Jane

Amanda Riddell
Oct 16, 2023
1 min read

Galbraith wasn't the first guitarist I'd seen with that stance. Brooke from my high school had a unique classical guitar technique which was cello-like, but he played the guitar a lot of different ways. I'm like that too, and I find that the slack-key technique is the least effort to produce. I don't change the tuning, though. My vision was a guitar which was pianistic in terms of how it handled all 12 tones equally, so I like to show that off in things like Pan's Preludes. But my own technique seldom produces ET. I started young in another tradition. Like, aside from any of the famous people, my grandma was an HOD of music, so it runs in the family. I'm just third-generation, but perhaps more on my paternal grandfather's side. His ancestry is still somewhat cloudy. My Mum mentioned Finnish and French heritage on Adrian's side of the family. Adrian's voice is where my singing comes from.

5 Comments

Amanda Riddell

Oct 16, 2023

Pippa being my Mum. Now that she's been to New York, I think people get me over there. But cis isn't really my thing. The problem with Charlie is I'm already too old; that's also why Kert wasn't in the film of West Side Story. Voices are important for film, but age is more important. Hannah was in her mid-twenties, so a reasonably mature soprano. We felt like we writing about characters a few years older than ourselves, so that was baked into the film.

Amanda Riddell

Oct 16, 2023

Replying to

Dubbing voices isn't the solution, though. It's more like a Crosby or a Sinatra thing to do than Broadway singing. It requires devising for the microphone, so Phillip was actually using rock techniques to produce Reginald, despite his classical training shining through in the phrasing. He's the one to hire for real productions of my music. I've heard him produce all of the notes in These Words Are Meant For Someone in rehearsals, but I don't know if that's something that's reproducible on the stage.

Amanda Riddell

Oct 16, 2023

Mum says she never heard Grandad sing, but I used to hear him sing when I was a kid. Not often, but at church services and other things like that.

Amanda Riddell

Oct 16, 2023

Replying to

Mum was a semi-professional singer in her later years too. She sang in jazz choirs, and showed me the arrangements etc. My Mum's a very underrated musician imo. She got the counts for sketch wrong, though. It was a rubato piece, but it was slightly too much. She knew, too: she was just lazy on the day.

Amanda Riddell

Oct 16, 2023

That's my 'imitation of a baritone' sound, but I can copy anyone. 🔥