My 1st choice of university would be the BIMM Brighton. This is because it’s music department has a strong reputation and is regarded as one of the best universities to study for music technology. It is a small, music specific university which has a great deal of links into the music industry. It’s location is ideal as Brighton is a strong cultural hub with a quickly growing music scene. Another reason it is an ideal location is because Brighton university is also there, so there are going to be a lot of young people who are the same age as me who will be willing to break into the film, gaming and media industries where at some point they are going to need someone who knows how to use a DAW to create soundtracks or special effects for their work. This allows me to have a foot in multiple creative industries.
Month: November 2016
Unit 10 – Social Media Profiles
https://soundcloud.com/crystal-pressure
Soundcloud
Soundcloud is a free service designed specifically for artists to post music onto the internet so that is publically availible for the world to listen to. It can also be used to post mixes onto, though Soundcloud has a notorious reputation for removing user’s mixes due to copyright infringement for essentially uploading other people’s music. Personally, I have been uploading mixes to Soundcloud monthly for almost 1 year now and never had Soundcloud remove any of my mixes, so perhaps I have either been lucky, or the reputation Soundcloud taking mixes down is overhyped. I have managed to build a handful of contacts with Soundcloud (or at least got some follows by somewhat established artists who have released music) so it is a useful tool for linking artists together, and the ability to message other users privately allows ease of communication to other artists. Unfortunately, Soundcloud requires you to pay either £4 per month or £8 per month if you want to double your upload time or have unlimited upload time, as well as access to statistics that can help you understand the demographics you are appealing to.
https://www.facebook.com/CrystalPressure/
Facebook is a social media website designed primarily for general social networking among people you probably already know, however it does allow for brands or artists to promote themselves via pages. In the above link is my own page, but I haven’t really done anything with it yet, hence why it’s nothing more than a bio at this point in time. On the contrary, I have used my personal Facebook profile to network with people involved in the music via the groups function. The groups function allows people to create groups regarding a specific topic where people of the same interests can communicate and share new music. I have managed to network with some established members of the music scenes regarding the genres I am into.
Twitter is a social media website which is similar to Facebook, except that it is considered to be less private than Facebook, which is better in terms of running an artist page. Similarly to my Facebook page, I have not really used it at all so far in terms of an artist as I don’t feel I am in a position to promote myself yet. It is very impersonal which means that it is not as good as Facebook in terms of networking, but it is useful supposing that you are an established artist looking to connect to your fans.
Unit 10 – Personal Development
My personal development target is to move away from London in order to refresh my surroundings to re-influence myself in a new way. For me, ideal locations for university would be either Bristol or Brighton. Bristol on one hand is a city with a thriving musical culture which is similar to London’s own culture, except they are not directly influenced by London artists; it’s more of a parallel. Brighton on the other hand tempts me because it is a quickly growing hotspot for underground music clubs and events, so it would be wise to move there as soon as possible to have a head-start in a potentially big scene. I am also tempted by locations such as Birmingham or Manchester due to their reputation for electronic and urban music.
I also intend on travelling to different cities in the future in order to experience the music scenes they have in a raw upfront perspective. Cities I would be interested in travelling to include Detroit for it’s long history in music and it’s influence it has had on world, Amsterdam for it’s welcoming attitude towards music, clubs, and culture in general, and Tokyo as a wildcard type of place to travel, and the culture shock effect that I’d experience from being a westerner in a completely different country with it’s own unique culture. I am also interested in travelling to LA or New York because of their reputation for film, TV and game industries, as well as their melting pot of musical influences. I am also open to the idea of migrating away from England should I ever find a place that stimulates me musically, has reasonable living costs, and has a strong support for it’s own culture.
Music CV – Curriculum Vitae
Name:
Charlie Tandacharry
Email:
xxxxxxxxxxx@xxxxx.com
Home Address:
xxxxxxxxxx
Phone Number:
xxxxxxxxx
I am an individual that has strong interests in music, philosophy, psychology, modern history, art, and film. I am very adaptive towards people and tasks which inherently means that I am consistent and reliable in terms of my attitudes to work, and can get along with virtually anyone making me a great team member. I am accommodating, knowledgeable, intuitive, friendly, positive, considerate and trustworthy.
