If you’re running a marketing campaign and want your marketing video to stand out, it’s important to choose the right music for it. This goes for running a successful podcast as well. The music that plays in the background is often more important than you think and can impact on your commercial or show positively or negatively depending on what you’ve chosen to use.
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Towards the end of last year, I was contacted by Hannah Chung, a really talented animation student at Sheridan College, to work on the music and original score for her animated film Curiosity Killed. After seeing the film and imagining how it would develop, I was super excited to work on this with Hannah.
Read MoreNinichi and Xelafish is a brand new fantasy sheet music store which I’m really excited to tell you more about. A few weeks ago, I introduced this collaborative project to you in my blog: Introducing Ninichi and Xelafish - A Fantasy Sheet Music Store.
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Ninichi and Xelafish is a brand new sheet music publishing house created by composer, Ninichi, and talented writer and multimedia creative, Xelafish. They came together to create this special sheet music store, which will be launching its first sheet music collection for piano, violin and violin duet on the 7thOctober 2019 via an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign.
To help us understand more about where the Ninichi and Xelafish printing house has come from and to understand the vision for it, let’s get to know Xelafish a bit better…
Welcome Xelafish! Tell us how you got into the world of music?
‘One of the coolest things I ever got into was piano and violin lessons from primary school. I was never the most talented at them with the best ear or technique, nor did I practice the most amongst too many other distractions except in sporadic flurries around the odd concert and exams. But I loved playing for the fun of it all the time and going on a journey through music. If anything, the thing I enjoyed collecting the most as a kid was not the DVD or the album / soundtrack / cast recording of anything - it was getting the sheet music and getting to play something for the first time and get lost in exploring it.
I still enjoy playing when time allows and it’s still as much fun to mess around solo or play socially with friends as it always has been. I’d been playing piano and violin pieces with friend and composer Ninichi for a couple of years when we ran out of music. It’s impossible to run out of music and although I sometimes get nightmares sheet music “runs out” (the reason is always different, the most recent, yesterday, was Boris Johnson) but we wanted to play something that wasn’t there.
Something that fell more in-between genres of classical, folk, soundtrack music and also more Lindsey Stirling’s fantasy style, but more conventionally melody led than dance music led. We also wanted it at the right level - easy enough to play for fun and enjoy it after a bit of work, difficult enough so it’s harder than some of the easy-play soundtracks out there and has a sense of thrill and excitement to conquer. And we also wanted context and purpose to the music - to engage with it as if there was a reason or scenario for playing it.’
I see, so is this where the Ninichi and Xelafish partnership began?
‘Luckily Ninichi is a fantastic writing talent and a lot of fun to experiment developing ideas and some music that really hit the spot began to come out until we were rarely playing anything else! We put together an outline for a series of collections that exist in their own world and relate to each other that we could release over time.
And rather than have sheet music as the supporting medium to a story, a recording, a film, an album (although there may well be these other things spinning off) - we'd have this front and centre of the project for a change with a Sheet Music Shop being the very centre of the story.’
Wow! Do tell us more about the Ninichi and Xelafish sheet music publishing store and your plans for it!
‘The Ninichi and Xelafish shop is a sheet music shop set in an alternate reality 1890, where spells are cast not through spoken word but via Melodic Enchantments where skilled composers can weave spells into music that can alter the fabric of reality. And extremely fortunately for anyone interested in their sheet music here in the 21st Century, they have recently developed one such enchantment to communicate across time, space and reality to our own and have a website...
We will be starting a crowdfunder in October to fund setting up the online shop and making available the first collection ’The Light And The Dark’ plus some supporting recordings and we’ll initially be providing arrangements for Piano Solo, Violin Solo + Piano accompaniment and Violin Duet. Backing tracks for solo violin and a narrated audio through the pieces will also be available. Though we will look to expand further into other sets over time if there is enough interest.’
Is there anything else you’d like to share with us?
‘I hope that Ninichi and Xelafish sheet music can find its place, bring people learning instruments or playing for fun a lot of joy, and offer something different to what else is out there.
The intention of Ninichi and Xelafish is to be an exciting source of sheet music that has imagination, context and purpose that developing or recreational players can connect with and enjoy.
If you know any musicians or music teachers that may be interested in this please do forward them to our site where there is a newsletter for updates. It would be fun to get as much of a following as possible of people interested before our Crowdfunder goes live on 7th October 1890 and 7th October 2019!’
Follow us on…
Twitter & Facebook: @NinichiXelafish
Instagram: @NinichiAndXelafish
About the author: Ninichi is a freelance composer for video games, film and media. She is also the founder of Ninichi & Xelafish, a London-based music publishers specialising in fantasy sheet music and audio stories.
Ninichi and Xelafish is launching an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign in October 2019 & needs your help and support!
Support us @NinichiXelafish & follow Ninichi @ninichimusic
