annika hammer

Annika Hammer

This is my dear friend Annika Hammer, (Nika), who I was in university with many years back. We don’t see each other very often, but when we do, we invariably end up at a piano at some point. She’s one of the few people I’ll fire off demos of new songs to and be comfortable knowing that I’ll get really constructive feedback from her, and her musical sense is one that I trust.

Although we studied classical piano together, she was very much steeped in Swedish folk music, and has been in a few different Swedish folk groups since, as well as maintaining her classical and solo pop stuff too.

Before Christmas, she uploaded some demos of her own songs and some gorgeous cover versions, which I’ve been completely addicted to ever since. I’d heard her doing a cover of “Love Will Tear Us Apart” the last time she visited me here in Ireland, and I absolutely adored her take on the song, so I was glad to see that she’d posted that on Soundcloud too:

However, perhaps my favourite of the covers is a Swedish song that I didn’t know of before hearing her sing it, but it seems to be quite well known. “Utan dina andetag” written by Joakim Berg, from the band Kent, and seems to have been a B-side, according to what wikipedia tells me. Another Swedish singer Carolina Wallin Pérez did a lovely stripped back version of it in 2010.

But, I’m a complete sucker for Annika’s voice and her piano playing, and I’m loving her version of this song. Even if you don’t understand a word of Swedish, the melody of this song is undeniably gorgeous. Beautifully written.

This one is her own, and she’d previously sent me this and another track to lend an ear to, and this one was my instant favourite and still is:

You can hear more from Annika over on her own Soundcloud page where you’ll find two more original songs, and some gorgeous Swedish folk songs too.
Over on her MySpace page she still has a cover of Joni Mitchell’s “Conversation” up, which was recorded on the piano downstairs here, and she also has a recording of her classical side, playing a Mozart piano sonata. (There’s nothing this woman cannot do.)

The Swedish trad band she is in also, Sheik, are on Soundcloud too (I recommend their youtube too, as the band are all beautiful.) And her gorgeous piano & flute folk duo, JONI are only on Myspace from what I can see, but trust me, you want to hear those tunes. Just flute and piano, and gorgeous.

I’ve a bunch of gigs in July

mister ebby performing at the programme launch of the 1st Galway Fringe

I’ve a few shows coming up here in Galway in the next month if you find yourself in this part of the world.

If you’re here for the Volvo Ocean race, I’m playing a gig on the 6th of July in the live venue upstairs in Kelly’s with some other acts, as a part of the Colours festival which is running at the same time as the Ocean Race festival. I’m looking forward to sharing a stage with Willow Sea, Matteo Priante, and Michael O’Connor.

The Galway Fringe festival had its inaugural programme launch last Friday, which I was very pleased to have been asked to perform at. The festival itself runs alongside the Galway Arts festival from the 12th to the 30th of July. I have a solo show in the Fringe programme, which has been moved to Saturday the 21st of July in Rouge at 3pm, instead of the 22nd as I’d previously posted. There’s a small discrepancy between the printed programme and the programme on the website at the moment, but that’ll be sorted pretty soon.

Unfortunately, the date change means some of the string players I’d hoped to use are no longer available, but I will work something out, and the show will go ahead as planned regardless. I’m quite looking forward to playing the grand piano in Rouge, to be honest. So often I’m playing my live gigs standing behind my trusty Roland stage piano, but this gig will be a lot different from my usual gigs as I get to really be much more expressive with a proper acoustic piano. I’m really looking forward to it. It’s free! Come along. [facebook event]

The wonderful Off Beaten Path dancers have their own show running for three days from the 25th of July also as part of the Fringe festival. They’re presenting two dance pieces, one of which uses my song Codail Sámh, and I will be doing some additional music as part of their show too, but the main focus are their two dance pieces. I’m quite excited to see their work, as I was lucky enough to sit in one some of their rehearsals, and it looks like it’ll be a really beautiful piece. Their other piece is using a track by The Chromatics, which will be a great contrast to the piece using my music. Definitely a show to try and catch, and their show is free too!

If you’re not going to be in Galway during July (honestly though, where else would you be but here for this month? Galway is amazing in July) then keep an eye out for other gigs around the country later in the year. If you don’t catch the dance show, we will be shooting a video of the dance piece itself, so you’ll be able to see their work in a slightly different format, but it will be even more thrilling to see in person.

Willow Sea

Matteo

Checking out my music for the first time?

I put together a few tracks that are some of my own favourites, and give a good cross section of the different kinds of music I’ve explored so far. Some songs from my debut album Wires, (check out the web album liner notes version of that album too) and some of the instrumental piano work too.

I’m heading back into the print studio tomorrow with Grace, to finish screen printing the last batch of the funder’s edition of the album covers. Once that batch is printed and assembled, then I’ll be starting to post them out to the folk who helped fund the album recording last summer.

There’s a few more video recording shoots coming up in the next few weeks, all going to plan, and I can’t wait to see how those turn out. For these next two, I’m working closely with Galway based dancer Genevieve Ryan, who has been helping turn my ideas into actual video shoots. She’ll be dancing in one of the videos herself too. The next two songs that I hope to be shooting videos for are Phoenix and Codail Sámh, but I’ve been working on treatments for a few other songs off the record too, and hopefully will get around to shooting those videos this summer too. For one of those in particular, we might be looking to crowdsource some extras for the shoot, so keep an eye on this blog, and my twitter, facebook, or google+ page if you might be interested.

