Where the Music Comes From

This is almost an overwhelming subject for me to identify and explain, but in writing my final project proposal, and through comments from tutors, it has become very clear that I could go some way towards being more explicit about the music and sounds I choose in work. Although the music is mostly distorted in some way - stretched out in time or over-layered, that too is heavily informed by the music itself.

When I first left school I went to music college and trained as a classical musician. During my time there I diverted towards Early Music, especially Early Baroque. Like most other people I deeply identified with music especially when I was younger, and so I have in my background years of studying, learning, rehearsing, performing and listening to music, mostly, but not exclusively classical. I was fortunate to be able to cover a great deal of repertoire in orchestras and chamber groups, seeing the realities of music behind the scenes. I always struggled with music theory but now acknowledge that dyslexia may have had something to do with absorbing its algebraic mysteries. However, pursuing theory, and playing within an orchestra breaks down and somewhat explains the structure, and anyway gives me more of an insight into musical theory than naught.

I have been thinking about how to approach all these influences. Sometimes it does not seem enough to say it's Sibelius, but what all those associations about Sibelius are to me. I guess that's it - associations, some factual, some personal, and mostly, what in my mind I link all that to - ways of thinking, places, aspirations, atmospheres. In that way, there is a universal Sibelius, plus a deeply personal Sibelius, Purcell, Schubert, Reich - my go-to composers.

Again, like the codification blog page,
http://eleanormacfarlane.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/codification.html, this Where the Music Comes From is a journalling exercise in order to unravel, identify and then summarise something that is already going on in my work process, in order to clarify for myself and in how I present work. More conscious thoughts make this more available to myself for progression. There is so much to unravel - you almost need a lifetime to do, and then a lifetime to reflect, but here we are.

Basically I hope to come up with a coherent answer to why Sibelius for 24 Hour Sibelius, or why whoever I choose in the final project.

3rd March 2014

...................................................................................................................................................................

Now I have completed the making of the moving image piece Embedded, I am come to the sound. Often throughout making the video part I have listened to my mother singing:
http://eleanormacfarlane.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/towards-final-project-sound.html

Especially after discussion with Angela in a tutorial, I have been thinking of how to layer the singing, perhaps making it more mixed, subtle and phased:
http://eleanormacfarlane.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/tutorial-report-36.html

Increasingly I am thinking of sound I made for a previous piece, The Future Past Tense:
https://vimeo.com/60550109

And how I made that - which is really how I always approach sound, but there I deliberately sought out small sections of music which had the emotional content I wanted - there was a bit of Purcell, Schubert and various 60', songs.

And for now, clearly why I am using my mother singing is because that is a significant soundtrack to my life over this past year. I choose it because it's there, as I chose to work on the Found Paintings and the old school photos for Class of Yesterday. There is more to relevance than unpeeling layers of reason and making connections - sometimes we use the things and thoughts, ideas, sights and sounds that are around us, and then discover the reasons and connections. That is probably a significant and useful thought for me as I pull all this work together and summarise a year's work in various ways, sometimes a sentence or two.

I have been looking all along, as I make the disparate elements of Embedded and then merge them all together, for a rationale I could explain, other than just knowing that they would work because it would all work out in the end. Now that makes sense to me - that I, or we as people, make connections and ascribe or pull out reasons. Clearly we do in life, and so in art. I have it!

And so from the musical filing cabinet/jukebox in my mind I was looking for a match of sound and feeling I want for the moving image sound to merge with Ellen singing. I may add a couple of elements still, perhaps splashing a different sound or feel in at some points, but I immediately thought of Saturn from The Planets by Gustav Holst, 1914-16. It's the bittersweet sadness of ageing which has brought me to tears many times. There is an open, spacey feel to that music which then brought me to the first movement of Mahler's First Symphony, 1888. That music seems to come from afar, from a high horizon, or a twilight blue night.

I was also thinking of something akin to the lovely orchestral accompaniment to Gavin Bryars' Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet, such intimate and unashamedly sentimental smooth with the rough recording, then thought I'll use that recording itself.

I guess I'm really sampling these pieces and mixing them with my own recoding, but they will likely be unrecognisable. I also guess I'm stealing from them, using their constructs and colours. It's perhaps like making a painting by choosing a few masterpieces and copying favourite colours or lines or horizons and making a new composition out of them. Perhaps that is much like painting or making art anyway - we don't tend to invent new colours or lines with each piece, but rearrange all sorts of previous ideas in new formations.

I chop the music into moments, give myself variations of them, and then layer and merge them together, much as I do the images, following their internal logic, the shape of the piece, and those hundreds of aesthetic choices which push, fit and form ideas.

I'm not sure if the aforementioned rap-style version by my son Magnus will as yet happen, but it has been a thought in the process anyway.

29th September 2014

...................................................................................................................................................................

Rap-Granny didn't happen, but I can imagine it and it was an influential thought.

I identified the character and qualities of the music I wanted to use, which was the spacey, Alpine feel of Mahler's First Symphony, and the poignant heaviness of Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age from Holst's The Planets suite. I have detailed how I made the piece here:

http://eleanormacfarlane.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/making-final-piece.html

As I am rounding up this MA blog, finishing posts, adding notes and hoping to tie up and interconnect loose ends, I note that music and sound has become fully integrated in my work and my practice, after having an ex-musician's resistance to it as I started the course.

11th November 2014