Hello there!
Just to let you know now, that ‘pages’ is the name of my second album and the artwork is currently being completed. Here’s a little bit about how I made it and the music and meaning within will hopefully speak to you in its own way when you hear it in late Spring.
I spent most of 2008 working alone on this album. I have never spent so much time working alone on any project as I did on this one. It’s how I needed to do it, and while often very confronting I really wanted to get to the root of what I wanted to express. I also had a particular sound in my head for the album which involved using an orchestra with songs in a way I hadn’t heard before so I wanted to explore that world.
Since ‘13 songs’, in exploring the orchestral sound-world I spent my time developing my orchestration and conducting skills in a number of ways. I scored ‘13 songs’ for 65-piece orchestra and I had 2 compositions premiered by the Crash Ensemble. I scored also for a string orchestra which I conducted in concert. I worked on compositions, and I studied orchestration and conducting.
Between February and March I spent about 5 weeks at the Tyrone Gutherie Centre in Annaghmakerrig, which is an Artists’ Retreat in Co. Monaghan. I spent my time there only working on words, with just with my pen and all of my thought-copies, and I worked in silence. I stayed in the self-catering cottages out the back, and while it was very isolated and confronting to work alone for so long, it felt very challenging and exposing. I thought a lot about what I wanted to say in terms of text, and WHY I should say it. I had a very large amount of material accumulated in many ‘thought-copies’, and I had to systematically filter everything down into a number of prose essays. I then re-drafted each essay a few times until I had a number of poems where each one was essentially a distillation of a different thought-stream from my thought copies. I ended up with a series of poems and would later decide if every poem would end up on ‘pages’ in the form of a song or not.
I spent most of April to July working on the orchestrations at home. Many of these started with pencil and manuscript working in silence from my head. Many started on the piano as chords, which I later transferred to my lap-top by typing in every single note that was to be played. Tedious this phase was but incredibly rewarding it was too. Sometimes I got really scared of the whole thing knowing that every one of these written notes was going to be played by the orchestra in the space of a day, and there would be no re-takes after that because everything was going to be played live. I didn’t want to record any playing after the orchestral recording day or I didn’t want to add any instruments. If a piece didn’t work it would have to be cut.
I then had many pots to distil from: ‘husband and wife’ pairings of each poems with their spouse-melodies, married because a melody had asked for certain words or because certain words had sung out certain melodies; some poems with no music at all; fully orchestrated pieces already married to poems; ‘unattached’ orchestral pieces . . . it nearly became too big! But I knew that many of my decisions would fall into place after hearing the orchestra play the music for the first time on the recording day, and I practised the conducting of each piece a lot beforehand. I knew it was going to be very intense and I had to be well-prepared.
The recording day in July was definitely one of the best and happiest days of my life and I can’t believe that we got 14 pieces rehearsed and recorded in 6 hours. There was a brilliant atmosphere and the players were so amazing to work with. The orchestra included trumpets, french horns, trombone, vibraphone, clarinet, flute, oboe, bassoon, violins, violas, cellos, double bass, glockenspiel, sticks and more. I needed to take a full week to recover after it however! The scariest thing on the day was that I was the only person in the room that had heard any of the orchestral music or had heard any of the songs, because they were only in MY head. I was the composer, producer, conductor, and would later be the singer. Neither did anybody else apart from me even know the real titles, as I used initials as the working titles. So I didn’t really know if any of it was any good or not!
Back at home from August I spent a lot of time alone reviewing every single recording to find the takes that I liked and that I felt I could sing well over. After that, and up to the 26th of September I was joined by my wonderful engineer Ger McDonnell and we recorded and mixed all of the vocals after the orchestra was mixed. I only had about 2 days off between producing, singing, mixing, reviewing etc., from early August to the end of September. When I was on my own I just went into a zone where I would work for hours like a zomby without moving and on all the days when Ger was coming over I needed to be prepared for him for an early start, so I would work until about 2, 3 or 4am the night before. I didn’t want him to have to wait around for any faffing the next day. I think we both ended up with very pale complexions!
I remixed the vocals on 6 of the pieces again in early October and then took myself over to London to get the album mastered by Jon Astley. On the 28th of October, the day my wonderful singing teacher Evelyn Dowling was laid to rest, the name ‘pages’ came to me after many tough weeks of indecision. The memory of Evelyn definitely inspired me on that.
The final, FINAL master of ‘pages’ was done on the 19th of November and that felt very final indeed.
So that’s just some of the story. There is so much more to tell but that’s all for now! I’m happy to confirm that I am truly happy with it and that I couldn’t have done any more. I like attempting to get to the stage of accepting my position on my personal creative road at each point in life. Where I am creatively right now is where I really am, and being a perfectionist I had to work on accepting that. ‘pages’ truly does represent me, right now at this time in my life. If I were to do more to it then it wouldn’t be ‘pages’ anymore.
