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David McGuinness's diary - May-July 2001 Monday 30 July 2001 I'm typing this on the flight back from Los Angeles, after a very busy and fairly sleepless six days gathering material about film music for the Radio 3 series Stage & Screen with presenter Tommy Pearson. There have been plenty of memorable moments, but some that spring immediately to mind are ... Lalo Schifrin playing us the Mission Impossible theme on the piano in his study, and telling stories about Frank Zappa; our realising that the quiet unassuming bloke we were talking to in the isolation booth at Todd AO studios was the film director John Woo; going out to dinner and completely failing to notice that the extremely glamorous and energetic person sitting next to me was Beyoncé Knowles from Destiny's Child (that's enough namedropping. Ed.); and finding four copies of Colin's Kisses prominently displayed in the Virgin Megastore at 8000 Sunset. OK, this last one isn't quite so Hollywood, but it cheered me up. Monday 23 July 2001 I had a royalty statement from the PRS waiting for me in the mail which included some income (not much, I hasten to add) from John Clerk's Miserere Mei Deus under the categories of UK karaoke and jukebox use. I think someone may have typed in a wrong code somewhere. Wednesday 18 July 2001 This week's holiday has occasionally been interrupted (or embellished) by packages arriving from Linn Records. On Monday came the CD booklet proofs, which look great. Unfortunately, there's no room either for all the session photos or for glossing the texts of the Scots songs, so I think I'll put up a 'additional sleeve notes' page here with the photos, the glosses, and more informal notes on the music. Eventually. This morning I sent off my corrections from the internet cafe in Port Ellen. The road east along the coast from there is amazing: within three miles you've passed three world-class distilleries: Laphroaig, Lagavulin and Ardbeg, and then a few miles further, just before the road peters out altogether, is the ruined chapel at Kildaton with its breathtaking carved cross, probably from Iona around AD800. Incidentally, the Port Ellen distillery itself is now only employed as a maltings, but if you ever come across a bottle of its product (it was in production from 1967 for a while) try it. Or better still, send it to me. Anyway, the CD premaster arrived from the saintly Ben Turner this morning, so I had the pleasure of listening to some of it on the beach across the road this evening, while taking in the view from the Paps of Jura right down to the American Monument at Oa. Mastering is a mysterious skill: I went to watch Ben work his magic on the McFalls CDs, and it looked terribly simple but I still don't understand what the hell he does, apart from make everything sound better. It's like the old rock cliche of 'What do you want in the mix then?' 'Everything louder than everything else'. Somehow that's what happens: you can hear everything much more clearly (including my dodgy edits, unfortunately). But what also struck me listening to the Ben-ed version is what a great cellist Alison is. When he mastered Colin's Kisses the same thing happened, his subtle EQ'ing really brought her sound out into the open. I'll ring him with my comments in the morning. It's good to be able to listen well away from the all-pervasive sound of the internal combustion engine - in a near-silent environment, my trusty listening kit of clapped-out old Sony Discman (made before the days of shock protection, so it skips if someone so much as sneezes in the next room) and Grado SR60 headphones (best £100 I ever spent) picks up things that I wouldn't hear in a very expensive studio. And it all fits in my hand and runs off two AA batteries. The beach across the road has some picturesque natives: Sammy the Seal, who comes by most days and sits on a rock for an hour or two, and a pair of oyster-catchers. They were even more noisy than usual when my son and I went down there yesterday (he calls it 'the sanity beach'), and it wasn't until we were on our way back that I realised why. In amongst the pebbles were an egg and a tiny chick frantically flapping its wings, and the egg was so well camouflaged that I nearly stepped on it. Rather than scare you off directly, oystercatchers try to lead you away from their nest, and we'd ignored them and stumbled across it by accident. I hope we didn't panic them too much. Thursday 12 July 2001 We're on holiday in Bruichladdich, a place well known to whisky drinkers the world over. Basically it's about twenty houses and a distillery: a commonsense ratio I think. This morning I borrowed a computer at local newspaper the Ileach's office in Bowmore (yes there's a famous distillery there too) to reply to some urgent emails. Last night I was rummaging through the pile of old records in the house where we're staying and found ABBA's Super Trouper. Like most of their albums, it has its awful moments, but the good bits really are frighteningly good, and proof positive that you can still pack an emotional punch with inept banal lyrics, as long as you get the music right. I wish they'd woken up to drum machines earlier though, as their drum parts are always simple, and on a straightforward disco thump like 'Lay All Your Love on Me' the poor guy just isn't solid enough. I'm sure some remixer