Stages Album Launch

UPDATE listen to the STAGES album and track 3 (feathers) here.

Over the last three months, I’ve been part of a writing, production and performance programme for emerging songwriting talent, it’s called Stages. It’s run by Moniak Mhor (Scotland’s National Writing Centre) in partnership with singer-songwriter, musician, producer, tutor and mentor Boo Hewerdine.

Being part of Stages is one of the best things that has ever happened to me – it has changed my life and my future. There’s twelve of us on the course and we’ve got an album launching in November (AN ALBUM!). This is us on the gorgeous album cover, designed by Elly Lucas:

Elly also worked with each of us on a professional photo shoot. That including taking the silhouette shots for the album cover above and each of us had our own personalised shoot. I wanted mine to have a water theme and then it rained during my shoot so we went with it. This is my new ‘I am a music person and I like it’ face: 

I have a few more portrait photos too – they will be popping up on my socials sometime soon.

There is a launch gig at Eden Court theatre in Inverness (Scotland) on 28^th October where each of us performs one of our original songs. The others are amazing – you need to hear them. I’ll be singing a song I wrote too and there will be a band playing with me and you’re invited! You can get tickets here.

I’ve decided to interview myself about it all – as a way to tell you more! Here we go…

What is your song about?

I’m glad you asked, it’s called ‘Feathers’, here’s my well crafted short song description:

Emily Dickinson’s poem “Hope” is the thing with feathers gifted me a melody and this in turn gave me the words for this song. If we can fly in our dreams we can soar in the here and now. Hope gives us wings – and every wing needs feathers to fly.

Boo Hewerdine helped me to write the song description – I actually wrote 660 words to describe my song. It felt like I’d written an inspirational speech by the time I’d finished typing and I was finding it a difficult task indeed, to cut all those the words down to the 50 word limit we’d been asked for.

So I read my 660 words to Boo and he did a wonderful three minutes of scribbling to produce this concise summary of what I was trying to say about how and why I wrote it! We tweaked it a bit together but he should get the credit really for it.

What style of music is it?

‘The sweeter side of the Velvet Underground’, according to Boo. But if you come to the gig, you can find out?

Sounds great, I’ll be there! So what exactly is stages? 

This video is really good at explaining what stages is:

In my own words, it’s a whole load of residencies on everything you need to know to make and release music. With mentoring too.

Tell me more, what were the residencies?

The first part of the course was a brilliant five days of songwriting at Moniak Mhor with Boo Hewerdine and Findley Napier. The photo at the top of this post is me performing one of the eight songs I’d written that week at a gig in the hobbit house.

Then we each had a three hour session in the studio Chem 19, to record a track. This is Jamie Savage in the studio – he was great to work with. He’s pointing to the studio room where you record vocals and instruments:

Then there was an image and branding weekend with Elly Lucas and Boo. And online sessions with Emma Pollock from the Delgados (I really love their music) on how to make a record and then a PR session with Innis and Campbell communications. Our last session is a performance residency – and then we perform the same weekend at Eden Court.

How are you feeling about the gig?

I got a vintage dress for it, in Edinburgh. I’m now worrying it’s too much like something a person who lived in a castle in the olden days would wear but it was expensive and it fits really well and it’s not every day you launch an album, so I’m going to wear it! I’m nervous and excited at the same time.

There will be a lot of people watching and you’re singing and performing something you’ve written for the first time in public, that is scary…

Totally! I’m also no sure what I should do with my body – do I just stand there? If I had an instrument I could hide under it, but Boo is a lot better at playing guitar than I am so he’s playing in my band. I’ve also got Beth Porter on Cello and Jamie MacRae on Ukulele. I’m really glad they were all up for playing on my track and being in my band for the live gig too. But their skill means I’m now instrument-less and it feels exposing.

I’m hoping I’ll learn what to do on the performance residency. I’m also hoping other performance related things I’ve done, spoken word gigs, science theatre shows and author events, I’m hoping they will help me to be less nervous. I’m trying to tell myself it will be fine but I know I am going to be EXTREMELY nervous and I may throw up beforehand! Hopefully not onto my vintage dress.

