Another great workshop with Drake Music Scotland last Thursday saw a well-balanced mix of trad and technology with three musicians from each organisation exploring how to work together . We started with an improvisation round a given set of notes, tried out some scored pieces by Drake’s Clare Johnston, and went exploring with Hector the Hero.
The main challenge is how to work with trad tunes when precise timing isn’t possible, with the obvious implications for structured harmonic changes. In this and the previous Distil/Drake workshop we’ve been exploring the concept of ‘ghosting’ (and having fun making words up …) when the music is tune driven but in phrases and fragments which repeat and interact, rather than right-through-all-together-and-again-as-fast-as-you-can style. During Hector the Hero Eilidh Steel (fiddle) and myself on harp found out just how hard it can be to try to not play in time together!
Harps were in abundance at the workshop with Fiona Rutherford and Amy Moar, who also played keyboards, from Drake. Rhona Smith, another Drake musician, uses Thumbjam on ipad and triggers Notion via a switch. Clare Johnston played viola and recorders. It’s a really thought-provoking collaboration between Drake and Distil. At the Just Festival in August several of us performed a piece of mine Ghosts and Fragments, which we’d looked at in the last workshop, and it’s a great way of looking at what makes a tune and the concept of time and timeless in trad music.
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Karen Marshalsay