Creative Exchange - Bath 3-7 Aug 2008

Dear all,

Welcome to Creative Exchange 2008, and this, our songwriters' blog. I'll be using these pages to keep you updated on the project before we begin, add detail regarding the tasks, and of course to post songs and photographs that we create during the week.

To begin with, we should get to know each other. I've collected together the various links you've sent us, so for now, visit everyone's sites and have a listen online. I couldn't find myspace or website links for Janet and Ng - so please let me know if you do have a web presence.

UK songwriters
Richard Lobb • Sara Spade • Carly Bryant • Katy Carr

HK songwriters
Rachel Kar • Ryan Hui • Janet Yung • Ng King Pan

The team
Joe Bennett (Music director)
Chris Blanden (Producer)
Peter Sarstedt (guest songwriter)

Songwriting!
We aim for you to write, individually or collaboratively, one song per day – so that’s somewhere around 30-40 songs through the week. You’ll be given a series of exercises and tasks designed to stretch you as a songwriter and hone your craft. We will be recording and blogging everything we create daily via these pages.

Please bring the following items with you;
1.    Any portable instruments (e.g. guitarists should bring acoustic guitar and accessories).
2.    A USB memory stick for saving/printing lyrics.
3.    A CD (or MP3s on a stick – or myspace link) with your material on it so we can share our music & influences.
4.    A pair of iPod-style (or any mini-jack) headphones for the music workstations.

About the campus

We're working at the Newton Park campus of Bath Spa University. For some of the time we'll be based in the Main House building (room MHG15 - the main boardroom). We'll also be working and recording in our MusicLab studios.

Feel free to add comments to this blog (you'll need to sign up for a vox account to do this). You can also subscribe to the RSS feed here, and post the blog on Facebook, your own blogroll etc...

Creative cultural exchange 2008

Bath – 2-7 August 2008

In association with PRS Foundation (PRSF) and the
Composers and Authors Society of Hong Kong (CASH)

This is an international opportunity for 8 talented emerging songwriters from different cultural backgrounds to work creatively together.

During an intensive 5-day period in August 2008 at Bath Spa University, 4 songwriters from the UK and 4 from Hong Kong will work creatively together in small groups and individually to create new work.

Throughout this collaborative process the composers will be supported, inspired and challenged both by others in the group and by Joe Bennett, Director of the UK Songwriting Festival, and by internationally-renowned songwriter Peter Sarstedt.

On Friday night, some of the songwriters were interviewed on the Ian Anderson show, presented on this occasion by Ricky Ross.
Here as audio files are the relevant excerpts from the show, including interviews with four of the Gathering 2007 winners Mary Barclay, David Ferrard, Andi Neate and Lisa Paton, and a brief interview with me discussing the writing processes during the week.

I included the audio for this song in a previous blog, but since the gig quite a few people have remarked on it, so here it is in full, including lyrics. Stevie's original draft of the lyric had the character in his homeland, which had become a war-torn landscape. My only suggestion during the workshops was to bring in the idea of the character being far from home - i.e. to make him a soldier fighting overseas. I think you'll agree that Stevie has used some remarkable imagery to illustrate the song's universal anti-war sentiment. It's also an effective melody that really carries the character's anguish and torment. We added a bagpipe-style open 5th drone using voices from other members of the group, and the final recording was produced and mixed by Chris Blanden. Personally I find the song astonishingly affecting, even after repeated listenings. It's one of those examples of performance, lyric, arrangement and melody lining up prosodically - all the musical elements pushing in the same direction.

Wind won't you carry me
Set my blind spirit free
For I have lost the will to breathe
As comrades fall like dying leaves

Black is the sun
Black is the sun

Rain won't you wash me clean
Such poison I have seen
Visions that will not be gone
For all my life, however long

And in this trench there is a picture
My sweet children smile at me
And in my heart an endless longing
Wherefore art the smiles I see?

Black is the sun
Black is the sun

Snow won't you chill my wounds
Spring she has come too soon
Fires scorch as we retreat
Flesh decays around my feet

Lord won't you bring me home
No strength have I to roam
A thousand miles beneath these boots
More death with every round I shoot

And on this gun there is a number
Tell me what this number means
Is it for the lives I've ended
Or is it for the tears I've screamed?

Black is the sun
Black is the sun

Wind won't you carry me
Set my blind spirit free
For I am broke beyond repair
So to my kin please blow me there

Possibly the most interesting task of the week, in terms of the songs that came out of it, was the exercise where everyone had to write a song with a tempo faster than 120 beats per minute (2 beats per second). This led a lot of singer-songwriters into new territory. The following song by Lisa Paton is based on the story of Colin and Ann Gordon and Stanley Lawson aka 'Alamo Stan', whose homes were among 300 houses to be bulldozed in Pennywell, Edinburgh earlier this year. Stanley daubed the phrase 'The Citizens' Republic of Pennywell' on his walls shortly before he was evicted, and Lisa was inspired to write this universal tale of home, family and community.
The audio is a live recording, performed by Lisa and Stevie Palmer, of the song's first performance on the day it was completed.

