Laura Lamn Interview with Sian O'Gorman NYX - Pre-Performance Nerves, How Ceremony can Inspire and Contain Creativity, Music Technology and More : Audio Transcript

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Laura: Hello and welcome to this new interview series. Today I'm in conversation with Sian O'Gorman, founder and leader of NYX Electronic Drone Choir. NYX create amazing performances, immersive soundscapes using the female voice and music technology. And amongst all the other cool things they do, they have also composed for TV and video games. In my conversation with Sian, we cover some really interesting topics like pre-performance ritual, how ceremony can contain and inspire creativity, pre-performance nerves, music technology, and so much more. If you're new to my work, my name's Laura Lamb. I am an artist, teacher, and community builder, and I believe that creativity, spirituality, and community are the lost pillars to well-being. I'm so excited that you're joining me for this interview today. Let's go. Welcome very much, Sian. I'm so happy to have you here.

Sian: Thanks, love.

Laura: Nice to be here with you and before our call I was just sat in quiet I was thinking right if I could just ask Sian one thing what would it be and I think it would be that. One of the things I, there's so many things I admire about you, but one of the things I most admire is the quality and tone of your voice. The first time I heard you sing, it made the hairs on my neck stand up in a good way. And I wondered for anyone who, because I know that although there's some things, you know, some things we're born with and some things are natural, but also there's a lot we can learn with our voice. And is there for anyone who's just starting to explore their voice or wanting to improve their range or their tone? What would be your top tips or practices for singers?

Sian: My top tip is just to have a practice. So like, I think there's a lot of kind of like mysticism around voices in general. And I think like as a kid, I was very into singing all the time. And then I just made sure I went to singing lessons and joined a singing group and all these sorts of things. I think probably when I was 10 and I was obsessed with it, I probably could sing well, I could sing in tune, but I don't think there was anything particularly special other than my real strong intention and drive to do it. And then because I just kept practicing and kept going and kept going, I was lucky enough that I started so young that I was able to kind of train so so well and so much and I think actually it's just like any other practice you know if it's any other thing that you're doing with your body just slow kind of methodical really kind of what's the word just it's not even like a discipline but it's just doing it constantly helps your body just relax and remember how to make these sounds outside of it. So I don't think it's there are loads of things you can do. There are loads of like, you know, little, you know, you can do scales, you can do all sorts of things. But the main thing is just singing and singing something that you love every day. And then your muscles will slowly just start to get stronger and more, stretchy. Sorry, it's morning time. I'm a bit like, well, but yeah, in general, I just think it's like any other physical practice. And I think, it just takes, it just takes time. It just takes time and it takes patience and it takes dedication. I'm not a particularly disciplined person in any way. I think the only, I was like reflecting on this the other day, someone asked me like, what's your daily practice? I was like, I think the only thing I ever do every single day is light a stick of incense and drink a cup of coffee. Like that's the only thing I do consistently. But I chuck myself into situations where I have to sing, like I'm like, oh, I'm doing this thing where I have to sing. But if I didn't have to, I probably wouldn't, I wouldn't practice every day or anything. So I've just been lucky enough to just constantly be chucking myself into situations where I have to do it. That I am consistently singing, but it's that consistency for me that's been really helpful. So I just think, yeah, it kind of helps people get out of that thought of being like, oh, I'm not very good at singing. Like same, I wasn't either. Like no one is when they start. No one's like, no one's, well, it's not true. Some people can, you know, instantly be pretty, pretty good at it. And the same with a load of physical practices, you know, like when I started practicing yoga, I was incredibly flexible. So I felt like I was instantly quite good at yoga. So, you know, there's this like thing of like, oh, I'm quite good at this naturally or something. But there's elements of yoga that I really struggle with. And there's elements of singing that I really struggled with. But because I just kept doing it, that's it. So find something that you like to sing and find something that you some way you like to use your voice and just keep doing it is my main main takeaway from now on.

