Jun 28, 20183 min read

Day 2: "Aw jeez, where am I"

Updated: Mar 28, 2020

Yeah, you probably guessed it - I got lost again today. It was a pretty eventful morning today, I started off by falling off the top bunk in my room, then losing my key card for a good 10 minutes, and then getting lost...somehow, again. Yes, that's right, I got lost walking a path which I walked through twice yesterday, BUT anyways, back to the program!

Our day kicked off with a helpful short talk by Nigel, preparing us for the BIG one - our one-to-one mentoring session with Christopher Young. These will be happening in the next few days, in preparation for the recording session with the orchestra. They will undoubtedly be very nerve-wracking BUUUT really great.

This meeting was followed by our one of our daily classes with Juanjo Molina (a Spanish film composer). We discussed instrumentation and orchestration, as well as quite an important aspect of composing for orchestra; the clarity of the score. This might not be the most exciting subject, referring to things like accurate dynamic markings, the organisation of systems on a page, and of course much more, but it is in my opinion so important, especially when dealing with an orchestra which is usually full of musicians sight-reading your music, so it must be clear as crystal, in order to convey your musical message to the screen and audience.

This class was then paused for a lunch break; this time taking us to an asian buffet down the road - it was pretty delicious, and the Spaniards didn't have to translate as much this time, so yay!

We continued our orchestration and instrumentation class after the lunch break (this time actually being punctual with our return), where Juanjo helped make this subject fun, with phrases like 'You should double check these things, because sometimes *insert notation software here* makes jokes'. Juanjo's classes are pretty informative of course, but also easy-going and very open to discussion between us, which makes them interactive and entertaining...while trying to keep our sometimes angry Mediterranean 'passion' at bay of course.

The highlight of the day was of course our session with composer Garry Schyman; he started off by telling us about himself, then followed with a Q&A with our own questions, and boy, were there questions. Many of us participants are quite interested in video-game composing, so let me tell you, the energy was high with this one! We discussed interesting topics such as the use of layered looping in video game sequences, which is one style of interactive music in games. We also discussed the process of game-composing, and how it differs/is similar to film composing, presenting itself with perhaps more similarities than one would expect.

Tomorrow, we finally get to meet Christopher Young in person, I'm sure everyone's impatiently awaiting to meet him! Francesco Menini and my fellow Spanish blogger Joan both went to meet him at the airport today, eagerly greeting his arrival, which I'm sure served as a warm welcome to Christopher after such a long flight from the US.

Tomorrow, tomorrow, as the song goes!

Also, please enjoy this selfie of me, Francesco (from Italy), and Damian (who is also from Malta, whaaat?!) which we took after a brief night out for tapas!