Tomorrow song
Beginning of the process
Over the last terms of our second year at Guildhall, my cohort got to work with David Crawforth with the goal to put on a performance at the Beacons Field gallery.
We had to write a commission for ourselves, develop a project, pitch it our teachers, and then start creating and rehearsing for the performance.
We started by finding a theme, so we could have a direction, and later on we came up with a name for the project by brainstorming with all the class, It took perhaps a couple of days to get the right words that we found interesting and voting on the best ones...
For the pitch we got divided ourselves into four groups to research, build and present the pitch; concept, content, context, strategy.
I was part of the strategy team, coming up with ideas for ticketing using eventbrite, marketing using our own social media, scheduling strategies, aim and objectives of our commission.
We did the pitch successfully, and the next step was to start making it real.
Putting the Performance together
I was with one idea that I wanted to play guitar using some sort of loop pedal or my computer to create the music. I never had done any of these methods before, and it was exciting for me to learn about as I was interested in exploring.
I had a feeling since we visited the gallery that I wanted some kind of weird sound scape, but I didn't know what it would be yet.
I also was planning to be part of a movement piece of Lucrezia.
We created and developed the Aim, Intended Outcomes, and the activities. One feed into the other, the activities are to reach the outcomes, and the outcomes to achieve our aim.
By this time I was helping the evaluation team to develop ways to track the cohort performance, gathering quantitative data (numbers, ratings, surveys with close questions), and qualitative data (story telling, quotes, open questions, add color to the numbers). So we could analise later on and see if there were improvements.
Wakeboard injury / bless in disguise
Everything was going smoothly, until on a Sunday afternoon doing wakeboard changes everything. On my last run before the water park gets closed, I took a risk jumping on a ramp bigger than this on that I am
jumping on the picture.
I landed on my left side quite hard, and
ended up in hospital with a kidney injury.
Slept few night in hospital doing exams,
and CT scans. We found out that I had
a 12cm tumour together with the kidney
that I just had injured. Doctors said
if it was a blessing the accident, as I
wouldn't know I had it until then...
It took a while for me to know after I had done a biopsy
and waiting for the results to come almost a month that it was
benign. Even though my doctor wanted to do a surgery and
take the tumour out with the left kidney. It was a shock for me.
By that time I wasn't going classes and to work anymore.
But I did had feelings to put out.
The performance was coming in two weeks time and I started to learn about
"Live looping triggered through Ableton using the internal IAC MIDI Driver". There are many ways you can loop. On this way you have to program as many loopers to loop in a particular time, and you start making music like that, playing instruments without pushing anything. It activates itself. I got inspired by many artists...
...so I started creating my music, inspired on these techniques, before I had to go through my surgery.
I spent hours, and days to create all the modulation for each instrument that I wanted to record, stop, dub, on the song. (Ableton screen shot below).
My recording process...
1st - I would start recording a few bars and looping my first bass sound with different effects on it that I found by mistake messing around inside Ableton.
2nd - Start recording and looping my second bass with different effects
3rd - Start recording and looping a guitar only for the chorus.
4th - Start recording and looping a drums
5th - Start recording and looping only for chorus couple of voices
Then there are verses of guitar solo, piano rhodes through the music...
On the chorus I start singing "Tomorrow, you never know", meaning that, you literally, don't know what's going to happen tomorrow. Maybe something good. Maybe something bad.
Performance.
My cohort got surprised when I appeared to do my sound check, and asked me why I came, that I should have been at home resting. But I had to perform, is what I want, and like doing, and I made this song for that.
We found a really cool spot for me to set up, which was a challenge as it was really small. However it was different and interesting. The only thing is that people couldn't seen properly what I was doing up there, the way I was building up the song playing different instruments. Never the less I enjoyed and also got good feed backs from it. I played it a few times as we were in a gallery, each time I played I was feeling more comfortable if it.
There were different performances happening at the same time, so people were walking around felt it felt like I was on a street performance.
The video below is one of the first times I played...
"The triangule evaluation will help to create the project much more smoothly, to not get overwhelmed with everything. It might take a couple of hours to develop it all, but will save your mind. I will definitely use this process on my next projects."
