Sights and Sounds of Isolation

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Runaway Model

As part of our ‘Sights and Sounds of Isolation’ art project that ran over the summer, we asked members of the public to send in their own artworks, compositions, and other creative pursuits, hoping to spark some exciting collaborations.
 
When visual artist Kris Sahlholt sent ‘Runaway Model’, a humorous, tender poem that she had written one lockdown evening, it inspired sonic composer and Tinderbox participant Sonia Killmann to create this beautiful ambient track around Kris’ spoken words.
 
Have a listen to the track here.
 
Image: Kris Sahlholdt
Track Credits: Kris Sahlholdt and Sonia Killmann
 
And if you enjoyed Sonia’s sounds and want to have a go at playing around yourself, you can purchase her recently released pack of samples here.

Runaway Model

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Humble Stay (Tinderbox Online Lyric Video)

This recording of a Tinderbox favourite ‘Humble Stay’, written and sung by the incredibly Lydia Bennett was recorded entirely during lockdown on phones and home devices by individual orchestra players while connected over Zoom, and then edited together and mixed by the talented Gary Boyle over at Slate Room Studio.

Inspired by the current limitations enforced by lockdown, Tinderbox Orchestra came together to create this lyric video by indivudally illustrating Lydia’s beautiful words and experiementing with Zoom to create a new kind of music video!

 

 

Moving Tinderbox Orchestra online came with unforeseen technical hurdles and complications, but over the summer we persevered, experimented and worked together to be able to continue playing together every week as normal.

As well as rehearsing songs, the orchestra have also been experimenting with trying out different methods of improvisation over video call. A Tinderbox rehearsal in the Jazz Bar typically involves a session of ‘Suggesture’; a method of improvising, conducted using a series of hand gestures that was developed by conductor Mike Kearney. It’s been tricky to translate into a Zoom call, but we’ve been testing out different methods (some of which we showed at our Tinderbox Livestream!)

You can check out more of what the orchestra have been up to online here!

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Shadows At Night

Songwriting projects are one of the staples of the Tinderbox creative music offerings. They are a brilliant way to show how everyone has an abundance of musical creativity, no matter what age, experience or background. It’s also very handy if you have a large team of experienced musicians and an entire orchestra to add into the mix once you have a finished song.

Lockdown presented a great many challenges, but also some surprising opportunities. The Shadows At Night songwriting project has been one of these opportunities.

At the very beginning of lockdown we started a songwriting group as part of our online music school. We quickly found that the Zoom chat function is an ideal way to collaborate on lyric writing. Over 3 or 4 sessions the young people came up with the lyrics, melody and structure of the song.

Once we had a rough recording of the song to click track we were able to take it to the Tinderbox Online Orchestra who were rehearsing every week. We shared the recording on Zoom audio and had a few practices through the track. Then orchestra members recorded themselves improvising along to the track on their phones or whatever recording device they had to hand, and sent in their recordings. The tracks were then compiled, edited and mixed by Garry Boyle at Slate Room Studio. All this happened within the space of a week!

We were so excited by the end result that we decided to take it further and asked Dominika Jackowska to facilitate a project to produce an animation for the song. Dominika is part of our Tinderbox Lab project and had been working on animation for online game design projects. She led a series of workshops to enable young people to generate the content for the animation and also to show them how the animation process works.

It has been such a rewarding project and we hope you enjoy checking out the song!

Thanks to everyone involved including the Tinderbox Songwriting group, Tinderbox Orchestra and Dominika Jackowska. Special mentions to Sophie for lyrical inspiration and Julia Dorozynska on lead vocals.

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Rimo (Tinderbox Online Version)

This recording of the Tinderbox Classic ‘Rimo’ by Luci Holland was recorded entirely during lockdown on phones and home devices by individual orchestra players while connected over Zoom.

Moving Tinderbox Orchestra online came with unforeseen technical hurdles and complications, but over the last few months we’ve persevered, experimented and worked together to be able to continue playing together every week as normal.

We meet together on Zoom every Sunday and have been recording online versions of Tinderbox classics, including Bethany Lane and Rimo – returning to such familiar favourites has allowed us to get used to new ways of playing! We have also been rehearsing a new arrangement of ‘I Wanna Dance With Somebody’ (originally by Whitney Houston), which was put together by the Tinderbox Arranging Group over the last few months.

As well as rehearsing songs, the orchestra have also been experimenting with trying out different methods of improvisation over video call. A Tinderbox rehearsal in the Jazz Bar typically involves a session of ‘Suggesture’; a method of improvising, conducted using a series of hand gestures that was developed by conductor Mike Kearney. It’s been tricky to translate into a Zoom call, but we’ve been testing out different methods (some of which we showed at our Tinderbox Livestream!)

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Sights and Sounds of Isolation Collaborative Film: Project One

Our ‘Sights and Sounds of Isolation Film Project’ began with the goal to create work from our simultaneously separated and collective experience. It aimed to capture all the different things that we were looking at and listening to, and what this time of isolation forced us to focus in on. We gathered images, footage and audio clips and brought these together into collaborative video and sound pieces. You can check out the other videos here.

