BEHIND THE SCENES: MUSIC COURSE (FUNDED BY MAES)

The Music Course this January was nothing short of a success. This group of budding musicians were able to hone their skills and build their musical portfolios. The participants got the opportunity to broadcast their creations live on the Reform Airwaves, which you can listen to below.

We caught up with Em at the end of the Music Course to hear about their experience of the course.

Please can you introduce your name, and pronouns, and tell us a bit about what you like getting up to in your free time?

E: I’m Em and I’m a non-binary electronic music producer.

Describe your music in 3 words

E: Expressive, Maximalist and Minimalist.

If you were stuck on a desert island with a record player, what record would you want to have with you to listen to?

E: I love music so much, I’ve thought about this. I think it would definitely be Introducing by DJ Shadow. He’s a really big artist from the ’90s, and the album is made of samples found in a record store basement. So it’s an album almost made of broken dreams.

Did you have much musical experience before? If so, what’s your favourite thing about making music?

E: I’ve done music production for a few years beforehand, but I’ve struggled to finish making tracks. It’s almost like a therapy for me. It kind of unravels what’s within my head and makes things more clear when I’m having issues with my identity, but making music helps me connect to that.

Let’s throw it back to your first day at Reform versus now, tell me a bit about your first impressions/feelings/emotions in comparison to how you feel now. What has changed?

E: At the start, I was quite excited to have an environment to create stuff and meet people. It felt quite refreshing because I’ve not been making stuff as much. And now I’m in a challenged place because I need to finish my track.

Do you have any musical role models that inspire your practice and why?

E: Bjork, Aphex Twin, Squarepusher, Arca and Dj Shadow. I think because I can see within their music that they really express themselves. The deepest emotions are within their music, and that’s something I’m really inspired by really aspire to do.

When writing new music, where do you begin with the process and what inspires you to make a new track?

E: I think it just depends on what mindset I’m in when I’m making something. I think for this I took inspiration from certain tracks because we did an exercise where we picked certain tracks we wanted to sound like. I chose a few Arca tracks and I went into this sort of digital glitch sound which is not usually something I do.

What will you take from the Music course moving forward & what are your plans from here onwards?

E: I just want to finish as many projects as I can cause that’s something I’ve struggled with quite a bit beforehand.

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