The aim for the project is to host our own club night. The night will be geared towards a variety of underground UK bass music. I wanted to start a night where I can hand pick some of the finest upcoming talent who evidently have a strong passion for the music they play, artists who follow their styles of music on a deep level, who know how to find gems independently, and are rooted in the ethic of wanting to deliver the best music they can. One of the aims is to build a roster of artists from this creative platform. The idea is to create an environment where creativity and fresh ideas are strongly encouraged, whilst staying true to the roots and origins of the culture our music stems from. This means that time is irrelevant when it comes to the music we play, meaning you will hear new, forthcoming yet-to-be released material, but you will also hear tunes that are several decades old. All of the music is related by the fact that they are of similar origins, and have played a role in influencing each genre. We revolve around UK Soundsystem culture and Urban music culture.
Project Concept
This event takes strong influences from iconic/historic events such as Blue Note, Sidewinder and FWD; night’s which were renowned for their openness to experimentation by DJ’s, where it was no exaggeration to say that they formed their own sound. It is the attitude of our club event which will separate it from the majority of other’s today; many clubs today often disregard the creative element of DJing in favour of employing DJ’s who will play virtually ‘clone sets’ as dozens of other’s in their genre, consisting of tracks that are ‘hot at the minute’. Whilst that may appeal for some, for many club-goers, this can become boring quickly, and it’s this demographic that we are tapping into. Our sound will, at its foundation, revolve around Drum & Bass, Jungle, Grime, Dubstep and UKG; all of which are interlinked with each other culturally.
Marketing and Promotion
To promote this event, I will allow 4-6 weeks once we have made an agreement (should you chose to allow us to host the event at your venue) prior to the date of the event to promote it. The methods used to undertake this task will include flyers, which will be attached to surrounding areas within approximately 2 miles of the venue. We will attach flyers to places where a high concentration of young people (aged 18-25) pass through, as that demographic holds the strongest interest in nightlife, and often hold little preference as to which clubs/bars they like to go to, and the music played is most likely to appeal to them.
We will also be promoting via social media. Our primary method will be via Facebook, where we will create an event page with all information regarding the night, which we will somewhat frequently re-share (about once every 5 days or so, then more frequently as the event date nears). I will be sharing the event in Facebook groups which are related to the type of music we deliver, as well as groups dedicated to Brighton (and surrounding areas) nightlife.
In digital music recording, it is inevitable that recording live sounds, instruments, and vocals would be desirable at some point. To include such material in a DAW project, you would be required to convert input signal from analogue to digital. The initial tool in the recording chain is the microphone, which detects acoustic energy and converts it into an electronic signal. This electronic signal is transferred to a sound card where it is converted from analogue to digital so that it can be understood by digital devices.
BA Digital Music – Year 1
Electronic Music in Context (Historical)
Charlie Tandacharry – Q13731220
‘Breaking the Rules’
Wednesday 29th November 2017, 4pm
Dr. Simon Fisk
‘Breaking the Rules’
The following commentary’s purpose is to discuss and contextualise functional tonality, Arnold Scoenberg’s twelve tone technique, Musique Concrete and Elektronische Musik.
What was Scoenberg’s twelve tone technique? Scoenberg’s twelve tone technique is a technique where each of the twelve notes on the chromatic scale are played and equal amount of times as each other, whilst simultaneously ensuring that the is no focus on one particular note via incorporation of tone rows. The twelve notes approximately attract an equal amount of attention, leading to a piece of music that is not in key. This technique is regarded as a form of serialism. Serialism is a term which refers to compositions that are based on a formal order of a definable parameter, such as duration or pitch for example. The twelve tone technique is considered a serial-based form as it is based on the order of pitch. There is no specific order the twelve notes must be arranged in to be considered twelve tone music, though a row of a piece of twelve tone music is composed of pitch classes.
Scoenberg’s twelve tone technique is often regarded as the most significant systematic-technique regarding the chromatic scale. The fundamental structure of the twelve tone technique is the tone row. Tone row is defined as twelve notes utilised in an arrangement on the chromatic scale. A pitch class is defined as a note on the chromatic scale. No notes are played more than once in a tone row. To Scoenberg’s annoyance, his technique was defined as ‘atonal’. He rejected this term as it’s suggestive of negativity, and preferred the term ‘pan-tonal’ though it never disseminated. Atonality refers to composition which does not orientate around defined tones of any chromatic note.
Inversions are known as notes within a chord that have been re-organised into a different order so that the root changes. It can be applied to triads and chords of more than 4 notes. An inversion that is situated within a single-octave spectrum is known as a ‘close-voicing’, whereas an inversion situated in more than one octave is known as a ‘spread-voicing’. Spread-voicing’s don’t convert chord symbols, the chord symbols are defined by their root note. Intervals always produce a similar sound to it’s inversion. Retrograde is defined as a composition of notes played in reverse and upside-down. Retrograde is a form of contrapuntal imitation. Contrapuntal is defined as music that includes harmonics that are replaced with additional melodies which cut across each other. Therefore, retrograde is a melody that’s interrupted by a reversed version of itself. This means retrograde-inversion is a melody succeeded by a version of itself that’s inverted. In 12 tone music, retrograde inversion is utilised in the same tone row. Inversion is often carried out before retrograde so the row starts and ends on the same note. The 12 tone technique was devised by Arnold Scoenberg across the late-1910s/early-1920s. 12 tone music was radically different from other music of it’s period as it did not confine itself within the realm of tonality.
