Tag: university

My first year studying music at Falmouth University has been a rollercoaster of an experience. In half a year I have learnt skills that will last a lifetime and met people that have inspired and taught me so much.

Within a month of starting the course I was playing with three of my fellow course mates – Emilio Ayto, an amazing guitarist who seamlessly hops from one style to another, Lewis Arscott who is an incredible piano and keyboard player and Chris Baker, aka Lunacci, an amazing singer-songwriter guitarist who blends genres and uses technology to create his own Sound World. The venue was the open mic at Jacob’s Ladder in Falmouth, which is such a friendly and relaxing place and was really fun to play in.

One principle that seems to be at the heart of Falmouth’s music courses is that by the end of the degree you should be able to not only be very good at music but also be able to make a living out of it. To accomplish this they have incorporated a large amount of practical aspects to the course. I remember one of our course leaders saying at the start of the course that while we were here he didn’t want us to be in just one band, he wanted us to be in loads of bands. Following in this principle, one of our first term modules was based around you performing, not just as a solo act but also with other musicians in a band. As part of this I played the Vaughan Williams song Wither Music I Wander with fellow course mates Louisa Hygate, Liv Reynolds and Mollie Harman, all truly incredible singers, instrumentalists and composers, Dali Diaconeasa, a truly very talented piano player and Nathan Cole, who is an amazing Banjo player. It seemed to work really well and I have to say I was pretty proud of the end result.

Another module in the first term was to write your own composition and this was combined with the performance module in that you would have to perform it in front of your course mates and tutors – no pressure or anything! I have been composing my own music for about 10 years and know the commonly used notation but the Uni really encouraged us to use advanced notation. This was a real learning curve for me since, apart from the Violin-specific notation, the music I played and composed didn’t really have a need for a lot of this notation.

The next term was even more of a kaleidoscope of experiences. In the next five months I played several times at the Uni’s Stannary Open Mic Night, both on my own and with Nathan and Mollie, which was really fun.

(QP and Nathan at Stannary Open Mic Night)

Thanks to Sophie Rooke, another course mate and brilliant Saxophone and Clarinet player, who passed my name on, I played with amazing band Propeller at the Stannary’s St Patricks Night, which was an incredible experience that I’ll never forget. That night also gave me the opportunity to write and record some Violin for the upcoming experimental film Memoirs, created by film students Lauren Dallas and Zara Denver, who were a joy to work with. This was a really new and useful experience as it showed me that writing music to film is definitely an area that I want to experiment with and I will get a chance to do

Harry Glasson Project practice (I’m taking the picture)

that in my second year. I also had the chance to be part of the Harry Glasson Project, which is a project run by singer-songwriter Will (or Dave) Keating to promote the songs written and composed by Cornish singer-songwriter Harry Glasson by recording and playing them live around Cornwall. His songs are very powerful and although I’m not a Cornishman myself, I know how important it is that these songs are shared and heard throughout the county.

Another few experiences I had was when I was asked by Saulius Jegelevičius, a brilliant second year student singer-songwriter from Lithuania, to play Violin on a few of his songs with him and his band for the Falmouth Concourse Festival 2017. The only catch? The festival was the next day! After a couple of hours practice the night before we’d managed to come up with something and it worked out well. Pearl Love, a very talented second year student and singer songwriter who was also playing with Saulius, then asked me to record some Chin-Cello (a 5-string Viola with Cello tuning) for her EP Shuddering Trains and play the song for the EP’s launch. This was really good fun and enabled me to not only get my Chin-Cello out and playing again but also my playing on a track that would be uploaded to iTunes.

Although all of these were not directly linked to my year of the course, I feel that the way the course is structured encourages collaboration with other students, similar and different courses alike. For example, as part of one of our second term modules we had to join one of the course’s ensembles, with first and second year students, with a performance at the end of the term. I chose to join the vocal ensemble since I wanted to work on my singing and thought that, tied in with having singing lessons as part of the module, this would be the perfect opportunity. This worked really well and with a few weeks of starting the lessons and ensemble I was performing and singing one of my songs at the Uni’s AMATA Lunchtime Concert for the first time. I really enjoyed being able to sing my songs and it seems that the combination of the lessons and ensemble had really paid off.

My first year has been really fun and it was rounded off by one of our modules which was to compose a piece and perform at AMATA for the first year’s Showcase. Together with Nathan, Mollie, Emilio, Lewis and Sian Wiggin, an amazingly talented Flute player, we decided to form a band for the Showcase, called Another Coffee Please, that would combine elements from each of our backgrounds, creating a Folk/Rock/Pop feel to our music. Composing, practicing and playing with these people was a real joy and together we created music that I think we were all really pleased with. I also have to give a shout out to Lewis who, in addition to playing Synth in the songs, actually learnt the Drums for this, which he hadn’t even played before! The result was truly amazing and without them the songs would have lost a huge amount of their power.

I’ve met such talented and friendly people while doing my first year who have taught me so much and I’m really grateful to all of them. It really is incredible how full of music Falmouth is. A few weeks ago Louisa, Liv and I watched Chris, Emilio and Sian play together at the pub Jacobs Ladder. It was really nice to see everybody and I realised what the most important and valuable aspect of my course mates was – we all supported each other.

Here’s to the next year!