We'll Keep a Welcome in the Hillsides - A week in the Valleys

I've just returned from a packed and fascinating week in Treorchy, our first Cerdd/Ed location. 

Nestling in the valleys, Treorchy is a town which popped up in the space of 40 or so years from the 1870's through to 1910's. Rival collieries built different sections of the town for their workers, so around one colliery, you see Scottish place names as streets Dumfries Street, Stuart Street etc. These streets are wider than those at the other end of town, as the other colliery had different ideas about how to build houses. Each bunch of miners clubbed together to pay for their own local services, social clubs, theatres, libraries, even health care - they put a penny in each week from their meagre wages to make it happen. It was with the miner's federation of South Wales that the idea for the NHS was born - you pay when you can so that you are looked after when you can't work. It's this sense of community that built the brass bands of the valleys too, where a sense of discipline, focus and passion for the music has maintained bands for over 150 years. 

Dydd Iau / Thursday 

My first stop was to meet with Caio, Ty Cerdd's web genius, sporting a marvellous movember moustache. We plan how we will share this work via Ty Cerdd's website, mapping, blogging, recording. Then it's a speedy cross town jaunt to pick up Mentor David Horne from the station in Cardiff and then wind our way through the rush hour madness to the valleys for a rehearsal of the Cory Band. 

Valleys directions give you a sense of how the towns have changed, of the people struggling to work with a new identity for a place which has gone through so much in such a short period of time. We are told that the rehearsal is "in the old Burberry factory" and when that draws a blank on our iMaps we are told to look for the corner where the post box used to be. The collieries are all gone now and the valleys have struggled over the last 40 years to reinvent an industry and economy. 

We find a warm welcome in the band room, a sparkling playground for noise lovers, there's all sorts of things which go parp and crash. We meet John, who joined the band at the age of 11 in 1937. He tells us about his first concert, with a stage built on the railway sleepers. The bands kept going strong thoughout the Second World War as the colliery men were essential to the war effort, providing coal to the services. 

The bands of the valleys are numerous. Each colliery had it's band and they are still fiercely competitive, hundreds of brass players regularly meet 2 or 3 times a week to practice, paying subs for the upkeep of the band, travelling across the country and to Europe to compete. Such a huge number of talented musicians keep this cultural phenomenon going with their love and devotion to banding. 

The Cory band have won everything, and they keep on winning. This is no ordinary 'amateur' band. The skill level is phenomenal. Listening in to the rehearsals gives me a sense of arranging, which instruments pair well, how layers of sound might be built. Kindly the band have sent me a number of scores and mp3s to study to get to grips with banding arrangements. 

Dydd Gwener / Friday

So to explore Treorchy's local history. The library is a mine of fascinating information as I trawl through looking for stories, local characters and events which will give the foundations for my Treorchy Walkie (I'm sorry). The pressure is on as I have to conduct this walk, complete with a social history and composing workshop for 31, 7 year olds, in Welsh on Tuesday! I listen to oral history recordings from the 1940's and call up some leads, some of the 'mums' of the Treorchy band and local councillor Cennard Davies. Cennard has made a walking tour of Treorchy which proves invaluable in my research. 

Dydd Sadwrn / Saturday

I set off on Cennard's history walk of Treorchy, exploring some lost places, abandoned industrial estates, rusty railway bridges, the Eisteddfod stones now surrounded by executive housing ... there is so much to explore here. Old Treorchy layers itself under new Treorchy. As I read Cennard's notes I see a man in Lidl buying 10 bags of frozen chips and 3 loaves (Rugby isn't it see?) a small boy with a picked egg jar, holding a fish which he tells me he caught on the railway, and a very satisfied cat polishing off fish chips and beans on someone's front step.

It's soon apparent that Cennard's walk will be too demanding for my troupe of young troubadors. It's large and rich and fascinating, I would recommend anyone to do it, but find yourself a good 3 hours on a sunny day. My evening is spent trying to cut down the walk to something manageable for young legs, allowing time to stop, look, listen, think, feel, and really experience being out and about. This is the main challenge for the project I think. I want to take the kids on my process, of mapping, walking and discovering, but the places I go would be too far, (and possibly too boring) for little legs and minds. So I compromise with a town walk taking in 6 locations of interest. 