has done something about it by now. But listening to it does give me just a tinge of regret at ending up a keyboard player, as sitting at the 88s (or 63s or less if it's a harpsichord) is not a musical activity that on the whole lends itself to instant emotional impact. I do retain a measure of jealousy of my colleagues who sing or play more expressive instruments. This of course explains my extreme delight at getting to play the harmonica. Wednesday 4 July 2001 The Gentle Shepherd score is taking shape now - Ben sends me the Sibelius files of his transcriptions from the sources, and then I fine-tune them and add my extra bits of arrangements. At the beginning of August we'll make up sets of parts and then it's up to everyone to make of it what they can. It was very interesting listening back to the session tapes of the Mungrel Stuff CD, how much improvisation and musical embroidery went on that I wasn't necessarily aware of at the time - there's no shortage of, ahem, personality in the playing. And quite right too: full marks to everyone for not playing what was written on the part in front of them. I wouldn't apply this approach to Bach, but then we weren't playing Bach. I'm keeping the Gentle Shepherd material as simple as possible to allow for maximum input from the players once we're all in a room together. I suppose this could be the first rule of making good music - get all the right people in the room. Most of our energy is going into organisation for August - Radio 3 has invited us onto the In Tune programme to play live on 22 August, which should be fun. We've been sending out invitations to the shows, and drumming up a bit of press, and there's still some work to do on pulling the CD together as well. Last night I put together a CD-R of all the session photos for inclusion in the CD booklet, and included two of Jamie and me taken in 1972 when we were in the same year at Hillhead Primary School. We were in different classes, but have near identical class photos - I wonder if they'll make it into the finished product. Meanwhile, with my radio programme making hat on, I'm going to head off to Los Angeles for a bit at the end of the month to interview a load of movie directors and the composers they work with. I'm producing a new strand for Radio 3 about film music (we recorded the first programme today for transmission on 30 July) which is an interesting diversion from 18th century Scottish culture. Thursday 28 June 2001 This morning we had another batch of Gentle
Shepherd auditions, and the cast list is filling up nicely. I've been away from it for a while, as I spent the last 6 days on Orkney, making radio programmes at the St Magnus Festival. It's always wonderful going there, as the place is scattered with ancient monuments from several millennia, and the people are unfailingly friendly. We recorded everything from a Chilean vet singing 'Scotland the Brave' to Thomas Zehetmair playing
Martinu.
It's inevitable on these trips that a series of running jokes develops amongst
the crew, as Orkney place names like Hoy and Twatt I would have been flying back home yesterday with the presenter Linda Ormiston (who got an OBE last week!) but the weather was foul - spectacular electric storms which added a certain drama to the concert we were recording at lunchtime. On Monday it had been beautiful - I set up a mobile office on the grass in the churchyard of St Magnus Cathedral, with Linda's iBook and lots of paper strewn about, and I got sunburnt, sporting a fetching daisy chain made for me by John Mark Ainsley. But yesterday reports from the airport were less than encouraging, and rather than risk a no-show from the vomit comet (as the Orcadians call the little plane to Scotland) we ran for the ferry instead. On the mainland was a nice man waiting for us with a brand new hired Mercedes - he'd brought it all the way from Inverness so we let him drive us back there, and then set off down through the spectacular scenery of the A9. I didn't get home until midnight, but on the way south the warm air and the gentle light make it feel like late afternoon. Thursday 21 June 2001 Today I've been putting together the last pieces in the jigsaw for the new CD. All that's left to go is the cover image - a quick brainstorming lunchtime phone call with Philip Hobbs at Linn left us with the idea of a West Highland Terrier with a Gillray-type speech bubble saying 'Ciao bella!' or some such short Italian chat-up line. I must phone Joe Davie later today and see what he thinks. The original idea that I had while wandering around Rome in March also involved a Vespa scooter, but Philip thought it was a mite incomprehensible - 'what's that got to do with Geminiani?' Anyway, the nice publicity and airplay that the second McFalls album has been getting (www.mcfalls.co.uk to buy yours) has reminded me that I ought to put similar effort into promoting my own record, so I'm going to give some thought to press releases and their most likely recipients. I'm always better at talking up other people's work than my own. ConCal board meeting and AGM was yesterday - conducted swiftly and efficiently to great relief all round. Now that we finally have an approved set of accounts for the year to August 2000, we're in a position to apply for funding for future projects. This has been a major sticking point in our future planning for some months