I hope you find a bucket in time. You mentioned Stages has changed your life, can you tell me how, apart from expanding your vintage wardrobe!?

Ha ha, well in lots of ways but mainly it’s helped me to gain confidence because I’ve discovered skills I didn’t know I had and that’s helped me to find a potential future I want too – one I didn’t know could exist for me and one that involves making music!

Wow, that sounds wonderful! I love your enthusiasm…

Thanks, this has been the happiest I’ve felt in ages too. I’ve been in and out of hospital with my back since March and I’ve not been able to play football or walk far or even drive at times but I’ve had this amazing music adventure at a time when physical adventure hasn’t been possible for me. So it’s sort of saved my year in a way. But genuinely, my entire future has changed because of this course.

Sounds like it’s been a tough year – life changing is big too – you mentioned skills you didn’t know you had – what skills were hiding inside of you and how did you discover them on the course?

During and after the first songwriting residency week, some sort of flood of songs got awakened inside of me. Some nights I was audio dumping two songs on my phone, just to stop them going around my head so I could sleep. I was waking up composing songs. I was audio recording songs on my phone while driving on the A87 (hands free). I had a spreadsheet of song ideas and it passed 100.

It started to feel like some sort of internal torture because I found it hard to believe I could be good at this – I was trying to resist writing songs – it seemed pointless when they’d be rubbish and there was no future in it, so I was having a sort of internal battle with myself because it all seemed so unrealistic – that I could be a songwriter. But the songs kept coming so eventually I sort help.

That’s a wise thing to do, for the sake of your sleep!

Totally it was, I asked Boo for help by desperate email. I told him I wasn’t sleeping because I kept writing songs. I told him I needed some feedback that wasn’t people being nice or my own judgement. I told him I wanted him to tell me what was wrong with my songs, so I could improve them but not to fix anything for me – I needed to try to find my own solutions. I said I’d rather write a bunch of rubbish songs and learn loads than carry on writing song after song into the void, with no clue of how to improve. I said I could take it, the constructive feedback. And that I’d only been able to get better at writing books and TV because people told me what was wrong.

What did Boo say?

He arranged to meet me for my next mentoring session and I braced myself for an onslaught of him telling me what I needed to improve.

How did it go?

I played the first new song and Boo played along, he really liked it. Then the next and the same thing happened. Then the next. He suggested using a cappo for one song. An alternative chord for another song. A tempo increase for another. But there was no actual changes. After four songs, he was as surprised as I was.

He explained he did normally give people lots of feedback. He said when I mentioned my spreadsheet of over a hundred song ideas, he thought I’d show up with lots of half written things but these were finished songs and really good. He said some more good stuff that I can’t remember because none of it seemed real. Then he was talking about producing my album and I couldn’t really take in what had happened.

So you discovered you could consistently write good songs, what happened next?

A similarly unrealistic things happened in the studio session at Chem 19. There was a load of excitement when I was studio singing. Boo got me to sing longer notes and be more conversational and I did a few takes but there was talk of me being extraordinary and I was totally baffled. I’m okay at singing but think I sound like a twelve year old – I’ve never been known as the amazing singer, I do not have the voice of an angel. But when I got back into the mixing room and I was told how good I was at singing, I answered with an angry and confused “What do you mean, good?”. I had it all explained to me – I can sing perfectly in pitch and apparently that’s extremely rare. Even most pop stars can’t do that apparently. Again, it didn’t seem real.

So you never knew, did you ever have singing lessons?

No but I’ve started them now, well I’ve had one! But there’s more too – more unbelievable alternate reality stuff happened in the studio that day.

Chem 19 sounds like a magical place, do go on…

Well we didn’t have long to work on my track so after my singing, I heard the different instruments play their parts and I told folk what I wanted to change and how. Specific things like note lengths or style and more general overall stuff like when guitar should come in – and we changed it and we got it all sounding really good together – I loved it.

