Domhnaill Corrigan from Lucan, County Dublin, is a musician, songwriter and audio engineer. In addition to creating and recording his own music, 17-year old Domhnaill is a member of two independent bands, a participant in the SubSounds: Tallaght programme, the Dublin Youth Choir and a full-time student with a radio slot on Liffey Sound 96.4FM. Although his passion for music has traditional Irish roots, already his musical journey has taken turns through rock and jazz to whole new paths for collaboration and musical creativity. Earlier this year we met Domhnaill in RUA RED, Tallaght, where he took a break from his work with Gerry Horan (CONTACT Studio) and Martin Moran (Alternative Entertainments) to talk to us about his music and how he first encountered Music Generation...
"I started off with Irish traditional music. I think at the age of five I picked up the violin… I was really into a band called Lúnasa and I said I want to play music like them. They’re an Irish traditional band... I did classical for about a year but I didn’t dig it… it was just trad all the way from the start. I picked up guitar through playing accompaniment; I just found a guitar, my dad tuned it for me and I taught myself from then on. Then the banjo came along because I joined a band… Banjo was pretty much like the violin and guitar put into one—it’s played like a guitar but tuned to a violin! There’s so many different instruments in traditional music so although I don’t play it anymore, I can still play all those instruments, and I love playing bluegrass banjo now which is really cool."
I started off with Irish traditional music. I think at the age of five I picked up the violin… I was really into a band called Lúnasa and I said I want to play music like them. They’re an Irish traditional band... I did classical for about a year but I didn’t dig it… it was just trad all the way from the start. I picked up guitar through playing accompaniment; I just found a guitar, my dad tuned it for me and I taught myself from then on. Then the banjo came along because I joined a band… Banjo was pretty much like the violin and guitar put into one—it’s played like a guitar but tuned to a violin! There’s so many different instruments in traditional music so although I don’t play it anymore, I can still play all those instruments, and I love playing bluegrass banjo now which is really cool.
While he appreciated having access to music lessons early on, Domhnaill found he was more interested in self-teaching and learning.
I had many teachers over the years... I’m just not into lessons. I don’t think it works for me. You’re told what to do and it’s sort of an awkward environment. I think it can put some people off playing sometimes. So I just buy an instrument and say, ‘Ok I need to learn this’. It was the same with drums, we just bought the drum kit – I’ve been drumming ever since, never took a lesson.
Over the years, Domhnaill’s appreciation of new and diverse genres and styles of music opened the doors to entirely different approaches to playing and creating songs.
I sort of lost interest in traditional music when I discovered a band called Radiohead…They just had such an interesting approach to writing music, so I was really into them and I said ok this is really what I want to do… I was really into guitar but they were sort of pushing away the guitars and getting more into synthesisers… I got FruityLoop Studios on my laptop and started playing around with synthesisers on the computer… that’s sort of where I learned about software and that was, I think, the beginning of my interest in audio engineering...