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Fringe Festival
 
Photo by Andrea McSweeney

Fringe Festival

Mary Locker —

During the Dunedin Fringe Festival, in March, our band Painted Blind had the opportunity to take part in the Dunedin Sound project Anything Could Happen. 

The project was headed by Sarah Spicer and Adam Goldman, who came all the way to Dunedin from Los Angeles, and it aimed to set up unlikely collaborations, make music, and celebrate the Dunedin Sound of the 1980s. 

It was an interesting experience for us as a band as we were able to work with ex-Logan Park student Abby Wolfe. We had a few days to write a song together, and during that time we all learned a lot about different ways of working on Music.

Because we are a band, whenever we begin to write music there are always four different sources of ideas, criticism, and development. Sometimes this makes the process of writing a song more difficult when we don't agree on something, but it also makes it much easier in many ways, as there is usually someone to fill in the gaps.'''As a solo artist however, Abby uses different methods to generate ideas and write songs. During the few sessions we were able to spend working with Abby, we learned a lot about different creative processes, and while at times it was challenging, one of the things that made the experience of collaborating with someone else really valuable was that it gave us a new perspective on the process of writing a song.

We are all glad that we were able have an opportunity to try something new, and the end result of our time with Abby was a song that all of us were happy with, a fun performance, and some valuable knowledge about how the to write a good song and work with other artists.