Music has always been a very emotional thing for me, when I was little, I would try to sing but immediately cry. I suppose that explains why Bjork is my favourite. She talks of 'singing to the moss' as a child; to her music is something spiritual, something that transcends language, race, age, and species. I think it's described particularly well in 'When Bjork Met Attenborough'.
I have clear memories of being 5 years old, doing expressive dance to 'Holst - The Planets' in my bedroom, and crying at how beautiful and powerful the music was.
I was fortunate (and unfortunate) enough to be the girlfriend of a "musician" for 9 years. I say musician in quotes as I wasn't particularly fond of his music or his attitude. We started out in a bedsit, his PC on the floor, me watching him make loops with Reason and Cubase. At the end of our relationship, he was studying Music Tech and Sound Engineering. Half the downstairs of our house was taken up with a PC running Logic, a huge sound-desk, amps, electronic drumkit, etc. All-day long the house vibrated with rock, metal, and his "singing". To any of my previous neighbours, I am sorry that I didn't put a sock in it...
After a childhood of bursting into tears every time I tried to sing, I thought I'd give it another go in my 20s. My attempts prompted my boyfriend to enforce a "singing lesson". He gave up within 10 minutes as I couldn't growl "yeeeah" in the same way as John Garcia from Kyuss. According to my boyfriend, this meant I could not, and would not ever, be able to sing. After that experience, my singing didn't leave the bathroom walls.
Aside from the lack of space, privacy or support in developing my musical skills, I'm grateful that I did pick up a useful amount of technical knowledge along the way. My boyfriend's studies meant I got a look in on how live bands are recorded, how music is produced, and got a crash course on a wide range of equipment.
Aged 24, I broke up with him and moved into a single room in a friend's house. Another friend installed Ableton on my laptop and gave me a brief tutorial, and so came 'Meeds'.
Solo
Meeds
This is just a small selection of my songs, the rest can be found on my soundcloud.
Left to my own devices, many nights I would sit in bed until 3am making weird sounds with my Launchkey Mini. I mainly used Ableton, Sylenth, Oxium and audio samples from
freesound.org
I started singing into a pair of headphones, eventually moving on to a £3 microphone.
Jobs, stress, house moving, other responsibilities etc caused a 3-year blip in my production. I found it surprising though how much I was still learning and improving when not working on music. When I came back to Ableton, I was inspired to make complicated, layered and evolving pieces. I particularly enjoyed involving Orchestral instruments, something I’d like to do more of.
I suppose at some point soon I could write a post about my musical influences.
I moved house at the beginning of this year and had big intentions to finish some more tracks. Maybe it's just a lame excuse, but working at home over lock-down made me sick of sitting at my computer desk. Thankfully, I'm back in the office now so I have my desk back for creative things, I've been excited by the idea of making some classical music. Let's see what happens...
Collaboration
2Sally
This was a short project I worked on with my friend, Jim. I would find the samples and then sing or dance what I felt the song needed, he was driving the controls the majority of the time. I've forgotten the password to the account, otherwise I'd add the few tracks still lurking on my hard-drive. I'll post them at some point.
Comments
Post a Comment