COVID Light Memorial | Michelle V Henderson

The Covid Memorial Light Art Project March 2023

Malcolm Innes a Light Artist came into the College to visit at the start of March and showed the HNC class some of his projects he had done all over the world. He informed us of his idea for his latest commissions work which was to be a couple of light art projects in Shetland the first being the Covid Memorial project. This entailed an interactive light art display on the side of the Mareel building that would be activated by motion of the public.

He wondered if any of us music students had any compositions or ideas for music to go with them.

During the composition module at College I had done a piano piece and I had a couple of ideas for more ambient style pieces incorporating the traditional flavour of Shetland with the electronic ambient vibe, which I thought might go well with the lights art display.

As the project deadline was only 3 weeks away I set too with my rough ideas and emailed them to see if they were of interest to him. I received a reply about a week later saying some of them may be of interest. I replied to ask which ones so I could focus on them and get them finished and mastered on time as I knew it was only two weeks away. I also had the Second Student Night to get ready for the day before the light art display as well as a marked rehearsal at college, as well as a promotional gig out at the other Lerwick College campus. In the middle of that I had to travel to Orkney for a funeral.

Three nights before the deadline I recieved an email saying he would like to use all four compositions. So I was up for three consecutive nights until 3:30am working on them to get them done in time. What a week that was!

I however work quite well under pressure and got them all transferred over in time. He decided to just use three but it was quite an amazing experience to hear my freshly done compositions used for a beautiful light art display. Worth the effort.

He has already enquired if I would be interested in seeing what his next idea was.

Below are some clips from the Covid Light Memorial and some Soundcloud links for all the compositions used. One of them was "Home" which is on the Live performance page which we played live the night before the display.

To the left is a video clip of the Covid Memorial Light Art display created by Malcolm Innes, The composition used here is a piano composition that I created actually for college. We had to create music to go with an image, the image I selected is shown below and the composition I had in mind was of being apart from loved ones wether here or in spirit. I composed it with a call and answer style where the call is from those left behind played in a lower tone and the answer from spirit being played in the higher tone. I thought it would work well for the covid memorial considering the distance brought between families and loved ones and those precious years lost during lockdown that could have been spent with those now passed on. I made two versions of this track the first just played without a metronome and the second I made with some rhythm and drum loops to create a different feel. There is a slight variation between the two.

To the right below is the music notation and the full versions on Soundcloud.

Below is the image I used for inspiration.

I used Reaper for the first composition as that what I was using at college, the remix I used Cubase as I worked on it mostly at home and was slightly more familiar with it at the time. I like both Reaper and Cubase but have way more stuff on my computer at home that goes with Cubase so I tend to use it more.

Photos below of the DAW work relevant to the modules Composition, Music theory and Digital Audio Workstations.

Dawn Awakenings

This composition was inspired by the quietness at dawn without the rush hour traffic during lockdown. I composed the melody in the stairwell at Mareel as its got nice acoustics for playing the fiddle. It was inspired from the old listening tune The Day Dawn which goes back to the 1600s. The first section of the tune was my imagination of the birds calling to each other repetitively in the early hours and the second part of the melody is me imagining the sun coming up. It was very quiet in Lerwick during lockdown. Very strange but nice to hear the wildlife so well.

I wanted to create an ambient vibe so layered up the fiddle parts and different harmonies as well as the Octave fiddle.

This track features:

Michelle Henderson fiddle/backing track

Ella Robertson fiddle

Maurice Henderson fiddle

Martha Robertson piano

Eamonn Watt percussion.

To the right is a video clip of the Light art display and a Soundcloud full audio of the track itself.

The other composition used for the memorial was "Home" which you can find on live performance page as we played it in Mareel the night before the display. Or there's a Soundcloud link below for an Audio version.

The same crew as above were involved in the recording and playing of "Home"

Down to the right are some of the DAW workings of Dawn Awakenings.