5.27.2026 - Rebekkah Hilgraves--Composer, Electronic Musician, Teacher

For more information: You can find music from the Skr0!nk project at https://skroink.com . If you'd like to see video with the music, you can find it at https://radhaus.tv, and look for "Morning Cup of Calm" and "I Scream Sunday". The collaboration project, "The Third Course" is also there. Find out more about voice instruction from Rebekkah at https://rebekkahhilgraves.com.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Good morning. This is the Blains World Podcast, where conversations are worth hearing and seeing. You can watch us each week on Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn. You can also listen on Spa Spotify and Apple Podcasts. And for more information about this show and fair shows or future shows, you can go to my website, which is behind me, Blainsworld.net. I'm your host, Blenn Greenfield, and here coming to you from my Zoom studio in lovely downtown Fairview, North Carolina. And each week we share positive news and uplifting stories about people and organizations in Western North Carolina and across countries. And toward that end, it's my pleasure to introduce um a very talented individual you'll meet in just a second. She's a producer, she's a composer, she's been a singer, she's been um everything else out there. And she is Rebecca Hillgraves, and Rebecca, you can wait for all your fans and friends who are watching. Hello, nice to see you. That is Rebecca Hillgraves. Rebecca was born in Washington, DC, and now makes her home in the Western Highlands of North Carolina. She began training seriously for vocal career at an early age. She studies in voice performance at North Carolina Northern Illinois University, including song and opera, early music performances practice, vocal pedagogy. Pedagogy and stage career. She has a uh solo career in classical she has had a solo career in classical juice jazz and contemporary and electronic music. I also know you, Rebecca, in other ways as well. I know you with um the band was what was the band you were in?

SPEAKER_02 1:40

Pinkish Floyd.

SPEAKER_01 1:41

Pinkish Floyd, uh sorry a couple times in Pinkish Floyd, you were absolutely great. Also I forgot I should mention that you're also now on the radio as well, and you're with Blue Ridge Public Radio, BPR. Okay, very exciting. Good stuff. And so um back up but I should mention perhaps most importantly, uh, you're now involved in something called Skronk. Skronk, yes. I just love that name. And so before we talk about anything else, I should ask you what is Skronik?

SPEAKER_02 2:11

So Skrink so years ago when I started studying classical music, I was in high school. Um and the teacher needed someone to play obo that year. And it was a small school, so you know, basically grab an instrument, and I started learning how to play oboe, and Skronik was the sound I made more often than anything else as I was learning how to play a double reed instrument. Uh and so when I started getting into the electronic music project, I just decided that that was going to be my name.

SPEAKER_00 2:43

So do you still play the oboe? No, no, no. Years I left it off years ago. Okay, but scroink stayed with you.

SPEAKER_02 2:51

Screwing stayed with me, yeah. It was because it was such, I mean, screwing, you know, that the sound that you make as a a read player.

SPEAKER_01 2:57

Okay, it's a great, great name.

SPEAKER_00 3:00

And the nice thing about that, nobody else used that, I think, right?

SPEAKER_02 3:03

Uh one one hopes, yes. Um but one of the reasons that I chose that name in particular was when I first started getting into the electronic music side of things, I was experimenting with different kinds of sounds, not just sort of drifty uh pads and things like that. I was actually experimenting with found sounds like my dishwasher and um car horns and birds and altering them and changing them. So the the idea of these found sounds, these noises turning into music was sort of the genesis of the name.

SPEAKER_01 3:39

Okay. So going back in time then, uh Rebecca, you grew up as a kid where?

SPEAKER_02 3:44

I grew up as a kid outside of Washington, D.C. for my first uh through about second grade.

unknown 3:51

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 3:52

Um outside this one of the Virginia suburbs. So then after that, did you move from the We moved around a bit. Um my uh my stepfather got transferred a lot with the company he worked with, and so my gr uh, let's see, my middle school, high school, and college, I all I ended up in uh outside of Chicago in northern Illinois. So I went to St. Charles High School, which, as it turns out, was one of the things that sort of saved my life. It was an amazing music program in those years. It uh the school had had a great endowment, and the music teachers that were teaching at the time were sort of the great triumvirate of teachers, a great choir director, a great band director, and a great theater director, um, and an orchestra director. Sorry, it was a a quartet of in terrific instructors. So I got lucky. Uh I got to get exposed to some really great classical music early on, even when I was still in high school.

