- Music
- 11 Apr 01
Here, Hot Press profiles some of the home grown artists who've launched new releases in time for the Christmas market. Ronan Hardiman
ANYONE WHO has seen Dick Warner’s award-winning TV series, Waterways, can hardly have failed to notice the vital role that music plays in contributing to the success of the project. The exquisitely filmed river and canal sequences rely heavily on musical accompaniment for creating that distinctive atmosphere, pace and mood for which the series has been rightly acclaimed.
The soundtrack for Waterways was composed, performed and produced entirely by Ronan Hardiman who has now released an album containing music from the first three series of the programme.
“It might sound crazy, “ he says, “but I was getting letters from as far away as Miami, from people saying how spiritual they thought the music was and asking where they could get a hold of it. The series is unusual in that there is a high degree of music content and there are long sequences with just music and pictures and no commentary – its a very relaxed-paced programme.
“It’s being repeated constantly on satellite channels like Discovery in Europe and PBS in the US,” he adds. “EMDEE productions, who make the series have now released it on video, so the idea of releasing the music in its own right was a natural follow-on from that.”
Hardiman, who played in various Dublin rock bands in the 1980’s has been composing and producing TV and Film music successfully for the past four years. The current theme to RTE’s television news is just one of his creations and he has also worked on independent productions which have been shown internationally.
Hardiman stresses the importance of working closely with film producers in order to fully deliver on their requirements and needs.
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“They may have worked on a project for a long time and have very set ideas about what they want to achieve out of it and it’s my job to realise what their vision of the project is,” he says. “It can be quite complex, particularly with timing. You’re writing to a predetermined sequence of film and you might get a particular sequence with six different points in it, that have to be punctuated musically. The shape of the piece can be almost determined by the action on screen but you have to be careful that the build-up, musically, doesn’t run faster than the visual action. Computers are a fantastic aid to tackling the mathematics of the thing as it’s all down to beats in the bar in the end.”
The soundtrack album to Waterways features twenty-one pieces of music taken from the series to date and Hardiman is more than satisfied with the results: “I hope it’ll appeal to people who like instrumental music in general,” he says. “There’s an interesting mix of instrumentation and styles – it’s been described as contemporised cajun and that’s one way of putting it!
“The album is not simply made up of erratic pieces of music stuck together without an overall shape,” he concludes. “I was conscious of creating an album that could be enjoyed away from the visual inspiration of the music and I do feel that it stands-up as a musical statement in itself.” Colm O’Hare
•Waterways is released on Hummingbird Records