What is Musique Concrete? Musique Concrete is an artform developed by Pierre Schaeffer during the 1940s. Similarly to Scoenberg’s twelve tone music of 2 decades prior, it was a long way from the confines of traditional music. Musique Concrete is created from sampled sounds exclusively as opposed to musical instruments. The difference between twelve tone music and musique concrete is that musique concrete is unassociated to the chromatic scale, or music theory. The instruments behind musique were a variety of tools including tape decks, instruments, tone generators, records, delays, reverbs and mixers. When recording their own sounds, mic positions were often more crucial than the recorded sound itself as it was atmosphere based. The techniques are adapted from audio engineering rather than musical artforms. The approach to sound selection is similar to that of foley artists as they select sounds to transmit a mood. They can use a technique called splicing which is chopping tape and re-arranging it to create different sounds.
Functional tonality means tones of which that are
What is Elektronische Musik? Elektronische Musik is a form of experimental music that formed in Germany during the 1970s. It birthed from the backdrop of the revolutionary student movement in the late 1960s. This was triggered by people who were angry at former Nazi’s who still maintained political power, and the politically motivated shooting of Student Movement figurehead; Judi Dutschke. Elektronische Musik was similar to Musique Concrete as it was a style compromised of recorded natural sounds. Elektronische Musik was influenced by Herbert Eimert who created tones from sine waves. In his Cologne studio, he was able to have incredible control over the tone with timbre and dynamics. This resulted in the ability to accurately represent serialism.
Elektronische Musik resulted in Krautrock; a German genre of music that drifted away from the confines of rock music by introducing the use of synthesizers and experimental electronic recording techniques. One of the most iconic artists in this genre is Kraftwerk.
The project I will be undertaking for unit 12 will be a collaborative album. The album will have a theme that is based around psychedelic drugs. The whole album will be in collaboration with four other students in my class, as well as potentially featuring some input from people outside of music. The peers I will be working with have significantly various backgrounds musically, which we believe will help add an experimental attitude towards the music we make. We believe that the theme we have chosen is an ideal topic because drugs is a topic that is spoken of commonly in society, and yet at the same time, is engulfed in false information that is often accepted as fact in society, resulting from a mixture of fear-mongering and glorification of illegal drugs. Society is generally fascinated by the topic of drugs so the topic alone is likely to attract consumers, which hopefully will make our marketing work easier. The Album will contain a single half-an-hour track.
Project Concept
The concept of this project regards how society is affected by hallucinogens, and the socio-cultural output it creates, which naturally influences my creative ideas when creating music. The research I undertake will be the foundation of influence in the album project, of which takes into account the influence of hallucinogens on society, and it’s reasons behind the effects it creates, and the overall outcome of it’s influence.
The purpose of the album project is to learn about the dynamics between musical movements, styles, artists with psychedelics, and to interpret this in our music in our album. We felt that it would be best to make us of the hardware equipment as we have not entirely explored the potential of the hardware in the past, and the I find the ergonomics of hardware encouraging towards musical experimentation as it is more physical than using a DAW. I believe that this approach will force us to stray away from methodic approaches that can become a bad habit for producers. This should help our product be unique.
Evaluation
For my evaluation, I will reflect among my group over preceding sessions at the start of every session to outline what went well, what didn’t go so well, and what we could do to improve for the upcoming session. It’s easier to allow some time to process the experience of the previous session, rather than criticising it immediately afterwards as it allows us to truly reflect on whether our thoughts are truly reasonable, and whether they actually aid in the progression and development of the project. We will also discuss how our revelations can inform the future of how we co-ordinate the project thus improving efficiency and allowing more time to develop smaller details in the project. We will also make an overall written assessment at the end of each week to summarise our spoken word evaluations.
Context
The theme of hallucinogens is good because it is a topic that is often taboo-ized which inevitably results in misinformation being accepted by the public. This means that the theme will catch a lot of people’s attention, which will hopefully mean that it is viable for us to sell our project and hopefully even make a profit from it, providing that our marketing is sufficient.
The concept behind my final major project is going to be about the influence of hallucinogens on philosophy, society and culture, which in turn inevitably informs influence on music.
My research will host the influence for a collaborative LP which aims to reflect the research and what we’ve learnt from it.
This is with regards to the effects of hallucinogens of society, the reasons as to why people use hallucinogens, the feelings that hallucinogens may evoke and the culture around hallucinogens.
The intention of the project is to explore the stylistic interactions between psychedelics and their according musical genres/artists, as well as to translate this into the music we make for our LP.
USP
The unique selling point of this project is that it will be written and produced live, entirely in one session (excluding edits and processing which will be done after the recording to ensure that the recording is clean, balanced and releasable). We will use a wide range of hardware, including; MPC 5000 Drum Machine, Korg X5 Keyboard, Roland V-Synth Synthesizer, Korg Volca Bass, Korg Volca Drum Machine, Moog Sub Phatty Bass Synthesizer, studio 28-channel desks as well as a range of “1/4 Jacks, XLR’s, Kettle leads, Power cables, Socket adapters to power up and connect the equipment.
Another one of our unique selling points is that most of the artists involved within our collaboration are from different musical backgrounds (in terms of production); I myself specialize in Jungle/Drum n Bass, R-yz specializes in Grime, Yellow Panther specializes in Dark Trap, Hail Ceasar specializes predominantly in Trap Soul, and C L O U D Z E P H R specializes in Lo-Fi Hiphop. You would be hard-pressed to find any kind of artist group with the same backgrounds, or even backgrounds as diverse as ours for that matter. This variety inevitably means that whatever we produce will be a stand-out, experimental piece which will unlikely bear any resemblance to other artist’s work. In an era where there are for more producers than ever before, there is an epidemic where most music unforunately can sound generic, and it’s often due to the divisive nature of genres, and a host of producer’s aiming to sound like an already established producer (something, I admit, am guilty of myself).