Dydd Sul / Sunday

It's my Uncle's wedding anniversary so the valleys clan come together to eat as much food as we possibly can. 

Later that afternoon, whilst digesting a whale of a sunday roast, I pour through my local history books, scanning in useful information and images, noting down poetry and quotes to use with the lesson on Tuesday. I've also got a DVD of Rhondda history, which gives me more context. It was made in the 90's and a younger version of Cennard pops up as a talking head. The valleys are a small place!

Dydd Llun / Monday

Charlotte, (Ty Cerdd's marvellous Education Manager) and I get our admin superhero suits on to prepare materials, print images and maps for tomorrow's session. I'm then off again, in my boots up to the Cemetery to find interesting dead people (Fergus Armstrong was the Colliery surgeon and went into collapsed mines with the job of amputating trapped limbs to free miners). Across to the old Abergorki Colliery site to find remains of industry amongst the hillsides. I'm then on to the Parc and Dare Theatre to see if Manager Simon Davies will show us around tomorrow, and on to the Library to search local poet Ben Bowen's writing for useful snippets. Amazingly, I find this poem, which fits the project perfectly:

Adgofian / Memories

Llygad welai dduw ar wên mewn blodyn
Meinglust glywai'r nef yn nghân aderyn
Meddwl fynai natur yn addoldy
Adgof ydyw'r cwbl erbyn heddy

An eye saw the smile of god in a flower
A keen ear heard heaven in birdsong
A mind took nature as a temple
All is but memory today

It's these moments of serendipity which often frame a piece, and pull together the research and searching into an idea. 

Monday night I'm back at the Band room, listening once more, wondering what I will do with this incredible set of players. There are decisions to be made about the use of sound, how much will I use the 'traditional' use of a brass band, and how much I will write 'my' sound using the tools they provide? This brings into question who the piece is for. 

My sense is that I want to blend in some 'traditional' snippets of banding, with the poetry of Ben Bowen, with the sounds that the children make, with a sense of Treorchy local history to create a piece which celebrates all these aspects of Treorchy and it's people and heritage. 

Charlotte and I talk to Austin the chairman about writing a piece for the band which would allow young players from Treorchy to sit in with the band. We're all excited about this idea, to make the experience for a young player to sit next to Tom Hutchinson, Owen Farr, Steve Stewart (I could go on, they're all amazing!) and be enveloped in that wall of Cory sound. 

Dydd Mawrth / Tuesday

It's school day. Here we go!

I've never led a classroom session before, certainly not in Welsh! Luckily the teachers are all incredible and helpful. We play some clapping games with the groups and introduce the idea that to be composer you need to EDRYCH (look) GWRANDO (listen) MEDDWL (think) and TEIMLO (feel). Ben Bowen's poem ties this up nicely for us. 

The class help me with my Welsh by translating composing terms for me, we write them on the board. 

Fast & Slow
Loud & Quiet
Short & Long
Spikey & Smooth
Noisy & Silent

These introduce basic concepts of composing to the group, we leave them on the board for later. 

Right then, boots on. We explore Treorchy, stopping to EDRYCH, GWRANDO, MEDDWL & TEIMLO everything around us. We write notes about the miners, the cemetery, we listen to the river and the railway and visit the old fair ground. The best bit by far is the visit to the theatre, which Simon runs wonderfully, telling us about how the miners paid for it to be built and pointing out interesting architectural features (the fruit freeze on the right side of the proscenium arch is upside down as they forgot to change the mould over!).

After lunch we reflect on all the things we have learnt about the locations and then think what kind of sounds and music would fit each location. 

BOOM CRASH BANG. This is what happens when you give 31 7 year olds percussion instruments.

http://soundcloud.com/ambleskram-1/ynyswen-primary-school

We slowly shape the pieces for each location using the concepts on the board until we have small pieces which reflect the sense of each place.

I've recorded these pieces and will try to use some of the ideas and rhythms in my piece about Treorchy. 


Dydd Mercher / Wednesday
Returning Home

So, returning to Edinburgh full of history, characters, sounds, improvisations, textures and ideas, my next step is to roll this together to make a piece in which any player of any standard can sit in and perform. I plan to create levels of parts, cornet, level 1, 2, 3, baritone, level 1, 2, 3 etc. so hopefully there will be something for everyone. I hope that this joins together the notion of top class banding with the sense of community inspired by the miners of Treorchy. 