SPEAKER_01 4:51

So when did you decide that music was going to be your career?

SPEAKER_02 4:56

In high school. I first started taking voice lessons when I was 15 or 16, and um there's a story to that too. I had wanted to be the next Pat Benator, and that tells you about what age I was. And I when I learned that she wanted to that she had studied classical music, she'd studied classical voice, I decided I needed to follow in her footsteps, and so I started studying classical voice with our choir director, who turns out to be to have been a terrific, you know, starting out voice teacher. Um and and then he introduced me to Puccini, and that that just appealed to every melodramatic bone in my teenage body. And so I started studying opera because Madame Butterfly was just the pinnacle as far as I was concerned. So I started singing classical music, and then it got to the point where I thought I'm gonna hold my nose and take a degree in classical music and voice performance, and I did.

SPEAKER_01 5:59

Because I'll talk about that in a second, but back to the the teacher you mentioned, is that person still around?

SPEAKER_02 6:05

I don't think he's still alive. It's been it's been quite a number of years.

SPEAKER_01 6:10

Okay, we've got giving a shout shout out to that person. But it's amazing that how one person can make a difference in your life. So so then you got which is very unusual for to have an interest with pet banatar and opera. Yeah, it's quite a uh combination, especially in that when you were a kid, I guess not too many other people were really inter into opera at that time.

SPEAKER_02 6:33

Not really, no. Um I was again, I was very fortunate. The school that I attended had a really terrific fine arts program, and so a number of the kids that I went to school with were singers. Um a lot of them went on to full-on lifelong Broadway careers. Um one of them uh actually had um uh a full opera career. Margaret Jane Ray was her name. She graduated a couple years before I did. And um, and so there was definitely a classical leaning in that school. I may have been the only one that pursued opera. I'm not the only one. I can't have been the only one. I'm not the only one. But uh, I was definitely one of the few who continued with it, went on to college and got a degree, and then, you know, went on to New York to study there. So um, you know, it it it was a it was a kind of a long long series of steps. So you did sing opera, right?

SPEAKER_01 7:34

At one point in time.

SPEAKER_02 7:36

Yes, I did. Uh I pursued it for well, I started when I was a teenager, and I pursued it into my late 30s, and then I had a spine injury that actually prevented me from doing much stage work after that. I can't carry around a 40-pound costume anymore. So I had to retire from the opera stage, and I still did some classical recitals, and then kind of went back to my roots in rock and roll.

SPEAKER_01 8:02

And so um, when you were doing that, were you singing as a solo performer or were you always with groups?

SPEAKER_02 8:09

A bit of both. Uh, I sang with choirs, but I did have a very small, very small solo career. Um, sang with a couple of orchestras around the country. I sang with Seattle Orchestra, uh, sorry, Seattle Philharmonic, and with Buffalo Philharmonic, and uh a few other orchestras around the country as a soloist, sang opera in New York City, never with one of the big houses, unfortunately. They were smaller companies. Um, but had a, you know, had a little career and then also premiered an opera in New York City called the Eglantine by a composer named Sam Bellich. And it was a small performance, but we did a recording of it. And so yeah, I I did, you know, I did little things like that, little things. I mean, you know, it was never one of those great world-class careers, but I got to sing with some amazing people, amazing people who themselves went on to world-class careers. And so the the fact that I got to kind of come up with these folks really had an influence on my view of the world. And I knew that some of these singers just absolutely had the it factor. So, you know, more power to them.

SPEAKER_01 9:23

So I got to know you first, I think, uh, in the Ashlo area with singing with that group, right? With uh uh name of the group is Pinkish Floyd? Pinkish Floyd. Yeah. You knew with them how many years?

