10.04.20 - Lazy Spring
Yesterday I attempted again to write my church song, or at least start – after many attempts and failings. Recently I have been focussing my reading and writing around flow state and optimal experience. This led me to give my attention to attempting to find that state. To do this I attempted all the things that I usually consider to ‘get me there’ i.e. I went for a run, did some yoga, had a meditation, did a singing workshop, played some songs, and then messed around on my loop pedal. After fiddling around on the guitar for a while, I found a few chords I liked. I played these chords in loads of ways; rocky, jazzy, funky etc. Eventually settling on a folky style – somewhat like how Allysen Callery might play. I fell back on some lyrics I had been messing around with early in the day ‘I woke up sometime in the afternoon, but the day had started too soon’ but did not want it to be about me. Eventually I began writing lyrics about Spring. This, of course, not being my original intention but I thought as part of this exercise I should ‘go with the flow’ and just do what I felt was right.
19.02.20 - Mill Piece
For this research project I have been completely immersing
myself in the musicians I have been studying.
When it came to composing a piece of music about Bates Mill I had in
mind the industrial, driven beats that are found on Björk’s Homogenic. Recently I have been composing music from
the ‘ground up’ – starting with beat.
This has come from listening to more beat driven music and from working
with a jungle DJ and a hip-hop producer.
Although this does not seem to be the way Björk composes I was thinking
about her compositional style. In an
interview found on the Youtube channel ‘Mollylurcher’ (2012) she says:
“Right now, my discipline seems
to be mostly in, when I arrange music or when I’m collecting libraries of beats.
The studio process is very disciplined
and very focused. And with my voice,
for example, my songwriting is, sort of, the opposite.” - Björk
I took that approach of disciplined and organised beat
creation and accepting of my “unpredictable nature” when it came to writing
vocal melodies and lyrics. The process
of writing the song was:
- · Organising sound files of the mill into samples that could be used for the song’s foundation
- · Collecting phrases that the participant had spoken on the tour of the mill
- · Listening to the beat in ‘5 years’ by Björk and imitating it with the samples I had collected
- · Using the sound of a machine in the mill to decide on key
- · Getting into a creative, isolated state where I felt able to create without being analytical
- · Using the participant’s voice to create the ‘synth solo’ at 2mins10 – putting it through a vocoder and converting it into MIDI
For the writing of the lyrics I focused my thoughts around
old age, using the mill as a personified ‘voice’ for my own feelings about the
subject. Now I have produced a demo I
intend to make amendments to the lyrics, structure, mix etc. The repetitions in brackets are supposed to
sound like they are coming from the machinery – I will experiment with changing
them to ‘my’, rather than ‘your’. I will
use structural and lyrical adjustments to make the second half of the song more
congruent with the first.
03.02.20 - Imbolc Festival
On Saturday night I went to the Imbolc festival in
Marsden. We met at Chris’ house, having
mulled cider and curry then all went down to the canal side. There were hundreds of people there and a
parade of fire-wielding druids. We
stood, front row as the hooded, masked parade leaders were followed by samba
drummers. The crowd followed them to
Standedge; some over the tops and others down the towpath. Chris Spears and I went over the top, via the
closed road amongst hundreds of people carrying lanterns and plastic, glowing
toys. It was cold but the body heat and
the excitement kept us all warm enough.
The spectacle and climax of the evening was a whirling fire show in
which people with masks on either side of their face performed unison tricks
with burning sticks. A dreadlocked woman
stood front and centre occasionally twisting a many pronged solid web of
burning metal whilst dancing to the drums.
A whistle indicated to the performers to move on to their next act. Eventually Jack Frost and the Green man
battled (although it looked more like a friendly negotiation) in the centre of
the raised field whilst statues of suns and angels were lit up in the
background. The people booed as Frost
entered the scene and cheered as the Green Man did. The scene was joyous, and the vibe was
festive and humoured. The band came down
and played in the middle of the crowd whilst the main characters came to show
off and have their photo taken with locals and people that travelled from
further afield.