now, so as Oliver Hardy once said, 'let's put our brains together and forge a head'. Meanwhile, casting continues: every now and again an actor appears on the doorstep to sing to me, which is a pleasant way of breaking up an afternoon's work. Sunday 17 June 2001 I'm now more than half way through the bits and pieces of arranging for The Gentle Shepherd - one of Sir William's songs has come out like a cross between a minuet and an 18th century Scottish psalm tune, which is probably about right. Yesterday I was in Edinburgh for the day, first port of call being the launch concert of John Kitchen's new CD, played on instruments from the Russell Collection. At the end he told me 'I saw you coming in and thought I'd better start telling some funny stories, because that would you'd do'. I bumped into Rob MacKillop briefly (his new CD of the Oswald Divertimentis for Guittar is just out www.robmackillop.com), and I also collared a friendly journalist who might be able to get us some advance features before August. Just time to fit in a random act of violence on a parking ticket machine before heading off to the Queen's Hall for the McFalls gig. The City of Edinburgh authorities dissuade people from taking their cars into town with some hefty parking charges, and rightly so, but I had to take a large box of tapes with me so I had to drive. The system has a failing, which is that most of the machines which issue parking tickets don't work. So the third machine of the day to take my money and offer nothing in return got a flying kick, which prompted it to offer me £1.40 in the returned coins slot. A bit like those old-fashioned fairground machines that you whack with a mallet and try to ring the bell. The gig was great fun, to an appreciative and noisy audience. My harmonica solo was hugely inaccurate, but it still brought plenty of whoops and cheers in the middle of Dave's song. Come to think of it, there was quite a lot of ruthless upstaging going on throughout the concert - Lise and I put on an impromptu puppet show with the squeaky hammers I'd brought along (they have smiley faces on) during Raymond Scott's 'Square Dance for Eight Egyptian Mummies', and then Greg trumped us with a wonderfully evil B-movie cackle in one of the drum breaks. And Su-a's musical saw accompanied by massed whistling in 'La Vie en Rose' had some sections of the audience in uncontrollable giggles. I went out and listened during a couple of numbers I wasn't in, and the PA sound was excellent - we haven't done any ConCal gigs with a PA for a year and more, but it's good to know that there are people (and gear) around that can do it properly. But it was occasionally sobering to realise, as I was blowing whoopee whistles, thrashing a piano and trying to sound like Bob Dylan on an off day, that the next time I'll be on that stage, I'll be reciting 18th century Scots as the prologue in The Gentle Shepherd. I'm sure it'll be just as much fun. Tuesday 12 June 2001 This morning began with a trip across to Edinburgh to audition some drama students with Andrew for parts in The Gentle Shepherd. There were some good people, although no-one leapt out at us screaming 'TALENT!!' or 'I would make a perfect so-and-so'. But it was great to hear people speak the words, after just having them going round my head for a couple of months. Before heading back to Glasgow I dropped in on Ben Lane who's going to save a lot of my time by putting all the songs onto Sibelius (the software) for me, and then I came back and had a meeting with Marie to go through some administrative stuff. BBC Radio 3's In Tune programme has asked us to go on and play live the week before our GS performances in Edinburgh - this should be worth doing to publicise both the shows and the CD, which should be out by then. Somehow I managed to fit in some correspondence, and a bit of arranging and some practice for this Saturday's McFall's gig, where I'm playing keyboards, harmonica and perhaps some percussion. I noticed yesterday my fingers were beginning to seize up from complete lack of use, so I got my book of Hanon keyboard exercises out and gave them a bit of a gentle workout. It doesn't take much to keep them ticking over. I could never be one of those people that practises for hours on end every day, but then I'm not playing demanding music all the time, so I don't have to. Tonight, work was put on hold, as Nicholas McGegan called me up last night to say he was in town, and was I free for a drink and a chinwag. I often complain that in Scotland, we're cut off from the cultural world at large, mainly through geography, but it's also true that a great many people, if they have some trace of Scottish ancestry, capitalise on it as much as possible and make it their business to be here when they can. Nick worked at Scottish Opera for a while (and his mum is a Robertson I think), so he has a flat just down the road and he stays there from time to time. It's nice to be able to drop in on the director of one of America's great baroque orchestras, just a 5 minute scooter ride away, and while away an hour or two. There are quite a few conductors with Scots connections who have little bolt-holes or relatives in the country, and John Butt has just been appointed Gardiner Professor of Music at Glasgow University, so he'll be resident here in the next few months too. Isolation - pah! Friday 8 June 2001 Well, after