Hi – and welcome to my new blog!
My first post comes on one of the last few performance dates of ‘Helium’ by Slung Low, performing at The Barbican in London to riotous acclaim (4 stars in The Guardian, same in Metro), and the news that I’ll be off to Florida in October with the fabulous Punch Drunk for a little bit of R ‘n’ D for their 2010 theatre installation extravaganza ‘Woyzeck’ as part of the Sundance Festival.
Life as a composer and sound designer “for film, television, theatre and multimedia” certainly has its ups and downs, but it’s never dull. As a career, I’ve been on this path one way or another since graduating in 2001 from The Media School at Bournemouth University, and before that as a teen scribbling tunes for my sister and I to play as duets on the violin. Up until this point, through necessity, it’s been supplemented through other musical work, and the occasional stint as a production assistant, as a means of paying the bills. I would have a tendency not to claim composing as my sole line of work when queried by anyone not in my line of work, and would preface this information with an “I’m a teacher” (or whatever else it was that kept a roof over my head). Somehow, being out in the ‘real’ world, with ‘real’ people who had ‘real’ jobs, in a strange way made me feel like maybe my line of work wasn’t actually that real.
In the last year, I’ve begun to reply, “I’m a composer,” to anyone who might ask what I did and felt 100% behind it, completely certain. It’s a really wonderful feeling 🙂 So this site will document my processes and thoughts about making and understanding sound for the screen and stage from the point of view of my experiences. I really hope it’s useful, and, at the very least, interesting!
More about Helium on my next post…
Thanks for reading and hope to see you hear (tut!) again soon!
Heather Fenoughty