I HAVE A SONG

I could not be happier right now, especially as its crit week tomorrow and I wasnt looking forward to saying I didnt have a song yet! Yann Seznec has gave me another song that I think will work PERFECTLY for my final piece, its layers/textural and it kind of mashes up in the middle and theres some really cool/weird sounds that I could have a lot of fun experimenting with. What I really like it the song builds up the layers and develops as the song progresses, which is what I really wanted and wasnt finding in other songs that I liked anyway, have a listen to it here on this video and this is the email Yann sent to me telling me about the song, how it was made, why he made it etc.... I will talk more about it soon but just now, I have to focus on my presentation which is tomorrow!

The song was built originally out of a loop of a field recording of a banjo player from the Appalachian Mountains. The opening sample is just one note from that recording. In the quieter middle bit the sample gets a longer and you can hear the guy singing.

I basically built the song by making a long loop of that sample, and then sitting with a piano and improvising over it a few dozen takes of a couple minutes each. I think mixed and layered all of those different improvisations on top of each other, and using that to create the structure of the piece.

The final piece of the song was the bass, which I created using a Korg MS-20 Analog Synth, which is a beautiful machine from the 70's that I had access to at the University of Edinburgh. You can make it really growl or be lovely and gentle. 

But the main focus of the song is definitely all of the piano bits. The song was the result of some playing around I had been doing with taking acoustic piano sounds and mangling them up electronically…so the song is really about having a conversation with myself, building a relationship with your own past, and creating something out of many different aspects and approaches to one thing. That's why it's called EarthFireWindWaterHeart, which is of course a cheeky and joking reference to Captain Planet.