Another week has passed and I feel better than ever. Not that that is hard after the last Sunday but still.
As talked about in the last blog we had a residency this week from Tuesday to Thursday. Two other students came from the mainland and enlarged our group of musicians. Yay! In general students are from all over Scotland but the residencies were held on Uist, in Glasgow, Alness and Shetland. On Tuesday it started with a VC (video conference) to people from Senegal which was extremely interesting. Now our task: We got a film made by film students from UHI about Senegal and Scotland but it didn’t have any music. So what do you think our task was? Hard to guess considering I’m a music student, eh? The film was 6 minutes long but we only needed to compose something from 2 minutes of the film. We went over and over the part we needed to find music for a couple times and went onto our instruments to come up with something that fits. Oh and also: There are certain samples and sound effects that need to be added into the music and also the topic NOSTALGIA should reflect in the music. Alright, on you go then. It’s a bit weird doing it that way round because you try to fit every movement of the music to the movements in the film but that’s just not possible because the film clips don’t follow a certain pattern. We needed another approach.
Second try: we started on the word nostalgia. What is nostalgia? Can fish be nostalgic? (For your information: YES they can be!) Just randomly trying out different chord patterns with nostalgia in the back of our head worked out quite well. We had an easy but in our eyes very nostalgic chord pattern, now onto the melody line. Some long notes in the fiddles, bass notes in the box, harmony line for the singers: Boom! There we were a few hours later with a good A part. Because the movement in the film went faster in the second part we tried to mix up the chords and find something more major-like. After the piano, guitar and cittern played the B part chords box and voice came up with a melody line that suited the chords perfectly and there was more movement in the melody line. A few improvements here and there! Done.
A very good approach for the first day! Now let’s go on to Day 2. Today was recording day. After going over the tune a couple more times to refresh our memory we recorded each instrument individually starting with the piano, then guitar, cittern, fiddle, boxes and singers. It is a working process and once your part is done there is not much you can do, but that’s just the way it is. Certain group members stayed to start on the mixing, whilst other(including me) left to get home before it’s dark, which is before 4.30pm now…
Thursday was mixing and mastering day. It is an interesting but time consuming thing and you don’t realize that before you do it yourself. We added the missing sound effects in the film and by midday we were done with it and could send it off to the others. At the same time we now had the chance to see the other projects which was incredible! It is always so interesting to see how others interpret the task and see all those different results. They are genuinely all so good and so divers, I love it! After that all the groups from all over Scotland came together through a VC and discussed what went good and how the process in general went! It was very nice to get all the different opinions and I would call that a successful residency!
Friday we had a gig at an event in Grogarry Lodge in South Uist. What a building! If you believe in ghost, second sight and all those stories you’re better off not going there. Thousands of different rooms and they are all so different. You feel like you’re back in the olden days with majestic chairs, tables and old chandeliers. The house was full of people and it was a lovely warm atmosphere, you could feel that the community on the islands is strong and everyone is extremely welcoming. And: There was food! Always a bonus! After we had a room to ourselves going over some tunes we went into the big lounge to play some music for the guest. Some really good tunes that evening, highlight though was the last note of the last set of the evening which was unplanned but so on point, you could read it on our faces!
Additionally I got a lovely message this week! Remember a few weeks ago I told about the Student Development Fund I applied for? They just came back to me confirming that they support me! Whooo!! Now I can start planning and that means I am going to the folkBaltica Festival in May next year and play some great concerts. Can’t wait!
Finished of my week with a walk at Lionacleit beach and some lovely views of South Uist. It started raining just when we got back in the car so I guess we really used the time there!
By the way, whilst I am writing this I am listening to a Christmas Playlist on Spotify. Yes you can kill me now. It’s not even December BUT I just can’t wait for Christmas this year. It’s the most wonderful time of the year.
Take care & cheerio bye,
Emilia
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