Hearyourcity: A new app takes users on a musical tour of Truro

As if going to the theatre isn’t exciting enough in itself, the Cornwall Playhouse – the Hall For Cornwall’s principal performance space - has commissioned Cornwall composer Graham Fitkin to work on a new app that will track your pedestrian journey in music.

Due for release on June 1, Geography is designed to link music and location by allowing perambulating listeners, using their mobiles with headphones, to improvise journeys through the cityscape, with each direction governing how the music unfolds. Upon reaching your destination (be it the theatre or otherwise), you’ll have a unique homogenous piece - your own personal ‘mix’, if you will - that can be shared in 21st century style with your friends on social media.

Julien Boast, chief executive and creative director of the Hall For Cornwall, said: “We aspire to be at the cutting edge of creating new work, both in and out of the theatre, and are committed to supporting artists of all disciplines. So when the opportunity to combine working with Graham Fitkin and new app technology as part of our History and Heritage programme fused, it seemed to be a perfect blend.”

The idea first came to Graham in 2008, with a very different city in mind. “I was composer-in-residence for the London Chamber Orchestra,” he recalls. “We had a trip to Damascus planned, working with Syrian musicians, and I was asked to write something that would take into account the topography of the city. I thought it would be wonderful if people could wander around and come across live musicians as they traversed the city.

“When I visit a new city for rehearsals and performances, I love exploring. I often go for a run, without a map – I let myself be led towards things that look nice, and I rather enjoy the fact that I might get lost. Of course, I’m also intrigued by sound, so I wanted to use the app to explore a city aurally as well as visually.” now, following a chance conversation with Cornwall-based producer Michael White. Michael thought the idea could fly with modern technology, in Truro; he facilitated the collaboration with Cornwall’s leading auditorium, and secured funding from the Arts Council of England.

Graham has spent two years working on the app. First he researched the city and walked its streets (a luxury afforded by living locally), making recordings as he went along. The bells you hear really are those of Truro’s magnificent cathedral; due to a current paucity of city centre bovines, however, Graham resorted to recording a Guernsey cow closer to his home in West Penwith, as the basis for a moo-sical symphony at Truro’s crown court, the site of a cattle market as recently as 1985.

The result is around 200 individual pieces of music – around four hours in total – which will stitch together to make different pieces depending on your journey. “Unlike many audio walks, which take you somewhere specific to hear a

Explore Truro using a new app devised by composer Graham Fitkin in association with the Hall For Cornwall

recording, there is no prescribed walk, nothing set in stone - the music reacts to where the user goes.” As such, it presented a very different way of working for the composer. “I have never composed for video games, which is perhaps the nearest comparison to this,” he muses. “It’s not like conventional composition, which is linear, or at least the end result will be.”

While major landmarks – the Hall For Cornwall, the library, the Lander Monument - and routes (roads, footpaths, pavements) are represented, you might be taken by surprise on hitherto unnoticed corners, and it’s definitely worth diverting down some of Truro’s fascinating “opes” (breathe in – they are narrow!).

Graham takes me into the back-end of the app - devised by Ignacio Rodriguez and his Sonic Maps platform - and shows me a colourful visual representation of all the musical extracts overlaid onto a road map of Truro. (App users will see something more sleek and subtle, and with good reason: “I don’t want people to wander around glued to their screens, determined to hear a particular piece of music. I want people to look around them and see Truro.”)

The catchment area is wide, from the railway station and Redannick over to Moresk Road and Newham. Individual pieces range from 20 seconds to two minutes; some areas have one, others several which are designed to play in harmony together.

Styles range from sedate strings melding with birdsong in Victoria Gardens, to strident synths and jingling cash in commercial Boscawen Street - and, inevitably, percussion for Tim Shaw’s Drummer statue. Listen out for a hospital bed beep, courtesy of the Royal Cornwall Hospital, on Infirmary Hill – once the site of City Hospital, it retains its medical connections in the form of major GP surgery.

The music you make will depend on the speed at which you walk and how you interact with your surroundings – say, whether you pause to inspect something closer, or double-back to pick up something you’ve dropped. As you move from one location to the adjacent zone, specialist software synchronises the beats between two pieces of music, enabling the perfect segue.

The feedback has been gratifying. “People who have roadtested it said, ‘It wasn’t the sort of thing I’d previously have thought of doing in my own city – it made me look.’ That’s exactly what I wanted.”

Asked if this is a template that could be rolled out to other cities, Graham doesn’t say no, but adds (with a nervous laugh): “It has been an awful lot of work, more than I ever imagined – and it’s my own fault, because it was my idea. It has driven me mad at times. It will either shorten my life or open up neural pathways I never knew I had, giving me another 50 years. Perhaps I’d do it again, if I had a long life.” l

With thanks to National Lottery Heritage Fund. The Geography app can be downloaded at fitkin.com