Laura: So you were talking to your friend about practice and you said okay so you don't necessarily have a daily practice but i'm curious because the work you create is who many people would say exceptional so i know and i also know that your the rest of your collective aren't you know for example they're not all with you in New Zealand now so you're not you're not practicing now and it seems like you do this kind of more intensive way of working. Yeah so I'm you know I'm only kind of learning from watching you following you but it looks like you're doing kind of residencies and week longs or two week long so you can intensively work on on these creative projects. How how does that work for you and you know for example maybe you could tell us about the process of your debut album and how you refine that over a period of time?

Sian: Yeah sure so the the i think there are many structures of creating a band or a choir or these sorts of things. And I would say we're not really in either of those categories. I'd say we run NYX. So NYX is like, as a little background thing, is kind of a multidisciplinary arts project that is coming through music. So it's like a music led arts project. And it's run by myself and Philippa Niels, who's also a Kiwi. And we run the project together, but it's also like my artist name. And it's also the name of the collective live performance version of the group. And often we use a lot more singers in recording as well. But because it's structured like that, we kind of rehearse and do live performances more as like a theatre company structure. So we have a show or, you know, we'll have a show or we'll have a recording project and I'll cast people according to what I need for that show. And then we'll intensively rehearse it together. It's also because when it started, it was a lot more of like a kind of DIY collective project where I was just trying to—it was still always run by me, but I was, when we started, I was doing that thing of like, hey, does anyone want to be in my group? And I'll make you all dinner and like tried to just get people to come to my house and do stuff. And I was like, it'd be really cool. Honestly, we'll just sing with loads of electronics. It'd be really fun. And I just had to like really force my friends to be part of it. To be honest, it was, it was quite, it was quite like, it was really fun, but it was really difficult to get people involved. And that kind of exchange is not sustainable really especially if it's kind of your music that you're leading you need people need to have a incentive to want to keep doing it and obviously the group loves the music but they're also it's the reality is we're living in a world where we just can't be we can't be giving away our time for free a lot of us is particularly singers and music yet. You know, I spent a lot of years just doing a lot of things where people were like, oh, can we do this? We just need some singers. We can't pay you. But, you know, and I just kept doing it because I just thought this is the way to get in to this world. But actually, the more we continue to say yes to things like that, the more it just becomes this expectation that vocalists will just do shit for free. And then I remember being, starting to do some more like professional sessions and stuff and just seeing you know all the orchestral players were very unionized and very like we only work from this time to this time and we get paid this and I was like well that's a bit extreme like be a bit more flexible and then I started thinking like yeah these people can pay their rent from music these people can do this so you know there's a there's a huge ethical undertone of how we work and it is that we we pay everyone. So that also means that when we get given a gig that when we get given a recording project we have to factor in the fact that there's potentially nine people that are going to be on this tour and each of them needs a day rate and each of them things and once you start adding those numbers up and then knowing that you know the reality for most gigs and venues and promoters and stuff nowadays is like, oh, we've got 500 pounds, can you do this? I'm like, shit, man, we can't even get everybody in a room for that much money. So it comes from the rehearsal, the way that we work comes from just a kind of financial reality of music today. I would love to be back in the the world where I just am in a choir once a week and go to that and just have a fun time with everybody. I really miss everybody in the group. The group is very professional but it's very rooted in care and connection with one another and we really miss each other when we're not together. And it requires people to do a lot of work on their own before they come into the room and it also requires people to be once that once they're there they have to be really on it so that's the other thing is just like the the level of pressure and intensity is a lot when you can't practice regularly because there's also this kind of like social pressure of like oh my god we're only with each other for three days and we're just so excited to see one another and then and then we don't see each other for a couple of months or whatever. So hopefully this year we're going to get a little bit of more like regular touring in because I think that will just be so every time we do a show, it just gets so much better. And every time we do a recording, the project just gets so much better. So it's just like, wow, imagine how much this could lift up if we, if we could do this really regularly, but it just costs so much money. So, and we're just independent. We're completely independent. So, it's just, yeah, it's a constant. And Phillip is absolutely insanely amazing at finding money and making that money go really far. But there's still just the reality of how much people can. And so often, you know, like the places that are asking us to play are like, oh god we really want to do that so we'll just take we're lucky to have a couple of projects that have managed to kind of we've done a couple of like computer game projects and stuff which managed to kind of boost the savings up a little bit so that we can take a loss when when there's a really good gig or a really good project where we're like oh we really want to do this but it's not enough budget but we'll just cut a little bit out of the savings in order to to pay for this because it's worth it you know but yeah. It's a constant balancing act and most of it is from financial. But I don't know, there's something I also quite like about the intensity of just coming together for three days and just like remounting something or starting something from scratch. It's like....

