For those of you who don't know, or haven't guessed from the title of my blog, I am both a jewellery designer and a singer. I am still at the training stage of singing so whilst I do work as a singer, and so a lot of teaching, I am still a student myself. It's safe to say that music and song are a huge part of my life! So, when Erin threw out the challenge to create a piece of jewellery inspired by our favourite piece of music, I jumped at the chance. This challenge was perfect for me, surely!
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Or maybe not....I can honestly say this is one of the most difficult blog challenges I have participated in and hands up, I'm not totally happy with the outcome. I really like the necklace I made, and I love the song I chose (one of, but not my absolute favourite piece of music in the whole world; I just don't think I'm capable of making that decision!) but I feel that I have been inspired by mainly the words rather than the whole song. This month has been quite a busy one with a lot of blog challenges on the way (pinwheel, 7000 Bracelets, Bead Soup coming up in a few days) and with me going away today (it's currently the 24th, last Friday to you, I'm scheduling this post) I haven't had quite the time to devote to it that I would like. I think I am going to do a personal challenge later on, and make myself pick a piece of instrumental music - no words to get absorbed by. I wasted a lot of time worrying about what piece to pick - I think the idea of picking my favourite just seemed too massive a challenge and the very thought swamped me! At the beginning of this week, I was teaching one of my pupils and started her on a new piece, a very beautiful John Dowland song which I performed at a music festival a few years ago. It truly is one of my favourite pieces, but it's one of very many. You can listen to it here, sung by Emma Kirkby with Anthony Rooley on the lute.
Magical....The combination of voice and lute is so intimate; so haunting and other-wordly. The song about finding beauty in sorrow - both literally and figuratively. I took this idea in the form of tears,; the smooth and delicate flowing line of the voice and the gently strummed lute forming lines of the music. I tried to echo these lines and tears of the song. (Ceramic bead caps by ChelleV2.)
As I said, I really like what I have created, I just think I could have risen more to the challenge. So I think I may have a series of personal challenges, right here on Songbeads, to be inspired by other music. Instrumental music so that I can't 'cheat' with the words! Can't wait to see what everyone else has come up with when I get back from Paris. Please hop over to Erin's blog for the list of other people taking part.
