Part 2

Could you describe your creative process on the basis of a piece, live performance or album that's particularly dear to you, please?

Into The Heart Of Love was our third album.



Mark had written several beautiful guitar tracks and a few songs. At this time I was working with a step sequencer and vocoders. We selected a few of these short minimal sequencer tracks to create some space between the guitar based tracks. The dominant instruments on this album are Mark’s guitars and clarinet, my keyboards were fairly understated, just adding some atmosphere to his compositions.

The end result is our most heartfelt and most listened-to album.

Listening can be both a solitary and a communal activity. Likewise, creating music can be private or collaborative. Can you talk about your preferences in this regard and how these constellations influence creative results?

Mark and I, as Woo, have been almost entirely a studio band since we started. Some reviewers of our music have even described us as ‘reclusive’.

This is not entirely true, but it is true that our collaboration has been fundamentally private. Over many hours the two of us have spent time listening and creating what we wanted to hear. How this has influenced the creative result is an interesting question. Had we followed the more conventional path and gone on the road and played gigs, we would have developed very different skills.

A great live performance takes special skills. Working in a studio requires a very different skill set and focus. Both of us are more suited to work in the studio, producing albums is generally a slow process and I think we really enjoy all the subtle control the studio offers.

How do your work and your creativity relate to the world and what is the role of music in society?

Most Woo music is recorded without a specific purpose in mind. There are a few exceptions, where the music has been made with a specific purpose in mind: We produced two albums Forever Healing and Planning For a Miracle which were made to use during healing sessions.



Both these albums use slow minimal sustains which can be played quietly in the background during a session.We also worked with a midwife to produce music for prenatal classes.

Music can be used as a background to every human activity. Music from all over the world is available online, at the touch of a button. Listeners can select specific music to enhance their lives.The artist name is becoming less important and the playlist is becoming the way into discovering new music.

Often a playlist is created with an activity, or situation or feeling in mind. For example, here are a few Spotify playlists that include Woo music:

Music For Plants
Music For Positive Deceleration
Bathtub Trippers
Be Still
Sweet Morning Music
Pressure/Release
Music for programming
Frog Skateboards
A Soundtrack For The Olympics

I include these playlists to make the observation that particularly with instrumental music, whatever was the inspiration and intention of the creator, once it’s out in the world, people are going to make something else of it.

To answer the question, I would say, with our phones and laptops, people are using every genre of music to create ambient backgrounds that bring the magic of music into their lives.

Art can be a way of dealing with the big topics in life: Life, loss, death, love, pain, and many more. In which way and on which occasions has music – both your own, or that of others - contributed to your understanding of these questions?

The day after our mum's funeral, Mark and I did not know what to do with all our mixed emotions. We went into the studio and recorded a spontaneous, angry and chaotic bit of music. Expressing our feelings in this way was intensely therapeutic.

Whether you want to share this type of creation with anyone else is an interesting question. We have tended to mainly release our more positive music, with the intention of putting something of beauty into the world. To touch someone's heart, rather than churn up their guts!

Mahler is a good example of a composer who explored the themes of death and loss. With his incredible ability, he was able to translate his intense feelings into musical form, as only a true master can. With such music, the listener can not only feel their own grief, but also increase their awareness of our shared humanity.

All human beings share the same emotions, the individual stories are unique, but the underlying feelings are universal. Great music can touch these feelings.

There seems to be increasing interest in a functional, “rational” and scientific approach to music. How do you see the connection between music and science and what can these two fields reveal about each other?

I am aware that there are many people exploring these more scientific approaches. I haven’t looked much into these ideas, but I was inspired by reading about ‘The Music Of The Spheres’, in which Pythagoras explored the physical relationship, expressed as ratios, between mass and sound.

These simple ratios (below) come from his experiments on the vibration of a stringed instrument and the mathematical relationship of the strings length and resulting pitch:

The octave ratio of 1 : 2. The fifth is 2 : 3. And the fourth is 3 : 4. Human beings literally resonate with these frequencies and so feel moved by the harmonies created around these ratios. The dissonance of the notes between these ratios creates an unsettled feeling in the music. This duality of harmony and dissonance form the palette of possibility for a musician.

“I realised by using the high notes of the chord as a melodic line, and by the right harmonic profession, I could play what I heard inside me. That’s when I was born.” Charlie Parker, American jazz saxophonist.

Creativity can reach many different corners of our lives. 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?

I like to open the fridge, see what’s inside and find a way to combine these ingredients into something tasty! It feels creative. More creative than washing up, but not as creative as making music.

The arts offer an opportunity to rise above the mundane activities of life. An art form gives a tangible expression to the multi-dimensional levels inherent in humans. Through the arts we express our emotions, our ideas and our visions. At rare moments, an artist produces a great creation, like a blessing from the divine. Mozart could write first-draft scores that were perfect! This level of genius is an example of an artist able to connect to the collective unconscious and the divine, and to share these exalted states through his music.

Maybe Mozart also made a good cup of coffee? I would hazard a guess his washing up wasn't too good!

Music is vibration in the air, captured by our ear drums. From your perspective as a creator and listener, do you have an explanation how it able to transmit such diverse and potentially deep messages?

It’s only in recent years I have seriously attempted to explore music theory, and I am still mystified and in wonder with how it can affect us so deeply and immediately. This mystery keeps me curious and engaged in the process of making music. How a particular key change can make us cry or feel elated, is still beyond me. But is it not these mysteries in life that bring the magic we yearn for?

I can’t explain how it works, I just love that it does!