creative costuming - whispers and words

[otherenglishskies]

I'm thinking I should reprise the 'A Demo A Day' Project for a 3rd time. I did one in 2013, one in 2014, and would like to do one this year as well.

www.soundcloud.com/a-demo-a-day previous recordings can be found here :)

[otherenglishskies]

I may still be hibernating from the world and dealing with some heavy brain-weasels, but I have also recently got back into composing, which is a major plus. I finally finished transcribing a setting of an e.e.cumming poem (’I Carry Your Heart’) that I composed at University, and it’s given me a push to get some other settings done. This is another e.e.cummings poem - ‘You Are Tired’, which is one of my favourites - and I’m working on one more of his, and an Emily Dickinson poem (’Hope Is The Thing With Feathers’.) When they’re done, I’m hoping to get them performed as a song cycle.

whoop for composition and productivity!

[lilium-inter-spinas]

Indi: Alice Nicholls Music

Alice Nicholls Music for @originalsong #songwriter on Indi.com

Hey! People! Folks! Darlings! Other non-gendered collective terms!

So I did a thing, which was pretty brave of me considering I am good at procrastinating and putting off doing things, but I did a thing and recorded a song I wrote and submitted it to this website called Indi and now my song is in third place on the leaderboard for a friggin’ INTERNATIONAL SONGWRITING COMPETITION :O

This is a huge deal for me. Huge. And if you could help me out I would be so so so grateful.

The more the video is seen and shared, the more ‘buzz’ it creates on Indi, and buzz counts for a lot in the judging. All you have to do is click the link and view the video, and if you feel like it you can vote for it by clicking the heart icon or the plus sign in the bottom right hand corner. (Indi will ask you to log in or sign up, but you don’t actually have to; just ext the login box and your vote should still stand.)

If you feel like being super-duper-extraordinarily helpful, you can share the video on any kind of social media: share it on Facebook, tweet the link on Twitter, reblog it here, send your friends an email link, any online platform that takes your fancy. Every little helps.

From a struggling musician - thank you so much :) I love you all.

[otherenglishskies]

lastnight: played a gig in a bar in a shopping arcade, as an acoustic singer-songwriter, as part of a goth night, which involved creepy cover songs on ukulele and djembe, and improvising/extemporising on violin to accompany a friend’s excellent dramatic poetry recitations.

today: proof-read and sent off an abstract for an academic conference on music therapy and dementia care, in the hope of being picked to actually present said paper at said conference.

this evening: all the food. all the sleep.

my life is weird and wacky and awesome and i’m a little spaced out right now with all the awesomeness.

[otherenglishskies]

getting organised.

[otherenglishskies]

found this today in a box under my bed. i remembered today that my notebooks should not be kept in boxes. they should be littering my room, being filled with ideas.

[otherenglishskies]

songs are bred out of living, rather than existing,

of facing down your fear and amping your courage up to eleven. they are fuelled by experience, sustance abuse, other abuse, unrequited love, love in all forms, fed by pent-up emotion. feelings are written down in secluded corners of artsy-fartsy coffee shops, deliberating over sugar and caffeine and deliberately addling our brains, writing out feelings in the time it takes for the tables to be cleared; words to later be taken home and have melodies created to fit them. sometimes the melody comes first, drifting untethered to chords until it finds its language. the finished creation may not see the light of day until weeks have passed, months, years after the fact, and even then it is done hesitantly, with trepidation; these are not things to be showcased with pride. they are too personal, too precious, and we don’t want to seem like we’re showing off. so we hide them away for fear that someone somewhere who we don’t know (and who is not here to judge us) may not like what we have done with our talents. which is bullshit, really, because what are songs for if not to be heard and listened to and thought on, and what is talent given to us for if not to be used? why write a song at all if not for solidarity with another human being, so that they can say - I feel, I think; I can relate to that. why else? why not?

[otherenglishskies]

behold my new toy

my lovely shiny new musical toy

:D

[otherenglishskies]

to the tune of ‘michael finnigan’

there was an old witch called Minerva McGonagall

she wore glasses instead of a monacle

and a hat that was vaguely conical

wise old Professor McGonagall

[otherenglishskies]

zzzzz.

i really enjoy midweek gigs but they tire me the fuck out.

