This project was a lot of fun to work on! The wonderful music of Salil Bayani of CampStudio. And unusually for a recording session you can watch the whole thing on YouTube.
I played nyckelharpa, oktavharpa, tagelharpa and Swedish säckpipa for this one.
Just leaving this here…..
Vikingakvinnornas Tid
Jonny was pulled in to record some nyckelharpa for this job which was mostly played by a colleague, but Vicki did record nyckelharpa for one of the scenes , if you’re in Sweden you can watch it on SVT Play. And Vicki’s scene is the Birka one (21 minutes and 56 seconds).
Stockholm Bloodbath
Vicki and Jonny both worked on the soundtrack to this epic movie. Vicki played Tagelharpa, Nyckelharpa, Bowed psaltry, Sienaharpa and double bass. You get to see us in the Behind the Score video. We’re throughout the whole film, but you can hear a lot of us in Blodsystrar (Blood Sisters)
This was a really fun project to do with a tight deadline! It involved about a week of over night recording to get our tracks in before we left on tour. I don’t think I’ve ever had to play this high on the double bass ever before – even playing in concertos!
The film is out in Sweden and we can’t wait for it to come out in the UK!
Boudicca: Queen of War
Jonny was an extra Boudicca: Queen of War. You can see this on Netflix. (It seemed to be the year of the Boudicca for us both!) You get to see Jonny in action with his carnyx. Filmed quite locally to us it was a late call. Come be an actor they said – you’ll get hair and makeup they said…. Jonny was nearly on both sides with his Roman Cornu – but that didn’t make it in.
Vicki worked with the composer Andreas Koslik for a German radio podcast of Boudicca. Mostly it was tagelharpa and quite a lot of it! You can read all about the production on their website. It’s all in German though!
We’ve waited a year to be able to add The Winter King to our website! Not only did we record on the soundtrack, but we were on set too so you can see us! We recorded bits and pieces for the show, but have no idea where or what made the cut! It was a lot of fun to actually be on set and play our instruments to the soundtrack we’d recorded! It premiered in the UK on the 21st December 2023 and is available on catch up on ITVx. Timestamps below to hear the main nyckelharpa/tagelharpa music!
To enable to have a totally silent authentic looking lyre – he broke out the chainsaw and made one!
We had a wonderful afternoon and evening at Channel 5’s Harvest on the Farm. We were asked to help create a party ceilidh like atmosphere by playing some ceilidh tune. Which we did!
You can watch the whole episode on My5.com – it should be available until 2027, so plenty of time to watch it again and again and again!
Hello!
Sometimes some of the jobs we do take a little bit of tracking down after the event and we’ve managed to track one of them down! This was a fun job to do – providing nyckelharpa for a Puy Du España in Spain! I’m littered throughout the whole track, so listen carefully! Thank you to the person that filmed it so I could see it! (Not that they know that!)
:))
One of the first lockdown recording projects Vicki did in Lockdown was for the amazing Clive Nolan. The stems all got sent off and then we didn’t any more about it until this week when we were contacted about plans to do some performances of this in Norway. So we went looking for the final album!! Here it is. (It’s also on BandCamp and Spotify) More details about those performances to follow!
It’s really fun to listen to something that was recorded 3 years ago! We love the narrative of this album – you need to listen to it!! Nyckelharpa, moraharpa and tagelharpa – can you spot them all?
At long last I can talk about a project that I did quite a lot of work for during the pandemic. I got to work on Netflix’s The Witcher Blood Origin. The character Éile, an elven bard plays the nyckelharpa, so obviously they needed someone to teach the actress to play! I was unbelievably excited to get the job!
Because of the way I was asked to play (ie as much drone as possible) I decided to use a gammelharpa bow and a gammelharpa bow hold. (It’s not possible to hold that bow in a modern way!) You can tell that from the video below. At the lesson with Sophia I realised who had made the instruments – Ian McMaster of Blackdown Harpas. Ian did an amazing job with all the requirements he was asked to do (I’m not going to give away any spoilers here!) but let’s just say I was stunned at the job he did!
Sophia was a great student and I think from the photo below she looks awesome! I’ve had a lot of comments about the bow hold – but to be nerdy for a second:
The strap is held correctly, the elbow is nicely over the tail piece, the thumb of the left hand is behind the keys, not the neck. The pinkie of the right hand is crooked behind the bow exactly where it should be and the thumb is tensioning the bow hair. Any other critique is overboard – so I will just say – good job Sophia! You rocked! I was onset making sure that everything was correct, so although you can’t see me in the picture below, I was there, just behind the camera!
Unfortunately Netflix forgot to credit me. So there are two of us nyckelharpa players on the soundtrack – the rule of thumb is: if you see the nyckelharpa being played – it’s me playing. If you don’t see a nyckelharpa on the screen, then it’s Erik Rydvall playing.
Sophia posted a video of her learning the nyckelharpa in instagram – click here! She was awesome!
I also posted a video of me tuning the nyckeklharpa down to Bb – click here.
Hello!
We’ve just got back from Whitby Abbey where Jonny wrote the soundscape and soundtrack to a piece of live theatre performed as part of Whitby Abbey Illuminations and Dracula 125. We created a video montage to part of the sounds track and also found a complete video of the finale that someone in the audience filmed. Last year Jonny wrote the soundscape/soundtrack but this year Jonny was able to follow each of the scenes around the abbey and trigger extra pieces of soundscape/music. It was an amazing time and we hope to be able to do more of the same and take it even further!
:))
Vicki & Jonny
Finally The Northman is about to come out and we are really looking forward to going to see it! We were involved in the project from the very beginning and were the last ones to record at Air Studios. It was a really large part of our lockdown lives and it’s quite emotional to finally see the fruits of our labour! We are liberally sprinkled over the whole sound track! We played pretty much the whole range! But you’ll definitely hear the pipes on To The Games and the bone flute on the End Credits!
Over the pas few days I have been busily adding as many videos and as many different instruments as possible. This is a big job that is going to take some time!
We’re building this. So this entry is a bit of a placeholder!