SPEAKER_02 9:36

We were there, we were together a couple of years. Um there was also a previous iteration called the Floyd Philharmonic that kind of fell apart because of some personality issues, but a number of us sort of branched out and made our own project, and we we worked together for a couple of years. They're actually still performing. Pinkish Floyd. Um, and they're they're great. I mean, they're the terrific musicians and just real dedication to the craft. So I was sad to have to leave, but again, you know, and I'm I'm old enough now and I've had enough injuries that uh I wasn't able to do the stage life much anymore, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_01 10:10

Okay. So go from there then into again, I'll have to ask you about Skrink. So is this now something you're you're doing? We call yourself a producer and composer. And so what exactly then is Skrinth? You told us how you got named for it, but what is Skrinth then?

SPEAKER_02 10:27

So um I'll I'll give you a little bit of background on how I got into it. So I also work for an internet radio station called Radiospiral.net, which specializes in electronic and ambient music. Um and I got into I got into it about 15, geez, almost 20 years ago now. Um and because I had been a broadcaster, it just appealed to me to sort of be part of this community. And then I started experimenting with these sounds early on. So I've been doing Skronk for about 15 years. Um and found along the way, you know, some instruments that worked for me, some a different kind of process than a lot of composers use. I use um, you see, some of the keyboards behind me, I use MIDI controllers rather than synthesizers. Um, but what that gives me is the freedom to use sounds. I have an immense library of sounds to choose from. I have a full orchestra, uh, all of the instruments of an orchestra to choose from. I have percussion instruments, I have uh different sound effects and drum patches and guitar sounds and harmonizer for my voice and all of those things, and it just sort of came together over the last 15 years. As one can imagine when one's starting out with a new project like this, it was pretty rough to start with. Um but when I discovered vocal harmonizers, especially, because I had been a singer for so long, um, when I discovered the ability to loop and process the voice, that really kind of spun me off into a different direction. And then all the years of classical training, I do not claim to be a good pianist by any stretch, but I had enough piano training where I could do the things that I wanted to do and make the kinds of sounds that I wanted to make with these all of these instruments that I have collected. And so now I'll send you a picture of it also. Yeah. I have I have four keyboards, one of which is a pedal keyboard, like an organ pedal, um, but it's also a MIDI controller, and so I can make sounds with it, like drum sounds or these really interesting sequenced sounds, electronic sounds, those sorts of synthesizer sounds, just a whole library of stuff. And I've been doing this for 15 years and I have thousands of these sounds, and I still have not even scratched the surface.

SPEAKER_01 12:53

I was going to ask you, so some people collect stamps, others collect coins. You collect sounds?

SPEAKER_02 12:58

I apparently collect sounds, yeah. Um I it all runs from an iPad. Right. Um and it's a it's a really interesting rig. And it's unusual, honestly, for electronic musicians to have a rig like this. Most of them rely on a combination of sequencers and synthesizers, like the Moog synthesizer, which you're familiar with, I'm sure.

SPEAKER_00 13:18

Right.

SPEAKER_02 13:19

Um but what I chose to do was drive all of this from the iPad with the MIDI controllers, with multiple MIDI controllers. So it's a it's a really interesting kind of kind of complex setup where the iPad is connected by USB to a hub. All of the MIDI controllers are connected to that hub, and there's software on the iPad that lets me run them all and run the different synthesizer sounds, all of the sounds that I've collected over time. Um and so I can tell the the let's see, this keyboard, I can tell it to play piano sounds because it's an 88-key keyboard. The one above it I can have maybe playing, oh, uh wind chimes or something. And then the keyboard above that is called Raleigh, R-O-L-I. And it's a it's a C-board, and it has a fingerboard that actually allows you to do full vibrato and slides and all of these really interesting things with it. So I can play, for instance, a duduk, which is a Turkish wind instrument, or I can play violin and play the vibrato of a violin on this keyboard. So I mean it's it's really it's it's expanded and it's a little ridiculous. It's it's gotten kind of crazy over time. I started with one keyboard and an iPad all those years ago and have just sort of expanded into this uh amazing arsenal of sounds.

SPEAKER_01 14:44

So talk about then this arsenal of sounds, and you meant we mentioned you're a composer. So is this now like do you compose every day or and do you sit down like writers, you know, three hours every morning, four hours every day?