a year or so of collecting 18th century sources for the songs in The Gentle Shepherd, I finally got around this week to going them through them all systematically in the search for the most useful ones to use in our performances. No doubt some early music purists will be horrified that we're doing this 'greatest hits' approach rather than trying to reconstruct one particular production or historical performance, but I think the days when the early music movement spent its energies trying to recreate specific events are gone, and rightly so. Apart from anything else, I think the urge to relive the past betrays a disturbing attitude to history. What I try to do is understand the past, and then use that knowledge to create something in the present - I think that's a more responsible attitude towards life, let alone music. Having written this, I'm reminded of a quote from XTC's Andy Partridge which surfaced in the newly released CD of their home demos: 'Opinions are like arseholes: everybody's got one, but no-one wants to hear yours'. Anyway, it's hard work comparing anything up to half a dozen versions of a song against the text of the piece, and trying to work out which makes the most musical and dramatic sense. For light relief last night, I added a gallery page and some links to the website, and inevitably encountered a variety of technical problems which I was still fiddling with this morning. But this in turn gave me a chance to listen to the radio for a bit, and I was entranced by a recording of a 1940s arrangement of the Gloria from Monteverdi's Vespers, for full symphony orchestra and chorus. It's not a performance I'd like to hear live now, but the sheer vitality and excitement of it was wonderful, and it also proved what an astonishingly good composer Monteverdi was. If my brain gives up this afternoon, I might go and trim the hedge outside for a bit. Monday 4 June 2001 I finally finished the sleeve notes for the CD today, so I have no distractions from working on the score for Gentle Shepherd. The super-hi-fi 24 bit recording necessitated a trip across the country on Friday. If it had been bog-standard CD-quality 16-bit I could just have churned out copies on my computer at home, but instead Friday morning was spent with a mobile recording unit parked outside Calum Malcolm's place, recording from one super-duper flash SADiE machine in the truck, to a groovy Augan machine in the music room. Now Calum has to transfer that onto data CD-Rs to send for mastering. The slight complication is that no-one really knows how to do this, so the boffins back at the Augan factory in Holland are going to have a go there, and if necessary do it to our album on Calum's machine by remote control from Holland. Isn't technology wonderful? Listening to it on studio quality monitors, you can hear every breath, squeak and creak in the silences between the tracks with breathtaking precision - it's almost like being there again - but if you forget to turn the volume down again before we start playing, the music is so loud it will make your ears bleed. Overheard in the BBC canteen queue today - technician to political correspondent: 'So, what pish are you doing on election night then?' Monday 28 May 2001 Having sat up editing until 3am on Friday night, I had a real day off on Saturday (this doesn't happen often), and did some gardening in the sunshine. I thought I'd finally finished the edit last night, but there was a little technical problem to surmount. For reasons far too tedious to relate, most of the album was recorded 24-bit at 48kHz, but CDs are 16-bit and run at 44.1kHz. Simply writing it to CD will leave it sounding slow and flat, and converting it is a very complex mathematical process which hi-fi buffs like Linn Records' customers can get sniffy about. After I'd run up a stressful series of software and hardware problems, eventually Tony Kime came over to the house this morning and calmly got it all to work. So now that I have a CD to listen to, I'm sitting in the greenhouse at the bottom of the garden, surrounded by trees and hiding from the howling gales outside, thinking out the final running order. It's a great place to work on a summer evening: no phone, no electricity, just a pot of tea, and a CD walkman with some cheap speakers nestling amongst the seedlings. Friday 25 May 2001 Another day glued to the computer working on the CD. It's slow and laborious doing the 2nd edit - the first one is always more fun, as you hear the record gradually come together, whereas you spend the second searching for tiny fixes and working on little details. There's an attitude in some quarters that it's a bit infra dig to do lots of edits, but the truth is that even with hundreds (and I invariably do hundreds of edits) you still can't turn a lousy performance into a good one. All you can do is minimise the distractions from the good bits. I anticipate a long night of editing ahead - I was going to start at 6 this morning but couldn't get out of bed ... I invigilated a harpsichord exam at the RSAMD this afternoon for a bit of light relief (!), with time for a quick word with Graham their in-house recording engineer - the studio there has a wonderful Neupert fortepiano in it which is rather useful. The second McFalls album came back from the factory this week, and I'm rather proud of it. Everything from James MacMillan to smashing