Research Cultural Influences
Alan Watts
Alan Watts is a philosopher who was most active during the 1960s who had a significant influence on the Hippie movement during that time period. His philosophy is widely known to criticize the direction of the modern capitalism at the time (and where it was heading towards at at the time). A lot of his work was about the use of hallucinogens (LSD in particular) and society’s attitude towards it. He reacted to the tabooization of the consumption of LSD by suggesting that LSD is something that threatens authority. He believed this because LSD can cause users to see the flaws in the motivations of modern civilization, which is a result of our natural flaws. His overall belief is that modern man has been plagued with agendas; method of thought that does not necessarily recognize and accept the truth, and often misplaces value on material things, and superficial achievements, rather than living in the present (which he believes is the only existing point of time, which is technically true) which is his interpretation of the ideal lifestyle. This links into LSD consumption, because it is believed that LSD can cause users to think outside of their mental conditioning, and become more accepting of reality for what it is, which can often contradict the doctrines that we have been taught.
On the other hand, he does not suggest that people should blindly take LSD just because he and others say that it is a good thing. This is because the obtaining of LSD faces problems which every illegal substance, or object has; being illegal, creators and distributors face no regulations of what they can sell. It has been known that drug dealers often mix their products with heavily addictive substances such as cocaine or even heroine in order to have clients effectively involuntarily come back to buy more. This is highly dangerous, and ultimately is not worth risking your life over, as whatever substance you acquire may not actually be LSD.
These findings were found in Alan’s lecture about the nature of drugs:
Hippie Culture
The Hippie Movement was a movement that started to take place in the 1960s across many western countries (but most prominently the United States and the United Kingdom). The fundamental principles behind the Hippie movement were anti-war sentiments, particularly regarding the Vietnam war and anti-capitalist agendas, which was in response to the ever-increasing power of corporations over people. The cause of people to feel in such a way to form this movement was often from feelings of isolation from a society which suffered greatly from repression from people whose values did not suit neatly into the traditional ‘straight couple gets married, has children, husband go’s to work, stay-at-home wife etc’ lifestyle. They felt that society was becoming too materialistic, and took on lives among other hippies which were much more communal as it was common for them to share living spaces with each other. The Hippie movement was a counter-culture at it’s core, which it’s purpose was to give people a platform to express their individuality, which included art, fashion, and more importantly, music. A catalyst the Hippies used to help express themselves included the use of psychedelic substances; particularly LSD and marijuana. The hippies used these substances because they wanted an aid that would help them explore fresh perspectives that are not immediately obvious to themselves. The idea is that it helps them grow spiritually, meaning that it helps them ponder existential concepts to develop ideas relating to how they themselves as individuals fit into the world. The use of psychedelics was for self-exploration in order to form an idea of one’s own identity, which often results in developing a craft in any chosen medium to externalise their identity, music being one of those mediums. The Hippie movement is notorious for it’s in music, and is often considered to have defined the culture of music as a whole from the 1960s as well as the early 1970s. The Hippie movement’s influences mostly stem from folk and rock music, though they weren’t necessarily exclusive influences as part of the hippie philosophy is individualism.
One of the most iconic songs associated to the Hippie movement is ‘Jimi Hendrix – All Along The Watchtower’
The reason this is is because Jimi Hendrix’s personality is the epitome of the hippie movement; his values were about promoting peace, love and psychedelics onto the public.
This video includes the philosophers Alan Watt’s (as I spoke of above), Gary Snyder, Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg discussing what hippie culture actually is regarding it’s philosophy
The Rave Movement
The rave movement was a movement which took place at the very-late 80s and into the early 90s, predominantly in fields and disused warehouses across England, although it was known to happen in more infrequent instances in other western nations such as America, Netherlands and Belgium during the same period. This movement was one of the first major forms of culture that revolved around electronic music, and pretty much cemented what most electronic music culture is today. Part of the culture included the use of psychedelic substances, which was usually MDMA and LSD, though a variety of other substances were used as well. These substances were not fundamental to rave culture, however it would be a lie to suggest that they had no effect or influence on the culture. Many producers at the time had aliases and/or track titles that referenced such substances, as well as tracks that included samples referencing these substances, for example; Ellis Dee, Psychotropic etc etc
The Rise Of Psychedelics In Hip Hop
Throughout the 2010’s, there has been a cultural shift in topics that are spoken of in Hip Hop music. There has been more and more mention of psychedelics in rap lyrics. One of the most prominent rappers in this theme in Hip Hop is Ab Soul.
Reason Behind My Marketing Strategy
I spoke to someone who owned a record shop on what the ideal way of releasing a one-off album in the circumstances I was in, and he suggested releasing via digital download without a distributor, and a low amount of physical copies in order to gain more attention in record shops from people who are not aware of our existence.
