March 14, 2013 by katie
For the first time we actually recorded our voices at a recording studio, rather than a bedroom or outdoors. We have 6 different voices on the Lightwoods Park track, which seemed too many to record outdoors.
We recorded at the Blue Whale Studio in the Custard Factory, Birmingham, and had a good and productive day last Friday. I’m back there tomorrow to record the final two voices: Gareth, a long-standing collaborator; and Catrin, a 9 year old girl.
The photo features Tom Naylor (aka Mr Naylor MC), who came in last Friday to record his own pieces of text that he has written for the Lightwoods Park story. Obviously used to doing his stuff in front of a mike! In fact everyone was a real pro on Friday (apart from me – I’m reading the instructions!)
Once the final two voices are recorded, we’ll be sending the files to Mark the Composer/Sound Designer to get to work on pulling them together into a soundscape. We’re hoping for jazz music, wintry sounds, and the sounds of skateboards on a ramp, to compliment the voices and the story.
January 17, 2013 by katie
Katherine has been busy over the last few months researching for the Lightwoods Park, Sandwell Bandstand piece. This is a completely new story, developed through conversations with several community groups and park users.
One of the main features in the park (apart from the Bandstand obviously) is skate ramp. We were keen to involve this in our story somehow, and feature the people who use it regularly.
This led us to Mr Naylor, a local MC, keen BMXer and skate park regular. We’ve asked him to write some small sections that will be part of the audio experience, and eventually we’ll record him performing them too. This is our first collaboration with an MC, so its all new territory. We like the rough texts he’s sent through so far, so we hope that we can bring it all together in a way that makes sense! His style is very different from Katherine’s (who is writing the rest of it), so it might be a bit of challenge to integrate it all. We do think its worth the trouble though, as it adds a local authentic voice to the piece, and has the potential to open up the finished piece to a different audience.
April 13, 2012 by katie
Some photos from our first research trip to Lightwoods Park, Sandwell. We’ll be developing a new work for this bandstand later in the year.