So it’s on to the artwork completion and then the album will be with you in a few months.
Looking forward to sharing ‘pages’ with you later in the year. . . . . .
x Julie
My work-table in a mid-distillation phase at Annaghmakerrig…………………………
January 9th, 2009
Hello!
I finally finished all of the orchestrations and got to the recording day in one piece. I conducted the orchestra over two sessions at the Irish Chamber Orchestra Studio in Limerick, and we got everything recorded. The players were just fantastic, not only in their excellent playing but in their lovely warmth and enthusiasm. I don’t think it could have been a nicer session. I am so very grateful for their fantastic talent.
It was a very small recording team just like I had on the first album and it felt so intimate. I was honoured and delighted to have Ger McDonnell again as engineer (who was engineer on my first album) and also Edel Griffith who Assistant-engineered (as she also did on my first album). The wonderful Graeme Stuart was my score reader on the day and Gerry Keenan booked all of the players and generally made everyone feel fabulous (as usual! .. x).
So now I’m at the mixing stage and the album will hopefully be completed by the end of August.
x Julie
August 1st, 2008
My favourite space to create music in is hard to define. It can be one of many spaces, but the most important space is the space that is my own head. If that space is furnished properly then I’d be happy to work on the roof of Clery’s. I get a lot of my ideas in mid conversation, or while walking, or travelling, so my copy books and mobile phone are always close at hand so that I can jot words and musical ideas down in tonic solfa.
So the space could be on the road, or on a train or plane or while having a coffee with someone or watching a film. I’m quite a shifty geezer when it comes to the next stage of composition and I need to move spaces a lot during the different parts of the process. I probably exude the composure of someone who’s carrying a bomb or who’s about to initiate a catastrophe.
Firstly I always work everything out on paper and manuscript. I then work with studio gear in my bedroom but sometimes I get cabin fever and move out to the sofa. I work in the kitchen when I’m doing work on the piano. I do my orchestration work on my laptop on the sofa or on my bed and then sometimes transfer the files to the desktop in the bedroom so I can work there for a change of scene. Once I went away to Annamakerrig and I found it really brilliant because I was taken out of my environment in a focused way and I got a massive amount of work done.
My bedroom is very clean but very cluttered until I get a fit of tidying every six months or so. I have often shared my bed with a keyboard and hard disk recorder or bundles of cables for months, and you are as likely to find yourself poked by some kind of charger or memory stick as you are to find the pillow. I am also a hoarder. When I was seven they found the end of a burger in my wardrobe 6 months after we’d been on a day trip to Dublin as I was feeling nostalgic about the first burger I’d ever eaten. So I never throw out anything of sentimental value, even a cable. Curiously enough I keep the living room and kitchen extremely tidy. It’s some kind of weird contradictory cleansing complex I have.
The most important things for me to have in my creative space are plenty of scope for silence and ideally an opportunity to have a glance at the nice view or the world outside from time to time. During the day, inspecting the shenanigans of the odd-ball neighbour can work very well, or some poor dog who’s tormenting himself trying to do something impossible.
I love the sound of the squeaky gate the goes every time someone drives into the car park across the road. I really love the sound of the night at about 3am and the way things echo in such an unusual way. I love the smell of the rainy night when you stick your head out the window for a glance, and the old drips of rain from a more glorious earlier rainfall that stagger from a drain and sound like they’re drunk. I really love the time when the birds start to sing at about 4am in those last few hours before the traffic starts again. Those last few lingering pregnant hours have a sense of peaceful magic and seem like they’re longer. It feels like nobody else in the world is awake. All the music always comes together then.
I often go for extremely long periods of time without even moving when I’m working. I could stay seated and working for 10 to 12 hours without even getting up. It’s probably very unhealthy to do that but it really works for me. After trying for years I just can’t get into this regular day of working that many artists talk about where they do a proper moderate day’s work. I’d love to get there eventually but I’m still someone who needs some kind of deadline, even if it’s something motivated by anxiety of an external deadline, and I do love going with momentum. I probably live my life that way. I love variety in life and while working on a specific project I do very intensive stints. Then I like being able to have the freedom of working somewhere else for a while.
My schedule is nondefinable and includes grabbing time when inspiration hits and sometimes I have to wait until I’m up to date on all of the admin stuff which really drains my will to live sometimes! In creative terms, isolation is hugely important to me. I spend all of the creative process working alone, and then only when that stage is over and I have my soundworld together do I feel comfortable having others listen.
What I like most about my space is the fact that it is always so present and always plentiful in wonderful surprises. It is a huge personal resource in that I know that amazing comfort can come from there.