Problem Solving
During the process of completing my final major project, there were a number of issues that took place. My immediate problem I came across was a lack of contact with the director of this film that I was originally meant to work with as a soundtrack composer. This was a problem his lack of response towards my attempts to contact him lasted several weeks before the final major project commenced, which is why in my unit 11 coursework, I mentioned that I would consider switching my project plans from Soundtrack composing to a collaborative LP as a back-up plan. The idea with a back-up plan for a project also stems from lessons learned from my major project in the first year of the course, where I was originally meant to do a live performance, but due to several problems organizing samples over the first 3 weeks, I had to make the tough decision to switch my project to an EP with little amount of time, which costed my grade. My experience from my old major project taught me that I need to take into account variables immediately as my time for the project begins, and make snap judgements as to what decisions to make to progress based on how confident I am with my circumstances, as opposed to waiting for weeks on end with reasoning based on pure hope. Due to this reasoning, I switched to the collaborative LP within the first lesson I had to work on unit 12, especially considering that the class mates that also considered a collaborative LP as their backup project felt the same way.
The first problem that occurred was a faulty Mac in the synth lab. This was problematic because it was not just any random computer that was out of order, it was the Mac that was optimized for live recording purposes, as it had all the hardware equipment in the synth lab connected to via complex cabling methods, which we were advised by our technician not to touch as it was organised in a way that only he understands. This resulted in us not being able to record our live jams onto a digital format. The best approach we could think of to overcome this situation was to take photographs of the settings we had on the synthesizers so we could replicate the same sounds we liked again should the recording Mac work again, allowing us to proceed to jamming out again quickly. This was only a ‘temporary adaptation’ rather than a solution to the problem, as we was running out of time in our day, and expected the Mac to be fixed within a few days; a week maximum. Unfortunately though, the recording Mac was not fixed within the time we expected, so we had to take things into our own hands before we end up in a similar situation of having to change projects last minute and consequently barely scraping a pass grade.
Our plan was to transfer the hardware equipment to one of the main studios, and plug each synth into it’s own individual channel on the studio mixing desks, however even achieving this solution proved troublesome itself, as all of the studios were booked out weeks on end as everyone else on my course was obviously doing their own final major projects and needed studios as well. Our solution was to create as much tracks, or refresh pre-existing tracks of ours as much as possible on our own DAWS of choice (mine being Logic Pro X) as at this point, we had used over half of the time available for this project and had nothing to show for it, so it was worth sacrificing part of the integrity of the project (our goal was to create a live recording, but at this point, chances of that working seemed bleak) in order to keep the portofolio for the project progressive.
We were however all in agreement that we still wanted to create a synth based album should we be able to make up for the time lost, so we planned to keep our appointments that were weeks down the line booked, with the intentions of recording long, single notes played on the synths in order to create a sample pack, which we would use in the tracks we made by chopping and importing our selected sounds into DAW samplers, and then transferring our MIDI sequence data into the chosen sampler channel. This would result in us having made tracks essentially from synthesizers, where we just wrote our chord sequences on the DAW.
Due to us having made our sample packs quicker than we thought, we decided to attempt to go back to our original plan of creating live recorded music as the equipment was still in the studio, and we managed to catch up exceedingly quickly on our work. This led to a problem, because when we took the Logic files to other computers and opened them, they did not correctly save the audio data content, leaving us with silence. Because we already had our pre-made tracks anyway, it was not too concerning for us, so we just reverted back to the previous plan of using tracks we made on DAW’s.
Planning & Production
I have decided to undertake the project of creating a collaborative LP based on hallucinogens because I believe that taking on a project among producers with a diverse background in music will allow us to cultivate something that is fresh musically, which can in turn help influence each of us individually on our future indepedent music, allow us all to curate our own unique sounds in our own direction.
The LP will consist of one long track which will be 30+ minutes long.
We decided that we will use hardware equipment to record ourselves playing live because it is an experimental project anyway, so we might as well get out of our comfort zone as far as we can.
This attitude will push our creative craft to the edge, something that many artists shy away from, which gives us a unique selling point from the get-go.
Marketing
Artwork
One of the members of our group knew someone who needed to do a project for their graphic design college course, so he contacted her and asked if she could create a piece of visual art for our project, in which thankfully she accepted to do so. The idea behind this work is that their would be an eye surrounded by clouds. This design represents ‘The Third Eye’. The third eye is a reference to a term in hinduism which means to have the ability to see things from outside of your own body’s perspective. This can be linked to psychedelic experiences as many people who have tried hallucinogens have had out of body experiences. One of the effects of psychedelics is.
Distribution
Our plan for the distribution of our album was to create a bandcamp account specifically for this project. We decided against going down the traditional route of releasing through a record label because it is an album, and generally speaking, labels only release albums from artists who have a history of releasing EP’s with them. On top of that, our album is an experimental piece, and record labels almost always exclusively release music within a specific style of a specific genre because they need to sell an ‘image’ and a ‘sound’ that is iconic to themselves (USP) in order to stay as in touch with their audience as possible. If they did not do so, then they are at risk from losing their audience’s attention if they release music that is wildly different from what the listener perceives to be the ‘sound’ of the label in question.
Prior to release, we will try to locate and contact small independent labels who’s ethos is to sell experimental music anyway, as it is the ideal way to release music, but we have already predicted that it any label would have any desire to release music from a group of artists who all have never released any music independently before, let alone as a group. This is because, similarly to what I said in the previous paragraph, the label needs an ‘image’ and ‘sound’ that already has some form of reputation or appeal, especially if the music doesn’t fit cleanly into the same style that the label is recognized for.
