The first single on my Homophonic Records label, Featuring The iDolls, Emma, Portia and Charlotte. Download from and receive excellent karma along with your purchase.
The creative workshop ‘Create A Jingle In 30 minutes’, an open-studio event for #DigitalShoreditch Festival was great fun and the bonus was being filmed for Manoto TV’s Tech Show.
A place where artists can exchange information and ideas is one factor of the hothouse and the other is economics.
Twitter Training Tuesdays aim to teach best practice on Twitter so that you can engage with the people, organisations and services that will save you time and money in promoting your business, services or project.
What you will gain from the session:
Learn Twitter’s main features: Home, @Connect, #Discover
Create a sparkling, optimised profile so you can be found
Twitter etiquette; don’t speak with your mouth full..that kind of thing
Use the powerful search feature to ensure you are in the right conversation
Develop best practice for Retweets, Hashtags and Lists
Realise that it’s not about numbers it’s about influence
Relax, you have content so there is going to be no lessons on what to say
The workshop will be made up of a small group and there will plenty of opportunity to ask questions and share Twitter experiences, both good and bad.
This is the first in a series of Twitter TrainingTuesday workshops, if you would like to be added to my mailing list or for more information please email me with Twitter Training Tuesday in the subject box.
Sunday 8th July 2012, 11.00am - 4pm at Hoxton Works, London
Following the success of The Visitors seminar in April composer and pop-culture aesthete Stuart Wood will host a journey through ABBA’s penultimate studio album, Super Trouper, which became the biggest-selling of album in the UK in 1980.
The day will include:
Playback and analysis track by track in a salon setting
The context of each recording; dates, places and participants
Opportunity to share experiences about the album
Lunch and refreshments included
Musical analysis of a selection of songs performed live by a West End singer
The effect the album had and continues to have on popular culture today The cost of the day is £58
You will receive a confirmation and a link to ticket details.
This is the second in a series of seminars, which is working retrospectively through the all of ABBA’s albums. If you would like to be placed on the mailing list please email me here: Mailing List for Abba Album Seminars
Short video profile of Stuart Wood Music - London-based composer and recording studio. Thanks to Melanie Malherbe for making this film. Check out her work
“I’d like to teach the world to sing…..” Coke’s 1970’s peace anthem (above).
I create original soundtracks and arrangements for commercials. I intensely worked at succeeding in this field because I love advert music and always have. There is something very powerful about this miniature artform; the challenge to the composer is to create a piece of event music with a beginning, middle and end, which moves the listener enough to want to part with their money, all in 29 seconds!
I am partly ashamed and partly thrilled to say I created the original six Go Comparecommercials - not my composition but my sparkling arrangement played by a 50 piece orchestra and 10 piece choir recorded at Angel Studios with no expense spared! The great thing about this ad is that the music had to be recorded before it was shot. The whole conceit is based on the song.
In an industry of art school graduates where the visual element is god, it’s nice when a good old fashioned music based commercial jumps out of the screen. The generation of copywriters who worked for commercial radio have long gone, but occasionally an ad pops up with a great jingle, and I get a rush of excitement that takes me back to being an eleven year old, recording the commercial break on my tape recorder.
Here are my TOP SIX.
1. Woolworths Christmas Ad 1981: “Have a cracking christmas at Woolworths” - It doesn’t get much better than this ABBA, inspired festive romp.
2. Cadbury’s Flake: beautiful string arrangement and deeply sincere vocal for the crumbliest, flakiest, milk chocolate in the world.
3. Fiat Strada TV commercial 1979, didn’t sell the car but we all loved the ad. Built by robots driven by idiots, was the gag, at the time.
4. Washing Machines Live Longer With Calgon. I sometimes fantasise that I had composed the jingle on this one.
5. Persil Automatic: Wouldn’t it be nice to wake to whiteness. A perfectly executed use of a standard, tastefully done, it sells the product and has you singing it straight away.
Bodyform: “Wooaah Bodyform”. I created the soundtrack for the Always panty-pad ‘dodgems’ commercials. It was arrangement of the Blue Danube played on a fairground organ. I thought at the time, ‘there’s only one place that’s going!’
The first in a series of critical appreciation seminars began yesterday with ABBA’s final album, The Visitors. Eight of us exchanged ideas and personal insights in the salon atmosphere of my studio in Hoxton as we listened to each of the nine tracks on the album. Highlights of the day were:
Analysing melodic, harmonic and rhythmic structures of the songs
Appreciation of the overall aesthetic of the album, including the artwork
Reviewing the lyrics and vocal approach to each song
Delicious lunch at the Turkish deli next door!
Sharing our pre-seminar task list of favourite to least favourite songs
Reassessing this list at the end of the day
Michael remarked that the album, released just before Christmas 1981, was in fact the height of summer in his native Australia and it’s dark tones jarred with the season.
Chris, originally from South Africa commented that the use of an Afrikaan word treks in When All Is Said And Done was unusual and significant. Björn, of course, needed a rhyme for ‘sex’!
It was such an eclectic mix of people who all made valuable contributions to the day in their own unique way.
The seminar ended with West End actress Amelia Cormack singing a selection of songs. She commented that singing I Let The Music Speak was like singing an art-song by Richard Strauss.
A bond of friendship and respect pervaded the room and our shared journey was a surprisingly moving one. I look forward to the next one, Super Trouper, in a couple of months time.
Cast members of Les Mis were in the studio yesterday recording backing vocals for WEST END EUROVISION 2012 in aid of The Make A Difference Trust. What a brilliant ensemble! - can’t say too much about the song as it’s a surprise! The show is next Thursday, 26th April at 11.30pm, The Dominion Theatre.
Sunday 29th April 2012, 11.00am - 4pm, Stuart Wood Music, B1 Hoxton Works, 128 Hoxton Street. London N1 6SH.
In celebration of The Visitors Deluxe Editionrelease on 23 April 2012, composer and pop-culture aesthete Stuart Wood, will take you on a journey through ABBA’s final studio album, first released on 30 November 1981.
The day will include:
Playback and analysis track by track.
The context of each recording; dates, places and participants.
Opportunity to share experiences about the album.
Lunch and refreshments included.
Musical analysis of a selection of songs performed live by a West End singer.
The effect the album had and continues to have on popular culture today. The cost of the day is £58.
As with previous releases in the Deluxe Edition series, this version of ABBA’s opus 9 will offer a DVD of archive material along with CD bonus tracks, all of which we will explore – including the demo medley ‘From A Twinkling Star To A Passing Angel’, the first previously unreleased ABBA recordings since 1994.
You will receive a confirmation and a link to payment details.
This will be the first in a series of seminars, which will work backwards through the deluxe editions of ABBA’s nine studio albums. If you would like to be placed on the mailing list please email here: Mailing List for Abba Album Seminars