Every day the songwriters played back new material to the group for discussion, and whenever time allowed we developed these basic first performances by getting our in-house producer Chris to work with the artist on some arrangements. So we thought it would be interesting to blog a 'before and after' from the Gathering week. Here's Amy Duncan's original performance and studio recording of Rodger Lyall's lyric, which tells the story of the fishermen of Inverbervie and their struggle to protect the ancient salmon fishing rights granted to them by King David II. This was the first day's task - to write lyrics separately and hand them to another Burnsong writer to add the music. It's not the most common form of collaboration, but an interesting exercise for songwriters; lyric-setting in this way is the preferred method of Elton John & Bernie Taupin and Chris Difford & Glenn Tillbrook (Squeeze).
The song's unusual 6/4 groove, Scots dialect and two-chord 12-string picking pattern seems, for me, to fit perfectly with the poignant and wistful power of this true story.

1.
Oor Rab, the Bruce faced Lanky Shank
Tae`mak us independent
Then sired a son, Aye Dave the same
Tae tak aheed the royal name

2.
Noo Davy wis a cannier chiel
Wha likit Royal Toons
And grantin’ toon folk fishin rights
Tae sport in ony wie they liked

Chorus
Gied fisher rights tae snigger troot
Stopped ithers comin in aboot
Gied burgh rights tae local folk
The Common Good noo just a joke

3.
And now an act of treachery
By Deeside Salmon Fishery
Brings plans tae bring the Stoney whip
Tae stop the Bervie fishin rip 

4.
But they didna’ reckon Ashie Reid
Like Brucie, independent
Sayin’ local folk will manage fine 
Oor Charter’s no rescinded

Chorus
Gied fisher rights tae snigger troot
Stopped ithers comin in aboot
Gied burgh rights tae local folk
The Common Good noo just a joke

So here we are at BBC Glasgow, stealing a blogging moment on one of their foyer PCs. We can't upload pics or audio here, but here for now we've posted our setlist. The ones in italics are new songs, written during the Gathering; we're also going to play through all 12 of the original winning songs. To find out more about the songwriters go to the main Burnsong site.

It's been an amazing week, and the winners have generated a huge amount of high-quality material. We'll be putting the full audio for tonight's gig online here in the next blog. As ever, I've used this experience to learn more about how different songwriters approach their craft, and it's been a privilege (and really good fun) to work with such enthusiastic and hard-working musicians.

Time to tune up!

 

The Gathering setlist

Nov 30th 2007 - BBC Glasgow

Home - Andi Neate

Hell of a Ride - David Ferrard

My Bonnie Red-haired Lassie - Paraig MacNeil

Reverse The Hearse - Tom Murray

The John McGlinchy Bridge - Stevie Palmer

Gowany Banks - Lori Watson and Mairi Campbell

Albasylum - Lisa Paton

Garvock's Ghaist - Rodger Lyall

Stepping Stone - Mary Barclay (Carroll)

 

Too Busy Playing God - Andi Neate

Smile or Cry - Mairi Campbell and Dave Francis

You've Been Leithed - Aly Macrae

Blackbird - Mary Barclay (Carroll)

The Pig & Its Mistress - Rodger Lyall

My Dad - Amy Duncan

Black Is The Sun - Stevie Palmer

Merl - Lori Watson (Lori's on tour in Germany - the song will be sung in her absence by Mairi Campbell)

Hope Inside - Lisa Paton and Amy Duncan

I Can't Believe - Dave Francis

Honours for Fees - Paraig MacNeil (trad tune "Bonnie Dundee")

Hi all,

Sorry for missing a day on the blog - Euan and Jim, our excellent session musicians, arrived yesterday, and we were rehearsing so intensively that we lost track of the time & weather; as I mentioned before, it is only possible to blog from a picnic table in the car park, which means that when it's raining (as it legendarily does in these parts) we can't take computers outside.
Anyway, Chris the producer has been inhabiting an all-Pro-Tools virtual world for around 3 days now, and all 12  songwriters have been creating one song each every day, so we're now up to a count of 42 songs from the week, plus the original 12 Burnsong winning entries, making a grand total of 54 original songs to choose from for our BBC Glasgow live set tomorrow with the Burnsong band. Some of the recordings will appear on tomorrow's Ian Anderson show; we'll be passing on more to the BBC in the next week or so - here's hoping some of these amazing songs get the airplay they deserve over the coming year.
We're just about to run the second half of the set, so I need to get back to it. For now, I've posted some of MP3s (below) of songs written this week, created using our mobile recording rig. In each case, this song did not exist last Saturday night - and here it is as a finished radio-ready recording. Ain't the creative process a thing to behold!

Yesterday's task was to work on an up-tempo song (singer-songwriters often have a tendency toward melancholia, and we want some lively material for our live set at the BBC in Glasgow on Friday). Lots of people are working on Logic, Garageband or Pro Tools, and I hope to post some examples here soon.
Today everyone is writing a voice-only song. There are some extraordinary vocalists in the group, and working on recordings of their material is a delight - one songwriter I know described recording songs with strong singers as like driving an expensive car; the destination is the same but the journey so much more pleasurable!
I'm blogging this from a pitch-black car park because that's where the wireless reception is clearest. I'm sure everybody had to blog outdoors back in Victorian times...

Today our first song rolled off the studio production line - Padraig's 'Honours For Fees', the only song of the original 12 winners that was unrecorded originally. All the musicians are Burnsong winners.
The songwriters were given their second task - to write a song at a tempo faster than 120 beats per minute. Lots of them are getting into writing with laptops and drum loops - quite a change for some of the more traditional folk writers, and the results are going to be very interesting, I think!