We are also planning to distribute our music via local independent record shops. We decided on this because we are effectively unknown artists, and because the internet generally requires you to know what you are looking for (searching artist/band/track name through search engines), it will only be exposed to a handful of people roaming the internet, often coincidentally. The benefit of selling hard-copies in a record store is that regardless of whether the consumer is aware of our existence as artists and as a ‘brand’, they can still see, touch, read and listen to a physical copy of our music. Also, record shops usually organise their music by genre, record label and/or artist styles; i.e: a bookmark on a record shelf in a record store which reads “Coki/Skream/Loafah/Tectonic” would reference music of/influenced-by dubby, South-London Dubstep of the 00s, produced and released by those artists/labels, but not exclusively by those entities. The bookmark is a reference to that iconic style of music which will immediately let the consumer know whether the products in that section interests them or not, thus attracting the correct audience.
Our plan is to contact a variety of local indepedent London record stores, via email or phone, and ask if we can sell copies of our album in their store in exchange for a share of the profit made from what they can sell. This is not a traditional approach to distributing as usually, a record label would have a contract with a distribution company, which would then distribute copies en-masse to high-street shops, online retailers, and download websites who are contracted to sell all music from that distributor. The purpose of that traditional process is to maximise consumer-coverage and efficiency of both transport and paperwork/contact/agreements etc. Unfortunately, distributors require you to have a contract with them, and they only work for you if you have experience and history of releasing material, as it shows that you have a fan base which allows for a predictable, reliable level of profit you can make.
Thankfully, independent record stores have a tendency to have a DIY, community-driven ethos which is personable as opposed to other types of retailers whom, bottom-line place a much higher priority on drawing a profit. This means that we stand a fair chance at striking a deal among local record shops, as we are only local students working on a college project.
Platforms
We have decided that the best format to release our work on would be files (MP3, AIFF & WAVS). This is because it is the easiest format to distribute as it only requires you to upload the files onto online retailers of your choice. Files do not cost anything, and you can have an unlimited amount of copies. It’s one of the most obvious platforms to the public for purchasing music. It is also the most cost effective, as online retailers such as Bandcamp only charge you £15 for the distribution an unlimited amount of files.
We also plan on releasing hard copies on CD’s as a limited run, exclusively available at local record stores. We have decided to do this because it is an opportunity to build connections which could help us create legitimate releases in the future. Because the process of releasing physical formats requires you to contact actual people and have a physical product, it is often much more feasible in terms of making sales, as there are millions, if not, billions of tracks available through the web, whereas little music comes to fruition on physical format, which in turn gives you a larger chance of being recognized by your audience. It may seem counter-intuitive, but there is an over saturation of music on the web which means our album can easily be lost in the vastness Soundcloud, iTunes and other online music services, which results in a small, if existent audience despite such platforms having an audience of multi-millions. The reason why this is is because music services such as iTunes have an enormous audience with a variety of tastes and needs from iTunes as a service, most of which are casual listeners who do not follow any genre of music closely.
If we are distributing physical copies at local record shops, we know right from the start that our album has more chance of reaching our target audience as only music aficionados would go to a record shop. This demographic tends to be more open-minded towards music that they’ve never heard before and artists that they do not know. Record shops also clearly define and organize their stock into categories which should make it easy for customers to understand if the music in that section interests them or not.
Promotion
For the promotion of our album, we decided that we would begin by creating a Soundcloud account dedicated to our project, which we will call “Shaman”,
Practical Skills
The track named ‘Trip Level No.5’ was made entirely our of samples from the Korg Volca Beats (excluding the bass which was created with both EXS24 default sounds and the EFM1 VST). Being Techno, the first part of the track I started off with was a basic 1 bar loop of 4/4 kicks using the kick sampled from the Volca Beats. To give the kick some presence, I added approximately 35% of drive and 5% of resonance on it’s EXS24 channel. I also used overdrive distortion sparingly as overdrive can bring some warmth in sounds, as well as a slight touch of bitcrusher. The sustain was turned all the way down, and small amounts of decay were used on this kick channel to smooth off the sound during and after the actual kick sound to make it tighter. I then copied this channel, and added a high cut EQ on the new copy channel to about 300 Hz and created a subtle ‘back pattern’ behind the main 4/4 kick. I then copied and pasted the same kick channel several times, and experimented with drone tones, textured reverbs, moving space reverbs, distortion and modulation effects to generate more harmonic type of sounds (it’s techno, so it doesn’t necessarily have to be melodic) to build soundscapes. I also sampled a closed hat, an open hat, and a cabasa type of sound. The hi hats were relatively easy to process, as they were already sounding good in my opinion. The only changes I really made to the hi hat sounds were cutoff EQ’s which cut off all signal below approximately 12k in order to allow space in the frequency range for other instruments. There were several layers of hi hats in this track, tuned with different levels of sustain, decay and release. Most of the track progression in this track was formed by utilizing automation and bus tracks. I created a few bus tracks which contain varying degrees of tape delay, reverb, stereo-widening effects and modulation in order to create an atmosphere that sits behind the music itself to create a sense of depth.
Evaluation & Reflection
For my evaluation, I will reflect among my group over preceding sessions at the start of every session to outline what went well, what didn’t go so well, and what we could do to improve for the upcoming session. It’s easier to allow some time to process the experience of the previous session, rather than criticising it immediately afterwards as it allows us to truly reflect on whether our thoughts are truly reasonable, and whether they actually aid in the progression and development of the project. We will also discuss how our revelations can inform the future of how we co-ordinate the project thus improving efficiency and allowing more time to develop smaller details in the project. We will also make an overall written assessment at the end of each week to summarise our spoken word evaluations.
