Starting my maturity-project!

Time passes so quickly! Next school year, which is not that far away, only three more weeks to go, will already be the last year!

Every student, given the fact that he wants to finish this school level with a testimonial, needs to hand in a project in the midterm of the first semester of the last year. And the cool thing about it is that everyone can decide to make whatever he or she pleases! Some people do something scientific, some sort of research or experiment. One of my friends, for example, makes an underwater remote-controlled craft, which takes a lot of time and patience to make since there are a lot of things you need to consider when you're building something which needs to be waterproof, and so on..!

Someone else is making a movie, another person is composing a music piece. But personally, I'm not that interested in any of these. But I love making music! So what could I do?

One thing about music that I'm really interested in is, of course, making my own music! But I don't like writing it; it's just not my way of being creative. The thing I like is a more technical and, in my opinion, free approach to making music. I don't want any lines on sheets to limit my creativity, and in some way, I think that sheet music does this to me. My way is to record and produce. I just like to sit down at something which makes noise (can be a piano, but doesn't need to be) and just start recording the sounds it creates, editing them, experimenting with them and rearranging them in new forms that exceed the casual forms of music you listen to every day.

So I found just the right thing for me!

I call it "Klangschaften", which is my play on German words for "landscapes of sound" (don't mix that up with Soundscapes, because that's an entirely new thing!).

In my definition, a soundscape is a song made out of noises, melodies and sounds recorded just from one place, one landscape.

Maybe you'll think that it's unoriginal because I know some others have done that before, but not in this way! Most of them just worked with rhythmic patterns, recorded noises and used them to create percussion. But I also want to record melodic elements, harmonies in our daily landscapes. And I want to limit myself too, I just plan on doing these landscapes for a certain place. One place, for instance, is the place I live and grew up. There are so many cool, funky and interesting sounds all around and I just want to record them and make them into enjoyable pieces!

I'm also filming the whole thing, which is quite easy with my new mobile recording setup. I can take it everywhere with me and it actually isn't that heavy to carry around. And the nice thing about it is, that the audio is synched in a very good quality with the movie clip, so I don't have to do that afterwards!

I borrowed the Canon 5D from a friend of mine, and the Zoom I got for myself. I've put it onto a Steadicam to get nice, smooth film footage!

Thanks for reading :)

Matura Presentations

Around this time every year there are Matura presentations at our school. To complete the four years of school everyone needs to make a project with lots of writing and a presentation in the end. The cool thing about it is that the project can be about everything you want, from music to biology or making jams or brewing beer (yeah that was a project a couple years ago!)
I'm due to make a project next year but I was able to see some presentations my friends made. One of them was about the liberty of press and Turkey which was really interesting! And later in the evening I went to see a friend of mine who makes live-visualisations for music which was a phenomenal presentation! It was astounding what he was able to make by himself: a program that could analyse any music in real-time and then produce a 3d generated video to that beat. He also combined this with a motion tracking so if it would be used at a concert the people attending could interact with the video.
Here's the Link to his youtube channel :)

Young Composers Project #3

A very busy week! Besides the many exams that are still taking place, I also had a concert for my friends "Matura" Examinations. It was really cool and I think it was the best performance we ever had.

On Friday, just after school, I rushed home to take a shower and leave again soon to go to Boswil. With a few weeks in between I meet up with ten other people to participate at a young composers course in the middle of nowhere on the countryside.. It's a lot of fun though and we are having a great time together making music and having fun, playing table tennis and discussing a lot :)

3 scholary concerts and Pop Up Market in Zürich

It was a very busy day today! In the morning I took the train with my mum to Zürich. First we went to the Apple Store to check out the new products that came out last month. We've spent nearly an hour drawing on the new iPad (which by the way is amazing).
Afterwards we went to get a few new winter clothes for me and went to a huge childrens' toy store. There they have a whole department just for miniature world trains and models. Since I want to continue my project on Miniature World Photography this was a brilliant opportunity to get lots of new ideas!
We were so exhausted because there were so many people in both the Apple and the toys store so we drank a hot chocolate in the café Sprüngli. We were really glad that there was two free seats so we sat down and there was an elderly art and theology professor sitting vis-à-vis. So we startedtalking to him and it did not seem to stop :)

Then we took the train to Stadelhofen where there was a market in the Maag Hall. It's called the Pop Up Market and exists in various countries. It's a design and fashion market and you know how much me and my mum love design stuff. And it was really wirth it going there! Lots pf cool market stands and lovely music playing in the background, just amazing!! We forgot to get some money but that was good; otherwise we would have spent soo much :P

Yesterday it was Matura presentation day which means that all the 4th class students who now finish the school and then will go to Uni or ETH, present their final projects. These vary from works about Ecology, to a musical and of course to concerts and music projects! Yesterday I saw two brilliant projects two friends of mine made, one about food/music and the other one about soundscape and minimal music. And today I saw a third one which was just amazing! One guy wrote a choir project with different songs from the media like the Mario Theme, Tetris theme, the main song from "The Undertaker" (one of my favourite Swiss TV shows), the theme of Assassins Creed, Battlefront, Indiana Jones, Star Wars, Hobbit, etc.. And this was all linked with super cool little theatre acts.. If I find the recorded and filmed version of it I am so going to share it with you ;) !

See you next Saturday :) Marin