field recordings for bird sounds down in Manjimup, where my extended family lives. I plan to mix these sounds with some synths in a spatial piece for when the audience is walking into the theatre (I'm unsure which performance space I want to use yet, but it is likely going to end up being in the RGA, The Rosemount, or the Spiegel Tent, if possible). Again, this use of very personal experiences and sounds is meant to impose the idea of intimacy on the audience right from the get go. This will then bleed into the first song, Until It's Easy. I made it! For the full recap of the different projects this involved, here are the PDFs and links to the tracks I created over the course of this semester's special topics unit. I had a lot of fun and overall I'm extremely chuffed with all of my work this semester (even if I didn't end up sticking to that update every week). Here are the links to the tracks I created on my Soundcloud profile: 1) Golden Trash (Solo) - soundcloud.com/user-751676690/golden-trash-draft 2) Sad Songs - soundcloud.com/user-751676690/sad-songs 3) Golden Trash (Band) - soundcloud.com/user-751676690/golden-trash-full-band
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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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