Recorded feedback from one of our lecturers based on the track ‘Hok Flute’
Week 1
The first week was dedicated towards organizing and planning what steps we should take in order to undertake our project over the upcoming weeks. This was a week of brainstorming ideas for the project, as well as attempting to troubleshoot problems that we may come across over the weeks before they happen to allow our project to move more efficiently. The resources we used in this week was only pen and paper. We brainstormed ideas by discussing the what style of music we should aspire towards and produce. We looked at music by Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix, Aphex Twin, Leftfield and The Prodigy to begin with.
We looked at music by these artists initially because they were the first artists that came to mind from each of us when thinking about music that correlates with psychedelics. One of the members of our group suggested looking at Trance music because it is a genre that is arguably associated with psychedelics more than any other genre.
Though he did have a point, I argued that Trance is not the only form of music that is influenced by psychedelics which he was inciting, as there is music in each of our genres we are involved in which are related to psychedelics that is much more relevant to us as artists.
Week 2
In this week we began to use the synth lab to explore the sounds on the different pieces of equipment available in order to establish what equipment we did and did not like, as well as identifying which presets we liked on each piece of equipment. We also started to practice jamming out together as a group; something as producers, we were not used to (except for the one drummer in our group). We did surprisingly well on our first sessions so we attempted to record our music through the Mac in the synth lab that was set up for recording, though unfortunately the Mac was faulty so we could not record. The resources we used include an MPC 5000, Korg Volca Keys, Korg Volca Bass, Korg Volca Drums, Korg X5, Roland V Synth, Moog Sub Phatty, Mixing Desk, MIDI Keyboard, and a Mac.
Some footage of my group jamming in the synth lab during this week
Week 3
In the third week, we decided to book out a studio and create a track arrangement in Logic Pro X as the recording Mac in the synth lab was still not working, and we didn’t want to sacrifice any time that could be used to produced regardless of the circumstances that we may find ourselves in. We decided to take the Korg X5 to the studio as we’d only need to unplug the MIDI keyboard that was already in the studio and plug the Korg straight in, and it had a lot of great sounds that we liked. In this week, we took time to practice playing around with the Korg X5, and we recorded a handful of the melodies we created for the sake of recording some ideas down incase we wanted to come back to those recordings and do something with it such as sampling it or recreating the melodic composition on a different preset or instrument. The resources we used in this week include a Korg X5, a studio, and x2 1/4″ jack cables.
Week 4
Due to unfortunate circumstances during this week, we could not record or use a studio in this time as our technician was away. Due to this reason, we spent this week recalling and evaluating our progress and questioning to each other how we could improve both the rate of work and quality of work with the time restrictions we had and the circumstances we found ourselves in. We figured that we needed to work on the aspects of the album outside of making music itself, such as marketing, artwork, promotional strategies and formats.
Week 5
Unfortunately, we were unable to use the studios again as the technician was not in on some days and all studio sessions for that week were booked out immediately. Due to this issue, we as a group figured that we would have to partially abandon our original plan of recording ourselves jamming completely live straight onto the album as time was running very tight, and there was no guarantee that we could use the studios in the following week. We decided that we would take our recordings from week 3 home, and make tracks out of those drafts just incase we could not perform live properly, though we tried to maintain as much integrity to the initial concept as we could by at least sampling our Korg X5 jams, and having the intention of sampling single-note sounds from the instruments in the future should we have the chance to use the equipment again. We found this to be the most reliable strategy we could think of.
Week 6
On our final week, we were lucky enough to have the opportunity to use the studios and the equipment in the synth lab, and we even had time to move all of the hardware that we wanted into the studio and set it up so that it can record directly into Logic Pro X on separate tracks. We decided to jam out after all as it looked as if things were getting easier, however, our recorded projects unfortunately did not save properly despite having ticked the options for saving as a folder and saving audio files. This meant reverting back to the plan we came up with in week 5 to simply create a sample bank of as much sounds as we can, so that we can work on tracks for the album outside of the time allocated for studio sessions.
Presentation
For my presentation, I was given an opportunity to unveil some of my album work to the whole music department from my college as well as guests that were invited by the students to come along. My college booked a venue in Balham called the Bedford which was a pub with a round stage based in the back of it. Our method of performing our album was by ensuring that the DJ’s (which included myself) played at least one of the album tracks each. The reason why we could not play all of them was because our performing time was limited to only 23 minutes (which for me is about 8-10 tracks long) as we had to share the time that the venue was hired for with other students in our class who needed to present and for the performers from the performance class to perform their songs. We also needed to take into account the moods and the rhythms of our own tracks so that our mix would actually blend well. This was difficult because our project was about creating experimental music, which meant that the musicality and the rhythmic styles did not necessarily match each other, let alone with music that we already had ready to mix. I played one of the tracks I made for the album, though it was a track that my group was concerned over whether it suited the concept of the album, as it was more of a simple Drum n Bass ‘roller’ (Roller is a slang term in Drum n Bass which means a track that isn’t necessarily musical, as it’s purpose is more focused on making audiences dance at events; they generally have simple rhythms which are easy to dance to. A similar term for it is ‘crowd pleaser’) which was not really experimental in any way. This was one of the tracks I made during the unpredictable weeks when we continuously could not get ahold of a studio and did not know how we could complete our album. Thankfully, we actually managed to create an abundance of tracks during that time, so it was not concerning that we wanted to drop this track from the album.
