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 :)

Songcircle, Royal Slam and a new Setup!

This week was really cool because I could attend multiple cultural events! First of all was another Royal Slam this week, with an awesome dance performance by my Salsa teacher, a really interesting and funny cartography presentation and a slam poet from Basel who slammed about his sad life as a primary school teacher :D

I also produced a video this week about sustainability at our school, we even won a price with it! But unfortunately, I only talked in Swiss German which means you probably won't understand a thing.. But here's the Link

Also, on Wednesday, my godfather invited me to a song-circle. It's a type of concert I've never been to before, where the artists literally sit in a circle and go around in circles performing their favourite songs together! Such a unique and fun concept, I really enjoyed it!

Last but not least I finished my new recording setup at home which, in my opinion, turned out really nicely :)

Oh and I hung up to new paintings I got from London :D

Through the lens of an immigrant, Concert recording

This week was great!

On Wednesday I prepared a photography exhibition with Farhad. He's a Syrian photographer who now lives here in Switzerland for about one and a half years as an immigrant. We did a project a couple months back where we went onto the street with him, and he had to take some pictures. Later we analysed them together, and now I offered him the chance to present them at our school.

It was quite some work until we prepared it all! First, we had to get some more presenter-boards form another building, put the pictures on them nicely and help Ali make tea for the exhibition. Just on time everything was ready :D

There were a lot of people, more than I expected. At one time nearly the whole room was full!

Photo by Farhad Ala

My friends had a concert in a small cinema on Thursday, where they performed live music to a muted black & white film. It was really well done, they did a great job!

I was asked to record the whole thing, audio and video. And of course, I did! It took quite some time to set it up, with all the cameras and stuff. Now I still have to edit everything..!

Music for the KSWE-News

Since last year our school has got their own YouTube channel. There they post videos every few weeks about current topics that are discussed in school and what the students ought to know.
I think that this concept is really good and shows that our school is modern and uses new ways of communication to talk to their students.

So this year the new people making the videos came up to me and asked me "hey, why don't you make the music for our videos?" and of course I agreed!
It was really fun, because I have never made an Intro-Song before and me and the video-guys think that I did a good job, but you can take a listen for yourself ;)
-> KSWE-News Jingle

Marins Music Studio

For quite a while now me any my friend Gideon who plays the trumpet have been recording multiple songs to make our own little album! It is so much fun and every time we record we get so many new ideas.
On Saturday we started doing some live recordings and they ended up pretty nice too :)

And now it is time to edit it all together :D