I spend a great amount of my free time perfecting my craft when it comes to music production as I am a perfectionist, and I strongly believe there is always room to improve. I dedicate myself because I want to be the best that I can be and because I enjoy producing as it is an outlet to express my experiences, feelings and thoughts, as well as to stimulate my creativity. I always try a new technique of some form when it comes to each of my productions; often techniques which I imagined on my own rather than trying to emulate another producer’s style. That does not mean however that I am averse towards cultural influences; I entirely embrace influences, but I try to avoid creating generic productions.
I am also a DJ who can mix on vinyl and CDJ’s. I enjoy mixing in my free time, and am beginning to take DJing to the next level and sourcing members of the of the music industry who are involved in the style of music I am particularly interested in producing and DJing, and negotiating sets for me to play both at gigs and on online radio. I have performed as a DJ multiple times in public settings such as the ExCel centre to represent my college’s music department.
I am currently working on a film as a soundtrack composer and a foley effects designer. Along the process so far, I have not only been producing music and sound effects for this film, but have also gained an insight into the film industry by regularly attending the set to understand the ‘vibe’ of the film, which I can transfer to the productions for the film soundtrack. Working on a film set has allowed me to develop my communication and prospecting skills to interpret the moods and emotions that the film is supposed to evoque and create a soundtrack that would express the emotions of the film. These techniques are transferable to sound design for games and TV.
I also have experience with live sound engineering and undertaking the role of a technician for music events such as Ox-Jam. I picked up the skills in live sound engineering very quickly, and can identify causes of issues relatively easily.
Education
The Norwood School (2009-2014)
GCSE Mathematics: Grade B
GCSE Photography: Grade B
GCSE English Language: Grade B
GCSE Chemistry (Triple Science): Grade C
GCSE Physics (Triple Science): Grade C
GCSE English Literature: Grade C
GCSE French: Grade C
GCSE Statistics: Grade D
GCSE Religious Studies: Grade D
GCSE Geography: Grade D
GCSE Biology (Triple Science): Grade E
Richmond-upon-Thames College (2014-2015)
BTEC Level 3 Engineering Diploma (90 Credits)
South Thames College Wandsworth (2015-2017)
UAL Level 3 Music Production/Technology (180-420 Credits)
Unit 9 – Advanced Production Techniques
The process of remixing the track begins by loading all of the individual stems from that track into audio channels Logic Pro X. Because there are so many stems used in this track, I had to go through the process of listening to each and every stem individually to see if I liked the sounds or could see potential in sounds, and then deleting stems which were irrelevant to me. This is because stems are large files that can take a long time to transfer (potentially over an hour), and also because having more stems in Logic Pro X means that your Mac will have to endure a higher strain on it’s processor. Another reason it helps is because it clears up clutter on the arrangement window.
Most of the samples I decided to keep were sound-effects and atmospheres rather than actual melodic material or sounds that were dominant in the original mix. This is one of the reasons why my remix has very little resemblance to the original mix. Next, I had to use the time and pitch machine found underneath the arrangement page within the functions tab to adjust the tempo of all the audio files to the tempo I wanted to work at (172 BPM to 165 BPM). For sounds that were relatively short, I cut them into very short wave forms so that there was only one note or tone that played so that I could eventually loop them in a way that makes the sound sound seamless and ready for use with the EXS24 sampler as an instrument. Once these single-note wave forms were cut, I would bounce that short file out of Logic Pro X as a wav file, then create a second audio channel and import that file into the second channel. The new file in the second channel would be reversed using the reverse tool in the functions tab that is found waveform window that can be found under the arrangement space. The beginning of this file would be placed at exactly the end of the original forward-ways file to create a seamless blend. Both files were looped in the same pattern to the point that the loop would last around a minute to insure that it is long enough for the higher notes in the EXS24 sampler in case I want to play high notes. I did this process for pretty much all of the sounds I sampled excluding the vocal loop and a downward-spiral sound effect.
