In May 2020, the coronavirus makes it impossible (or at least unwise) for musicians to meet up and do what they do best. Dekoor Close Harmony decides to spread their music in new ways. Following the success of their first quarantine video, people all over the world are asked to submit a video of themselves singing a single note in the key of F major. 270 submissions later, Teun is asked to put everything together in a new composition, forming the prelude for Fix You by Coldplay, as arranged by Malene Rigtrup.
The unique task was challenging in several ways, both musically and technically. The gargantuan amount of files had to be organised by note and subtly edited to make sure less experienced singers and disturbances in the recordings (mostly from phones) did not distract from the music. The progression had to sound monumental, the voicings bombastic but not too dissonant. Lastly, everything had to be passed on to video editor Lukas Arts in a way that enabled him to convert it to a video capturing the sheer scale of it all.
The project was in collaboration with Jos Mulkens, who took the distanced recordings from Dekoor and made them blend as if they were standing on one stage again. Christoph Mac-Carthy and Daan Jansen also lended their professional ears for Fix You.
Teun Buwalda (Utrecht, 2000) has been doing music for as long as he can remember. He shapes his ideas using piano, trombone and his own voice, but his favourite thing to do is writing arrangements and compositions. A sucker for music theory, Teun describes his own work as a middle ground between easy listening and complex jazz. Experimental musical concepts can be fun to explore, but everyone should be able to enjoy the sound.
Teun grew up in Culemborg and started on West African djembe as well as piano. Before middle school, he sung in multiple youth choirs and performed with bands. At O.R.S. Lek en Linge, he assembled a network of anyone he could find who could play an instrument, and often started small projects. Meanwhile he conducted musicals, arranged for his a capella group and dozens of bands, and participated in the composing contest set out each year by the Netherlands Wind Ensemble. During his final year at high school, he followed a preparatory year for Composition at the Amsterdam Conservatory.
Nowadays, Teun is an Artificial Intelligence Student at Utrecht University. However, music never left his side: Teun continues to start musical projects, travel around with world-renowned choir Dekoor Close Harmony and explores the borders between AI and music. In 2022, he followed the Music & Technology in Practice minor at HKU and in 2023, he wrote his bachelor’s thesis about tuning systems.
Teun can always be reached via e-mail: teuncb@gmail.com