Unit 11 – Final Project Proposal

Initial Ideas

Group LP
One of my initial ideas included creating a group LP with Ryan, Levi, Josh and Caesar. The concept behind the album would be to create music that does not conform to the stereotypical sounds of the genres that our individual backgrounds are in (to an extent). The LP would be a crossover of all of our genres and sounds. It is almost certain that whatever music we end up making will stand out as we’d all be inputting our variety of influences into each track. The project would be used as foundation influences for our future individual projects, allowing us to develop our own sound around people and places where we’ve actually seen.

Solo EP
Another initial idea included creating and releasing an EP. My lecturers advised strongly against an EP because there was a tendency for students who were making EP’s to only make tracks with no promotion, marketing strategy or even the intentions of releasing the music. Despite this, a solo EP is still under consideration for me because my production skills are approaching releasable quality and I intend on releasing music in my own time in the very near future anyway, so I would definitely have a marketing strategy as well as a great deal of primary research. I have already received literally 100% positive feedback from about 10-15 small artists in the same genre as myself, though some of those responses did include some constructive criticism, mostly regarding how my bass lines could include more elements to give my dynamics.

Idea Proposal

My project is going to involve me creating sound and music for use with a film which I have been contracted to work on outside of college. I decided to use this as a basis for my final project because the project involves me having to learn new skills and techniques through trial and error which will inevitably help me gain experience for me to self reflect on in order to grow my craft as an artist, engineer and musician. This topic is also convenient for my final project because it means that I can streamline my college work and my personal projects into one, allowing for efficiency with the time that I have as well as a workflow that feels more natural.

Early Stages

The early stages of my work began way back in around October 2016. The project commenced with a private meeting with the screenwriter where he spent several hours briefing me with the concepts behind the film, the planning and work he had done so far. He showed me storyboards, drawn-screenshots, concept artwork and described the characters to me. The idea of this meeting was to convey the ‘spirit’ of the film to me so that whatever music I create will blend in with the film.

Project Concept

When in initial talks about this film and the soundtrack to it, the screenwriter sent me a playlist he created which featured a variety of music that he believed that the film should be influenced by. Unfortunately, most of the music that he showed me did not really resonate with me or my style of music as most of it was Indie-pop/rock. There was some music that did stand out to me, and that was the more jazzy and hiphop-esque kind of tracks that he showed me which was like a middleground between us. I asked him about any creative limitations I have with this film to see what I could and could not do, and he answered me by saying that he didn’t want it to sound ‘electronic’. This may look like I was the completely wrong person for the job, though ironically most of the tracks he showed me were electronically produced. Because of this, I decided to share with him some music that I thought he would like based on what he sent me, and it turned out that he liked almost all of them and thought that their style would suit the film. The music that I sent him was all electronically produced. From what I can make out from the music that he sent me and what he likes, what he meant by “don’t make anything electronic”, he really meant to not use obvious electronic sounds such as 808’s or 909’s.

I also figured that the styles he likes are often breakbeat-driven and Lo-Fi which may be why he thinks that the tracks he showed me weren’t electronic; most of which used synthesizers. Thankfully, I definitely like working with breakbeats and I do like mixdowns that aren’t overly-clean, so I still suit this project.

After this meeting, I decided to show the screenwriter some pre-existing tracks by other artists who have influenced me in general that I believe suit the theme of the film in order to find some common ground with the screenwriter. Doing this would help allow me to create music with integrity that also resonates with the film. Some tracks that the screenwriter loved include:

Hokusai (Source Direct) – Crystal House (1996)

Attica Blues – Tender (The Final Story) (1997)

Burial – Fostercare (2006)

Calibre – Reach You Everywhere (2008)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLJWMJTNhYQ

J Majik – Slow Motion (1997)
https://youtu.be/WaRsinS5B1I?t=56m37s

Portishead – Only You (2005)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmDkzVvherk

Payfone – Subcoiscient Lamentation (2014)

Photek – Neptune (1997)

Lion Youth – Rat A Cut Bottle (Dub Version) (1978)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gw1Ll2vV32A

Vangelis/Kraftwerk/Origins Of Synthetic Music

Vangelis is a soundtrack composer for films. He is mostly a self-taught musician who played the piano from a young age. He avoided taking formal music lessons, and as a result, he never really had great music theory knowledge. He believed that music schools close doors rather than opening them. In 1949, he performed in a concert of 2000 people in his home country which was his first breakthrough as an artist. In the 1960s, he formed his own pop-rock band named ‘The Formynx’. Later in 1968, he formed another band called ‘Aphrodite’s Child’ which went on to be a hit, selling 20 million copies. He is notably known for being one of a handful of soundtrack composers that prefer to use synthesizers and sound effects as opposed to the traditional approach of using an orchestra. For this reason, Vangelis’ appeals to me as an artist as my interest in music mostly revolves around electronic and synthesized sounds. Not only that, but his style is mostly atmospheric with long, slow, sweeping, deep chords which have a somewhat emotional feel to them, which is partially similar to my production style in general. His style also uses subtle arpeggiated elements to give the sound more life to it. One of his most significant works was the soundtracks to the film ‘Bladerunner’ (1982). For me, it was the track entitled ‘Bladerunner Blues’ which really inspired me to undertake this project:

Vangelis – Bladerunner Blues (Bladerunner) (1982)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RScZrvTebeA

This soundtrack stands out because its sound is far ahead of it’s time; it still sounds fresh today. It is also ahead of it’s time in the sense that entirely-electronic music was something that was only just beginning to take off in 1982. There was a handful of artists during and prior to 1982 who had produced music that was exclusively electronically sequenced, and despite groups such as Kraftwerk existing for over a decade at this point, even remote forms of electronic music (any music that uses synthesizers or drum machines) were only just about becoming commonplace, though they were generally not accepted warmly by the public at first. An example of early electronically-composed music can be seen here:

Monoton – Leben Im Dschungel (1980) (Example of early experimental electronic music)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPqe0C6PbvU

As you can see, early electronic music also developed ambient music in the process. That is because one of the notable traits of synthesizers was it’s ability to hold notes for as long as you like depending on what your ADSR are. Notable artists who pioneered early synth music include Brian Eno, Tangerine Dream, Erik Satie, Irv Teibel and many more.

Kraftwerk

Kraftwerk is a German Electronic music group hosted by Ralf Hutter and Florian Schneider in 1969 in Dusseldorf. They are known for being one of the first artists to create electronic music that would reach music charts and become accepted to the public. Their music in the 1970s was some of the first electronic music that would become favoured by the public and also was one of the most innovative artists at the time. Their influence came from the back of the German Rock music scene. Prior to albums where Kraftwerk used synthesizers, they were known as Organization, which was an alias they used for their LP named ‘Tone Float’. Tone Float was an album that consisted of experimental rock music.

Pre-Kraftwerk (1969)

Kraftwerk (1977)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMVokT5e0zs

You can hear the influence of the ‘pre-Kraftwerk’ years in their music where they were involved with electronic music, as their style maintained the cold, gritty and industrial sound. Not only were they pioneers in terms of being some of the first artists to release electronic music, but they were also part of a handful of people who had made dark music up to that  point in time, as music was typically quite laid back up until around the late 60s/70s when Punk Rock began to form; a genre which had influenced Kraftwerk. Despite this, they were also inspired by upbeat music at the time such as the funk music of James Brown. The theme of their music was often in regards to post-WWII European life, which both criticized and praised the ever-growing technological advances at the time. Their aesthetic style reflected this with futuristic ‘computerized’ robotic themes. Because of this wide range of influences and impersonal nature of their music, Kraftwerk received great praise from artists from a variety of backgrounds across the globe, which inherently resulted in Kraftwerk becoming arguably the most influential group of musicians in the 20th century, onto the 21st century. Although they were already universally one of influential artists in modern history, they were in essence fundamental to genres such as Techno, Electro,

Equipment For This Project

The music for this project will be created with Logic Pro X as that is the DAW that I specialize in, however I wanted my work to connect with the history and the artists that have influenced me in this project, so I also intend on using the synths we have in the college such as the Dave Smith Prophet and Roland V-Synth, though I would also like to use the electric piano stored in the live performance room to layer over the top.

References, Bibliography etc

Klaus Kehrle. (Unknown). Tone Float – Organization | Songs, Reviews, Credits | AllMusic. Available: http://www.allmusic.com/album/tone-float-mw0000458850. Last accessed 4th March 2017.

Justin Dicenzo. (2012). Top 10 Synth Pioneers. Available: http://justindicenzo.com/2012/03/06/modern-monday-top-10-synth-pioneers/. Last accessed 3rd March 2-17.

Matt Hubbard. (2014). Sound Design 101: Making Your Film Sound Great. Available: https://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/sound-design-101-making-your-film-sound-great/. Last accessed 11th February 2014.

Smithy Sipes. (2015). Sound Design. Available: http://www.independentfilmadvice.com/sound-design/. Last accessed 21st February 2017.

Wikipedia. (2017). Ambient Music. Available: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambient_music. Last accessed 27th February 2017.

Ben Burtt. (2009). Ben Burtt demonstrates how he made Wall-E.Available: http://benburttinterviews.blogspot.co.uk/2009/02/ben-burtt-demonstrates-how-he-made-wall.html. Last accessed 26th February 2017.

Micheal Coleman. (2016). SoundWorks Collection: The Sound of The Revenant. Available: https://vimeo.com/150150229. Last accessed 1st March 2017.

Sideways. (2016). Theme vs Leitmotif. Available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVlsIhbQ2qM. Last accessed 4th March 2017.

LightsFilmSchool. (2013). Sound Design Tutorial For Film: Audio & Pre-Production. Available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWN3RJGUetk. Last accessed 5th March 2017.

Esteban Batres. (2012). Sound Production of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. Available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMKjPWQuBFs. Last accessed 8th March 2017.