crockery and me playing E flat harmonica. Unfortunately they included in the booklet a photo of me laughing uproariously while holding two saucers in a threatening manner. Adrian left a message on my answering machine last night to say he was playing a gig in Bath, and in the hall there was an 18th century poster for The Gentle Shepherd - 'if you want to know what's on it, ring me back'. It was for one of the English versions given at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, but a different cast to the production I've got the scores for ... Meanwhile, it looks like the Prefab Sprout project may be about to be resurrected in a slightly different form - hope so anyway. Tuesday 22 May 2001 Tonight I put the TV on to watch Simon Schama's History of Britain on BBC2, as I knew it was going to be about 18th century Scotland. The beginning of the programme was about Darien, Scotland's attempt to set up a colony in Panama, and what music did they put under the images of Central America? Yes, it was our recording of Clerk's Leo Scotiae Irritatus! Great - someone did their homework ... I haven't had much time for writing diary entries recently - meanwhile, I've finished the first edit of the CD, and tomorrow I can start tweaking it and thinking harder about the running order. Glasgow University sent me the photographs I ordered of David Allan's sketches for The Gentle Shepherd, which are really beautiful. If they'll give us permission, we'll put some in the concert programme. Last night I went to hear McFall's launch their tango CD at the Arches in Glasgow. The Arches would be a nice venue for us, with a great atmosphere, except that the regular trains thundering overhead wouldn't really be conducive to our quieter moments, and the bar staff's habit of clattering and telling jokes throughout the gig wouldn't help much either. Still, McFall's were great, and there was a fair smattering of ConCal members there in the audience too. Carolyn Sparey's been battling with osteo-arthritis in both hands but hopes to be playing with us again in November. Well, apart from a brief appearance with McFall's in a couple of weeks' time recreating my harmonica solo and playing keyboards a little, I'm not due to tread the boards again now until The Gentle Shepherd at the end of August. I'd better remember to practise from time to time ... Sunday 13 May 2001 I'm sitting out in the garden in the blistering hot sunshine, and there's a marching band rehearsing in the playing fields across the fence. I've never heard a marching band rehearse before and it's quite an education. They don't play much music, just an awful lot of scales and exercises, and occasionally they stop and run round the athletics track. I suspect the conductor is a sadist: he certainly shouts a lot, but then that's open air rehearsals for you. When the enormous percussion section rehearse on their own it sounds like a lost Steve Reich piece from the 1970s. Anyway, yesterday we set off for Melrose a bit late, as our car was smelling strongly of burnt rubber and I didn't want to take the risk of getting stranded halfway there with Greg and Kate Bott, and having to wait for the AA to come and rescue us. So a visit to the local car hire company started the day. One of the many nice things about playing in Melrose is that Burt's Hotel does really exceptional bar meals, so the day's work schedule always includes lunch before the rehearsal to get us in the mood. The Parish Church is a beautiful building from 1810, with the perfect acoustic for what we do, and it's up on the grassy hill above the main street, so in the break we could all lounge around on the grass in the sunshine while Katy, a keen Arsenal supporter, listened eagerly to the FA Cup Final on the radio. It was all going fine until Liverpool scored twice in the last 8 minutes, just before we rehearsed the Vivaldi Gloria Patri, so the flute solo was particularly poignant. The last movement of the Laudate Pueri is a rollercoaster coloratura on the word 'Amen', and Kate toyed with the idea of replacing it with 'Arsenal' in the concert if they won - perhaps it's just as well they lost. Just time for a fine bag of chips with the McGillivray sisters in Melrose's Harmony Garden before the gig, which was a cracker (if I say so myself). Kate sang wonderfully, Katy played her concerto with great finesse, the strings sounded fabulous, and not a dry eye in the house in Ich habe genug. But the best thing about it was that the music just felt like an extension of the social part of the day: when we played in Melrose two years ago, our contact at the Scottish Arts Council was in the audience, and came round to the dressing room at the end to say 'that wasn't a concert, it was like coming to a party', and this time was even better. So the party continued in the hotel bar well into the night, with Nicolette, Alison and I making a brief excursion at one point back across the road to Burt's where the beer was better - we share the notion that the first sip of beer after a gig is a sacred moment to be treasured. What a happy band we were: driving back with Greg this morning, he said he hadn't laughed so much in ages. He's off playing tangos with Mr McFall's Chamber tonight at the Bongo Club in Edinburgh. Speaking of which, do yourself a favour and buy their CD 'Revolucionario' (produced by yours truly) at www.mcfalls.co.uk .
