WELCOME

Hi there, I'm a mum of 3, recently completed the UHI Shetland HNC in Music. I embarked on the course to figure out how to work a DAW and how to record our family music collaborations and compose music on the computer. It has been the best thing I have done and I have learnt a lot! 

I grew up in Lerwick, Shetland and have been surrounded by music of many genres throughout life. My grandparents were both classical pianists and my Mum also a pianist who played classical but also would vamp along to the many shetland traditional sessions at home throughout the years. My Dad is a fiddle maker and used to play the fiddle and guitar but due to arthritis his playing is limited, however he still makes fiddles.

My brother Maurice and I had fiddle lessons at school, I had Willie Hunter as a teacher and my brother had Trevor Hunter. They both had very different ways of teaching. Trevor the perfectionist and Willie really kept the interest going by giving you new tunes all the time. My brother used to learn all my tunes I would get.

We often would have sessions at home after the lounge bar would shut then our home would be filled with musicians such as Willie Hunter, Peerie Willie Johnson, Bogey Dalziel, Charlie Simpson, Clive Henderson, Violet Tulloch and many more. At folk festival time we had the excitement of Graham Townsend from Canada and Willie Hunter in with Violet Tulloch. I remember me and my brother peeking from the top of the stairs as we should have been in bed. Willie Hunter said, the kids should be down to hear this, so that was our cue to stay up late.

We would go to bed listening to records and my parents, quite often requests for world music from the readers digest collection. I seemed like the Hungarian, Bulgarian, Austrian and Italian albums. Our parents knew if we had fallen asleep as there would be a voice that would request the record to be turned over if the music had stopped.

As I grew up I lived for the Folk Festival every Year and would count down the weeks to it. I would collect autographs of all the musicians and enjoyed watching the workshops and going to the concerts to experience the folk music from all over the world. It was one of the few events where kids could get the chance to join in music sessions with the adults. I longed to turn 18 so I could get into the Lounge bar for a tune! 

I moved to Edinburgh after studying Hairdressing at 18 and lived there for about 3 years and loved going to the sessions in Leith and the Tron and going to gigs of all different Genres. 

I loved Electronic dance music and the scene was huge in Edinburgh at the time in the late 90s. Martyn Bennet was playing often and I just loved his fusion of the traditional with the modern Electronic dance. I attended festivals and had the experience of having sessions with artists from all over. Picking up many tunes along the way by ear. So many variations.

I moved back to Shetland and continued to work as a Hairstylist, opened my own Salon and enjoyed my weekends having tunes until I had kids of my own. 

I ploughed my energy and time into running them to music lessons and activities, I organised family friendly sessions at Mareel to give opportunities for the youngsters to play with the Adults as I could remember well the long wait for the annual Folk festival and wanted to make the wait feel less lengthy. This has paid off as I can now enjoy collaborating with them.

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When my eldest daughter Ella decided to do the NC in Music I was reading through the courses and said, I would love to do something like this. She said just do it! We ended up in the same practical class! which was nice as we were the only two more traditional style musicians there. So she got roped into my compositions as well as my younger daughter Martha and my brother Maurice. It really brought us together to work on some things as a collective.

One of my more recent influences before applying for College was Eamonn Watt. He had studied with UHI Shetland and I had stumbled across his music online whilst looking for Locally sourced music that I could use for my Reiki Healing Business. He introduced me to Cubase when I had asked him how he went about his compositions and thought it was something I would love to try. He came to get me started by showing me how to plug everything in and showed me some basics to play about with.

I asked him to join us and share his percussion skills for our last two student nights. It was an exciting moment for me as I am in awe of his compositional works and percussive talent, and so grateful for his encouragement and help along the way. He has answered many out of hours messages when technology has had me stumped.

 I missed out on a lot of the computer tech development over the last 17 Years as I was busy raising kids so this was quite challenging figuring out how to work with the DAW. So when I saw that this was covered in the course I thought this would be a great help to me.

I hope to do more compositions and collaborations and my zest for music is flowing with force at the moment. I would recommend the HNC Music to anyone needing a little inspiration and motivation to getting back to music. 

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My other qualified day jobs are Hairstylist, Reiki practitioner, Therapist in NLP, CBT, Psychotherapy and also a qualified Life Coach.

My ambition is to compose more music to play and do more performances with the band as well as create more compositions of different genres now I have the sussed out the DAW. I am hoping to embark on the Music degree next year with UHI Shetland at the same time as my daughter Ella Robertson who is currently studying the HNC Music and has been very much part of my HNC experience by being in the band.

In my year out I aim to create some shetland vibe meditative music to use for my Reiki healing business amongst other collaborative alternative compositions. I would like to build my repertoire with the band so we have enough content for full length gigs and share my compositions and hopefully inspire people to give electronic music a go. At age 45 I started my electronic journey and have really found my passion mixing my favourite genres and creating different vibes. It's pretty addictive. I would love to show others it's never too late to do that dream you always had.