Play Me, Mend Me | Jane Aubourg

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Play Me, Mend Me is an exploration through music of pain and repair, made using Anita Johnson’s sculpture Play Me, Mend Me. You can follow the progress here, through my monthly zine series Paper Trails, on my Instagram page, or join my mailing list to hear about releases and performances.

This project was funded by a Wollongong City Council Grant.

Play Me, Mend Me is an exploration through music of pain and repair, made using Anita Johnson’s sculpture Play Me, Mend Me (which I affectionately call The Instrument). The Instrument is an assemblage of an unfinished violin, salvaged crutch, tobacco tin, and blanket. It has strings that span its 1.6m length, creating three unique sounding sections.

The sculpture calls on the overall themes of brokenness, healing, and gesture from the broader exhibition it was part of – themes I am drawing on to connect with my own background of chronic pain from playing the violin. Working with this instrument has allowed me to explore new ways of making music that still build on my strengths and experience of playing the violin.

My practice as a violinist and a composer whose practice is rooted in improvising has been complicated over the past few year by chronic pain in my neck and shoulders. I have been working towards recovery both through physical therapy, but also through finding new ways to create music and perform that move beyond traditional ways of playing. This project represents this perfectly – an instrument that uses my experiences and instincts as a violinist but also demands new approaches that don’t fall into old patterns.

Ideas about gesture and repair not only inform my approach to making sound with The Instrument, but also the emotional journey of managing chronic pain, recovery, and the very particular, joyful, cathartic relationship that a musician has with their instruments that is complicated by pain and repair.

This is a deeply personal project that I'm very excited to share with you. It will ultimately take the form of an album and an accompanying zine, as well as a live performance version to be released and performed in 2023. You can follow the progress here, through my monthly zine series Paper Trails, on my Instagram page, or join my mailing list to hear about releases and performances.

March 2021

Similar improvised performance as part of an exhibition at Sydney Design Centre

July 2022

Received a Small Cultural Grant from Wollongong City Council to write and record music for The Instrument – the project titled Play Me, Mend Me.

October - November 2022

Scoring & refining the sketches to develop the pieces. Writing & reflecting on the process and the work to create
an accompanying book.

December - January 2023

Working on scores & artworks while the sculpture is being exhibited in Tamworth.

October 2020

Improvised performance using contact microphones and delay pedal as part of the exhibition closing at Wollongong Art Gallery

June 2022

Performed Many Hands Make – a piece written for 5 people to play on the sculpture, performed The Music Box Project at Upstairs @ The Glebe: Stir, Flutter.

July – August 2022

A series of sketches developed as part of WAV Island Season 2 – a music writing challenge in the Spirit Level discord community.

November 2022

Performed some of the developing pieces live at The Servo Food Truck Bar on 18th Nov, supporting other wonderful string players Xani + Peter Hollo.

February 2023

Launched Paper Trails, a zine series that follows the creative process as I continue to write the music.

Where is the project currently up to?

June 2023 – I am currently working on finishing the pieces and recording them. I started a zine series in February to chart the creative process as it was happening and I'm loving how quickly it has become part of the process.

November 2022 – I am currently scoring my initial sketches and beginning to refine the ideas both for the recorded compositions and the live versions of the pieces. I'm putting together what I will share at the Nov 18th gig at The Servo.

The zine text has mostly all been written, but not all of it has been edited. I've been collecting visual sketches and materials that will also go into the zine. I've been working with the wonderful designer Emily Willis from Oh My Golly on a gorgeous letterpress cover for it.

Music

Book

Legend

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Sketching

Scoring

Recording

Mixing & mastering

Release

Performance

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Writing

Editing

Collecting

Designing

Cover design

Cover printing

Assembly

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Complete

In progress

Not started

Wollongong Art Gallery

As part of Anita Johnson's exhibition Come to me without a word at the Wollongong City Gallery in October 2020, I was invited to perform an improvisation on her sculpture Play Me, Mend Me.

The improvisation was performed by attaching a contact mic to one of The Instruments two bridges and connecting it to a delay pedal, used to create layers of this unique sounding instrument.

The performance was filmed by the Wollongong Art Gallery as part of an interview with the Anita (performance introduced at 37:00):

Australian Design Centre

I was also invite to play the instrument as part of the same exhibition at The Australian Design Centre, Sydney in March 2021. This gave me chance to further explore ideas from the Wollongong performance.

1/1

Initial sketches

July - August 2022

What's a sketch in music? A musical sketch for me is a quick draft of an idea, a chance to hear it and see if there's something there to explore. It might be 30 secs of a melody or a 20 minute improvisation. It's rough and quick – it's about getting an idea "on the page". I tend to work with recordings first as sketches, before scoring and recording the final piece (though sometimes a sketch starts as a quickly drawn score). This is a collection of my initial sketches for Play Me, Mend Me.