SPEAKER_02 14:57

I wish. I didn't I don't have time for that, unfortunately. I don't have time to do all of that. Um what I do is I do compose. Um most of the time, though, I improvise. So these shows that I do on Radio Spiral, Radiospiral.net, um I have a I have two shows on the weekends. I have a Saturday morning meditation show, and then I have a Sunday evening, about five o'clock our time, five to seven. Um and I play live for those shows, and what I do is I'll plan the basic structure of it. I'll plan the sounds that I want to use and the key and the sort of general atmosphere that I want to establish, and then I will literally improvise for anywhere from 30 minutes to a full hour, sometimes more, um, and just kind of make sounds with this arsenal of uh of sounds that I've collected over time.

SPEAKER_01 15:53

And so where do you get the ideas from? Just out of the head or out of the sky or a bit of that, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:00

Um I actually have I have a list of show ideas. Um, and there are topics like The End of the World, The Apocalypse, Um, The Forest Floor, Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe, Kali Ma, the Indian Goddess, um, Glaciers, Alien Encounter, Fire, Death and Transfiguration. So a lot of it comes from my exposure to classical music. I w uh when I first started this particular iteration of the shows that I'm doing on Radio Spiral now, I leaned heavily on my classical background. So for example, uh The Russian Easter Overture by Rachmaninoff. I I borrowed the the DS Ede from that and some of the themes from that and kind of folded that into these sounds. Um and I I rely heavily on strings, for example, orchestra instruments. Um I did one that was kind of an homage to pictures at an exhibition, Ms. Orsky's work. Um, and I used flute sounds for birds and and it kind of semi-classical experimental stuff, and it's all improvised. So I will spend a lot of time, I'll spend hours putting together the sounds and deciding on the mood. I might even write poetry for it sometimes. But generally, once I get to performance time, I I the spirit kind of moves me. You know, I'll get the sounds that I want and um the the overall structure. Sometimes I'll make some notations like a chord progression or something like that, and then just kind of let it carry me.

SPEAKER_01 17:44

So since you mentioned what you mentioned, folks, and I'll put this in the description of the program today, but to find out more about some of this, so you're going to tell us where we can get information about Radio Spiral Network?

SPEAKER_02 17:56

You can so Radiospiral.net is the station where I do these shows. My two shows are called Morning Cup of Calm. That's the Saturday morning show. And it's an hour of just drifty meditation music. Um, no real structure to it. It's just, it literally is intended to get people into a really lovely meditative space to kind of launch the weekend of calm. Uh and then Sunday night, the show is called I Scream Sunday. I scream Sunday. And a lot of that is because I will do a little bit more experimental music. I'll do things that rely heavily on vocals, um, sometimes kind of noisy, sometimes dance music, sometimes cinematic, kind of symphonic soundtrack. And there those are end up being kind of quite by accident. But what I discovered was, and those especially were what triggered it, I have to have kind of a movie going in my head. I have to have images. I have to have a storyline, a plot of some kind, even if it's just images or or just sort of impressions, I still have to, there's a very visual component to a lot of what I do. So there are a couple of them, and I'll uh hopefully be able to share samples with you. These are all very long-form pieces, by the way. So if you share samples, just take little bits of them. But Ripley is one, and it was inspired by the original movie Alien, where the woman was the one who survived because she had told them what was going on, and they're like, no, no, no, we got this. And she's the she and her cat were the ones that survived. So I did a whole hour-long thing about Ripley, and I brought in these wonderful sound effects that I had found, and then altered those and made this soundscape across the hour where and and there was a story unfolding in my head of her kind of being chased and then chasing and then winning, and then maybe not winning, and being damaged, and then going on and finally being able to win the day. And so it has this arc to it, and there are a number of them like that. There's another one called Heavy Metal, M-E-T-T-L-E, Heavy Metal, that's a similar sort of thing where it's like this po post-apocalyptic sci-fi soundtrack that you'd see in a in a movie somewhere. And these are all like soundtracks that I wish someone makes a movie, someone could make a movie for because they have this very visual component to them.