Adopt a Composer Project with Making Music 

The launch of Adopt a Composer saw a beautiful crisp autumnal day. As I hurtled towards St Martin’s through the familiar tunnels bisecting London’s rich clay, I felt nervous and excited about this new challenge. On more than one occasion it has dawned on me that I have said yes to something about which I have no details. Who? What? Where? When? How? All are blank. It’s like I’m travelling blindfolded, through these dark tunnels. I blearily alight into the crisp autumn sun and after a few moments of steeling myself, descend into the crypt.

Scary things happen in crypts, but this was not one of them. A lovely bunch of people who, in all honesty, only have one thing in common, and it’s the one thing we are not allowed to talk about! Discussion quickly descends to puppies and the buffet.

Making music provide a warm welcome and a broad introduction to the project through videos, talks and Q&A sessions, all the time we are waiting excitedly and nervously to see who we will be matched with. I have an inkling, as earlier on I had broken the coat rack (oops) within eavesdropping distance of a warm Welsh accent. True to my guess, these tones belonged to Charlotte from Ty Cerdd.

Ty Cerdd are a really interesting organisation, spanning the whole of Wales, with an emphasis on community and education music. Charlotte was really keen to involve some form of intergenerational aspect to the project. I had been considering a walking based composition, based on the landscapes. Some of my previous works are based on 24 hours in a given location. I fold in research about the social history, my impressions of the landscape and found sounds which I record and electronically manipulate into the music.

I had to have pity for my wonderful new mentor David Horne, sandwiched between two enthusiastic Welsh women trying to get a word in edgeways! Sometimes you meet people and ideas just flow, this was one of those. 45 minutes since we had met, Charlotte and I had started to sculpt something which incorporated our two ideas, looked practical, and exciting.

Our project blurb was drawn up to cement the ideas.

Cerdd/ed - (working title)

Cerdd/ed is the collaboration of Ty Cerdd with composer Amble Skuse. 

Cerdd/ed links local primary schools with community ensembles to explore local history and create a tailor made composition, drawing from the stories of the local environment, inspiration from walking and found sounds generated by the children. The piece will be available to the 'audience' as a site specific piece as part of a local history walk. 

Amble Skuse will work with the community music group to explore their memories of their town, using their photographs, stories, memories and old newspaper reports, we will create a locally generated memory map, based on the locations. In collaboration with the group, Amble will develop a walk around sites of interest, mapping memory, and retaking old photographs where possible. This walk, along with the source material will form the basis for Amble's composition.

Ty Cerdd will create a teachers pack for the partner primary school to explore ways in which sound and stories can generate musical material. It is envisaged that the community group will perform a short assembly to the children to introduce the partnership, and then the teachers will work through the education pack, exploring found sound, and making poetry from landscape and stories. 

The children will then set out on the walk trail, with hand held recorders to bring back snap shots of exciting sounds they find along with way. The children will also be encouraged to take photographs, and write down any phrases which strike them from the landscape. The teachers’ pack will support classroom teachers in creating 'contemporary' compositions in the classroom from the inspiration found on the walk. 

The material generated by the children, will feed in to Amble's composition, using the found sound, and processing it into electronically generated location specific noise. Amble will write a piece which allows the community group and the school to perform together, along with the electronics. 

The performance of the piece will be recorded by Ty Cerdd and turned into an mp3. 

Amble will create a website, detailing the route of the walk, along with interesting social and oral history relevant to the town. Alongside this will be photos, old and new. The route will be downloadable as a PDF map and directions, with 'treasure hunt clues' which will lead the walkers/audience to a series of geocaches. At the geocaches, walkers/audience will find the links to the mp3, along with snippets of oral history. This will allow the walkers / audience to listen to the recording in a site specific way through a G3 enabled phone.“

We retreated to our geographical locations to begin working on the project, Charlotte to find groups to work with, and me, to design the website, prepare the group materials and do some serious Welsh research. It’s such a blessing, this project as it enables me to rediscover the landscape and history of the country I call home. I’ve been gorging on history books, Gwynfor Evans, walking books and old photographs of the Rhondda, a friend even sent me a dragon cookie cutter (although I’m not sure how we can work this into the project yet!). My Tonypandy Mam is most excited and can’t wait to get on the phone to the relatives about it all.

