How to Map 2: The Map Outline News
…ase, GBR_adm.zip. Open it up and take a look. What you will see is a crazy number of files, none of which your computer seems to really recognise. Don’t panic. What you’re seeing is just a few shapefiles (remember shapefiles? No? Let me jog your memory). As we’re looking at the shapefiles in the C: drive rather than in ArcMap itself, you can see the six individual files which make up the one shapefile. In fact, in this case you’re looking at 18 fi…
Victoria’s reflections on the music of the Batwa Story
…gistics of taking a team of 10 to Kisoro and beyond. We have spoken on the phone and emailed many times. It’s good to meet at last. The flight to Kigali makes a stop-over in Bujumbura, the capital of Burundi. I suddenly realize that by the end of the day I will have been in four different countries – Kenya, Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda. I am already struggling to believe that I am in East Africa when 24 hours ago I was in South West London and this…
How to Map 1: Housekeeping News
…s-pernickety-elderly-fella analogy, it also gets terribly irritated if you change your file or folder names. This is because the links made in ArcMap (that will make more sense later) aren’t live, meaning they don’t update themselves. So if you change a file or folder name ArcMap gets confused with the pathway it’s supposed to be following and it loses the data. It’s remediable, but a pain, so best to avoid doing that. The point of all this is: ke…
Day 4: Discovery of the Young Stars… Story
…bass, to slide the rings along the top as he plays to elogate the note and change its pitch. Please now listen to him in action – it is extraordinary and yes, this is one guy, one instrument: https://youtu.be/yP3s7QyT750 https://youtu.be/34kILyMgZbM https://youtu.be/XTfrBuyept0 https://youtu.be/viY2RgM0ZJE https://youtu.be/yv07MFvC7zQ https://youtu.be/4tQvFzqxbxA Kanindi Jazz Band The second group were the Kanindi Jazz Band, great dancers who also…
From Kisoro to Nairobi to Lake Victoria Story
…th his spear. He made a par five on the ‘Crane Song.’ Willie Bembe’s First Flight: Our sound engineer Willie Bembe enjoyed his first ever flight going from Nairobi to Kigali. He was far less scared of the thunderstorms then the rest of us, but did make things interesting. He almost went to the bathroom in the galley, confusing it for a loo. During a stop-over on the route to Kigali, he almost gave the flight attendee a heart attack by trying to sm…
Day 6: The Studio @ Traveller’s Rest Hotel, Kisoro Story
…inyo. Here, they put down their track. Not at all phased by the use of headphones and mics, they take everything in there stride, performing a number of takes as the song develops. We start by giving them a simple click to follow the beat but quickly realised that their tempos are far more subtle than this. Francis comes back to set the rhythm with their natural clapping and it suddenly all came together again. Once we have the female vocals recor…
Day 1 & 2: Preparing to leave for Kisoro, Uganda Story
…icrophones. This also carries the tripod for Roving Video 1. Cable Bag/Headphones: This is full of all the jacks, mic connects, headphone extenders. There’s a lot of cables. Mega Tripod: This is the bag for Pado’s pride and joy, the mega tripod for Stationary Camera 1. Project Management: How do we now set ourselves up for audio-video recording on site? Again, based on lessons from both the March Pilot and Lake Turkana, here’s the set up: Overall…
Kenya (Coast): Day 4 – the road back to Nairobi Story
…groups were very large, but because of budgets we could only bring a small number. We had good production but we couldn’t get the whole band in their element . Gargar was an example. Huge women’s group with lots of culture things – women’s rights … we could only work with four. We realised it would be better to take the studio to them. We would get a better view and get a more authentic sound. Then Abubilla Music contacted Tabu for a project and w…
May 2011 – Jimmy reports back on the pilot phase News
…ly not at ease with. I recognize that, as I have mentioned, that things do change. But I would love to see more and more young Kenyan musicians base their work on more acoustic instruments while taking advantage of today’s modern recording equipment rather than being totally reliant on it to produce “robotic” stuff. There shall exist modern, contemporary music and traditional music. The latter is sometimes viewed as “backward” and is not at the fr…
Discovering music roots with SWP News
…ly not at ease with. I recognize that, as I have mentioned, that things do change. But I would love to see more and more young Kenyan musicians base their work on more acoustic instruments while taking advantage of today’s modern recording equipment rather than being totally reliant on it to produce “robotic” stuff. There shall exist modern, contemporary music and traditional music. The latter is sometimes viewed as “backward” and is not at the fr…
More Ketebul voices…Steve reports from the field News
…ited to be heading out for our first day of recording. But first we had to change a flat tyre on car number 02. Half an hour or so later, we were all geared up and ready to go. Jesse, who had just arrived after taking the night bus from Nairobi to Malindi, joined us in car number 02. First stop was Watamu at the fuel station to fill up the cars and Jenny, our beloved and reliable generator, and also to pick up our man on the ground, otherwise know…