Laura: That's cool. That is cool. And you use a lot of technology. How did you get into that? And then how do you share that with the group? Because I don't know if all the singers, did they all come equipped with these tech skills? Because it's quite advanced what you're doing. So did you create your own training to get all the singers on board? Or how did you do that?

Sian: So when we started, which was eight years ago now, none of us really knew what we were doing. I was getting into like, you know, I'm a classically trained singer and I was doing a lot more contemporary music and I was really into I was trying to basically be like record myself as like a solo artist to make stuff that sounded like probably like I was trying to be like Portishead or Imogen Heap or something and so I was like getting out my logic and like playing with all the effects and stuff and then I had a couple of friends who had guitar pedals so I was like practicing playing through those and then I just kind of had this idea of like how cool would it be if everybody was singing in a circle and these kind of effects processing things. I had another couple of friends who were also doing a little bit of like noisy sound experimenting, but none of them were singers. They were more just kind of like noise or sound artists that were working with that kind of stuff. And then I had a load of friends from my choir singing world who also loved the sound of it but had never used any equipment. So we just kind of got on a room together. We started fully skills sharing everything. We would just have days where we would all sit around in a circle and be like, how do you do that? And we kind of all found our little bits of equipment that we loved. And that sounded really good with our voices because that's the other interesting thing is that like each piece of technology really interacts with people's voices in a totally different way. It's like everybody's timbre and natural kind of like breathiness or directness feeds into all of the magical stuff that goes on inside the equipment and comes out in a totally unique way, which is really fun. But yes, none of us really knew what we were doing. I would say the ones, it's interesting because the ones that joined the group who weren't singers, felt a little bit like they had to—you know there's a sense of like oh i really need to be good at good at something in this group so i'm going to really harness into the technology side of things and the ones that were really good singers were a little bit more potentially a little bit more lazy around the technology stuff and myself included in that. But when you just kind of find your your piece of tech or your piece of equipment that you're like this is—I like this one. This suits me in terms of the interface. This suits me in terms of how it sounds. It's all about wanting to hear yourself back in a way that you like. And then we got Ableton on board. And Ableton was one of our original sponsors. They took us through a real amazing load of training. And so they still continue to sponsor us today and give us loads of training and are training us up to be trainers of each other. And Ableton, I think, was the best. Like, I love Ableton so much. And it's become, yeah, it's become like my second instrument, you know? So I feel like Ableton is now, yeah, it's like, there's so many things I've made on there or found on there that just sounds so cool that I'm just like, this is like, I love this. I love this equipment. I love playing on this. I love making stuff on this. And it's been yeah, it's been amazing and then since the group has kind of evolved You know people have come in and out and the new ones kind of come with their own like Everybody I'd say in the group has got their own individual practice of of making music and some of them are a lot more tech-led than others and but the the younger ones particularly are pretty like well versed and in the—in Ableton particularly. So like they teach us a lot really. And there's so, yeah, there's just so much diversity in what can be done in the voice and then expanding that out through the electronics is just phenomenal. So yeah, yeah. It's a good, it's a, yeah, the tech side of things have been really interesting. But I think also what's been fascinating is it's been, it's really grown in a time that has also grown, it seems to have grown around us. So when we were first doing it, there was just not that much info out there on YouTube, on anything to find how to use your voice and how to use multiple voices and perform them live. Every single mixing engineer every single kind of live engineer was just like whoa I've never done this before like what like you've got quite overwhelmed by it and now it's just cool this is great we can we can work with this but yeah it was a there's a lot that's kind of grown up around it in this time we were also in terms of learning and skill sharing we started, we were kind of off the ground and then COVID hit and then we spent a lot of time on the internet together in COVID learning stuff together. And it was really fun. We started doing all these kind of, um, these projects where someone would, would make, um, or someone would make a line and then able to file and then they'd share the file with the next person and another person would add something else. And then another person would add something else. It was kind of like, you know, when you have those drawings that you make with, you fold up the paper and someone draws the head and then someone draws the body and then someone draws the thing. And it was so fun. And that was a really good way of us learning different things. Because you could also see what the previous person had done and how they'd done it. And it was just such a fight. And then we just ended up making a little EP out of it, actually. It was really funny. And just such a joyful way of kind of staying connected over that time and learning some new stuff. And, yeah, we were very lucky with all the generosity of all these kind of tech partners that gifted us a lot of stuff at that time as well.

