​Well, I’m recovering from a two day hiatus where technology - although it has helped us create our work online - has also been causing us huge headaches.
 
I was appointed (I think by process of elimination?) to do the music mixing for The Crooked Spire project.
 
I had hoped to have all the singers’ files for a few days while I mixed the music and songs. I had gradually built up the mixes of the music by saving rough drafts of the Logic Pro files as each item came to me.  
However, some of these only arrived on the day I was supposed to send them to the sound mastering engineer. So, I worked until 2 in the morning on the mixes (trying to do as much as possible on headphones.)
 
As many others in our communities of musicians and artists are finding, trying to record yourself while listening to a backing track or click track can become a bit of a nightmare.
 
One musician I know has referred to doing ‘contortions’ while listening on headphones and recording themselves. And then when you listen back to yourself it can sound so disappointing and dispiriting because it is you, on your own, laid bare so to speak, when you are supposed to be part of something else in a backing track or a group or ensemble.
 
So, it took two days and 3 goes before I was able to transfer 7 pieces of music for the ‘production’ to the mastering engineer who was going to put the polish on our recordings.
 
He only had one day free in his schedule to work on it. The night before I thought I’d uploaded to Google drive.
 
Next morning, I got a phone call at 9.30 from Kevin to say that not all the files he needed were there.
I was in the middle of filming a scene outside Brampton Church and had to leave Clara to get on with it and my wife took over while I returned home to send the files again.
 
So, I uploaded the files again. I found there wasn’t enough space on Google drive so paid £15.99 for more google drive memory. Each file took between 20 minutes and an hour to upload. That’s seven times a minimum of 140 minutes twiddling thumbs. All depending on WiFi internet strength.
 
Near the end of the day - at 4.45 Kevin rang me to say he’d had a problem with opening the files from Google drive and could I upload them again via WeTransferTM.
 
So, while supper was waiting to be cooked, I started to upload to Kevin’s WeTransferTM the 7 files. This time it worked and later that evening I was given the thumbs up.
 
I was pretty exhausted by this time and needed the next day to recover.
 
Next day Kevin was able to WeTransferTM the finished and beautifully polished music files ready to go to the actors so they could film the rest of the showcase before it goes back to Andrew (Director) and Matt (Editor) to be made into the finished ‘master’ piece.
 
Martin

​Ferguson’s Gang…

1927…Britain's heritage is vanishing. Beautiful landscapes are being bulldozed. Historic buildings are being blown up. Stonehenge is collapsing.  ​Enter Ferguson's Gang, a mysterious and eccentric group of young women who helped the National Trust to fight back.

A National Treasure of a Musical

​The retelling of a true story, we assume, must be complex, balancing the sensibilities of the descendants of the real characters with the need to entertain, but Martin Coslett’s AshGate Productions did just that. ​The five wonderful actresses who starred in ‘Ferguson’s Gang’ at the Yvonne Arnaud’s Mill Theatre in Guildford this week, switched roles, costumes, accents and storylines in the blink of an eye, without ever missing a beat.

​Very moving, powerful and very well presented. - Heather and Mike Brayshaw

​I really enjoyed the combo of music and serious subject,  I was drawn into the Penn story by the acting, from the very start!  Nothing dragged, nothing seemed not quite as it should be.  And the music was fun yet interesting and harmonically developed. So bravo to all of you. - Margie

Everyone I spoke to after the performance thoroughly enjoyed it.  how effective it was to have the cast sit in with the audience and to make such dramatic use of the centre aisle. 
- Ann Vernau

​PS.  I have one complaint: this morning I can't get 'Spice of my Life' out of my head!!