We’ve sketched out a few dates for a visit, and my next job is to design myself a programme of activities, interviews, visits, extracts, questionnaires, and walks to do while I’m there. Now I just have to see how many more Welsh language lessons I can squeeze in before my trip! Gyffrous iawn!

Love triangle electronic tango poetry - Como Sera?

Something about this week has rubbed off on me, into my subconscious and out through my ears. Friday saw me working with Mr McFalls Chamber in a strings, harp, piano, electronics and poetry performance for the Distil Showcase in Stirling. Sunday, I was lucky enough to see McFalls doing their Viva Tango! thing with Valentina Montoya Martinez (voice) Victor Villena (bandoneon) and Cyril Garac on Violin. 

So when Red Note put out their latest 'Noisy Nights' call for Violin, Cello, Accordion and Tape scores there was nothing I could do but yield to the call of electronic tango poetry. Using a beautiful poem called 'Como Sera' by Amado Nervo I began creating a 3 way contrapuntal tango between Violin, Cello and Accordion. Describing a love triangle which will never be resolved, each of them dancing to their own melody, weaving in and out of each other yet never submitting to the will of the others to dominate. The melody ends on the submediant, never allowing us a resolution.

A gentle F minor piano loop pins the poetry to the ground, with the words longing for the taste of spiritual kisses and immortal delights. The poem beautifully suits the darkness, passion and longing of the tango as the poet yearns for a time after departing this life. 

A trip to Red Note's 'Inventor Composer' on Wednesday night added some dramatic electronics to the piece, with disturbing sub bass, teeth-grindlingly uncomfortable bitcrusher crushes and high frequency audio tingles provided by cut glass resonances. 

This piece is built from my first week as an Edinburgh resident, parcelling up the musical gifts which have come my way into something new. Something which tells the story of relocation, of uncertainty, of endings and of new beginnings.

The final stages of the Distil process

Several times I've considered writing this blog, documenting my Distil process but each process has been so wildly different from the last that it felt like I needed to wait until I was nearly done. And I am. Nearly. 


The piece is for the wonderful Mr McFall's Chamber, plus Jenna Reid on Fiddle, Fiona Rutherford on Harp and Alistair Paterson on Piano, plus myself on Electronics and the wonderful Ben Seal on Sound. (If you've not seen Ben's alter ego Benofficial, I highly recommend checking him out on Youtube.)


So with a line up like that (self excluded) there was a certain level of pressure building, add to this the fact that the lovely people at Distil have already supported and invested in me and I want to do them proud. This piece starts to have a reputation in my head before it's even begun. This is also the first time that I've written for something 'on spec' meaning that in previous pieces, I've written them before being selected. It's a different game writing something to order once the gig has been announced. But, dealing with the demons is part of the creative game.


But, I'm sure you didn't drop in here to examine the contents of my tiny mind, so on to the music. 


Earlier in the year, I had met with poet Angus Peter Campbell to discuss the possibility of working together on a bigger project. We decided that we could trial run this collaboration by working together on the Distil piece. After having discussed several ideas, we decided to work with his poem "The Great Maiden of Corrodale" which deals with tradition, time, and tide. The poem is set in the Hebrides and links very clearly with my own themes of isolation, communication and time. 


I wanted to explore the idea of our present being a lens through which we view the past. All we can know of the past is imbued with our current perspectives and cultural assumptions. This impacts upon traditional musicians in where they choose to position themselves on the scale, from 'gatekeeper of tradition' to 'innovator'. Each of these terms being contentious of course. 


So, the piece contains a traditional tune from 'Shower and Sunshine' a traditional Devon song about love, loss and the sea. But this tune is adapted, it moves into 5/8 time and develops from a clean rendition to an awkward harmony, to a series of delays and distortions. Added to this tune is a new melody I wrote called The Maiden which references the character in the poem. She is dancing, flighty, collecting nuts and wild garlic though woodland. This melody also dances through a series of delays, sub bass and jazz chords to our contemporary ears. Both these melodies are primarily carried by Fiona on Harp. I love to write for Fiona and her deftness of touch can really portray this character, at once long gone and alive for us.


