Claire Coupland\u2019s musical journey includes time spent on the grounds of Camosun\u2019s Lansdowne campus (photo provided).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nBefore Coupland started at VCM she studied musical theory for a summer to be prepared for the entrance test to VCM\u2019s jazz program.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t start taking music seriously until 2010, when I joined the Conservatory of Music,\u201d she says. \u201cAfter a year my teacher was like, \u2018Claire, you need to go somewhere else; you need to be somewhere more challenging.\u2019 So I just applied to the one school I had heard great things about.\u201d<\/p>\n
Coupland had to make an audition tape for her application to Humber in Toronto. It was nerve-racking, she says; she felt as if she didn\u2019t really know what she was doing, having only been at VCM for a year. She nailed the required arpeggiated chords and scales and her three selected songs, gaining her entrance into the program for 2011.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe first two years were theory, history, electives, and ear training,\u201d she says. \u201cYear three was really good because you got to put on recitals, which leads to year four, using the recording studio to produce another student and them to produce you.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was between her third and fourth year at Humber that she recorded her album Lonely Heart<\/i>. Coupland was absolutely terrified of songwriting but begged the head of her department to put her in the writing ensemble. It paid off: she\u2019s since received praise from her mentors and teachers, which include music industry notables such as Triumph\u2019s Rik Emmett and producer Bob Ezrin (Pink Floyd, KISS, Taylor Swift).<\/p>\n
\u201cI remember bringing in my first song and being so scared and almost in tears over it,\u201d says Coupland. \u201cWe had these practice modules; my song was due the next day and I was sitting crying in a module and then fell asleep. I woke up and was like, \u2018Okay, we\u2019ve had a nap, it\u2019s time to finish this song.\u2019 That\u2019s when I wrote \u2018Lonely Heart,\u2019 which I named the album after because it was a pivotal moment for me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Claire Coupland
\n8 pm Thursday, December 17
\n$10 recommended donation, Northern Quarter
\nnorthernquarter.ca<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Folk singer\/guitarist Claire Coupland is playing her first headlining show in Victoria this Christmas season, celebrating her new EP, For You. It\u2019s a homecoming with a Camosun twist: Claire was in the Applied Communication Program (ACP) here at Camosun. She had a revelation while studying at the college that would impact her music career. \u201cThere […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11438,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,156],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts","category-december-2-2015"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11437"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11437\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11439,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11437\/revisions\/11439"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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