ireland
Release – In Your Own Time Part #3
This is the third in a series of post rounding out my experience of putting out In Your Own Time in April 2013. The previous posts covered the inspiration behind the project and putting it together as an app. This post will talk about putting the app out into the world and what that has meant for me.
Release & Press
The release date for the app was April 2nd and in advance of that I sent out some press releases to magazines and blog who I thought might be interested. There wasn’t an immediate take up on the idea. It had a summary write up in Noise in the first week. It also got a tweet from Harmless Noise. Largely though, initially at least, the response was a bit disappointing. Read more
2013 – a look back on the year that was
The year of Our Lord 2013 is almost over and at least 2013 things have happened to me this year, but rather than list them all here is an abridged summary. Lots of travelling, meeting new people and hearing interesting things in interesting places with interesting people.
Learning
This year was a pretty hectic in terms of education. I’m out of my masters a little over 18 months and I’ve been trying to continue to learn as much I can. I’ve been luck enough to get the opportunity to study on a number of courses, both in Ireland and internationally. The first was the Young Composers’ Meeting in Apeldoorn. This was a pretty terrifying experience as I got to write for a 16 piece ensemble with voice. Most of the instruments were ones which I had never written for before, and I wrote the piece as we drift softly (into the fog) for the course. Read more
A joyful slog
A joyful slog is a film about the DIY/indie music scene in Ireland, packed full of interviews and footage of musician and people active within the scene. It tracks the genesis of the scene in Ireland, from early exponents like Fugazi, and how the forerunners inspired and effected the current wave of DIY musicians. How the choices they made created a model for those who came after them to use to go indie. It’s a really motivational film and echos a lot of the sentiment that I heard in May at Music 3.0, ‘Just go and do it’. It’s also great to hear from the musicians and bands themselves, to hear about the process and what being independent means to them. If you’re interested in getting your own music out into the world it might give you some ideas or the kick you need to get started. Last, but certainly not least, the film is packed from beginning to end with excellent music. Well worth a watch.
Irish Composition Summer School
It’s been 2 weeks since I finished a week of composing and recording as part of the Irish Composition Summer School. In the mean time I’ve had some time to take stock of the course and wanted to give a summary of my experience. The goal of the course is to compose a piece of music during the duration and have it played and recorded by a professional musicians in the final two days. This gives you 8 days to write a piece of music that will be played by professionals, a pretty scary task. Before starting the course I’d done some composition for college assignments and a bit of song writing but nothing too major, this was to be my my first major leap into the world of composition.