These islands of melody are linked by calm, threatening and turbulent seas of string sections, we survey islands of the past on the horizon but can never possess the boat which will take us to them, we carry them in our imaginations. 


Technically, so many processes have been used, and whether this is of interest to anyone I am not sure, so stop reading if not... The piece began as a series of improvisions on Logic, painting with sound, finding melodies, adjusting, linking and building harmonic structures underneath them. Added to this were a series of delays to create the effect I was looking for. In terms of structuring the piece, it was a fairly organic process, I knew that I wanted to move through different feelings and moods and so built some slow moving string chords with gentle piano delay as a recall phrase. 


Once the piece had been 'sound painted' in Logic I needed to score it. I use Sibelius for this process and although there is a nifty way to import scores from Logic to Sibelius, I've never found it to be quicker or easier than just inputting the whole thing from scratch! 


Once the dots are in, the fun begins, choosing dynamics, techniques and expressions which are denied to me in Logic, eyes closed, re-listening, drawing on my score then updating. Sounds, longwinded doesn't it? It is. But it's a lovely thing to do. 


Once the Sibelius score is written I can then work on electronics plotting. Back in Logic, checking the automation that I've written in and working out how this will translate for a live performer. Working out which channels can be 'statics' (i.e. the signal will be consistently processed), which channels need effects to be linked to pots or faders so that they are adjustable throughout, and which channels have several different presets and so will require splitting and then live switching from preset to preset. 


I can then bounce down my samples, and mark the trigger points onto my Sibelius score. The samples are loaded into the ESX24 sampler on a multichannel to allow for separate EQ's and compression (depending on the sample source). I can then start to map the LX cues onto my Sibelius score print out. I do this by colour coding the effects (delay is pink, sub bass is green, sample cues are blue and 'states' are yellow). I mark the cues onto the score and start to do some 'phantom fader' rehearsals, listening to logic and moving the faders as they are scored. This gives me a sense of my role in the performance and gives me the chance to troubleshoot fiddly or busy sections in advance. 


The final aspect is preparing a blank Logic Mix window waiting for the live signal feeds on Thursday. Each channel either goes to the static plug ins and on to the stereo output or is routed to a bus, and the fader for that auxiliary channel assigned to the USB controller I've been practicing on. A few more run throughs and it starts to feel possible, performable and nearly complete.


Tomorrow I will meet with Fiona and have a few hours working on the harp part together, then the print shop will make my 8 pdf parts and scores into real pieces of paper. On Thursday morning, me, Fiona, the van and the harp will be wending our way to Stirling and we get to see if this is going to work. Cross your fingers for me!

McFalls Electronics Project II

Today I am writing the MAX/MSP patches for my piece Chapels with Splendid Glass Windows, which will be workshopped by Mr McFalls Chamber on Thursday this week. I'm feeling pretty lucky to have another opportunity to work with these amazing musicians. My part of the project last year focussed on my piece Sea Longing, with Gaelic poetry by Sophia Dale.

Chapels with Splendid Glass Windows has several layers of electronic wizardry which we will explore throughout the workshop. The initial layer of electronics can be achieved through the use of pedals, phasers, delays, octave drops and reverbs achieve a sense of space and texture. The next layer of wizardry involves routing the signal through Logic and using the automation of plug ins to achieve the effects. Should this prove successful this is the point at which the patches will be tried.

The patches will connect a series of usb gadgets and toys to the automation in Logic. The idea behind this is that the musicians will be able to control and manipulate the effects on their sound. In practice this may be more complicated than is sounds, as the musicians will be using several of their limbs and a fair amount of their minds to control their instruments. Luckily, I've left a fair amount of free play in the bass part so I'll be enlisting the technical talents of Mr Rick Standley while he's counting those rests.

I've also made another one of my gate trigger patches for this piece. These gates will open for a given time frame and listen for the audio cue, as long as we are reasonably on time and in tune, the samples should automatically trigger.

So, I must move on and pull all this technicality together. I'm sure the McFalls website will bring more blogging as the week unfolds. Louise Rossiter and Malcom MacFarlane will also be working on pieces so there will be plenty of new music and experiments. Don't forget to check in and see how we're getting on.