SPEAKER_01 20:28

Now, is this ever going to be if somebody wants to listen to them, so you're going to tell us how to listen to them, is you can yeah, you can go. Is this ever put together as a a a complete Rebecca Hillgraves Scroink one or you know, whatever? Is it a a compilation you put together?

SPEAKER_02 20:46

So there are there are a couple of places you can go. Um I have most of my tracks, the ones that I felt like releasing, felt were worth releasing, on Bandcamp. So you can go to Scroink, S-K-R-O-I-N-K.bandcamp.com. Uh, and those are just the audio releases there. Um and I have it set that you can listen to them before you buy them. Um and then you can also see videos of the performances. Now the morning cup of calm videos are usually videos and visualizations. You don't actually see me playing. But it has a video component, and they're intended again to sort of set this mood of calm. Um and those you can find on radhouse.tv, r-a-d-h-a-us- dot TV. And you can look for Morning Cup of Calm there, and you can also look for Ice Cream Sunday there. Those are the two shows where the scroink thing happens. There's also a third one there called the Third Course, which is my collaboration with another electronic music in town. His name is Al Baldwin. He goes by Palad Mask, and he have he and I have collaborated a couple of times on some things under the third course. Um, but my solo stuff is either Morning Cup of Calm or Ice Cream Sunday under radhouse.tv.

SPEAKER_01 22:05

And who by the way, as we mentioned, I'll be putting this in the pro program description. So if you want to see this or hear this, you can do so. But some of them, which is kind of cool, some of them are something you can watch. What when they're watching, are they watching you in four different keyboards or what are they watching?

SPEAKER_02 22:22

So yeah, so the ice cream sundae ones especially you'll see me play. And you'll you'll see I it's a it's a three-camera rig, so you'll see the camera shooting from a couple of different angles, including overhead. So you can see, well, and unfortunately you can't see the pedal keyboard with this camera arrangement, but you can see the the the three upper keyboards. And then you'll see me singing once in a while and you'll once in a while you'll see me play a percussion instrument or something like that. So yeah, the ice cream Sunday ones you can definitely see me play. Now do folks ever get a chance to see you do this in a concert of some sort? You know, I am talking with the third room in downtown Asheville and I'm hoping that we can do something with them soon. I haven't got a lot of traction there yet. We're also talking with Cry Samadhi at the bottle shop and I I haven't played out yet uh other than briefly I played oh this is a few years ago now with Mountain Skies which was an electronic music festival that was held at Whitehorse Black Mountain. And I played there and that was my first collaboration with Al Baldwin and now we're third course we did a thing which was an excerpt of a cycle of poems that I did a number of years ago called Rachel Rising. We we pulled a few from that collection and we turned them into music for um I think it was a 30 minute set, 15 or 30 minutes.

SPEAKER_01 23:47

Because even to do the set though, it's probably a pretty convoluted thing you have to bring all this equipment with you and and you have three or four keyboards at at one time.

SPEAKER_02 23:57

It's a big setup yeah it's so it's you know I'm bringing I would be bringing for the for if I played out I probably wouldn't bring this whole big complicated thing. I have some smaller keyboards that I can bring and then I would bring the laptop and it would be sort of an attenuated version of Scroink if it were the fun thing to watch you or does this guy Al do the same thing too he he does it a little bit differently he has a couple of smaller keyboards and he triggers he'll he'll trigger pads he'll trigger generative sounds um and and sort of create a framework that that we then work with together um so his approach is very different from mine. He's got synthesizers he doesn't he has a couple of MIDI controllers but he's mostly got synthesizers. So we have kind of gone down slightly different paths uh as far as our music goes. I think he's getting more into the MIDI controllers now than he was but he started with synthesizers.

SPEAKER_01 24:53

And so the goal of all this is to they don't necessarily have they don't have albums per se but the goal is to sell the music on on these various I mean I would love that in fact um very very much to my surprise I I have I have I don't know sixty releases or something out on Bandcamp now maybe more um some Gods bless him some fellow bought the entire catalog.