Then it was lunch and we were driving to the co-op and Boo and Jamie from the studio were talking about me and to me – saying it takes years of working in the studio before people get to that level – how I was razor sharp with hearing and knowing exactly how things needed to change. And that I had the confidence to voice it. They said it didn’t matter that I didn’t have the technical terms to describe things.

I didn’t have the technical terms or words because I didn’t know them – I’d never done it before and I hadn’t realised what I’d been doing was producing. It’s normally what Boo would have done, but he had gone surprisingly quiet at the time.

I thought we were supposed to get our song sounding great so I told everyone what needed changing by singing their instrument parts and describing how it should change. When I found out that wasn’t normal, I got worried I might be coming over as some kind of arsehole – telling everyone what to do – but they explained I hadn’t and it had been surprising but very good.

Brilliant, so what happened after that?

I had a sort of mini melt down where I couldn’t take in any of what had just happened and I couldn’t go back into the studio to watch the others do their tracks. I felt like I needed to run away. It didn’t seem real, my brain didn’t have the neuropathways for what had happened so I had to get away from the studio and do something that felt more normal instead. So I went off to meet a pal for dinner. Later I drew Boo a graph to try to explain why I’d had to leave:

This is really long answer to the original question so I hope it’s not too boring. Now you’ll understand why I needed help summarising my song description from 660 words down to 50!

No it’s facinating, thanks for your honesty. Keep going..

Okay thanks. I’m clearly not secretly talented at writing song descriptions or answering interviews questions!

But there was one more skill I didn’t know I had and that was hearing what needed to change during mixing. Mixing is where the track gets polished up so everything sounds good.

A couple of weeks later, I mixed in person. I was back in the studio and Jamie Savage had already done a mix but I’d found some things I wanted to change – for example one of the times I sang the word word ‘night’, I hadn’t sounded the T at the end – so he took a T sound from another of my vocal recorded versions, where I had and added that in. I learnt loads about the process – Jamie showed me how he was fixing things – he was really generous in explaining what he was doing.

After a while, he got me to sit down between the two giant speakers and listen and write down the time I heard anything wrong and what it was. So I listened all the way through the track and I had twelve things – all really small. We fixed each of them. Then I listened again and had ten more, we fixed them. At this point there was talk of me having the hearing of a bat. For example I heard the start of a guitar cord about to come in on a bit where there wasn’t guitar. Jamie went through each audio track from the instruments one at a time to find the sound I heard was on the ukulele track, the uke microphone had picked up the guitar from when guitar was in at that point in the song.

I have hypersensitive hearing because of having ADHD. It’s quite overwhelming at a times, I can hear through doors and I can hear all the conversations at once in a cafe. Jamie told me I should be a mixer and he explained most people can’t hear the things I can on a song – they can just tell afterwards, when it’s fixed that it sounds better. So again – massive surprise there too.

Sounds like you could also be a spy?

(Emily giggles) I’d be a rubbish spy!

Seriously though, this sounds like it’s been an incredible journey for you – but you seem surprised by so much of it, were you not making music already?

When I applied for a place on Stages it felt like a long shot! I didn’t expect to get in and I didn’t tell people I was applying. You had to send two recordings of songs you had written and a statement about why you wanted to do it. 

When I found I’d got a place and a bursary I delighted but mostly, I was shocked and scared. Isobel at Moniak Mhor said there were loads of amazing musicians on the course. I’m not an amazing musician so I didn’t know what I could bring to the course so I told her that I could bake cookies.

I spoke to a friend, Anna-Wendy Stevenson and she told me I had loads of ideas and loads I could bring because of my background in science and she said not to be afraid.

I still felt totally out of my depth when I arrived – most folk who got in were already out there playing music. I felt like a random who had stumbled in off the street. I’m not very good at guitar and I’d also been super nervous about there being an image weekend as part of stages. I don’t look glamorous – I didn’t think I’d fit in.

Were the other people on the course glamorous on arrival?

Turns out no one was. We’re all really different to each other, different ages and different styles of music so I felt at home. It’s such a lovely bunch of people on the course and it’s been wonderful going through the journey with them – I’ve made some life-long friends too. 