Next, I create an auxiliary bus on one of those two channels, and then send both channels to the same auxiliary bus. I then open up the virtual mixing desk and increase the signal sent from each channel to the new auxiliary bus to around 0dB, and then decrease the volume of both channels to compensate for the volume increase. This allows the sounds from both channels to be combined in one channel (the auxiliary channel), meaning that you can apply an effect on the auxiliary channel, and it will affect all signals that have been sent to the auxiliary equally depending on how much volume was signalled from the original channels. On the auxiliary channel, I applied some regular large-hall reverb using the space designer to help smooth out the transition between the two files. I then applied a special drone-tone reverb that can be found on the space designer to completely change the tone of the sound. I applied a drone that made the auxiliary channel sound like an electric-piano chord. I used this same process with some of my other samples I had, which allowed me to make a string sound and a choir sound as well. Once these sounds had been created, I bounced the auxiliary channels into their own audio files, then imported these new audio files into new audio channels I created, ready to be transferred to EXS24 samplers to be used as instruments.
At this stage, the rest of the production was down to creativity/musicality rather than any plugins or effects (or at least not much outside minor things such as reverb’s and echo’s). All of the sounds used in my remix excluding 2 breakbeats and a sine-wave bassline were sounds that originated from the original track I was remixing. Once I had finished creating the structure of the track, it was time to engineer my track so that the sounds are all balanced out. The first thing I did was adjust the volume levels of each individual channel so that they are approximately balanced. Next, I created several summing tracks for the different type of instruments, one for the drums, one for the melodic content, and one for the atmospheres. I inserted all of the tracks into their appropiate summing group, and then applied a compressor to each summing track. I would then solo one summing group at a time, and adjust the compressor to mesh the sounds together. This mean using very low threshold and ratio settings as I didn’t really want a noticeable ‘sucking’ sound, but rather glue compression so that louder sounds do not overshadow quieter sounds.
Once this was done to all 3 summing groups, I created a new bus for all the summing groups and bass (which I had excluded from all summing tracks), and set the signal send level to 0dB on all 4 channels, and reduced the channel volume to compensate for the volume changes. I then opened up the mixer and added a compressor to the new auxiliary channel so that ALL of the sounds will be meshed together now that they have been meshed together in their designated groups. The compressor settings were subtle (low threshold and ratio settings) on this auxiliary channel too because I only wanted the separate groups to mesh together without changing the compression of the individual groups too much. Once this was done, I was ready to bounce out my track as an audio file.
One thing I did notice is that my headphones seem to drastically under-represent the low sub-bass frequencies. This is relevant because I used only one set of headphones throughout the whole production process of this track. I noticed this issue when I played the track through a hi-fi system which I was familiar with. This has happened with several of my tracks before. Unfortunately, I only realised this fault close to the deadline of this work, so I was unable to make any mix down changes as I would have to keep making volume edits on the bass, bouncing out the track, transferring it to the computer that the hi-fi is connected to, and go back and forth with this process until the balance is right. This can take hours, and the computer connected to the hi-fi is more-often-than-not occupied by somebody.
The style I remixed my track into was D&B like the original, except that mine was slightly leaning towards Jungle; a genre of music that D&B originated from, and is often regarded as a sister genre to D&B. Current trends in D&B/Jungle include taking influences from early Jungle/Rave music such as using raw breakbeats with minimal processing, which I have done so in my track. There is also a recent trend with hybrids of Jungle and Footwork taking place, taking more musical influence from Footwork’s hometown of Chicago; which has a tendency to use instruments such as electric pianos or wide, deep synth pads reflecting earlier music from Chicago such as House or Soul. I have also used a similar sounding electric piano and deep synth sounds. There is a current trend of using sinewave basslines in particularly in Hiphop. This is nothing new, but is just very prominent lately, and is an element I have incorporated into my track.
Examples of recent music with these features
https://soundcloud.com/platform/machinedrum
A technique I have used which is relatively unique to Jungle is breakbeat chopping and layering. This is where you move transients of a breakbeat file in time, and cut breakbeats so that all cuts are equal in length and in time, then creating your own patterns using that breakbeat. Layering is where you layer two or more breakbeats over the top of each other to give the rhythm a ‘thicker’ sound.
Links to the remix bounces:
https://soundcloud.com/crystal-pressure/futureshock-drums/s-yCUb9
https://soundcloud.com/crystal-pressure/futureshock-instruments/s-mS26B
https://soundcloud.com/crystal-pressure/craggz-x-parallel-forces-futureshock-crystal-pressure-remix/s-FRbn2
Veill Presents: Music Production & Performance Level 3 Coursework 