SPEAKER_02 25:19

Oh really? And continues to buy them when I release new ones um and I'll you know I'll release them as individual tracks because again they're long form they're anywhere from 30 to 60 minutes and he buys them every time I put them out there and he he has my entire catalog which is just amazing to me. Someone actually went out there and bought the whole thing and spent a couple hundred bucks to do it.

SPEAKER_01 25:40

So you know that was it's really cool so you have your you have your followers a groupie you got a guy following you.

SPEAKER_02 25:46

Got a guy following me I don't know where he is or where he's from but he seems to like the music.

SPEAKER_01 25:51

Okay that is really cool and track it. So the goal of this then is you doing this for your personal interest or professional interest or you want to do something with it?

SPEAKER_02 26:02

It's mostly personal but it's also to some extent professional I would love for some of the the sort of cinematic ones to become soundtracks for films. And I'm I'm considering doing something like offering the music to filmmaking schools or to filmmaker programs in schools and offering them up to young composers and say, you know, here give use this in your film and let's let's conspire to do something.

SPEAKER_01 26:33

Well I I could think this would be a really cool thing when they have the what's it the weekend film festival at Asheville or something that that might be kind of a cool thing for you to do or offer to the winner, you know, you'll give them a score that they could use. Right out that would be kind of a fun thing to do. Yeah right now if anybody's listening if they want to use this for films they would contact you and we'll give contact information as well.

SPEAKER_02 26:59

Yep Yeah I would love that I would love that if if some if some young aspiring filmmaker wants some creepy science fiction scores and and they're not all creepy they're not all they're not not all um scary music. A lot of them are sort of drifty love love movie, love film, love story kind of things. A couple of them are very evocative of battles for example or as I said the the homage to uh Ms Orgsky's pictures at an exhibition has this sort of flute and pastoral countryside kind of feel to it.

SPEAKER_01 27:35

So it's it's a fairly broad mix and it depends on how I feel that week well let me ask you on the other end because you're giving some ideas as you always do um could somebody say to you they're doing a film and they want to get this kind of reaction I would love that I would love that off the air we'll talk about that concept because you're giving me some ideas and that would be it seemed to be the way to go you know that you see an aspiring filmmaker and have somebody in mind who come to you and say would you be interested in doing this?

SPEAKER_02 28:05

I would I would absolutely love to do that. I you know if I if I were able to do a bespoke score for someone um that would just that would that would be sort of the pinnacle of what all of this was about.

SPEAKER_01 28:17

Okay so that's good to know and we'll give contact information as well. So talk about the other part of what you do too. I know you told me off the air you you also are a teacher as well. And talk about the two kinds of teaching you do. So the first one I'm interested in will you teach or if somebody wanted to learn script could you teach them I you know that's a great question.

SPEAKER_02 28:41

I never considered that I I'm not sure it's something you can teach. I can certainly provide guidance but I think it depends on the person's skill and interest um you know I can I can point them to the techniques that I use. Right. I could I I can't teach piano I'm no I'm not I'm not nearly good enough to teach piano. But I could probably point at well here are some of the the apps that I use here are some of the sounds that I've employed along the way here are some of the techniques I use to put together a set um beyond that it's it's not really something that one teaches this kind of thing I think is I mean electronic music is a whole discipline in college right but a lot of it has to do with learning learning the electronics themselves uh learning synthesizers learning the principles of how you generate the tones um what the acoustic principles are what the what the electrical signals are and the signal chains are but what I do is a lot more kind of instinctive than that. So I suppose I could give you some pointers but I'm not sure that's something I could teach necessarily if somebody was interested in it to how you got this off the ground and how you do what you do.

SPEAKER_01 30:10

Maybe aside from the teaching of that you also teach what music you teach singing lessons as well I do.

