I spent about an hour or so, playing with my guitar and a loop pedal experimenting with percussive sounds through the acoustic body and playing pitched ostinatos over the top. Idea's were coming thick and fast but I didn't really have a great amount of time to really sit and work at it. Over the next week or so, I'm going to attempt to record something and post it on Soundcloud so hopefully I'll have something concrete to work on.
I also saw an article in The Guardian about a series of concerts celebrating 50 years of minimalism, which got me thinking about my good friend Steve Reich, so I listened to his 'Works 1965-1995' compilation back to back as my way of 'celebrating' such a milestone. The full article can be found here.
Last Monday we (myself and the other MA composition students) had a really great lecture with Edward Caine, a brilliant York based composer who deals with 'Extended Instrumental Technique', although as we discussed in the lecture, the word 'Extended' is not an appropriate word to describe those particular techniques. That's one aspect that I found interesting. The techniques themselves are not technically extended, but they are labeled as such because they don't fall into our inherited performance practice (what we have been taught conventionally/traditionally). Essentially...
Extended = Different
In short, the lecture really opened my eyes to many possibilities within composing, especially for certain instruments (including the voice) that I had previously not even considered using because I thought them too technical or somewhat beyond me. I'm going to try some experiments using some of the techniques discussed in the near future so I'll refer back to lecture when I do. Many thanks to Ed for that day, he was full of flu and was a real gent to stick with it, thanks a lot Ed.
Onwards and upwards, hopefully with more composition soon.
LW
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