Comprising a collection of compositions, book chapter, and educational tools this project examined new approaches to songwriting from various perspectives.
The project’s book chapter explored the role that sampling and sequencing technologies have played in the recent evolution of songwriting, and asserted that techniques pioneered in the formative years of hip-hop and underground dance musics have proliferated into the wider pool of popular music compositional strategies in the post-digital age. Four key contemporary songwriting techniques were identified including performing the sample, melodic assemblage, use of repeating mantra, and 'cut and paste' structures.
The album Fingers in the Gloss further explored these trends and themes through creative work. Opting out of traditional song forms, instrumentation and recording techniques, rejecting dominant structures, skills, and equipment; instead it explored DIY and anti-production techniques. Strategies included - open improvisation and extended technique on turntable and tape; capture of internal working sound of instruments; use of non-standard studio instruments and hardware (often broken, obsolete or domestic); extensive live processing and mixing as opposed to post-production in the digital audio workstation. As a basis for semi-live songwriting the result was a series of works where sung melody met noise and collage, and song fragments floated in larger structures.
This project extended to empower other with music makers with practical strategies for the contemporary songwriter working in our increasingly fragmented and multi-layered post-digital landscape. Accompanying the album were a series of public workshops, entitled ‘De-skill and Scavenge: New Recipes for Songs', exploring the liminal space between songwriting and experimental music/improvisation with playback media. In the chapter four sets of practical exercises are provided to empower the reader to work beyond the confines of a traditional musical skillsets, by approaching instruments and recording technologies as compositional tools in new ways.
Tools
Tools
