Travis Weller

“I initially thought that I would end up with enough raw material for about 45 minutes of music. Instead I have at least 4 sets worth - much more than I was expecting! Refining and rehearsing the music will take some additional time, but so much quiet and productive time with no interruptions yielded several hours worth of mockup recordings and an entire wall of sketches.

As a father of two young kids with a full time job, unstructured time is a rarity. Typically, I schedule out smaller blocks of time to complete specific projects. I decided to use my time at Hambidge in a very different way, giving myself time and space to explore a new direction in my work that I had just started finding the edges of. When I arrived at the garden studio and saw the wonderful open and bright room, with its well maintained piano, I knew right away this was going to be a perfect workspace for me. As both a composer and performer, recording is a big part of my process and never being far from my recording setup resulted in some great audio documentation of ideas throughout the week. As I started writing down ideas and musical sketches, I used the large blank wall in the studio to hang up my work so I could refer back to it. That wall ended up being a map of my progress throughout the residency. The quiet space of garden studio balanced perfectly with the beautiful surroundings at Hambidge, and I so appreciated the great food and a little social time at the end of the day. My experience ended up being both very productive and relaxing at the same time. By my checkout day, both the big wall in the studio and my hard drive were full of music. I can't wait to see what comes out of all the material I brought home with me!.”

– Travis Weller, Texas, Music