Sheepcore: my musical future?

by Laura Kidd

Shords, ghords and moving forwards

When you wake at 6.32am on a Sunday and can’t think of anything you’d rather do than sneak quietly up to the attic to play with your new piece of music gear, you know you’re onto something.

I find myself in a new music-making experimentation phase. I watch videos and read message boards about hooking up synthesizers and drum machines to my new MPC Live 2 ¹ via MIDI.

Late one night I purchase and download three packs of distorted drum breaks ². They sound delicious.

I find myself suddenly eager to really get to grips with all the hardware that sits in my studio, chain it all together and “jam” (a word and state I have hitherto eschewed entirely. No, I do not want to “jam” with you).

I start working systematically through the brilliant “MPC Bible” ³, noting down things I want to be able to do and eagerly awaiting the chapters that will help me do them. I am being patient for once. I am reading the manual for once. I want to do this well.

I’m not thinking about how I can turn any of this into music for my next solo record: I’m just in the lab. Action is more important than results.

Yesterday I sampled several old recordings from my phone: a sheep baa-ing, a goat goat-ing and me softly singing “doo-doo-di-doo”.

After I hit publish this afternoon I will turn those samples into instruments, creating chords. No, sh-ords ⁴. NO, GHORDS! ⁵

I find a new favourite YouTuber: Jon Makes Beats ⁶. I like him because he invites us to spend time watching him make something from start to finish. These are the sorts of videos I’ve always wanted to make, but haven’t got round to…yet.

Jon has gravitas, and his deep emotional understanding of making art through sound comes through in everything he uploads. He is comfortable, unapologetic, kind, welcoming. I find his videos immensely comforting.

I’ve been finding everything tricky recently, but throwing myself into something different is helping. In the weeks between my Gran passing away and her funeral, I was unable to plan out my next week of creative work, let alone the next 3 months, let alone actually embark on any of the work itself.

After last Thursday’s funeral I’m not suddenly fine. Of course not. But yesterday, between self-propelled MPC lessons, I plotted out what the rest of the year could look like in the world of my music project Penfriend. I don’t know why ⁷, but I just felt like it, and now the chaos feels a little less chaotic.

I have so much I want to make all the time, and it’s always frustrating that I can’t make all of it. For a while I haven’t felt able to make any of it. But I’m starting to believe that I might be able to make some of it very soon. And that’s a huge improvement.

Share your tips on finding forward motion in the comments, please – I need them!

Thank you for being here.

Love,
Laura xxx

PS: SATISFYING

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1. not a sponsor. Akai, my DMs are open!
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2. I bought them from here. Also not a sponsor.
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3. not a sponsor. If you own an MPC I think it’s worth every penny, though
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4. Sheep chords – SHORDS!
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5. Goat chords – GHORDS!
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6. not a sponsor, but seems like a very nice man.
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7. but forcing myself out for a jog in my local beautiful country park almost certainly had something to do with it. ↩︎

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