Menu
header photo

iselinfergestad

music & more

Sound and Music for moving pictures

I attended Diploma in Music Design at Norwegian School of Creative Studies (Oslo). During these classes I made vocal recordings, radio bumpers and jingles (conceptual), architecture installation sounddesign, demo TV-theme and demo Tv-bumper, dvd sounds, sound design and composition for film, music design for game-concepts, audio studio recording, audio editing for voice and sound to film, Trailer-music, documentary filmscore, digital orchestration and arrangements, songwriting for stage play and piano solo compositions.

Software that I know: Logic Studio Pro, Pro Tools, Soundtrack Pro, Final Cut Pro, Waveburn, Compressor, alittle AfterEffects, Dvd Studio Pro, Cubase/Cubasis, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, the old Media 100. Some Ableton Live.

Youtube video Playlist: https://m.youtube.com/user/iselinfergestad/playlists
Listen to streaming music @ SoundCloud: http://soundcloud.com/iselinmusic

Childhood in music

I was six when I started playing my main instrument, the piano, at a local classical music school in Drammen, Norway, which I attended for about eleven to twelve years. At the age of eight I started to write my own music at a childish and basic level by myself with each piece having their own drawing as I started visualizing music. According to my family I was early on the keys composing, but I didn't show it to anyone. They were kept in secret for myself only. I still have all these drawings on paper on the attic, and some of them I performed at my first school concerts; "the boat", "the guinea pig" and so on. But I started re-arranging the notes by the composers I learned at the classical music school, so my teacher recommended I had to find other teachers to develope the creativity. Instead of playing full scores by other composers. As a farewell gift to her I wrote a musical piece inspired by birds sitting on the electric cables which looked like and became a music score. When attending music school I used to attend every music school concert to play pieces by other composers, but also some of my own.

From the age of thirteen I composed for piano with a simple tape recorder standing on the nearby shelf in our livingroom, and it was so simple , but even today I am missing the old tape recorder sometimes. It was so easy to just click "record" while playing. Because I listened to my performances over and over again to perfection them also in the way I am playing - with heart and depth as much as possible .

Even though there wasn`t a festival nearby, I did also play my small piano pieces at every possible occation og location - even at a local supermarket in the everyday rush in front of people with their bags full, just improvised, but usually a very simple performance. At seventeen I started contacting a recording studio in Drammen to develope what I had in passion. At this Drammen studio I composed, recorded, mixed and arranged all the sounds, but the engineer was really helpful mastering and mixing to make it work. This was before my engineer education. His name is Arne Iversen and he still runs a studio and composes for theatre. Radio plays at NRK radio1 followed for 11 weeks on the local charts with ethnic-inspired "Above Conflicts" (formely called "The Eternal One") and local live performance at festival nearby in hometown Lier. At the same time attending Music/Dance/Drama at high school, this gained my interest of performing and exploring, and multi media. :)I attended Multimedia Design education straight after, to get insight in media fields, for two years in Denmark specializing in management and entrepreneurships, as I wanted my productions to be part of a more holistic project where I'd also run a few.

I also attended film/TV and art history and analysis at Lillehammer University College which has a greater film environment. Then I was attending Music Design courses at a private University called Norwegian School Of Creative Studies for taking my music to the media scene. In between education years, I have done music teaching for kids in elementary school jobs, written plays with music for kids at local choirs and done songwriting both for stage shows at the university (I was a project manager for the yearly theatre play at Lillehammer University in '04) and for other people by request (birthday parties, weddings a.s.o).  I have brought many people together before in different projects, also teaching rhythm .

Alongside the studies in Music Design for film I also got job as a paid scorecomposer, recorder and sound designer for a documentary film during these studies. I worked on theme music and entire scores for two short docs from Norway, where i also edited some film scenes and made the final compression, format and mastering as film editor, scorecomposer, mixer and sound designer.  After graduation, Zentropa contacted me from Denmark and my film received national broadcast (NRK) and screening at short film festival.

2011 news: Got Music Contract with Zentropa Denmark, Zentropa Music (film production company). I am listed in their non-exclusives archive for film and motion picture sync, so it is possible to contact them if you are producing films within Zentropa and want to work with me.  I also may contact you on behalf of my founding, creative projects of collabs.

What I am devoted to: Ecology, scenery, the sunlight, the autumn, impulsive people and projects, rare instruments, creating, living in belief of yourself and the goods in this world, optimistic thinking, social entrepreneurships, event planning, painting, drawing illustrations, observing people and cultures, buildings of all sorts (especially eco, but also ancient), the colourful world, the starry universe, ancient history, space, the sun, finding peace, discovery, Hayao Miyazaki, dancing, long walks, tallships and wrecks, the ocean, the mountains, waterfalls, trees, floating, owls, dolphins, children, winterwonderland.