SPEAKER_02 30:17

I do. So I have kept my toe in the classical water um in that I do still teach classical voice um to any kind of singer. It's not just anyone who wants to be an opera singer. The technique that I teach is called belcanto which is a an old time honored technique and I am actually as it turns out 11th in an unbroken succession of belcanto instructors over time. My instructor was his instructor before him and so on and so forth going back into the 1700s and teaching the the precursors to this technique and then as it evolved into what we now call belcanto technique. And it's a kind it's it's actually kind of falling out of favor on the opera stages unfortunately ex and it and I and I say it's unfortunate because it is it is healthier vocalism than a lot of what we hear now on classical stages. It involves a lot of physical effort but not here more like in the torso and it involves a lot of understanding of the physical mechanism itself the not just the breathing mechanism but what actually goes on in here. I'm a very technical teacher I I show you diagrams of the vocal mechanism and the the cartilage and how things work in there and and then help people understand the right kind of breathing to create the sounds that are healthy, beautiful and uh provide stamina uh I have I've had singers classical singers of course I mean some of my singers have gone on to take degrees in in classical performance I had one singer who was actually a shredhead metal singer who came to me and wanted to learn how to sing better so that he could get through a set get through a show without feeling like he had been gargling with gravel the whole time. And so I worked with him for a year and he came back and told me later oh yeah this I can still make the sounds that I want to make but because my body is healthier doing it I can do a three hour show and not feel shredded at the end of it.

SPEAKER_01 32:32

Did I ask you that that the technique then could be used by all singers?

SPEAKER_02 32:38

All kinds of singers not just classical singers. I I'm working with a fellow right now who who sings um sort of pop and rock and classic rock and country and and those sorts of things and the technique is helping him he has even taught I mean we've only been working together for about six months and he's already told me that his gigs are better because he can feel a difference. He's not singing he's not sounding any different necessarily but he feels better he feels like it's healthier and he's got more stamina um and and he feels better about how he sounds his pitch is better things like that. So it it doesn't matter what kind of music you're singing this approach helps you come at it in a more healthy manner.

SPEAKER_01 33:28

Because I would imagine that there'd be more of a market for people to do more than just classical or opera area anywhere.

SPEAKER_02 33:36

So it's just kind of well you'd be surprised you'd be surprised I've had a couple of classical students as well young singers who you know want to prepare for college degrees and things like that. So um there is there is actually it's a very small market here obviously you know small town of 90,000 um but there is interest in the classical side as well.

SPEAKER_01 33:58

I imagine it'd be very helpful to work with you too in terms of um auditions you know or how do you get how do you choose an audition how do you prepare for it right and that's not only for professionally but just like you said getting to school or or college you have to have an audition prepared. So that's that's something um else I could see you doing if people want to find out about that side of you that's is there a website or is there a place to find out information?

SPEAKER_02 34:26

There is you go to my website it's Rebecca Hillgraves dot com and it's spelled the way I spell my name you can see it on the screen. So it's with two K's and an H on the end and then Hillgraves with one L. Rebecca Hillgraves dot com and that's my teaching site. Okay so if they go there they'll find out a teaching site does that also include information about this other stuff uh yeah a little bit I try to keep them separate because Scroink is just such a different project from the classical side um there I think there's a there's a a a link in there vaguely somewhere but mostly the Rebeccahillgraves.com focuses on the classical stuff but if you go to scroink.com that'll take you to the bandcamp page okay so the question Rebecca Hillgraves is in 10 years from now or five years from now where do we see this going?

SPEAKER_01 35:16

With teaching or with scroink?

SPEAKER_02 35:21

When you grow up what do you want what do you want to do when you grow up oh well I want to keep doing what I'm doing I love teaching it lights me up I I there is something so immensely satisfying and rewarding about hearing the changes and seeing the light bulb go off in a student's head when suddenly a concept makes sense and their body it makes sense in their body and then all of a sudden the sound starts changing. And with this singer that I was telling you about that I've been working with for six months, you know, we've heard that happen he'll he'll practice and even if it's even if he doesn't practice every day of the week he'll come the next week and I can hear the difference because the brain and the body continue processing this information anyway, even if you're not practicing all the time. And to see and hear him kind of light up when the concepts begin to make sense and when his body starts really getting under what he's trying to do, that is so satisfying. So satisfying so I'd love to teach until the day I die. And the same with Keroik honestly I mean it's something I can do here in the safety of my own home without risking damaging you know I mean you see I've got a cast on and you know I've I've had some issues lately. I love making music and it is one of the things that has you know especially in the current climate kind of kept me sane making music and it's sort of my rebellion against the insanity.