[otherenglishskies]

i find it impossible to explain to people sometimes how much singing is a safe thing for me, a good thing, a healing thing. not just singing my own lyrics, they’re all intensely personal and stuff and it’s healthy to get that out, sure, but making music with other people, people who don’t have to give a damn about what’s going on in your head and who you don’t have to give a damn about if you choose not to but you can if you like, people who are there just to sing or play and everything else that’s going on in your life drops away the moment the baton comes down, and you can throw your whole body into it and just concentrate on getting. the notes. right. and that’s it. that’s all. everyone’s there for the same reason and nobody gives a shit about your demons right then.

i once said sincerely to someone that weekly rehearsals helped me to stay sane, and they gave me a weird look. other people probably have their own versions of this saving grace. mine is a choir, it always has been a choir, and i’m extremely glad of it this evening

[otherenglishskies]

My family <3

[otherenglishskies]

Ahoy!

I did a thing for an arts project in Leeds: the group ‘Artists Anonymous’ are hosting an online publication of responses to the idea ‘Lie Back And Think Of England’ - visual, sound, video, writing, poetry, anything. Mine turned into a song, as my ideas often do, here’s the link and my brief commentary on it:

https://dl-web.dropbox.com/get/Alice%20Nicholls%20Music/Think%20Of%20England.WAV?_subject_uid=20439452&w=AADQ7i0fI0LObKK3M8eBxdKKTknrp5-0fuh7WJQv3RIDZA When faced with having to respond to the idea ‘lie back and think of England’s various themes for a song ran through my head. What to centre it on? Patriotism? Immigration? Tradition? Love? Sex? But none of these topics on their own seemed enough to encapsulate ‘thinking of England’ – a county with flexible borders, wildly fluctuating politics, a country with relative amounts of privilege where those with privilege sometimes don’t see or notice those beneath them. As an English musician, and an English woman and a feminist, the notion of my downtrodden country was not a difficult one to conjure, and the idea came into my head of England characterised as a woman. And so the song began to take shape: the first verse depicting a rose-tinted view of an idyllic, stereotypical England; the second its repressed people, especially the country’s attitude towards women and female sexuality, and things we don’t like to think about so instead we concentrate on its beauty (‘think of nothing/except what lies beneath our noses’…flat skies, everlasting fields, and so on and so on.) I then turned to this idea I had of England personified – and as such, the last two verses could be an unnamed woman, or England herself speaking: both sometimes repressed, both ill-treated, and both staunchly carrying on. It’s often how I feel as a woman in England – and to think we are so much better off in this country than women in so many other places…

[otherenglishskies]

wow this blog has been neglected. i am still here, pomise, just busy. i wih i could say i was busy doing musick things. *sigh*

*waves at rag-tag bunch of tumblrites who fllow this blog for SOME reason*

[otherenglishskies]

So.

I'm debating a Kickstarter or similar for the next album, because rather than recording in my mate's garage (not that it's not brilliant and still produces incredible results, but Nick deserves a better place than that), this one may need an actual studio with space for a drumkit and a brass section and other such interesting stuff. Also I would like to be able to pay the musicians whose considerable talents I purloin for recordings, and there'll be more of them on this album (see above re brass section) rather than them just doing it out of the goodness of my heart.

If we raised enough dosh through Kickstarter we would be able to record a bit extra, produce a special edition, and generally find lovely ways to thank the wonderful hypothetical people who pledged for their support and monies. Plus you'd get mine and Nick's undying love and gratitude for ever and ever and maybe a ticket to the album launch if we can finance that too.

Soooo, hypothetically if we did this...who'd be interested in pledging some cash for us? :D AN

[otherenglishskies]

A Demo A Day

'A Demo A Day' was a project started up by Alice Nicholls (@alice-nicholls-music) in September 2013 when she found herself in a musical rut. The premise was simple: write, compose, or record one thing per day for a month, and keep evidence of everything that was created.

For March 2014, Alice is giving the project a second run, and the results of every day's demo will be posted on here, whether they are fully-formed songs, snippets of choruses, random musical sketches and improvisations, or even lines of poetry. This time round it's slightly different, however. If other artists want to contribute their own little demos recorded in the month of March, they can be included and uploaded to this page too, fully credited.The demos will then be collected into an album, available for web release only, for people to download if they want. The proceeds from this are going to The Music Therapy Charity - www.musictherapy.org.uk/

Happy composing! AN

[otherenglishskies]

BBC Lincolnshire - Lincolnshire Folk, 26/02/2014

Tom Lane brings you half an hour of local folk music.

about 23 mins in, my track 'Ranter's Wharf' from the album 'Folk Law' is played. i'm also mentioned somewhere near the start. thanks tom! :D

anm