Collaboration - Procession

 I began working with Immogen Dillon in 3rd year film on Procession - a film about a funeral/wake, and friends. 

A good suggestion I had was for her to send me and the other collaborators a playlist of inspiration/music ideas. This really helped me with the direction of my piece. I made the final song of the film, to be played in the last scene at the beach and into the credits. The main inspiration for this piece was Perfect Day by Lou Reed, starting off gentle and building to a crescendo, expressing melancholic tone, bittersweet feeling of letting go. On the playlist there was also some Beach House which made me want to use drum machines, synth, reverby vocals etc. 

Another thing that really helped was that I made 4 demos of songs that could work, and sent them to Immogen, and she decided on one that fit the vibe. This made sure I was headed in the right direction before I spent ages on recording.  

I finished the main song for the outro, and sent off the mix, and Immogen asked to if she could use the other demos for other gaps in the film. So I ended up with Demo 1, Demo 2 and Procession as the 3 songs in the film. Also I sent them a version of the song without singing so they could also use that in other parts of the film. 

brainstorm for 7 min piece

 exquisite corpse

https://instrumentinventors.org/agenda/new-emergences-and-iii-present-the-exquisite-corpse-recomposing-the-body/

The exquisite corpse was a counter-narrative to the ideal body narrative that arose in 18th century. It was invented in 20th century by surrealists, as a collaborative game. The game assembled words, composed sequentially by simple rules, or randomly, by only seeing the ends of the previous contribution. Later on, drawings were introduced. When I think about it, 

Creating a piece of music with a number of parts, each part is written independently of each other and then combined. setting some parameters/restraints like tempo, and key to keep it sounding cohesive. Could either improvise each part and record them, and collage them into something afterwards, or score them out and arrange that way. 

For example once a day for 5 days improvise on guitar, piano, synth, and record this. On 5th day listen back to them and arrange into a cohesive piece. 

Another option is do an exquisite corpse drawing and respond to it/use it as a score. Walk and make drawings informed by sight and sound.

aesthetics for texture piece

- Body, embodiment, taking up space

- Allowing for play

- Collaging different materials and colours

- Allowing for improvisation and interdisciplinary approaches to performance

- Violin and guitar, with field recording/fixed media and maybe voice, percussion

- Contact mic experiments, lo-fidelity textures, collected sound

Other students' workshop presentations

2/3/23 

Ari's presentation was really interesting and inspired me to apply to study abroad, she learnt about Scotland's music history and told us how to apply/what it was like.  I ended up applying for the same uni as her but didn't get in. 

Izzy's presentation on how to overcome creative block/keep writing was interesting, one tip that stuck out to me was to record something in Ableton mindlessly or without trying/thinking too much, and then delete it, just to make something and maintain the habit of creating and composing even if it's not your best work. 

30/3/23

The workshop today was with Alice Humphries and Louise Devenish, they talked about their collaboration percussion piece. It was extremely useful and interesting to hear Alice's compositional practice after taking her notation units last year. Alice talked about how over time she has developed her own musical language and subconscious limitations, and her use of pitch sets. 

She also had some really good points on collaboration and professional practice, like being on time, sending drafts and being okay with sharing imperfect work. balance between theoretical and intuition

After seeing Louise perform the piece and hearing her talk, I was inspired to write and explore percussion. Louise told us that 'percussion can be anything', which just opens up so many possibilities. 

25/5/23

Jonathan's presentation was inspiring, giving me insight into composing for theatre, and how to get in to the drama side of WAAPA. I liked how he talked about what techniques he used from Lindsay's class e.g additive rhythms, in relation to setting words in theatre. 

Henry's was also good because I always like discovering new tunings and it helps break out of shapes that I always use.  I feel like not a lot of composers at WAAPA talk about guitar. 

• DADGGD
• EADGBD
• EABEBE

health and wellbeing of the artist (project week 1)

General wellbeing practices (yoga, meditation), adjusted for artist.

- To gain a competitive edge. As a musician you are always going to be formally and informally put against your peers. 

Alexander technique

What are your habits? what do you do when you sit down, tighten neck? what about when you sit down to play piano? bring guitar to you, bring pen to you. 

Relationship between head, neck, body.  Letting go, but there's direction happening. Composer: be in a position where you don't adjust to the desk. Avoid adjusting after the fact. Looking down at a desk/phone/laptop, places 65lb of pressure on your neck. 

Imagine head is going up as you sit. Breathing from opposite hip to shoulder, open breathing

Mountain pose, parallel feet open hips. 

Raising shoulders

Yoga

Pre-concert routine ? Practice routine? Try yoga before a show... or before composing

Hypnosis

Subconscious reprogramming. 

Close eyes, see clear blue sky, hear waves, 'i will be calm, confident when I reach 1, then count waves from 8 to 1. 

Self Talk

Mental rehearsal/visualisation

Artist reaction to stress: has to be perfect or just don't try. But perfect is a dirty word, think ideal instead. 

Thinking in a different way about ideal quality rather than the best violin concerto since Beethoven. Just get it into what you do, imagine yourself composing, what does it feel like, you might imagine yourself being stuck in an idea, so go back and think of it corrected. Try to be as vivid as you can. 

Progressive step could be i'm terrified to play in front of this person, but i'm going to do it. 

Centring - looking down instead of looking up/around

instant gratification monkey

at some point you can stop seeking criticism, as a professional you can say i don't want to hear any critiques. 

Dopamine Detox - instantly feel more alert and focused!! Just try not going on phone for a day or two. 

glimmer

(glimmer is band i play guitar in)

video from smol fish launch at the bird on 4/5/23. we had a few new songs in the set. 

we also had a photoshoot recently with emma daisy and i love it, especially the double exposure with native plants (at kings park)