We're rehearsing in the immense 1930s church round the corner from my house, so I get to walk to work after taking my son to school. This is very civilised and a bit of a luxury, given that most of the rest of the band have travelled 400 miles. We spend the lunch break having a picnic in our garden in blazing sunshine, which is all very idyllic. On days like this Marie is in charge of food and drink, and we eat well. Greg and I dash off at the end of the afternoon session to play our second Cremation of the week, and very good it is too. It's essential to have wit if you're playing Haydn, and Nick McGegan constantly bubbles with it (and with more double entendres than Finbarr Saunders), so it's enormously enjoyable. The soloists are great, especially Gerald Finley: possibly the best baritone singing I have ever heard. Apparently quite a few of the audience had been at the previous night's concert in Edinburgh and travelled across Scotland to hear it again the next night. Someone in the orchestra (I've forgotten who) congratulated me afterwards for improvising just on the right side of the divide between good and bad taste - a nice compliment I thought. Thursday 10 May 2001 Just got back from helping move my harpsichord into the church round the corner for tomorrow's rehearsals. I spent Monday learning the music - for some reason the musical preparation is always the last thing to get done - and since then I've been playing fortepiano in the SCO. Nicholas McGegan is hilarious as ever, and an ideal conductor for Haydn's Creation, or Cremation, as musicians always seem to call it. The piece is a total delight, and chock full of cheap Haydn gags. My favourite McGeganism from the week so far was when he turned to the cellos to ask for vibrato on a certain note - 'you know, a bit of wankeroo'. Unfortunately the orchestra forgot to order me a score to play from, so my every spare moment is spent copying the cello part into the vocal score I've got instead. As a result I'm now very tired. Meanwhile, the McFalls tango CDs came back from the factory, so I now have a bag full of those to distribute to the great and the good. And while I'm on stage tonight in the Usher Hall, the assorted ranks of Concerto Caledonia are going to be eating and drinking in Glasgow's finest restaurants. I wonder who'll be the more tired tomorrow ... Thursday 3 May 2001 A useful day. Editing of the CD is underway at one end of the kitchen: I'm doing the Geminiani songs first as they're the most fiddly. Mixing with Calum on Monday was fun, in the glories of 24-bit digital sound, and on Tuesday I finally got to the end of the Gentle Shepherd text, so now it's time to think about casting. This morning I got an email from Radio Penguin in Novosibirsk (unless some rogue is winding me up) asking for a CD. I quite like the idea of getting airplay in Siberia, particularly now it's spring and the sun's come out here. And this afternoon I had a meeting with Tom Laurie, where we firmed up the dates for our Glasgow concert series. It's all going to be in November - dates are on the events page now! © 2001 David
McGuinness |
concerto caledonia
are sitting ducks for easy
humour in the course of a hard day. But my favourite this year was our irresistible
alternative lyric to Aerosmith's Walk This Way (Aerosmith and Run DMC if you're under forty): 'She took me to Waulkmill Bay'. I think it's the juxtaposition of the mindless riff and Tyleresque screaming with the tranquil beauty at the place itself.