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salwa
Monday 15 November 2010
Wednesday 10 November 2010
Story of me
I warn you now that this is probably going to be a Very Long Blog entry but it Is the story of how all this came about.
People may wonder what, how and why got me into this singing
Stuff. The simple answer, is that music has always been a way for me to express my feelings. Unlike other people, I seem to not be able to suppress these emotions, it's sort of an affliction to compulsively express them. People who know me know that sometimes if i feel ill, thats all i can talk about as though talking about it is an exorcism of it, which actually it is for me. Luckily, when I was young I had a family who encouraged self-learning and not self-pity so I spent many "ill" hours reading classical literature and poetry. Great romantic poetry is still some of my favourite to read and I think both Kubla khan and The Lady of Shalott are my favourites. This instilled in me a great love of structure around words, of rhythm and phrasing.
Mainly I suppose, I write lyrics.
Since I had a very good ear and a notion for composition at a young age, putting music to my lyrics seemed a normal next step. From about 4 I can remember playing the family
Piano, but one thing I hated was playing other peoples music! Although there were some classical pieces I desperately wanted to play, most of them were for people with large hands, Rachmaninov and Chopin were mainly lost to me. So I gradually rebelled, against classical music and my parents desire to see me achieve my grade 8 (I got grade 6 in the end). Eventually I turned to guitar where I religiously watched GnR tour videos to try and copy my idol, Slash and the teenage rebellion was in full swing.
After my gcse's I gave up piano entirely and was briefly in a band called Crush, playing 2 gigs doing mainly grunge covers, before my voice gave out from all the growling. Real life then got in the way up till about 2 years ago when an operation on a salivary gland tumor (Benign, thankfully) meant I suddenly had "strokeface" and couldn't talk properly let alone sing, for 6 months whilst the nerves in my face started to gradually heal.
As you can imagine, this woke me up somewhat. And at the same time, I'd been moving away from the Metal music I'd been into, wondering how I could fit in because my voice was too delicate for mandatory screaming. An album, recommended by a friend (thank you Sam) changed my life.
"For Emma Forever Ago" by Bon Iver was one of The Most Beautiful albums and collections of songs I'd ever heard. For the seeming simplicity, the raw emotion and the original way to make a vocal seem so gentle yet so full. It made me rethink my own style. Also at the same time, I'd been more and more aware of the ukulele. I remember seeing Bishi give an impromptu performance as part of Showstudio, realising that one of my fave actresses, Mila Jovivitch played one too, I thought I'd investigate. I bought a basic uke from a local music store to start with and realised this had been the missing musical ingredient to my recent life. The uke drove away the cobwebs of guitar "sameyness" and really let me find the sort of roots I'd been looking for. I had to get more!
I knew just the place. Just off Brick Lane on Hanbury Street in East London is a curious shop called The Duke Of Uke. Yes! I thought when I first saw the sign, this Has to be investigated!
The shop was a small persons candystore with bright miniature guitars everywhere. I found out there was many types of ukule and being the bass-note lover that I am decided to try a concert uke which was tuned slightly differently.
So to recap:
Sals life + Bon iver + uke = Fresh Music.
From then on and for the last year ive finally got up the courage to take my small assortment of songs to public places.
My myspace page has all the details of where you can watch me next.
Http://www.myspace.com/salwasmusic
Thanks for reading this far x
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
People may wonder what, how and why got me into this singing
Stuff. The simple answer, is that music has always been a way for me to express my feelings. Unlike other people, I seem to not be able to suppress these emotions, it's sort of an affliction to compulsively express them. People who know me know that sometimes if i feel ill, thats all i can talk about as though talking about it is an exorcism of it, which actually it is for me. Luckily, when I was young I had a family who encouraged self-learning and not self-pity so I spent many "ill" hours reading classical literature and poetry. Great romantic poetry is still some of my favourite to read and I think both Kubla khan and The Lady of Shalott are my favourites. This instilled in me a great love of structure around words, of rhythm and phrasing.
Mainly I suppose, I write lyrics.
Since I had a very good ear and a notion for composition at a young age, putting music to my lyrics seemed a normal next step. From about 4 I can remember playing the family
Piano, but one thing I hated was playing other peoples music! Although there were some classical pieces I desperately wanted to play, most of them were for people with large hands, Rachmaninov and Chopin were mainly lost to me. So I gradually rebelled, against classical music and my parents desire to see me achieve my grade 8 (I got grade 6 in the end). Eventually I turned to guitar where I religiously watched GnR tour videos to try and copy my idol, Slash and the teenage rebellion was in full swing.
After my gcse's I gave up piano entirely and was briefly in a band called Crush, playing 2 gigs doing mainly grunge covers, before my voice gave out from all the growling. Real life then got in the way up till about 2 years ago when an operation on a salivary gland tumor (Benign, thankfully) meant I suddenly had "strokeface" and couldn't talk properly let alone sing, for 6 months whilst the nerves in my face started to gradually heal.
As you can imagine, this woke me up somewhat. And at the same time, I'd been moving away from the Metal music I'd been into, wondering how I could fit in because my voice was too delicate for mandatory screaming. An album, recommended by a friend (thank you Sam) changed my life.
"For Emma Forever Ago" by Bon Iver was one of The Most Beautiful albums and collections of songs I'd ever heard. For the seeming simplicity, the raw emotion and the original way to make a vocal seem so gentle yet so full. It made me rethink my own style. Also at the same time, I'd been more and more aware of the ukulele. I remember seeing Bishi give an impromptu performance as part of Showstudio, realising that one of my fave actresses, Mila Jovivitch played one too, I thought I'd investigate. I bought a basic uke from a local music store to start with and realised this had been the missing musical ingredient to my recent life. The uke drove away the cobwebs of guitar "sameyness" and really let me find the sort of roots I'd been looking for. I had to get more!
I knew just the place. Just off Brick Lane on Hanbury Street in East London is a curious shop called The Duke Of Uke. Yes! I thought when I first saw the sign, this Has to be investigated!
The shop was a small persons candystore with bright miniature guitars everywhere. I found out there was many types of ukule and being the bass-note lover that I am decided to try a concert uke which was tuned slightly differently.
So to recap:
Sals life + Bon iver + uke = Fresh Music.
From then on and for the last year ive finally got up the courage to take my small assortment of songs to public places.
My myspace page has all the details of where you can watch me next.
Http://www.myspace.com/salwasmusic
Thanks for reading this far x
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
Monday 8 November 2010
Great things
Still great things to be seen...
// Autumn leaves, fall off the trees, onto the ground below me.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
// Autumn leaves, fall off the trees, onto the ground below me.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
Sunday 7 November 2010
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