The United Kingdom Pt. 1 - Scotland
Ok, So I’m currently in Oxford nearing the end of my journeys, and I think it’s about time to take stock and recount some of the adventures.
So the goals for my trip were generally:
- Meet some creative musicians making music in the post/math-rock idiom and quiz them about their composition process, mainly trying to gain insights into this whole perception/composition problem outlined in previous posts.
- Make field recordings of interesting sonic environments for later use in compositions.
- Study the Schillinger System of Musical Composition - an extensive system for writing music involving numbers and equations and other interesting and crazy stuff.
- See shows and network with musicians and label people here.
- Gather inspiration for new works.
So let’s start with Scotland, where Summer is colder than what I consider Winter at home. In Glasgow I was lucky enough to meet up with John Cummings of Mogwai, for a few pints and a chat at a lovely pub and record store called Mono. It was really interesting to hear him elaborate in a really humble and down-to-earth way on what was behind music that I have greatly admired for years.
As a band who’ve been around for about 15 years, their process has changed greatly, and this has had huge effects on the sonic outcomes. For example, we chatted about the process of the most recent Mogwai release, Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will - during the making of this album the members were scattered across the globe, so the composition process involved exchanging files over the net, each member adding parts individually and building the composition. John felt that one of the effects of this was a stronger divergence of ideas. In a rehearsal room situation where the members come up with parts together while jamming, there is an instant feedback network between all the members, which tends have a normalising effect on what is created. When members are working in isolation, the ideas can follow more extreme tangents and result in a more diverse collection of work.
Another interesting thing was hearing about how each member has a different sort of perspective on the sound, with some members more sensitive to harmony and melody, and others more obsessed with texture and sonic quality. This seems consistent with my experience of working with musicians - those with less formal training often have a more acute sense of sound quality and timbre, perhaps due to less top-down perceptual interference from analysing pitch classes and rhythms. And vice-versa for those with training.
I found Glasgow an enjoyable place to be, lots of interesting architecture, shops, and cafes, but without the strong smell of tourism that pervades Edinburgh. Don’t get me wrong - I’m aware that I AM a tourist, but when you walk down a whole street where each shopfront is coated in bright glossy paint and the name of each store starts with “Old Scottish…” you start to feel like you’re not getting the real deal.
In Glasgow I ran into a few nice guys in a cool store called Rubadub who sell loads of great audio gear and vinyl. We got chatting after discovering that we shared mutual friends, and talked about records for a while. He recommended some discs I might like, and I bought one called How to Dress Well - Love Remains.
In Edinburgh I did a lot of wandering while Helen was at a neuroscience & music conference. I did things like climbing Arthur’s Seat, enjoying pub lunches, covertly recording Scottish conversations, and generally enjoying the atmosphere. In the evenings Helen gave me her summary of the Music & Neuroscience presentations that she liked from that day of the conference, so I got the win-win of getting the interesting bits without having to sit through it all.
I captured some interesting sounds there - here’s an excerpt of one of the many bagpipe recordings I made, and also a train announcer with an awesomely unintelligible accent, that Helen & I both felt needed to be recorded.
http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Fplaylists%2F884752feild recording xcerptz by Chrisperren
On the whole I really enjoyed Scotland, I would love to go again and spend a longer time there, especially in Glasgow. Although having experienced the chilly summer I’m a bit terrified of what the temperature would be at any other time in the year…
Stay tuned for the next installment of this story: London.