Written by Kirsty Devaney, Composer for Newtown
For the for-Wards project I am finding that having two screens is really useful!
On the left is a software programme called Sibelius 6. This is a notation programme that means I can create the score and parts for the musicians. It also plays back the music I have notated into the computer. This give me a really rough idea of what it will sound like – however the instrumental sounds on the computer are not half as good as having real living musicians play your music.
On the right is another programme called Logic Pro. I am less familiar with Logic but it allows me to manipulate and alter the recordings we got from the community session. I have chopped them up, layered them and changes the volume (the yellow lines show the volume changes).
I also have my electric piano to the right of my computer for when I need to generate new musical material.
What has been interesting is trying to play both the Sibelius and Logic files together to help give me an idea of how the final piece will fit together. After the second workshop I found that in rehearsal with the musicians the recording files from logic were very quiet compared to real musicians so I need to make them louder. This is just one example of how things can change or don’t work when you go from computer to musicians.
