The only opera I’ve ever seen live was one I was working backstage on, and I’ve never managed to get to see one properly as a member of the audience, which is a silly situation now that I think about it.
There’s a nice synopsis of the three acts on the Opera Ireland page for the event, just so you know what’s going on as you listen to the beautiful music.
It’s a mask I made when I was a young teenager that was found in the attic again this summer, so I decided to re-use it this year as one of my hallowe’en costumes.
Added some videos to my youtube page over the last few days. Nothing that you won’t have heard already on my soundcloud page, or via this website, but some people prefer youtube, so I’m starting to use my account there a bit more.
youtube playlist with a number of my songs and performances
This song was written at the same time as Helen (don’t make a sound) back in 2007 sometime. Both songs were inspired by novels I’d read or recently read at the time. I’ve noted previously that I tend to work on songs in batches of two or three at the same time. Sometimes an idea splits in three, sometimes I’ve loads of little ideas that start to link together resulting in some different songs. With this one, I was working with a really basic straight-forward chord progression, and I was trying to write something that was musically quite simple and direct. Perhaps because the other song I was working on at the same time was the opposite of that.
I’ve never been so sure of this song, but I like some parts of it. I guess I’ve been playing it so long that I’m just used to it. One of my old housemates surprised me one day by saying it was her favourite of my songs. I think I have a music-snob idea that because it’s simple it’s not as good as some of the more musically complex songs. I’ve managed to completely over complicate the piano line as a result though, and I definitely fuck it up in this demo. I’d go fix it up before posting it, but my piano has been out on loan all weekend, and when it comes back I’m gonna finish off the new demo I start for “is this what they call romance?” instead.
I’m not a fluent Irish speaker. I didn’t learn Irish very well in school either. Any Irish I do have came from the fact that I was friends with Irish speakers, and joined a youth theatre group at An Taibhdhearc, the National Irish Language Theatre of Ireland, based here in Galway. Thus I will apologise if the lyrics of this little song are examples of terrible Irish. :)
It is one of two songs that I have written that have Irish language lyrics – the other one just has one section of the song in Irish, and the rest of it is in English. Interestingly, I never set out to “write a song in Irish”, it just seemed to happen both times.
This one was written when I was working as a barman in Club Áras na nGael (the Irish language bar here in Galway) and obviously being surrounded by Irish on a daily basis had some kind of an impact. It is one of the things I love most about Galway – it’s the only city I’ve been in in Ireland where I’ve heard people casually using Irish in day-to-day situations, e.g. queuing for the banklink, or sitting at a table in a café, or talking to their kids walking down the street. As much as the language can appear to be integrated in a tokenistic manner in some parts of the country, here it doesn’t feel like that at all. It really does feel like it is a part of the city – a small part, sure, but a definite one.
It’s only a wee little song, and I never finished off the lyrics or really figured out in my head where it’s going, but I demo’d it again there in the last few weeks to get it on record so I could sit with it and really hear what I want to do to the song. So, I guess it’s a work in progress at the moment and we’ll see what happens with it.
In terms of writing it – the melody came first, and the words kinda slotted into place at one point when I was playing it at the piano. The song was written at the same time as Maria, and both started life as piano instrumentals. I may yet record instrumental versions of both songs, as I’ve half a notion to release a little record of just piano instrumentals.
