A Special Birthday Present

In my post about the Big Purple Party I mentioned how we had worked on a short programme of music for the entertainment.

We had actually planned to have one more particularly special musical piece performed but unfortunately it couldn't be played because the piano at the birthday venue wasn't in the best condition.

James (18) had written a special piano piece for his Auntie Anna's birthday, and titled it simply 'Anna'.

We had asked if there was a piano at the venue and were told that there was one there that had recently been tuned. Unfortunately, when we arrived on the day of the party we discovered that although the piano may have been tuned recently, there had been no mention made of the fact that the majority of the keys stuck down when you played them! I'm not sure how it could possibly have been tuned without the tuner realising this, but there was no way it could have been performed on and it was too late for us to make an alternative arrangement for someone to bring a digital piano along to the party. Instead we just told Anna that James had written a piece for her and that he would record it as soon as possible so that she could hear it.

In a way I'm actually kind of glad that he didn't get to play it on the day. For the simple reason that I think it's such a beautiful, emotional piece and I fear that there may have been few dry eyes at the party had he been able to play it there, especially given Anna's illness.

True to his word, he managed to get a decent recording of himself playing the piece the following week and uploaded it to his Soundcloud page for Anna to hear and to share with others.

Anna is a big fan of hill walking and so James chose one of her many hill walking photos to be the background picture for the track.

So, without any more chat, here is the special birthday present James gave his Auntie for her 50th birthday. I reckon he's still on track for a good career as a composer.

A World Premiere

Last week it was the Spring Fling, the annual Spring music concert at the older boys' high school.

It was James' last year taking part in the concert as a pupil and he was certainly kept busy in it.

Firstly he played the piano accompaniment for the guitar ensemble. Then he moved onto the newly started school Jazz Band, where he played trombone, and where Calum played trumpet. They both played their respective brass instruments in the Senior Wind Band, who performed a James Bond Medley. I would have added a wee clip of their bands playing, but I don't want to distract from the main focus of this post. 

The biggest thing James had to do at the concert was to stand up and give a presentation before the 'world premiere' of his animation. OK, so it wasn't a world premiere as such, but it was the first time his animation had been shown in public before a large audience so it was as good as a premiere to us anyway!

In his 6th year at high school James is studying Advanced Higher Gaelic, Advanced Higher Music and A-Level Art (Their school choose to offer A-Level Art rather than Advanced Higher as most of the Art Colleges prefer this as a qualification.)

For his main project for Art he had to do a work of Art titled 'Journey'. What this piece of Art is is entirely up to the students, and so James decided to make animation since he used to enjoy working on them so much when he was younger. Since his main study for music is composition he also decided that he would write the music for the animation himself too.

In his presentation at the concert he explained how he went about working on the animation. First of all he wrote a piano version of his soundtrack. Then he orchestrated this. Once he had written the orchestrated version he went around and asked all of the instrumental teachers at school if they would play the parts of their instrument so that he could record a proper version of the soundtrack. The staff were all so helpful and more than happy to play their parts for him. Then he just had to tweak with the levels a bit and his soundtrack was finished. The final result sounds amazing, but that wasn't the end of his work. 

Next he had to work on the animation. He wanted to animated a character against a live background, and so spent a week going out in all weathers to the woods around where we live. He got both photographs and film clips of the trees, the ground, the river, the rain falling etc. Finally he animated the little stick man over the backgrounds. This was the most labour intensive part of the project as each frame was hand drawn. There are about 24 frames per second and the film is 4 minutes long, so it works out at about 5700 individual drawings. He was only given a week to work on this section and so you can see why he chose to make his character a little stick man. Even though the man is just a stick man, he still added the shadows to him to make him more realistic.

 He has put so much thought into every tiny part of this that it just works so well. The teachers at school were so impressed with it that they asked him if it could be shown at the concert, so I know it is not just me as his biased mum who thinks it is amazing!

Anyway, enough of the chat about it, and onto the actual animation. For the best effect play it in full screen (clicking the little thing at the bottom right of the clip)

He has also added the soundtrack on it's own, which I think is a great idea because sometimes when you are watching a film you are distracted a bit from listening to the music properly, even although the music makes the film.

I studied composition as my main study when I did my music degree, which is what James also wants to do, although he is taking a year out after school to decide for sure. I know that I didn't have as much talent as him, or as much confidence either, when I was 18 and so I'm pretty sure he has great things ahead of him if he continues like this.

He has set up his own You Tube channel where he hopes to add more music as he gets it recorded and would really love it if he got a few more subscribers. You can find his channel here. I'm sure a lovely comment here or there on his animation would also be most welcome :)

October Birthday Boys

October is a double birthday month in our house.

The month kicks off with Calum's birthday right at the beginning. This year he turned 15.

There was nothing that he really wanted for his birthday, but he has been after a bigger accordion for some time now as the one he had was only a small sized one, with very few buttons for the chords. I had been keeping an eye out on both eBay and Gumtree for months to see if I could get a good one at a reasonable price.

After months of looking, and being outbid every time, I found one the week before his birthday. It was located about 45 minutes away from here and was a collection only. Because it wasn't located in either of the big cities, and the fact that it was collection only meant that I wasn't up against too much competition for it and I was delighted to win the bid just a few days before Calum's birthday.

The accordion is in excellent condition and suits Calum just perfectly. He can be found most evenings playing away and trying to get to grips with all those extra buttons - he has gone from having around 12 to 80! I'll leave the most recent clip of him playing until the very end of the post.