30.01.20 - Coffee with Bates
Today I met up with one of the brothers that owns Bates Mill. He was over 15 minuets late for our meeting at Coffee Evolution because he had “to deal with something on site”. I told him about my project, slowly – he took notes of almost every word I said at the beginning. He seemed very interested in the project and had already some experience of creative types using the Mill for a basis on which they compose music. He suggested I investigate Simon Armitage and how he creates using place as a starting point. R told me how he had visited old, nonworking mills and in contrast to Bates Mill he finds that the building seems like it had ‘died’. He says the machinery, the people and the goings on keep the building alive. He has agreed to meet with me again, show me around the mill and give me an interview. I look forward to the next steps.
27.01.20 - Marsden Song
As my Piece Hall song get’s further away from me I feel it’s time to take a break from it and work on some other songs. The Moorland song has been taunting me to tackle it so today I began properly. I already had some ideas for chords and vague melodies. I sat down in the practise room at Uni and started to play the chords and sing. Some words came out. I was thinking about another of my recent songs – Layered Lands – which is about growing from rock and cracking like it. Another one of these ‘we are the land’ themes because it makes me feel better. I started writing this ‘Land, you are my body’. I have recently been talking with Monika about loving and respecting your body – another theme that occurs regularly in my mind. On that theme I continued; ‘Naked and lovely, I mustn’t forget’. I brought back some other lyrical ideas I had and generally just jammed it all out, forgiving any things that didn’t sound quite right yet. Somehow, I stumbled across this little picking pattern and started singing – completely stream of conscious. Quite a mystical thing indeed.
This is my body and my body is mine. This is my county, won’t you come and stay a while
Get to know, the endless, unbroken moors. Get to know, the vastness and the open doors
This is my body and my body is yours
06.01.20 - Standage Song
After a stretch of listening to Sufjen Stevens’ album Illinois today and listening to him speak about the ways in which he writes his place-centred songs I was inspired by a few things he pointed towards. Firstly this idea of narrative and fiction writing to tell one of the many stories of a place. And secondly his washy, playful writing style that mixes serious subject matter with a delightful whimsy. After mulling on this for a while but mainly letting it sit in the back of my mind I began writing some guitar music. I had no intention initially of this music being anything to do with any location and didn’t have a location in mind but did eventually begin to sing some melody. I began to daydream about the houses that sit by the Huddersfield Narrow Canal, my imagination moving them closer to the water than they are in real life. The first lyrics I wrote, based on this theme were:
- How do they deliver your mail? Is it in a post barge?
- How do you get out of your house? Do you have to swim for?
- How do you receive the news? Is It by pigeon?
Imagining a light hearted, fairy-tale scenario I remembered what
else Stevens had said. That the lyric
content should be specific and detailed so I tried re-writing the lyrics with
that in mind I went on to write:
- Their houses were so close to the canal
- That they’d get their news from the barge
- And the people passing by were pushing their boats with bare feet
- I was getting paid in company cash
- So nothing I was earning really made me a richer man
- Those hills, those hills
- We’d blow a hole right through
The lyrical theme came from a memory I have of the Standage tunnel tour at Marsden where the guide told us that the boatmen used to push the barge through the tunnel with their feet and get paid in tokens that they could only spend at the shops owned by the company they worked for.
05.01.20 – A Walk In Marsden Moors
My mood was sullied by a rather dramatic and unfortunate
event that happened the night before. It
was early January and the wind was blowing a fierce gale into my cheek and rain
was gently wafting into my left ear. The
colours were rich shades of browns and oranges as if the earth was on fire or
perhaps that it was seeping out some copper or clay. I didn’t wear a hat and although it wasn’t
raining as such my hair was gradually getting soaking wet. We walked the muddy footpath over the tops
where every breath of air was as fresh as I have ever felt. Unless Monika was stood next to me I couldn’t
hear what she said as the wind was taking up the majority of the frequency
band. We came across dog walkers, one of
which put his foot straight into a cold, earthy, deep puddle. Eventually, we came to a rifle range – at this point we decided to head back into town for
a bite to eat.
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