On April 28th, I attended a music conference in Brighton as part of a trip. On this trip, there was a wide variety of activities which included a demonstration of synthesizers, DJ equipment and digital audio software. This took place in the main hall round that back of the centre. There was stalls hosted by a range of manufacturers including Yamaha, Native Instruments, Cubase and many others. These stalls had the equipment of the manufacturers out for both display and trail-use by visitors. On each (or most, as some were not running as I was there) of these stalls there were demonstrators who would inform us about their product and explain how it worked. One of the pieces of equipment we were shown was the Yamaha HS7. The Yamaha HS7 is a studio monitor which grabbed my attention because I found the sound to be very crisp, though with that said, we were in a giant hall so the acoustics may not be representative as they would be in a studio setup, and the Yamaha demonstrator told me that they were worth around £330 for a pair, which seemed like great value for money. Another piece of kit that caught my eye was the Roland JD-XA Polysynth synthesizer. This synthesizer stood out to me because the sounds it made were really warm, deep and lush, it had a wide range of parameters so that you really could create unique sounds, the feeling of the keys was really nice as they were firm and weighted, but they were still easy to press, the build quality and finish of the product was pristine, and it included it’s own sequencer which meant that you could pretty much use it as a standalone piece of hardware if you really wanted to. Unfortunately however, it was well out of my price range as it was worth £1,500, though with how good it is, I can’t really argue with that price. The last product which caught my attention was the NI Traktor D2 deck. This was because it was far different from any other CDJ/controller/turntable I had ever seen before. It was different in the sense that rather than a jogwheel/platter, you had to control the BPM with a knob, it included 4 different channels for you to upload stems of tracks, or even just samples in general, and it even included it’s own fader for each stem track along with 2 effects pads per stem track. This appealed to me even as a DJ who prefers the traditional, original 2 vinyl turntables, though I cannot see myself ever replacing turntables with this type of setup, but it does seem like a good stepping stone for the DJ who wants to move on to live performances.
One of the seminars I attended included the producer/DJ Throwing Shade, PRS manager Andy Ellis, publishing manager Jarrod Bird and programme manager Bhavash Patel. Their talk ultimately regarded making money from music. They talked to us about setting a personal timetable as an artist, in which they recommend that you plan a designated time-slot which you spend responding and sending emails to people that work with you once per week to ensure that you are up to date and informed with the legal side of your music (PRS, publisher’s rights, track sales etc). Throwing Shade spoke about how she became an artist, which was originally simply by making tracks and posting them to Soundcloud which slowly built her a small following, until eventually her music was noticed by well-established Techno DJ/Producer Kassem Mosse who played her tracks. This caused her to make the big decision to quit her oncoming-career as a lawyer and become a full-time musician despite the disapproval of her parents. Her first step as a full-time artist was hosting her own radio show on NTS radio, which inevitably brought her attention from many DJ’s, producers and record labels. This lead to her releasing her first EP, and from there onwards, she was officially an active, independent artist. At the end of their talk, I asked the panel to advise me on what precautions I should take as an artist that is aiming to release my first EP in regards to many small labels which apparently have not paid artists what they are owed; a situation that appears to have fairly often within the music scene that I am involved in, to the point where it’s becoming the standard, and more worryingly, acceptable practice by labels. Throwing Shade responded to my question by saying that whenever I approach or am being approached by labels, I should research the label in question to understand how ‘big’ they actually are (how much money they’re likely drawing), and to then respond to that research by setting out boundaries to the labels with what you will and won’t allow them to do, and what minimum percentage share you would accept to receive, and how many years you will allow them to hold the rights to your music for. She told us a story about how a multi-million-dollar shoe company tried to pay her with a pair of trainers for using her music, and how she talked them into paying her a considerable amount of money, as well as how a label offered to hold the rights to her music for 10 years where she talked it down to 3 to display the importance of setting boundaries. She also said that all negotiations with labels should be documented; either digitally or in print so that the label by law has to follow the rules you set out or else face large fines and even imprisonment should they ever try to manipulate you to your disadvantage, as it is common for people to be fooled into believing that you can trust labels (even independents) to stick to promise that they made in spoken word.
The second talk was hosted by Chris Goss; owner of Hospital Records along with several members of the label’s publishing/promotional team. He spoke about how he started Hospital Records in 1996 with the intention of releasing Drum n Bass after being involved with Acid-Jazz and Triphop as it was the freshest and most popular genre in London at the time. He mentioned how he booked venues that were of high capacity in relation to his following/size of his label and how that it was incredibly risky, but yet managed to break even. He started the Hospitality night in 2001 which was one of the first Drum n Bass events which focused on lighter, soulful styles of Drum n Bass as opposed to the techy/dark D&B which was popular at the time. He struggled to find venues that would allow D&B nights due to stereotypes of D&B heads being aggressive, taking drugs and other criminal activities, which even to this day still happens. He has hosted one of the largest raves which was Hospitality at Finsbury park.
Bill Porter was a sound engineer who is recognized for his work with such stars as Elvis Presley, among other rock and country artists. His career as an engineer began in 1954 as he worked for WLAC TV whose role was to mix the sound for microphones used on television filming. In 1959, he moved on to work with RCA records as a mix engineer for musical recordings. His big breakthrough in the industry happened when he mixed the track ‘Don Gibson – Lonesome Old House’ as it became successful in both pop and country music charts. This resulted in Bill Porter becoming a desirable candidate across the industry. Later that year, Bill mixed the sound for ‘The Browns – The Three Bells’, though during the process of his work on this track, he accidentally damaged the original recording which resulted in distorted pitch. Knowing that his job was on the line, he sliced off damaged part of the tape (which was the intro), and attached the intro from a different take hoping that nobody would notice. He was lucky enough that it went on to become number one in the pop and country charts and nobody noticed, and we only know this because he confessed this incident around 40 years later.
