Robert McFall

We're moving into a 'post-production' stage of the afternoon just now - i.e. the musician's have finished and can sit and write blogs etc.

One of the nice things about these workshops is that, because everything's being played on electric instruments, we can talk while being recorded - it doesn't come through because there are no mics in the room. For this reason we've just recorded a whole piece - by Julien Lonchamp - with Rick, our bass player, counting the beats almost the whole way at the same time as playing! Which he obviously enjoyed the challenge of! There's a conversation going on as I write about the desirability of click tracks - well, I'd rather have Rick counting aloud any day.

In some ways today was a simpler affair than yesterday - we merely (merely!) had to get to play the piece correctly while Julien and Martin applied effects to it and Alex refined and recorded it. The piece is called Fall of a window cleaner and has many echos (as the composer himself verified) of Bernard Hermann's suspense and horror film track music - in this case considerably expanded by quite extreme use of sound processing. The second half of the piece (in which the window cleaner falls into the building and fights to get out - or something like that - complicated story line) is, as Rick pointed out, reminiscent of Steve Reich's music - and, indeed, Julien admitted that Reich is one of his current influences.

The weather outside (very present as we sit beside a huge window which opens onto a veranda with a fabulous view over the foothills of the Moorfoot Hills) held up and it didn't rain, but it was overcast and a bit blowy. Martin's been taking field recordings of the outside sound world out there - maybe they'll find their way into someone's piece.

A fiennes.org site

Mr McFall’s Chamber is a registered charity: SC028348

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