The videos are all being done with pretty much no budget, and just the time, energy and talent of people who want to come together to create something. It’s absolutely humbling that such talented people are giving their talent and time to these little projects of mine. I’m really looking forward to seeing how the next two videos turn out, but I’ll be doing updates about those shoots when they happen later this month.

Speaking of camera work, some bright-eyed fans of Ros Na Rún spotted that I had a tiny little part in an episode of the show last week. I’d almost forgotten about it myself, and missed it airing, but some people saw it, recognised me, and got in touch to tell me so. Sweet – thanks a million.

Wires album liner notes

I’ve been busying myself making the special funders edition version of the cd covers, but also putting together an online version of extended album liner notes here on the website. It’s one thing I’ve always loved about CDs and Vinyl records – being able to pore over the pages of lyrics while listening, or look at the photographs, see who the musicians are on each song, and read the little thank you notes. It’s something that’s less easy to do when you’re buying music digitally.

But with this online version I’ve put together, you can listen to the album in full, investigate songs individually and see the lyrics, musician credits, and read about the recording experience, or what inspired the song in some cases. There’s some photos from behind the scenes in the recording studio, in the printmaking studio, and now in the dancers studio too. Each page will be updated as more of the videos get shot and made available online, and I’m toying with the idea of putting up some music score parts for some of the songs in future as well. So, the liner notes are something that will hopefully continue to grow and develop over the next few months as I keep realising the “Wires” project fully and will then be a wonderful document of the record when it’s time to move on to the next project.

So, why not grab a cuppa, and Check out the liner notes as they are right now.

Piano habits

Improv is how I interact with a piano mostly. As much as I’ll go and play music by some wonderful composers, or my own music, very often I’ll just sit at the piano with a coffee and play away whatever comes into my head. I have been known to be playing with one hand while reading twitter with my phone in my other hand, but that’s a bad habit I’m trying to do less of.

I go through phases with what I play when I’m just improvising away at the piano. Lately a lot of my piano improvisations have ended up exploring similar rhythm patterns, and a lot of close playing with overlapping hands. For a while I was really exploring a lot of simple chord progressions and melodies, out of which grew some of the piano instrumental pieces that I still play and have done demo recordings of. There’s one piece that I’ve not recorded at all yet which is sort of a link from that stuff to the kind of exploration I’m doing at the piano these days.

I’ve found myself playing compound chords, odd progressions, lots of repeated chords with accents providing the rhythms, and melodies forming and dispersing out of those chords. There was a quote that stuck in my head from a piano masterclass from Daniel Barenboim I was watching on youtube, where he said something about how you are either playing with all ten fingers as individual fingers, or else with both hands as one unit. It stuck in my head, because it’s so true:

“You don’t play with two units, with two hands: you either play with one unit made of two hands, or you play with ten units.”

Daniel Barenboim – Masterclass on Beethoven – Chicago, USA. July 2005

The kinds of music I explore through improvisation is very much a signifier of what kind of music I write around that time, as very often it’s through improv that I’ll find a melody, or progression, or whatever, that ends up as a song. Certainly I can pinpoint which songs of mine were written around the same time, merely by looking at what kind of piano part it has.

I’m always tempted to record myself every time I improvise, but that’d be a heck of a lot of random hours of playing music, with a lot of repetition as I explore an idea. Instead, if there’s something I really like that I’m playing, I’ll play around with it and really watch what I’m playing. Also, I don’t really like people listening to me improvising, as it’s always riddled with “mistakes”, or messy playing, or half formed ideas, and as interesting as those sketches might be, they’re really just sketches which might become actual works later on. Also, the improv can be a lot closer to the bone, and it’s like a musical brain drain I guess. It’s also my favourite way to practice and exercise my hands, but not perhaps the best way, as it gets too limited in focus sometimes.

One of the simple little piano pieces that grew from an improv is the extra bonus track on the Bandcamp version of the album, but you can download it for free if you sign up to my mailing list with your email address.

I always tell people that piano is easy – the notes are there, you just play them, but playing piano well is the difficult part. But really, if you’re interested in piano you should watch that entire masterclass with the three different pianist being coached by Barenboim. It also features this wonderful piece of wisdom about the piano:

The piano, like this, a very primitive, neutral instrument. Any weight you put on the keys produces a sound, look. It’s a C# – not particularly interesting, but I do with the elbow. You can do that with an ashtray – anything, you can do that!

You try to do that with a violin, you get nothing! You have to first find a note, then you have to know how to put the finger, then you have to know how to connect the two hands.. then you have to decide… so before you can actually make the equivalent of that [pointing to the piano note].

Therefore, the piano is, from that point of view, a very neutral element, and it is precisely this neutrality which gives it the possibility of so much expression. Because you can put on the neutral wall any colour you want – you cannot put whatever colour you want on a wall that already has a colour – blue, red or whatever it is.

And the neutrality of the piano is what gives it the possibility to be so expressive. But in order to do that, you have to accept the fact that in itself, left to its own devices, it is a very neutral, inexpressive instrument, but that it is open to 20 million different ways of seduction of each finger.

Daniel Barenboim – Masterclass on Beethoven – Chicago, USA. July 2005

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