His choice of birthday dinner was Haggis, Neeps and Tatties.

For his cake I wasn't sure what to do for the decoration as Calum had made no requests. I had made a rainbow cake and covered it in white icing but didn't know what to put on the top.

James (17) came through to help take over and was soon sketching this amazing Celtic pattern on the cake with a food colouring pen. 

We both agreed that a Celtic pattern suited Calum perfectly.

Three weeks after Calum's birthday it is Fraser's turn.

Here he is on his last night as a 3 year old.

And here he is the following morning as a big 4 year old!

We were on holiday up in Lewis for his birthday, and he had been very excited about the prospect of spending his birthday at Granny and Shen's house.

He has recently been asking if he could go ten pin bowling, after playing it on the Wii with his brothers, and so we booked the two bowling lanes at the sports centre in Ness, at the north of the island, as his birthday treat.

He was so excited about it, and about getting to wear the funny bowling shoes.

The bowling there must have the nicest view of any bowling alley in the whole country. These are the views from the two windows.

Back to the birthday boy.

He took great delight in choosing which ball would be the best for him.

Fraser's bowling style was a little unorthodox, as you can see in this little clip, but it did the job and he ended up beating most of his brothers!

Granny was able to come bowling with us too.

Back at Granny and Shen's house there were more presents to open.

After that Fraser had invited one of his little friends to come around for a play and some birthday cake. She used to live down near us and attended the Gaelic toddler group we go to, but moved back up to Lewis in the summer. Fraser misses her at the Monday toddler group and so was delighted to have a little catch up with her.

Unlike Calum, Fraser had some very specific requests for his cake! He wanted it to be a figure of eight race track, with a tunnel in the middle, and with some of his Cars cars on the track and watching at the side.

He said the cake was exactly what he wanted, that he had had a great day, and asked if it could be his birthday more often!

Finally, here is that clip of Calum on his accordion. He still has never had a proper lesson on it. I've just been helping him with the keyboard side of it and we have worked out the chords as we go along!

Dazzle Ships and Haggis

Ally (7) has been learning about the Dazzle Ships at school recently and has really loved sharing everything he learned about them with us. As well as learning what the Dazzle Ships were, his class had a few visits from an artist who helped them work on an art project connected to the Dazzle Ships.

For the last few months Edinburgh has had an example of a Dazzle Ship docked down in Leith, and we found out recently that it was only going to be there until the end of January. So I promised Ally that we would go down to see it after school last Friday - school finishes at lunchtime every Friday.

The docks are only a 5 minute bus journey from the boys' primary school and Friday was a rare bright afternoon - as opposed to the usual grey and dull ones in January.  Perfect for something that involved being outdoors.

Dazzle Ships were an idea that came about during the First World War, when the Admiralty were trying to think of a way to protect their ships from enemy torpedoes. Since they couldn't hide the ships, they tried to confuse the enemy instead, and painted the ships with bright, angular shapes and patterns. The aim was to confuse the enemy so that they couldn't tell which direction the ship was travelling in, and so it would be harder for them to take a good aim with their torpedoes. There was no set pattern for different types of ships, so as not to give away what type they were.

Ally was delighted to see the Dazzle Ship for real.

Once we were finished looking at the Dazzle Ship we took a walk back along the Leith Shore, which looked rather lovely in the winter sunshine. What a difference it made to have the sun shining, even though it was still cold. Everything just seems lovelier and more cheerful in the sunshine! 

Now onto the haggis, which has no connection whatsoever with the Dazzle Ship, other than being part of the same weekend.

On Saturday night my husband's sister hosted her annual Burns Supper, an event that she has done every January for as long as I can remember!

She only ever serves the king of haggis' - haggai?, what is the plural of haggis? - at her suppers, the locally made Macsweens.

Before it can be eaten, the haggis needs to be addressed by someone reading out Burns' Ode to a Haggis. This year James (17) was again the only one brave enough to try it given the honour of addressing the haggis, despite his protestation that as he's dyslexic it's hard enough for him to read English and Gaelic, never mind something written in Scots!

Anyway, he did a great, and suitably dramatic reading, and was particularly enthusiastic about the part where the haggis is stabbed and sliced open! 

Everyone in our house loves haggis, neeps and tatties, and we eat it much more often than just Burns and St Andrew's Nights.

See that kilt Calum (14) is wearing? It's his dad's! It was just a tiny bit big for him.

This may have been the first time that Rocket Raccoon had attended a Burns Supper.

I didn't have time to dig out the kilts for the younger boys, but they did all wear their Scotland tops instead - or a cute little tartan shirt for Fraser.

After dinner we always sing some traditional Scottish songs, but before we started on the singing we had a little bit of music from some of the boys. 

David (11) played An Ataireachd Ard on the guitar...

...and Calum played us the first section of Kate Martin's Waltz on the accordion. He only started learning it that week, which is why he only played the beginning! Calum also accompanied a lot of the songs on accordion too.

 Ally just wishes Auntie Anna had a piano so that he could have performed something too. He still loves playing the piano as much as when he started just a few months ago, and still can't walk past it without sitting down to play for a while. I tell him that he's like our little Mozart as he can't stop playing a tune half way through. He needs to get to the end of it, no matter what he gets called away to do! Mozart was apparently the same, and his children used to tease him by playing unfinished cadences on the piano, which would result in him rushing over to play the end of it!

History lesson over, here's a little clip of David and Calum's two musical solos to finish off with.