Diary

6th day

16th Mar 2010 by Tansy Davies

we’ve decided to focus on mira’s piece for our last day, determined that she would leave with a completed score. i’m very proud of what she has made in such a short time: her piece has a distinctive mood and character, and the roles of the instruments are clearly defined. it was fun to see how happy she was when we experimented with superimposing her material. i suggested breaking up some chords to make a high cello melody- mira made a rhythm for it and when we floated it above the existing texture, the effect was divine.

the week has been amazing. its a luxury to get instant feedback from another artist- composers are normally alone until the very end of the composition process. we set out learn about each others’ technologies, but more importantly, i’ll take with me a glimpse into mira’s unique musical imagination.

Tagged as: electronics, mira calix, score, trio

5th day

15th Mar 2010 by Tansy Davies

continued to select and process my sounds, which i’m narrowing down to around 10 really good ones. mira said it was time i started to put the sounds together- to really start the composition part. starting with my favourite sound, mira showed me how to begin- we experimented with superimposing and looping sounds and it was sounding good from the start. i’m starting to shape a piece, but i’m finding it difficult to have sense of whether or not its actually any good! i realise that i’m still only using a tiny part of logic, but i’m happy to explore it in bite size chunks.

mira has a really nice shape emerging for her piece now: its kind of in two halves, defined by very low cello for the first half and very high cello for the second part. she working with loops and mechanisms in different tempi and transpositions- some of the techniques i use.

Tagged as: electronics, logic, sibelius

4th day

14th Mar 2010 by Tansy Davies

I´ve started to get the hang of logic now- I find it similar to sibelius and quite intuitive. of course there are some irritating aspects, but I’m learning how to avoid them. having collected around 30 minutes worth of found sound on day 1 I’m now going through and selecting and processing the best ones. mira has limited the kinds of processing i’m allowed to use to reverb, eq and distortion, and i’m finding a wealth of possibilities using these techniques alone.

i can see that mira is actually starting to enjoy writing music by hand! she took the material she had made back into cubase today to see what would happen, and i think she was disappointed with the outcome: she’s now thinking in new ways. she asked my opinion after working on cubase and i felt that the music had lost something, so she went back to the techniques we had evolved on day 2.

Tagged as: cubase, logic, sibelius

further

13th Mar 2010 by Tansy Davies

i spent most of the day helping and guiding mira through new territory. when she was busy progressing on her own, i went back to my logic song and created more new material. my instrument bank is growing.

Tagged as: electronics, logic

1st day of work

11th Mar 2010 by Tansy Davies

excellent day. we decided to concentrate on my part of the project. this means working purely with electronics. we started the day by doing some “field recordings” in the fields around the house. we found some great organic sounds, starting with crunchy footsteps in the thick snow, various chains, logs, stones and some mammoth size icicles. after lunch we transferred the sounds onto my computer and went through a quick crash course of using logic. i then spent the rest of the day selecting sounds and processing and then rendering them. tomorrow we will flip over and concentrate on mira’s part of the project. we have decided to start by making a line or melody, this could come from a poem that she is currently working on setting, or we could devise/find a system for creating pitch material.

Tagged as: field recording, tansy davies