I wrote this piece originally for Sinead Gleeson who asked me to write it for her blog at:
http://www.sineadgleeson.com/blog/2008/03/18/musical-rooms-part-18-julie-feeney/
March 29th, 2008
Hello there
Just to let you know that there is an hour long podcast feature on my music on RTE Radio 1 on
http://www.rte.ie/radio1/mytunes/1172890.html
I talk about how I compose music. Apart from that I’m working away on exploration for my second album which will be completed next year!
Have a great Christmas!
x Julie
December 21st, 2007
I am still spending all of my time these days in my own world composing music and I am still loving it! Sorry I haven’t been able to write in a while. I was delighted with the premiere of my composition for the Crash Ensemble which was called ‘Sleeping’. I scored it for viola, cello, alto flute, clarinet, trombone, percussion and vibraphone and it was conducted by Alan Pierson. I performed live video visuals to accompany the piece. It was just my face being asleep. It felt so strange not to be singing but I didn’t want to on this one. I had recently become fascinated by the sounds, the grimaces, the expressions and the facial tremors that sleeping people make. At the same time, while collaborating with a Japanese Botuh dancer on a recent production ‘Slat’ at the Galway Arts Festival, I became addicted to very slow body movements. I wanted my piece of music to be accompanied by a live video projection of my face ‘being asleep’. I wanted the ‘face’ to be live also, rather than prerecording it, and I’m really glad I bit the bullet and did it. I actually nearly decided not to do it the day before. But you’ve got to try things out or you’ll never know!
The Crash Ensemble were brilliant and I am very honoured to have worked with them again. Last November they premiered my piece The Tail Is Wagging the Dog in Dublin. Their festival, Shindig, this time lasted the whole weekend and I was blown away by the high standard of pieces on the programme. It was truly an aural stimulation ‘fest’. What a weekend!
It was a real blast to conduct the string section from the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra in Liverpool. Moya and the band were fantastic too, very tight. After spending so much time orchestrating her songs, it felt strange to be conducting the notes that I had written over so many weeks. I couldn’t believe they were finally being played. I was extremely impressed also with the standard of playing from the string players. Seriously excellent.
That’s all for now, I really must get back to composing. I’ve made mucho progress since I last blogged and I really hope to continue that way. Till soon!
November 20th, 2007
Hello there!
I’m spending all of my time these days in my own world composing music and I’m loving it. It’s a wonderful to be able to spend all of my time doing that. On the 12th my composition for the Crash Ensemble will be premiered and it’s called ‘Sleeping’. It’s scored for viola, cello, alto flute, clarinet, trombone, percussion and vibraphone. They’re a brilliant ensemble and I’m very honoured to be working with them again. Last November they premiered my piece ‘The Tail Is Wagging the Dog’ in Dublin. I won’t be singing this time but I will be performing some performance art which will be on a live video projection as part of the performance.
I have now got most of the material for my next album together and I’m looking forward very much to recording it over the next few months.Since I composed the song cycle version of ‘13 songs’ for the Ulster Orchestra last May, my ears have really opened up to many new combinations of sounds. I’ve been exploring lots also with my voice.
Recently I finished orchestrating 9 songs for Moya Brennan and the strings of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra which I’ll be conducting in concert at the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Hall on the 21st in Liverpool.
That’s all for now!
October 4th, 2007
It was brilliant to perform at this festival, not to mention that Italy is definitely one of my favourite countries in the world! The crowd were just lovely and actually danced ad sang along to my music. I was very taken aback given that my album isn’t even released there. The festival was so different to Irish or English festivals. I don’t think I saw one drunk person!
July 28th, 2007
It was such a blast to work on ‘Slat’ at the Galway Arts Festival. I worked with Japanese Butoh dancer Maki, choreographer Ghohei, musicians Robbie and Rebecca, artist Alice Maher, lighting designer Paul Keogan and composer/deviser Trevor Knight. I think it’s fair to say that the Irish contingent learned hugely from the Japanese! Their talent was incredible not to mention their work ethic, and it was so inspiring to work with them.
I felt something very special that I hadn’t felt before in my part of the performance. I really want to explore performance art much more after doing that. ‘Performance art’ is such a vague term so I think I’ll just discover it and see where it leads me!
July 25th, 2007
It’s been really lovely playing some Irish dates. Recently I’ve played the Spiegeltent in Cork, Wexford, Kinsale and Drogheda. I think though now I feel that I need to get immersed in writing again, very much so.Â
July 15th, 2007
I cannot say in words what an incredible experience it was to stand in front of the Ulster Orchestra and perform my own song cycle for 2000 people. It was one of the most spectacular and significant experiences of my life.
I know I nearly exhausted myself to within my last breath orchestrating my own song cycle, but the exhilaration I felt up on the Waterfront stage was worth every second. On the first song I felt very emotional. It was so surreal hearing a 65 piece orchestra behind me playing all of the notes I had written. Boy. Belfast is just brilliant. Thank you Belfast!
May 6th, 2007
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