Thursday 18 June 2009

June

Since uni finished two weeks ago, I've been hanging around between Donegal, Belfast and Dublin. Not all that much happening, but there have been a couple of things interesting recently.

Last week, I helped out Rui Chaves with part of his independent study for his MA. 5 of us went up into the top 5 floors of the old library tower in Queen's and switched on and off lights along the rows of books (14 on each floor), according to a timed score. Rui's going to use parts of it as an accompaniment to one of his compositions, which should be cool.


Here's a video of us in the library.


This week I was out getting some field recordings as a favour for an American composer, Robert Scott Thompson, who had contacted me via Freesound.org asking for sounds from the Belfast/Antrim area. I got some nice sounds from a small bird colony out on Belfast Lough at 6am, caves in Whitehead and some alright ones from City Centre. He's going to develop them into a Belfast-themed composition. I'll eventually get some of the sounds up on Radio Aporee.

I was in Dublin on Sunday all day loading out equipment from the Take That circus tour. It was a massive operation - 96 of us local crew, about 50 senior crew, 34 trucks full of equipment and a stage which stretched half the length of Croke Park. They would have grossed about €4,200,000 from ONE night's show (70,000 people at €60 a ticket), which took three days to set up and two to take down. Must get myself into a boyband.

Going to Slovenia tomorrow for 10 days, then back for a couple of days, after which i'm heading to the Pennines for a weekend before heading back to Belfast for graduation on the 8th July. Then I'll be looking for a job / roadtripping / getting stuck in to rugby pre-season / working at festivals / developing my Max/MSP skills / gigging with bands here and there etc. I just hope the weather stays good.

Monday 1 June 2009

Electro-acoustic composition: Impressions (8'25)



A composition from my final portfolio for uni.

"This piece explores field recordings made during travels in West Africa during summer 2008, and my initial impressions of some of the places we visited. It evolves in chronological order from the beaches of northern Morocco to the oases and mosques of the southern Sahara."


Click to listen (Mp3, 11.6mb, 8'25mins)

Some of the field recordings used in the piece can be found on my Freesound page.