Tag: video

Behind the scenes: screenprinting the covers

The very lovely Grace Mitchell was in Lorg Fine Art Printmakers last Friday finishing off the screenprints for the handmade limited edition covers I’m sending out to the wonderful folk who funded my album. I tagged along, pretended to be helpful, but really just made coffee and shot some video footage and took some photos of the work in progress.

So, if you’ve ever been curious as to what a fine art print studio was like, here’s a little bit of a look inside the studio at Lorg. We were just screenprinting that day, but there was another artist in the studio doing some etching at the same time, which was interesting for me to watch as well, but I didn’t shoot any footage of that.

I’d done a little bit of screenprinting when I was studying art in secondary school myself, but this is on a whole other level by comparison, and was quite interesting to watch. I now have another batch of about 60 covers to assemble – which will take me a little while. But once they’re all made, editioned (numbered), and signed, they’ll be getting sent out. Nearly there at this stage. This is the home stretch of the CD making side of things.

The music I used in the video is bits of the piano instrumental “Bewerunge” that is up on my soundcloud too:

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.

Video: I Wish You Were Here

I’ve been intending to make some videos for the songs on the record now for a while, and this is the first one to be finished, probably because it was the simplest of all the video ideas.

I’m collaborating with some wonderful local creative talent on some other videos, which will be shot in the coming weeks too, and I’m looking to work with more people too – so if you’re interested in making videos and want to work with me on a project, then get in touch.

There’s a nice sort of reciprocal approach happening where everyone is getting something out of the projects – be it a video to represent their music, as in my case, or a vehicle to showcase their art, or dance, or whatever it is they are bringing to the project.

For a solo musician, it’s a joy and an inspiration to work with other people at times.

So, subscribe to my vimeo or youtube accounts, as there’ll be some more videos uploaded in the coming months as they get finished. Some of the ideas for those videos I’m really very excited about, and can’t wait to get working on.

It’s a slow process

Later today I’m heading in to watch Grace set up the screen to go and print the handmade covers for the CDs finally. We were waiting for a new screen bed to be installed in the studio, which was yet another unexpected delay that you just can’t plan for I guess. Hopefully Sunday will see us folding endless covers and sticking them into envelopes to finally start posting the limited edition ones off to the wonderful funders. There are still quite a few of those funders who’ve not emailed me in their addresses, but I’ll be going through those one by one and emailing them individually to remind them after I’ve sent out the cds to everyone who has already sent in their addresses.

In the interim I’ve been busying myself with meeting people who are interested in helping put together some videos for my songs. This Sunday just past I met up with two wonderful contemporary dancers who want to work on a piece using one of my songs, so I’m really excited to see how that develops. Hopefully we’ll be filming the dance piece and making it available for people to watch online. But even to have other creative artists collaborating with me and wanting to use my music for their own art is reward enough for me to be honest.

There’s another video piece being worked out at the moment too – I’ve had some ideas for videos for some of the songs, and I’ve been looking for people who are interested in getting involved to help make them happen, and it seems that one of those ideas might come to fruition. Meeting someone tomorrow who might be the very person to perform on the video, I just need to make some more contacts with filmmakers here in the west who are interested in getting involved in low/no-budget video projects using my music. But at the moment, there’s four different video ideas being actively worked on, and at various different stages so far.

Aside from all that, I’ve been continuing to teach myself how to play things on the ukulele – which I picked up a few years ago as an instrument that I don’t have to play for work, or play well, but that I can just noodle with idly at home while waiting for something to load on the computer, for example. Ukulele and knitting were my two de-stressers when I had major computer problems last year. I really enjoy the lightness of the texture from the ukulele – in many ways it’s the complete opposite to piano for me. It’s something I don’t play well, and has this light fragile sound sometimes, but that’s possibly just how I play it.

But, last night I recorded a quick one-take cover of a Fiona Apple song on ukulele just for fun. I’ve had the song running around my head for weeks now, so I figured the best way to deal with it was to learn it somehow and try sing it. Her music has really singable melodies, and they’re such a pleasure to sing too between some of the wordplay and the range that she sings in. Her albums are some of my favourites to stick on a sing along to at the top of my voice while baking, for example.

But here’s that cover if you’re interested in hearing it. I posted it last night on twitter, tumblr and facebook, so you’ve possibly already heard it, but I don’t trust myself to write a blogpost when I’m tired anymore, and this thing was recorded at about half ten last night:

Live video demos

I’m currently going through a bunch of little live video demos of some of my songs that I have on my computer, and posting a few on my youtube channel for people to see.

They give another side to some of the songs that ended up on the album – though the ones that work best in demo form are the ones that ended up pretty much with just piano and voice on the record itself.

They’re pretty low res quality, as they’re just stuff that’s recorded with the webcam and a little home recording setup I use to get songs down when I’m working on them so I have something to reference again later. I’ve been using it again lately to demo some of the very new songs I’ve been working on.

I Wish You Were Here
It’s an old song that wasn’t meant to end up on the album, but did a take of it on the last day of the piano and vocal tracking, and liked how it came out, so it ended up on the record.

Wet Feet

I think this video shows just how lazy I can be at the piano sometimes. And also how much I move when I play – it’s something piano teachers always pointed out to me but that I never really noticed until watching back little clips like this. They really tried to get me to stop moving my upper body so much when I played, but it’s a habit I’ve never broken, and something I still do whenever I play. I just move a lot at the piano when I’m playing.

The version on the album is pretty pared down too – there’s some lovely cello on it that I miss now whenever I’m playing the song solo again. Same with this next video, actually:

Restless

I do plan to have some proper videos up on my youtube channel soon, along with these wonderfully webcam home demos too.

Listen or buy the album: [itunes] [amazon mp3] [bandcamp]

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