I'm part of a wonderful online community in the Spirit Level Discord that occasionally runs a challenge called WAV Island – once a week upload something new you've written for 8 weeks. It's a fun way to get things flowing with a supportive and friendly crowd, and hear a diverse output of music. When it's all over, we each pick one of our entries to go on a compilation album. You can check out both Season 1 and Season 2 compilations on Bandcamp.

The timing of Season 2 was wonderfully serendipitous – just as the project was funded by a Wollongong City Council grant and I was about to start work! What followed were 8 audio sketches. I found the process of sketching something, then putting it away to work on the next sketch worked really well for me. It stopped each sketch going into a pit of disillusionment and kept the energy and momentum going. I was also sharing some of these sketches as I went on Instagram as Friday jams/sketches. I really liked this as a chance to share and connect to others through what I was creating.

Week 1

An experiment with the eerie sounds on The Instrument. There's a lot of scope for sounds that scratch and screech, and I wanted to have a space where I just went for it. I'd like to build on some of these and think about how to structure them.

Thematically I think this explores not only the unpleasant sensations of being in pain, being uncomfortable, and being unsettled – but the process of sitting with these sensations in a mindful and curious way. There can be a lot of frustration and exhaustion when you feel like this that can feedback into the sensation. Learning to just observe how your body feels in this moment without trying to change it is a challenge.

I really feel a lot of enjoyment, curiosity and playfulness with eerie, discordant sounds, so I want to apply this to discordant sensations elsewhere in my body.

00:00 / 04:10

Week 8

A return to plucking rhythms – this time a hocket (which is absolutely one of my top five words). A hocket is a melody or rhythm that is shared between two (or more) voices so that one voice sounds while the other rests. The opening is the hocket, with half the notes on the lower section of the instrument, and the alternating notes on the upper section. I used the same tuning as week 6 and am feeling pretty good about it. It also seems the most stable of the tunings I've tried so far – the right amount of tension on the strings.

00:00 / 03:54

Week 7

This week's sketch turned into 2 sketches, with 2 ideas that I originally thought would layer really nicely. When I actually put them together it really didn't work for me, but I thought they stood well on their own. The first one is based on circular bowing I did when I performed on the instrument in June. When I made myself a note of what to play, it connected in my memory to a photo of a teacup I took. Sometimes I make a note of something that just feels like it will be creatively interesting, but I don't know how yet. Years down the track my brain just pulls it back out of the bag and it's a good feeling.

The second sketch came from a feeling that I was avoiding this part of the instrument – what to play on it? How to make it interest? Can I really make any sounds on it that don't sound like a hoot soundtrack?

The answer came after a conversation with Anita (who made The Instrument), who noted that it sounded bell like.

Sometimes that's all that's needed for a creative spark.

Week 6

This was the most complete sounding sketch to come out of this process. It unfolded naturally and unexpectedly. I went in to try some gentle plucking rhythms (I was thinking about the really gentle way that my osteopath manipulates muscles). Then I just kept playing and returned to some arpeggio bowing (my favourite). My wonderful partner has a great way of approximating words when they don't come straight to him, so he called it 'archipelago' bowing. I loved the instant connection to this time with WAV Island, so that's what it was called.

Week 4

I've wanted to write a piece capturing an MRI for a long time. Years ago I had one and had the best time – an amazing, personal minimalist electronic concert right around my head.

After trying to organise to record one for ages and coming up against roadblocks, I've shifted tack. It's been so long, that I think the memory of the sound and the joy of the experience has become more important.

So this sketch was about starting to build an impression of an MRI on The Instrument.

Week 3

This week I was trying out a new playing position – somewhere between a cello and a bowed lyre. I also wanted capture something of the sound of medieval bowed lyres and a more folk tune. I had been playing a lot of Witcher 3 at the time and also included a set of Scandinavian medieval music in the Upstairs @ The Glebe: Stir Flutter gig with the music box project. I'd love to make a short bow for playing this as my violin bow was a bit long and cumbersome to play like this.

00:00 / 02:29

I've been really enjoying scoring coming back into my creative process. When I create things for myself to play and record, often I only make little cheat sheets for myself to remind myself of a chord or a structure between sessions.

When I do need to score a piece because other people are going to play it, so many interesting aspects emerge. It invites you to be more specific about what you want, to articulate it. Even if it's an indeterminate moment (there are improvised choices for the performer to make) it's helpful to articulate the parameters of that, to be able to convey what a gesture or moment is aiming for.

Scoring also reveals patterns and structures to reflect on so I can be more intentional about how I refine something.

I've had some anxiety and mental blocks about scoring, but I'm getting a lot of enjoyment from the process.