Name: Will Gardner
Nationality: British
Occupation: composer/ arranger
Current Release: Remains
Recommendations: Sotto Voce by Claire Deak/ the photography of Sandra Rocha, Da Calma Fez-Se O Vento

If you enjoyed this interview with Will Gardner visit his website for social links and music news and links to purchase.

 
When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening? Do you listen with your eyes open or closed?

I find that music is so readily accessible, and so ever-present, that it can be easy to relegate it to the background. Listening with closed eyes can help me to focus my attention, and bring it back into the foreground.

I do sometimes feel physical sensations in my body on hearing certain sounds, but mostly my experiences with music occur in my mind, and are abstract, emotional and difficult to put into words.

What were your very first steps in music like - and how do you rate gains made through experience versus the naiveté of those first steps?

In some ways, this whole trajectory of naïveté to experience happened to me in reverse. I built up a lot of musical experience over many years before I ever tried writing my own music.

I had a very full-on musical education. I grew up as a cathedral chorister. We would rehearse before school and sing evening services every day. I then went on to study music at university and have been working behind the scenes in the music industry as an arranger for other artists for quite a few years now.

It was only during the pandemic that I began to write for myself, and I actually found my musical experience to be a bit of a hindrance. I felt burdened by it. I found it difficult to allow my experience and naïveté to coexist whilst writing.

According to scientific studies, we make our deepest and most incisive musical experiences between the ages of 13-16. What did music meant to you at that age and what’s changed since then?

That was an exciting time of discovery. My friends were introducing me to bands and electronic music for the first time - after many years where I was mostly just exposed to religious choral music. But honestly I don’t feel like the experiences were deeper than ones I’ve had since. My musical taste has developed quite slowly, and I feel like some of my most formative discoveries were through friends at university. I remember hearing Burial for the first time aged 19 and thinking I’d never heard anything like it - and I have had similar discoveries since. I would like to believe that our experiences deepen with age. I don’t like the idea that my most intense feelings in life are behind me.

Over the course of your development, what have been your most important instruments and tools and how have they shaped your perspective on music?

I am a pianist so practically speaking the piano does appear in my work quite often. But I also find the piano very limiting, and that it pushes my music in certain sonic directions that I don’t always want to go.

This tension between my identity as a pianist and the sonic limitations of the piano has become quite an important part of my musical language.

I feel that the tools that are most important to my work are those that enable me to alter the sound of the piano. To distort it, disfigure it, to transform it into something else. It’s like I’m always searching for ways to expand the piano’s range - and sometimes, to escape it entirely.

Ultimately, I believe that our tools are only there to serve our ideas. It is a brave artist who masters one tool, and then abandons it because it’s not the right one for their next idea.

What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music and what motivates you to create?

I know that music allows me to express things that I am unable to express in any other way. I’ve also learnt that my creative motivations are rarely clear from the beginning - and only reveal themselves gradually over time.

My new album Remains is about the experience of caring for my Dad through the last stages of his Parkinson’s dementia.

When I started work on it, I didn’t really know what I was doing. I just knew I was very interested in the idea of memory loss, and trying to create an aural imagining of the experience of dementia.

It was only later down the line, that I realised that what I was trying to do was to make a connection with him, to experience this awful thing he was going through alone, and to share it with him.

Paul Simon said “the way that I listen to my own records is not for the chords or the lyrics - my first impression is of the overall sound.” What's your own take on that and how would you define your personal sound?

The album is an aural imagining of the dementia experience so the overall sound was very important to this project. I became very interested in the sound of the uncanny, things breaking down, and unclear, foggy sounds.

Sound, song, and rhythm are all around us, from animal noises to the waves of the ocean. What, if any, are some of the most moving experiences you've had with these non-human-made sounds? In how far would you describe them as “musical”?

I have actually been reading Deep Listening by Pauline Oliveros and feel inspired by her teachings on these sorts of ideas. I can often feel moved by hearing natural sounds interacting with whatever music I’m listening to at the time.

I believe that our natural surroundings are as “musical” as we want to them to be. But it is all too easy to block them out, to stop listening. It requires a lot of attention.


From very deep/high/loud/quiet sounds to very long/short/simple/complex compositions - are there extremes in music you feel drawn to and what response do they elicit?

I don’t think I’m drawn to extremes per se, but I believe any extremes can be effective if they serve the musical idea that they belong to.

From symphonies and traditional verse/chorus-songs to linear techno tracks and free jazz, there are myriads ways to structure a piece of music. Which approaches work best for you – and why?

A lot of what I do is structured around improvisations. Levodopa and Blossom are both tracks that are entirely improvised structurally, and then I built things around those structures. I find that improvising can help me to bypass the rational part of my brain and tap into something more intuitive.

Could you describe your creative process on the basis of one of your pieces, live performances or albums that's particularly dear to you, please?

Most of Remains was made from extracts from my Dad’s personal diaries. I chose lines of text and used them to create fragments of melody and rhythm which then evolved into larger, structured pieces, either composed or improvised. I then removed the original text so only music remained. I found this a useful stimulus, and it allowed me to explore themes of memory - both through using the diary itself, and the process of erasure that followed.

Sometimes, science and art converge in unexpected ways. Do you conduct “experiments” or make use of scientific insights when you're making music?

Yes! I quite often conduct experiments as part of my process - often as a way to get me inspired and get me started. For Remains I created a prompt box, inspired by Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategy cards. The box was filled with different mini experiments to test based on ideas about how to explore memory through music. For example one might say “write a short piece and then try to recreate it from memory the next day”. I found them a really useful way to get me going, and some interesting music emerged from them.

How does the way you make music reflect the way you live your life? Can we learn lessons about life by understanding music on a deeper level?

I think my music and my life are in such a constant, complex relationship that this question is really hard to answer! In the most literal sense - I feel like I can be quite a rational, thoughtful and careful person - and writing music affords me space to explore and get more comfortable with intuitive and unconscious processes.

Writing music and creating art in general also reminds me to look closely, to pay attention, to value communication, to think deeply, to slow down and to feel things.

Do you feel as though writing or performing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?

Yes, they feel very different to me. It’s what motivates me to create music - the opportunity to explore emotional spaces within me that I don’t yet understand. I can’t do that when I make a cup of coffee.

Every time I listen to "Albedo 0.39" by Vangelis, I choke up. But the lyrics are made up of nothing but numbers and values. Do you, too, have a song or piece of music that affects you in a way that you can't explain?

Yes, many - and for me it’s that mystery that makes music so transcendent and alluring. The first example that comes to mind is Ian William Craig’s A Turn of Breath, which has a raw, abstract beauty in its wordless, tape-saturated vocal loops.

If you could make a wish for the future – what are developments in music you would like to see and hear?

So many people say to me that they can’t sing! Which I find really quite sad and I think reflects how we see ‘singers’ in general as highly professional, pop superstars. Singing is one of the most natural things in the world but I feel like we have become scared of doing it for fear of being told we can’t by Simon Cowell.

I would love for more people to feel empowered to sing, to love the sound of their own voices, to join choirs, to sing together, and participate in amateur, community music making generally.