I’m glad to hear it. So why did you apply to do the course, if this wasn’t already your thing?

I applied because of two things – this time last year a dear friend of mine, Elspeth Murray was heading to a songwriting weekend course with some friends and someone had dropped out. She asked me if I wanted to come along. There were lots of musicians but not many writers. So I said yes and I absolutely loved every minute of it. I loved being around people who were writing music, I wrote three songs and I used one of them as part of my Stages application.

So what about the second song, where did that come from? 

I’ve written children’s songs about squirrels to go with a book I wrote , so I used on of those in my application too.

Sorry I interrupted you there, you were telling me the reasons you applied for the course, what’s the second reason?

There was another composing experience I’d had that I’d loved. I made a stop frame animation as part of the Art and Design NC I was studying, on the Ise of North Uist last year. I’d become friends with an amazing woman, Anna-Wendy Stevenson. She’s a world class violinist and she runs the applied music BA for UHI. She’d mentioned wanting to write film music once in passing so I tentatively suggested us working together because I’d made a short annimation that needed music (but I totally understood if she didn’t want to or was too busy).

Amazingly, she was up for it. I sent her the idea tunes I’d written for the otter and for some fish (me pretending to be a violin and flute as what app audio messages). She then did something wonderful – she recorded the tunes I’d sent on proper instruments and told me how I’d written trad tunes and that they were really good so we should use them instead of her writing something new.

We had a couple of evenings together at her house after that – where we put the tunes to the animation and I can see now, I was in a producer role back then – I just didn’t know that’s what I was doing.

It was one of my favourite ever life experiences – she was so talented and I could say – right can you now add this harmony over that with the violin and she did it instantly. So I could invent and sing out tunes that I could never play myself and she could play them back to me and make it sound exactly the way I wanted them to sound. It’s the closest I’ve been to feeling like a Jedi.

I was at the piano finding a segway tune so we could switch between two keys from the otter to the fish (because the otter starts making a fish picture on the beach out of shells, but the otter and the fish tunes were in different keys). So I found it and then she instantly played it back to me on violin and that made it sound just like an otter creating fish art.

We needed a tune for the raven at the end – I was sat at the piano playing all the notes from the fish to make a chord and then the otter notes in a chord and suddenly, a mournful raven tune sort of appeared out of the piano beneath my fingers and between the two chords and two keys – it was like the raven was in the room and in my blood. And I can hardly even play piano. It felt like magic. After I finished, Anna-Wendy said “Emily that was brilliant, we should have recorded it” But it was okay, I could a remember it!

If you’ve had the joy of music sort of just appearing – you’ll understand this – it’s like the combined creativity in the room enhances you and something beautiful appears that could have never appeared had you been by yourself. I love collaboration.

It sounds wonderful Emily, I’m aware I’ve taken quite a bit of your time so I’ve just got another couple of questions I’d like to ask if that’s okay? 

Sure – go ahead!

What’s been the reaction to your new song from the Stages album, feathers?

Well I’ve only played the track to a handful of people because it’s not out yet, but I’ve had three people cry in a good way and a couple of goose bumps and everyone got excited and told me about something it reminds them of – a person or experience. So so far, it’s gone down well. 

I wanted to ask you about how it felt seeing the photos and about the hardest and best parts of the course but we’ll save those questions for another interview if that’s okay. My last question is what’s next for you, after the gig?

I’ve written enough songs for a solo album (including three collaborations too) and I’ve got enough song ideas for ten albums at least – but I need to get funding to make my first album first. And then see if people actually like it too. So I’m in the process of applying for funding for that. I’m now going to be co-producing with Boo on it – which I’m super excited about. He’s amazing to work with, super talented and he makes me laugh all the time too.

Thanks Emily, is there anything else you wanted to add?

I want to say a huge thanks to Boo for so being kind and patient and grounding during what’s felt like a rollercoaster of emotions and experiences for me much of the time. And to everyone we’ve worked with during stages – they’ve been amazing! And to all the participants – I’ll write another blog post on ‘who are stages’ with a bit about each of them because they’re all so flipping brilliant.