[Marimba music playing]
Music can be used to tell stories. But where does the music come from?
And how do the musicians know what to play?
Well, I've come to the Sydney Conservatorium of Music to find out more. Let's go!
I'm here with Associate Professor, Paul Stanhope
A world-renowned composer. Hi Paul
Hi
Now, what is a composer?
A composer is someone who makes up music and you can make that up in lots of different ways.
Right, okay! Is that music in your head?
Yeah, that's an interesting idea isn't it? But yes the music starts in my head.
Sometimes I play it a bit on the piano first so that I can hear it back and then I put it into music notes like this.
Music notes?
Yeah.
Well I just see like dots and lines and squiggles but what do they mean?
So it's like a bit of a code isn't it or another language
and musicians learn from when they're very little how to read these music notes.
They are little like squiggles which tell the players what to play on their instruments
and then they practice those notes and they make music from it.
So all these notes make up music. Why did you want to become a composer?
I've always been fascinated by music by performing music by singing music by playing music
and from a young age I wanted to write my own music.
It felt like a really good way to express your feelings inside of you
and it's also really fun to work with musicians who can play your music.
So, what inspires you to make the music?
Inspiration can come from a lot of places.
It can come from a picture could come from a story it could come from a feeling which is inside of you
and you want to try and express that through music.
Wow lots of different ways to be inspired and tell the story.
What techniques to use in music to tell the story?
So some of the things we can do in music is to create a theme that represents a character
So in our Sea show there's a melody which represents character of David, the little boy.
And that theme or that melody goes all the way through the piece.
And you can have different melodies to represent different characters.
Right, that's an interesting way of telling a story so you're saying that the character has
their own music?
That's right yeah.
Wow so now we have the music is there anything else we can do to create the mood to tell the story?
I think I might know someone to help us, let me introduce you to Dr. Daniel.
Oh let's find Dr. Daniel
[Marimba music playing]
Hey Daniel!
Hi Karen! Lovely to see you.
Good to see you too.
I'm here with Dr. Daniel Blinkhorn who is a multi-international award-winning composer and sound artist.
What does your job involve?
These days it involves recording lots and lots of sounds from the world around us
Wow what kind of sounds do you like to record?
Typically going into places where there aren't too many sounds that people make
Wow
So environmental sounds really.
So what is environmental sound?
Well that varies from location to location
But to give an example a few years back I was up recording the sounds
of icebergs melting in the North Pole.
Wow there is a sound to that?
There is a sound to that it's a remarkable sound. I have a special microphone and
that allows me to be able to lower that into the water and all of a sudden it
just opens up into this really amazing strange you know soundscape it's incredible
[Sound of icebergs melting]
What inspires you to like you know create these film scores and soundscapes?
I think for me it's a very personal thing
I realized that there is so much noise in the world that we're just not hearing the kinds of
natural sounds that are out there. And so I wanted to be able to really focus on those
and to be able to tell a story with those
and be able to make other people aware of the beauty of the sounds that are around us sounds we get in nature
What kind of techniques do you use to you know get
that sound capture that sound I have a whole variety of different
kinds of microphones which typically allow me to be able to record these
sounds in a kind of special way. So I have some that you can place underwater
others that you can place on the surface of something and they'll pick up all of
these kinds of wonderful sounds.
In fact if I was to put one on the ceiling of this room here you're going to hear all kinds of amazing sounds
that we can't actually hear as we're talking.
Oh wow. Why is sound a music so special to you?
Well it's pretty magical stuff I mean there are sounds that can tell stories
It can be very dramatic it can be sometimes sad sometimes it's very happy.
I mean it's it's like I say it's a pretty magical kind of experience.
well I have some friends outside I think would love to learn more about what you do.
So would you like to meet them?
I absolutely would that would be fantastic.
They'd love that [Giggles]
[Marimba music playing]
These are my friends. Hey guys say hi to Paul and Daniel.
Hi Paul and Daniel.
Hi Hello
These guys want to learn more about music.
Great, you've come to the right place.
Let's get some instruments out.
Yeah!
Let's do it!
Okay everybody today we're going to create some music.
We need a theme for our music piece. What are we going to do?
I know we're in a cafe so why don't we use the cafe?
Great idea let's make our piece called in the cafe!
Let's make some words up for the cafe.
Hmm you can think of a word for the cafe?
Yep?
Egg.
Egg! What a great thing I love eggs.
Shall we write E-G-G
Okay, let's pick up our mallets and we're going to play E-G-G
[Children playing xylophones] E-G-G E-G-G
Where are we again?
Cafe
We're in a cafe do you think we could spell that word out?
Cafe. What are the letters?
C-A-F-E
[Children playing xylophones] C-A-F-E C-A-F-E
Very good! We need to go and get some cafe sounds.
I think I need some help from Dr. Daniel
Shall we go with Dr. Daniel? Yes, let's do that!
[Children chattering excitedly]
You ready?
[Milk steamer whirs]
[Microwave button beeping]
[Microwave buzzing]
[Microwave beeping]
[Children chattering]
Ready? 2, 3 - go!
[Children playing xylophones] CAFE CAFE
[Glasses clinking] Would you like some coffee?
Good!
[Glasses clinking] Would you like some tea?
Now cafe noises! Just go "Raaaaaa"
[Children playing xylophones and tapping glasses]
And we'll finish with some cafe sounds.
[Audio recording from cafe playing]
And that was "In the Cafe"
Congratulations boys and girls!
[Clapping]
Why not take this exercise to the park or the zoo?
Or try emotions like fear or excitement to make a soundscape!
We hope you enjoy exploring this exercise
at home or in the classroom. Say goodbye everyone.
Bye!
[Marimba music playing]