The United Kingdom Pt. 2 - England
Our last episode ended after some lovely explorations and discoveries in Scotland, and London promised an equally rich experience.
The long train trip from Edinburgh was a nice chance to chill out before entering the bustle of London. That evening Helen & I settled into the spare room provided by some generous family members, and caught up with them over some delicious dinner & wine, still baffled by the stubbornly late sunset.
I might recap at this juncture on the whole point of the journey. My 3 weeks in the UK was basically a chase for interesting ideas, new music, new attitudes, and unusual recordings. In Scotland I had been lucky enough to chat to some great musicians, and found some interesting art, music, and environments, and hopefully my journeys south would prove as fruitful. The trip was partially funded by the generous Arts QLD, so… lucky me!
My to do lists:
London:
- Visit some galleries
- See some cool live music
Brighton:
- Chat with James Vella of Yndi Halda about writing music
- Visit “Resident” music store
Oxford:
- Spend three days learning Schillinger theory with Dr Jeremy Arden in Oxford
- Meet with This Town Needs Guns in Oxford and talk about writing music
- Meet with Kevin Douch who runs Big Scary Monsters Recording Company
Wherever:
- Get some nice field recordings
- Write some music - Visit lots of record stores and spend too much money on vinyl (well that wasn’t really on the original list, but it did occur, so adding it to the list retrospectively makes me feel better about it)
Let’s talk London first. In terms of music, I felt very overwhelmed - it’s just such a huge place and one doesn’t know where to start. I was urged in the direction of Camden, and told that this was where I would find the “London music scene”, and while Camden was very cool, it seemed to house a very specific kind of scene. It seems like you would need to be in London a good few months before you’d know where to go and who to know to really get into a music community.
Having said that, I did find some pretty cool stuff whilst in the big city. I went to a gig in Shoreditch at a place called the Old Blue Last, and listened to and met some great bands there (see Rosa Valle, Hold Your Horse Is). I picked up some pretty exciting vinyl purchases, with The Books “Lost and Safe” and Talk Talk’s “Spirit of Eden” amongst the highlights. I caught an All Tomorrow’s Parties show with Boris and Russian Circles that was truly excellent. I also got a lot of good video and audio of the general London hustle & bustle.
I had been in touch with a gentlemen named James Vella, who plays in Yndi Halda - a band who’s work I’ve admired for a while now - about meeting up for a chat. He’s based in Brighton, so Helen and I made a day trip out of it, with me taking lunch to chat with James, and spending the rest of the day seeing the sights of Brighton Beach. James was an interesting man to chat to - having studied literature at a post-graduate level he’s no stranger to critical thinking about the arts, so really welcomed my questions about perception & composition. I was particularly interested in hearing the difference between how he works with Yndi Halda - where compositions are collaborative and not written down - in comparison to his other projects such as A Lily, which is largely notated. He described these two as involving a “different mindset”. James and I chatted for about an hour, and I am yet to transcribe the full interview, but I look forward to reviewing what he had to say.
Next was Oxford, where I was to receive tuition in the Schillinger method of music composition and meet some more cool people.
The Schillinger course was really interesting, and while the technique is very extensive (one could just about spend a lifetime exploring it), I found that even just some of the approaches and ways of thinking about music were inspiring in themselves, even without the rigorous number-crunching.
Number-crunching? You may rightly wish to know what this Schillinger thing actually is. So Joseph Schilling was a composer and music theorist who lived in the 20th century, and recognising that the world of music had moved on from the classical western tradition, set about designing a new method for composing music. What he came up with is condensed into two huge dense books and known as the Schilllinger system of musical composition. It was used by the likes of Gershwin and Coppola and relies heavily on the expression of rhythm, structure and pitch in number patterns. For a math-rock nerd like me who also dabbles in the world of art music, what could be more exciting?
In three jam packed days of tuition I was barely able to scratch the surface, and though I do plan to delve deeper into the technique, here are a few approaches that struck me as interesting or inspiring that I have been able to implement immediately in my practice.
1) A focused micro/macro approach.
The technique seemed to me to encourage the composer to work in broad brushstrokes where appropriate, leaving details for later. This may involve deciding the length and character of each section before fleshing them out with any notes, or mapping out a large chunk of music rhythmically before assigning any pitches at all.
2) Number approach to rhythm
Schillinger rethought the way we compose and notate rhythms. Rather than endlessly subdividing the breve, the smallest subdivision used in a rhythm is treated as one time unit, and a rhythm is represented by a series of numbers corresponding to how many time units there are between each attack. So for example the rhythm of “crotchet, crotchet, quaver quaver, crotchet” is “22112”. This has some limitations and composing in this way can sometimes lead to very unnatural rhythms, but as an alternative way of thinking about rhythm I think it’s really useful. Any way to distract your mind from the crotchets and quavers you’ve grown up reading is a good way to get creative juices flowing, I think.
3) Harmony
There are a few different approaches to harmony outlined in the method, with varying levels of tonality and atonality, but they are all managed by assigning chords and pitches to – you guessed it – numbers. When working with harmony I often get bogged down in the limitations of having a tonal centre and only a very finite number of intervals to work with around it. Using Schillinger’s ideas it seems to open up a world of limitless possibility, where pitches pivot around one another, not always chained down to a rock-solid tonal centre. Even though the results may exhibit a strong tonal centre, it feels like a more playful and curious way to put it all together. Perhaps I feel this way because it isn’t familiar, but even if this is the case, a fresh approach is still a very valuable thing.
I also was lucky enough to meet the lads in This Town Needs Guns, and Kevin Douch who runs Big Scary Monsters. I wrote a little post about this on the lofly website, so won’t repeat it all here. But suffice it to say that I learnt a lot and had a great time!
All in all the trip was a massive success. Not just because all the little bits went well or because I achieved my goals, because it was an inspiring new experience, and I felt mentally and creatively rejuvenated by the whole thing. A month later I am still in touch with some of the people I met, still sifting through fascinating bits of audio, still enjoying whimsical record purchases, and still implementing new techniques and approaches to composing. Hopefully this will all continue and grow, until the next big adventure!