This video is the project’s first fully developed outcome and it is made up of film and audio clips that Tinderbox participants have recorded from their immediate environment, responding to the idea of looking more closely at their now very intimate surroundings.

This video features recordings by Luci Holland, Sonia Killmann, Oliver Entwisle, Sunny Yoon, Niki Dunne and Rhona Sword.

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Arranging Group

A number of people in the Tinderbox Orchestra have been meeting up and working on some new arrangements to play during our online Sunday rehearsals.

The group have arranged a great version of Whitney Houston’s 1987 dance-pop classic, ‘I Wanna Dance With Somebody’, and have some new arrangements in the pipeline.

Arranging music together online has presented some interesting challenges. Each member of the group took on a specific section of the orchestra (e.g. Woodwinds, Strings, Brass, etc.) and worked on their parts over the course of the week, consolidating them during the arranging sessions and fitting them all together.

It was hard to know what other people were creating, and the variations in melody and rhythm throughout the parts created some interesting harmonies and new ways to approach the arrangement.

The orchestra have been working hard to rehearse the arrangement over the last month and a recording will hopefully be ready soon for everyone to listen to, and the group has some exciting new ideas for future projects to work on with the orchestra!

Keep your eyes (and ears) peeled for a recording soon!

 

Check out what our other Tinderbox Cafes have been up to here!

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Music Quiz Night Quiz

The Tinderbox Cafes are online peer-to-peer sessions organised by members of Tinderbox at the beginning of lockdown. They have involved open-mics, musical editing and arrangement sessions, drawing sessions and Quiznights, and have been an amazing way to stay in touch and keep creative!

The ‘Music Quiz Night’ has taken place roughly once a month as a fun, social activity during lockdown. It also gave us the chance to show off some of our more ‘niche’ (some may say useless) music knowledge.

So far, they have been a great success, filled with lots of laughter, a few passionate debates regarding ABBA songs, and have left us questioning whether or not ‘Quiztina Aguilera’- our reigning champs- will ever be beaten.

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‘Pome’

pome (noun): a fruit consisting of a fleshy enlarged receptacle and a tough central core containing the seeds, e.g. an apple, pear, or quince.

‘Pome’ is an sonic, poetry-based online game created by Tinderbox Lab Project Manager, Luci Holland, using the game building platform ‘Construct 3’, which the Lab has been exploring over lockdown.

The idea is that you type in your own words, and once you play those and start to move those around, it triggers some sounds that were recorded with the Tinderbox Orchestra.

Have a go for yourself below!

 

Instructions:

Hit enter/return to start, and start to type your own poem or use the word prompts

Hit enter to end a word/line and trigger a new word prompt

Click and drag set words to arrange your poem and create sound

Click in the top right to save an image of your poem, or double-click to save and restart

 

Featuring the musical sounds of the Tinderbox Orchestra (recorded as part of another project called Gloam with Biome Collective)

Tweet me @LuciHolland – I’d love to see your poems! #pome

 

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Sights and Sounds of Isolation Collaborative Film – Project Two

Our ‘Sights and Sounds of Isolation Film Project’ began with the goal to create work from our simultaneously separated and collective experience. It aimed to capture all the different things that we were looking at and listening to, and what this time of isolation forced us to focus in on. We gathered images, footage and audio clips and brought these together into collaborative video and sound pieces. You can check out other videos from the project here.

The second outcome was a result of artists Sonia Killmann and Rhona Sword being inspired by this process to make a more focussed and intentional work. Drawing upon the isolating and claustrophobic effects of lockdown, they have been working together to create pieces that aim to capture a sense of more intense intimacy with the natural world that has come from current circumstances.

Created collaboratively, with Sonia first composing a soundscape from found recording and Rhona creating a moving image work in response to this, it utilised their respective disciplines of composition and visual art, and was selected to be included in the ‘Cabin Fever’ art publication.

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Bethany Lane (Tinderbox Online Version)

Tinderbox ‘s online youth clubs, music groups and orchestras (which you can check out here!) have worked incredibly hard to put together a digitally created version of the Tinderbox Classic, ‘Bethany Lane’.
 
All the footage comes from our online youth clubs, music groups and orchestras, who have been gathering to rehearse and record together online during the lockdown, and the video was created in support of youth work and local communities.
 
It has taken a lot of experiemtnation, and has been a huge learning process to figure out how to make music together online, but we’re incredibly proud of the end result, and hope that you enjoy it too!
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Drawing Group

The drawing group began at the beginning of lockdown as a weekly session where people in Tinderbox could sit together virtually and do some drawing or make artwork, outside of our music rehearsals.

We have taken inspiration for our drawings from things we have seen or enjoyed during lockdown, and have also worked together with the Tinderbox Lab to create some drawings for a level of their game called ‘Chase Out the Bug’ that was based around images of falling food.

The group has been a great way to connect with each other from across the country, and keep creative during lockdown!

Check out what they’ve been up to by clicking the images below!

