All the poems that I recorded with Belvedere Mountain Express are now up on Myspace (you can find them here - you will need to scroll down to find them all!). I thought this would be a good opportunity to say a bit about how we worked on the collaboration. When I joined Myspace, I noticed that Belvedere Mountain Express (an electronic musical project of Golebnik, who sometimes comments here) were 'looking for a female vocalist or poet'. I've often liked the idea of working with a musician. So I listened to Belvedere Mountain Express' music and we met up to discuss how we could work together. At that stage, I was thinking 'this is music I could really work with' but nothing more specific! I knew though, that I must be able to work with the track 'Aux Champs des Lapins' (In the Fields of the Rabbits), so I gathered together all my rabbit haiku and scattered them through the music. I also thought about the titles of the other tracks and tried to match them with existing poems of mine, to narrow down the poems I would try to fit in the music. From there it was a process of listening to the music over and over and fitting the words in. City Empire is an existing poem and I just fitted it to the track, whereas A Vow in the Blue Belltower was the existing title of the track and I edited a poem I was working on to fit it.
The greatest challenge was how to fit short poems into long musical tracks! We're both very pleased with how it all turned out, and judging from comments here and on Facebook, so are several other people! While you're visiting Belvedere Mountain Express on Myspace, do listen to their other music, they've got some excellent tracks!
13 comments:
This all sounds wonderful Juliet. I do often wonder what people do with their time if they haven't got one or two all-consuming passions.
What a wonderful idea! I'm a musician, too (play piano and guitar and write songs and instrumental pieces), and hoping to somehow fuse my music with my writing one of these fine days. :)
You are so versatile, CGP! Must look at MySpace...
Wow! and congratulations.
Aww thanks, Juliet, for ‘bigging up’ Belvedere Mountain Express. Being without an official record label, we need all the promotion we can get!
Regarding the title of ‘Aux champs des lapins’, when my parents lived in deepest Surrey a few years back, and I used to visit them by train while living in London, there was a patch of land just south of Guildford which was always teeming with rabbits. Inspired by that, I intended to call a piece of music ‘In bunny-fields’. When I eventually came up with a composition which fitted that title, on a whim I translated it (as best I could) into French.
dear juliet, the poems & music are splendid together. The cat & I lay on the bed watching a small flurry of snow disappear as yr amazing voice fitted itself inside that landscape of music. I really wanted a whole lp of yr voice and the tangle of music. thanks for pointing the way to it. Incidently, I had a hard time figuring out how to find this place to comment to you. finally, at last, i said, now i can say how good you are! Robin
so far i've boomarked the site; i'll haveto take some time off to listen to it
much love
gillena
I really loved the one I listened to. I'll check out the rest as soon as I can.
Juliet, I've forgotten how we "met", but did you know I have two pieces on MySpace (is that how we met?).Anyway, if you haven't heard them, you can go to MYSpace and I think just type in my name of maybe RobinRule/music. I still am learning the internet protocol to making things work. ha!
love,
Robin Rule
i love the concept of music and Bunny Fields. Being a rabbit person myself. I watch every march full moon, and the wild rabbits really do dance in our apple meadow. In our part of the world, they are called Jack rabbits, are not quite as large as a hare, but bigger than rabbit and they have HUGE ears. They are a beautiful creature. So music must accompany
their wild minuet!
Weaver, Coastcard, Titus, Gillena, Deb - thanks!
Thomma - I didn't realise you were a musician, I'd love to hear some of your work sometime!
Howard - you're welcome and thanks for the backstory to the title of the piece!
Robin - thanks so much! yes we did 'meet' on Myspace, I'll pop over and listen to your tracks, I've probably listened alerady.... I love watching rabbits dance too and hares, though its rarer to see hares here...
Very cool that you've crafted a collaboration between poetry and music!
This is awesome, Juliet! You have a beautiful voice. I love how the poems are woven into the music. Wonderful work!
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