Laura: Amazing. So, coming back to now, I know you've just got back quite recently from an art residency in Boston. I'd love to hear more about that and how many of you were there and what that was like.

Sian: Mate, that was amazing. It was one of Philippa's friends that she met at a residency called People Festival that she used to work in and participate in. And it's basically like this beautiful villa in Ubud in Bali. And it's in the shape, the house has been designed in the shape of a sound wave, which is insane. And it's got this massive open, amphitheater lounge with all these pianos looking out over these rice paddies. And we, like, basically, Philippa sent it to me years ago and was like, oh, my God, look at this place. And I was like, wow. And then we kept, we just applied, like you apply to most things, being like, well, you know, put an application in, but who knows. And then we got an email saying, yeah, you've been accepted. And we were like, oh. And I just couldn't believe it. I love Bali. I've been there before and I found it to be like incredibly magical.

Laura: Have you been there before? No, I haven't. And was it just you and Philippa or did a few more of you go?

Sian: I ended up going and then there was another visual artist that went and a writer. And so the aim of the residency is to draw people of different disciplines together. There's three bedrooms, so we all stay there. And the intention is that we would make, potentially make collaborative work, but make work that's very much inspired by the landscape, by the cultural, like, world of Ubud. And we basically, the whole residency is curated by this amazing woman. She's so fucking amazing. And she took us, like she was the daughter of like this, basically like the Ubud kind of contemporary art gallery scene. And she just had such a depth of knowledge around contemporary art, but also around—like she was part of the village. So she was taking us to all these amazing village ceremonies. We were lucky to arrive on the day they have a festival—two festivals every six months, which are like—the festival when we arrived, I can't fully remember. And the day we arrived, the festival was when the gods come down from the sky and the gods come down from the sky and they hang out with all the humans for like 10 days and they offer gifts and they offer knowledge and they party with the humans basically for 10 days. And at the end of the 10 days, the gods go back up into the skies. And everybody has a huge ceremony to commemorate this time and to also honor this golden ball in the center of them that has gathered all of the knowledge in and has gathered all of the wisdom in. So when we arrived was the day the gods came down from the skies. And then we got to go to the ceremony that was the kind of integration honoring ceremony at the end. It was just phenomenal.

Outro: Thank you so much for listening today. You can visit the show notes to find links to all the books and different things that we mentioned in this episode. And if you'd like to follow Sian and her work, you can visit https://www.google.com/search?q=nyx-edc.com.