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Drawing Group

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Chase Out The Bug

During the lockdown the Tinderbox Lab has been running weekly Virtual Studio & Game Development sessions, where young musicians and artists have been getting together to share skills, help keep each other motivated and work on different projects. 

Recently the sessions have developed into a game-development project where we have been learning a programme called Construct 3 and making online games together.  

‘Chase Out The Bug’ was the first game that the Tinderbox Lab developed online together, and was an exciting and experimental learning process for everyone involved! It was featured at out first Tinderbox Online Gig and is created using artwork from our Lab members as well as our Tinderbox Drawing Group, with sounds from Sonia Killmann.

A huge congratulations to everyone involved in its creation!

You can have a go of the game yourself here!

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Tinderbox Tuesdays

Tinderbox Tuesdays is a wee poem about our online Tuesday Hub, written near the start of the lockdown.  This is usually our weekly youth club where about 50 children and young people get together to play music and hang out at North Edinburgh Arts, but since the lockdown we have been meeting up online every week for something a bit like an open mic session. It’s been a brilliant way of keeping in touch in this time and great fun and uplifting too.

Tinderbox Tuesdays Poem
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Sights and Sounds of Isolation Collaborative Film – Project Three

Our ‘Sights and Sounds of Isolation Film Project’ began with the goal to create work from our simultaneously separated and collective experience. It aimed to capture all the different things that we were looking at and listening to, and what this time of isolation forced us to focus in on. We gathered images, footage and audio clips and brought these together into collaborative video and sound pieces. You can check out the other videos from the project here.

The third project is a result of experimenting with the possibilities of online music making and composition, and was produced in conjunction with the Tinderbox Orchestra.

The musciains experimented with improvising in response to each other over Zoom, which allowed composer Sonia Killmann to collect the recordings and mix them into an atmospheric soundscape. This provided the inspiration and framework to create put together a film created from video fragments collected from our lockdown experiences.

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Musical Asteroids

During Lockdown, the Tinderbox Lab have been working together remotely to learn about online game making software Construct Three, using their skills in visual art, sound and coding to build their own games.

Lab artist Liam Dempsey has also been using the programme to create his own game, Musical Asteroids. For anyone that attended our Room to Play showcase last year, you might remember Liam’s stuffed toys refitted with accelerometers that detect movement and play back sound.

Musical Asteroids sees these ideas progress into an online platform and take on a new form – have a go for yourself here!

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Hey Jude – Symphony of a Thousand

Is it possible to get 1000 people playing together online?

On Sunday 21st June, alongside the Music Education Partnership Group (MEPG), we gave it our best shot! You can see the results for yourself here!

Together we played and sang along to the classic Beatles song Hey Jude in an attempt to form the world’s biggest ever online band!

Music, lyrics, a backing track and other resources are still available at: https://wemakemusiconline.weebly.com

The event started with a few practice runs, and then we live-streamed a performance together on facebook for Make Music Day.

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Tinderbox Livestream

Our second online gig was streamed live on Facebook on 20th June, 7-8:30pm. We would have been playing at Solas Festival on the very same day, and whilst we were sad not to be there in real life, it was great we can link up and celebrate together online.

The stream featured performances from lots of young musicians and singers, some online orchestral experiments and some amazing guest acts and collaborators, including:

– The Jellyman’s Daughter (Edinburgh’s spellbinding duo, with their beautiful mix of guitar, cello and vocals)
– EBB (6-piece band from The Lodge Arts Collective in Lockerbie – all living together in the same house in lockdown!)
– No Moniker (Edinburgh musician and rapper)
– Jed and Jo (blistering guitar, banjo, fiddle and harmonies)
– DJ Dynamite (bringing us all that funk and soul)

Also featuring:
Imogen, Kuba, Jon, Amelia, Maciej, Simon, Shiloh, Chelsea, Liam, Christopher, Robert and Robert, Action for Children and the Tinderbox Lab.

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Tinderbox Online Gig

On Saturday 16th May Tinderbox hosted it’s very first digital gig to celebrate two months of online music making!

The Zoom event featured live performances from a number of our young musicians and collaborators, as well as a first chance to see new videos of the orchestra performing during lockdown. We also managed to show exciting progress on our other interactive media projects that have been taking place.

You can catch the highlights on our Facebook page here:

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Over the Rainbow Project

The Music Education Partnership Group organised a “Musical Rainbow” to say thank you to heroes across the country in support of the NHS and all key workers at 8pm Thursday 30th April! Musicians across Scotland joined in with recordings of their performances of the Wizard of Oz classic ‘Somewhere Over The Rainbow’, and all of us at Tinderbox thoroughly enjoyed having a go and taking part in such a brilliant initiative.

Music Education Partnership Group – MEPG: https://www.facebook.com/mepgscotland

#wmmrainbow

Tinderbox Collective is a community of young people, musicians, artists and youth workers, based in Scotland.  We are a registered Scottish charity, under the name Tinderbox Project, no. SC042825.


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North Edinburgh Arts Centre
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