SPEAKER_01 37:07

Let me ask you back to making music. So this we can get done if they want to work with you on a one-to-one basis. This can be done in person obviously it can be done virtually do you do it virtually?

SPEAKER_02 37:17

You know I prefer not to because um singing especially well the the stroke stuff maybe we could do that virtually um the but singing is such a physical tactile undertaking um that I need to see and I need to feel what's happening and point at things and show you things and I I think I mean I know there are a lot of internet teachers out there and bless them you know if they're successful that's great but the kind of technique that I teach really requires physical presence. I think it's not as effective otherwise. Okay so the so you know I I make house calls um but I also have an arrangement with a local private school where you know if someone is interested we would meet there and have lessons.

SPEAKER_01 38:06

Well the nice thing back to they can also have lessons at your place as well?

SPEAKER_02 38:10

No I don't teach here. Okay interesting yeah so but you would bring your iPad then or it have the background the music you bring your iPad for the scrunk stuff yeah I would have an iPad and we would just you know I would just you know use the the virtual keyboard that's on the iPad to demonstrate things. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 38:26

So recap Rebecca Hillgraves there are two things we're going to talk about and it'll all be in the description but if you're interested in the instruction aspect of what you do to RebeccaHillgraves.com spelled the way I spell it right there. And that'll have information about what you do and what kinds of things you teach. And if they're interested in the Scroink side of you the best bet is to do what?

SPEAKER_02 38:51

Well there are two places to go. If you want just audio go to scroink.com S-K-R-O-I-N-K scroink.com or you can go to radhouse.tv r-a-d-h-a-us dot T V and look for ice cream sundae and morning cup of calm and those are the two Scroink projects there.

SPEAKER_01 39:14

And then if you're interested in the collaboration that's the third course it's also on the same radhouse.tv side and our last question since you mentioned all these uh different titles and stuff how do you get the the titles for your like when you compose a piece or write something does everything have a title to it?

SPEAKER_02 39:31

Every i i yeah I started out not using titles but I discovered that I had better luck with the overall focus and mood and whatever you want to call it by applying titles to it because then that that visual story happened right um where if for instance one of one one of the the pieces that I'm gonna send you is Unto the Stars which is how it must feel to go into deep space for the first time. And I also did something similar for a recent Artemis tribute project. But this one was specifically fantasy it was a science fiction story. You see you see science fiction movies all the time about going into space and and you know going into space for the first time the a person going into space for the first time but how it would feel for the human race and for the representatives of the human race to leap into to deep space for the first time to get past our solar system for the first time and the the awe they would feel the fear and the wonder and the excitement and all of the complicated emotions that would come with that and I tried to capture that in music. So it's in a a number of movements and it's leaving the earth and saying goodbye to Earth because it's a one-way trip at this point um just because we don't have the technology to do anything else. And then it's things like going past uh the old voyager and going past the Oort cloud and how it would feel then to maybe get to one of the first nebulae out there for the first time. So you know it's it's it's a series of kind of visual and emotional impressions of these stages of the journey so back to your original question about the titles the title kind of drives the piece the the or the the the story arc that I build under the title is is and what ends up driving the piece.

SPEAKER_01 41:40

Were you always a science fiction fan?

SPEAKER_02 41:43

Oh yeah oh yeah oh yeah so funny story about that I was slow to learn how to read when I was in preschool and before preschool you know you start picking up words and letters before that and I was a little slow at it. Well my father gave me some science fiction novels and got me interested in reading and by first grade I was reading at sixth grade level because finally it was something that actually interested me. I didn't I wasn't interested in C. Jane run C Spot you know those boring boring but science fiction and something that activated my imagination that way oh yeah I'm all about it and I still am I'm reading a William Gibson trilogy right now.

SPEAKER_01 42:34

Anyway Rebecca Hillgraves I'd like to thank you for being my guest this this edition of Blake's world podcast also like thank my producer Capitay and uh one of these days again we'll bump into each other I'm sure thank you I'm sure we will thank you so much