Bill Porter continued to work with Atkins until 1963. In this time, his work began to influence what would become known as the ‘Nashville Sound’; a style of country music that has a smoother sound as opposed to the traditionally rough sound of country. During his career, he worked on 579 records that charted, 49 that made the top 10, 11 that made number one, and 37 were certified gold records. Bill Porter’s work in this period was done in a studio which had poor acoustics as it was resonant and the frequency response was uneven. To resolve these issues, Bill acquired fiberglass panels and cut them into triangles, and then hung them from the ceiling at a range of heights in order to balance the sound. Another one of Porter’s techniques included using an air conditioner to cool down the reverberation room in order to direct audio to the plate reverb device, as well as to allow a cleaner sound to be returned from the device. He did this in order to achieve an echo that sounded fuller and brighter.
Another signature style of Bill Porter included mixing background vocals towards the front of the mix, as well as revolving his whole mix around the vocals as opposed to the percussion as he did in his previous works before his time working with Roy Orbison. Bill become such a popular engineer among clients outside of RCA that RCA even decided to emphasize their business as one for independent clients and used Bill Porter as their selling point. In 1964, Bill Porter left RCA to work with Colombia Records, and then Monument shortly after that.
Since the start of the course, I have seen my understanding and abilities in music, music production, marketing, business grow substantially. I have gone from being an novice DJ with a handful of experience with Logic and Cubase on rare occasions, to a DJ who can mix seamlessly 90% of the time who is at a great enough skill level to be playing on radio and clubs, a producer whose relatively sufficient in using a professional studio with tracks that are approaching release-worthy quality, a sound engineer who can play as part of a team in setting up a 3-way soundsystem, a sound designer for sound-to-picture as well someone who has gained much deeper knowledge on how to actually sell music with knowledge of licensing, PRS, A&R and other roles among the promotion and licensing side of music. My production improved as I learnt how to use the plugins included in Logic properly as previously before joining the the course, I did not know how to use them. The most significant tools I learned to use were compression, space designer reverb and the EXS24 sampler as they allow me to ‘smooth out’ my productions as well as allowing me to create my own sound. I have greatly developed my hearing over the course as I have learned to pay more attention to detail to sound and their dynamics.
The intention of my work is to create soundtrack, sound design and leitmotifs for a film that a friend of mine (who is a screenwriter) is creating. An influence of mine regarding this project is Vangelis; a soundtrack composer who revolves more around synthetic, electronic sounds and instruments; a style and sound that resonates the most with me amongst other soundtrack composers. Soundtrack designers will often try to create music that reacts with what is going on in a scene on a frame-by-frame basis in order to evoke an immersive sense to the viewer, as opposed to traditionally making a song without the thought of the film itself coming to mind. Sound design is an occupation that has only existed for around 100 years. Initially, there was no sound to footage pre-1910s, though soon soundtracks and narrations dubbed over the picture itself. Some early examples of sound design in films include classic cartoons such as ‘Tom & Jerry’ where the continuous soundtrack defines the mood and the energy of the scene, frame by frame. These type of early cartoons where almost entirely dependent on the sound to portray the story as it happens. I intend on creating leitmotifs for the main character first as that was what was requested by the project manager. The next step would be to create the soundtrack to support each scene of the story one at a time as the footage is given to me.
In the present day, the music industry has more diverse applications than it ever has been. Producers have the choice on whether they want to use analog or digital equipment without being concerned with what the next big, upcoming tech is going to be; there are many producers who use equipment that is 20+ years old in their current productions. For some, the appeal with analog is that it adds ‘warmth’ to the sound and isn’t excessively clean. On the other hand, many producers prefer to use computerized digital equipment. Digital’s appeal is that it is much much more accessible as it is far cheaper, and you only need a PC/Mac (which the vast majority of people, musicians or not, own anyway) and a DAW of choice which often costs around £200 on average (£200 could barely get you a single piece of analog equipment) and usually includes a large enough variety of VST’s, plugins and samples to make a variety of music without getting boring too quickly or sounding too generic.
If there does come a time when a digital producer gets bored with their DAW, there are thousands of software accessories available to buy online to bring something new to play with, each of which is tailored to deliver their own ‘sound’ and to have a variable amount of parameters which could suit producers of all skill and experience levels. Alternatively, you could also implement analog hardware via MIDI and/or an interface. This can also be of interest to the analog producer who wants to experiment with digital. What I am ultimately getting at here is that in this day and age, music producers are not limited to certain types of tools/equipment, and can create a bespoke setup which orientates around their style and approach, rather than having to adapt around the equipment in question.
The same can be seen in DJ-ing; at this point in time, you are not forced to adapt to analog vinyl and there is a decreasing pressure to use digital CDJ’s or other forms of controllers due to the resurgence of vinyl (it never really disappeared from DJ-ing/dance music, however there was a decreasing amount of music being pressed onto vinyl and a pressure to convert to digital, until recently). There is also DVS systems for those who like the feel of a turntable, but want to reduce costs with cheaper files or not have to carry heavy vinyl to the venue that they are to play at. I believe that DVS has proven to the music industry that some people prefer turntables, despite the rhetoric that suggests that vinyl is ‘outdated technology’. There has even been experimentation in recent years with 3D printing vinyl records. Despite the recordings not sounding anywhere as near as clear as regular pressed vinyl or a file for that matter, it is still new technology and these experiments where mostly undertaken by university students, so there is much potential for 3D printed records to become as good as standard vinyl one day should there be more funding and research applied to it. Personally, this is something that I’d love to see happen as 3D-printers are expected to become household items in the near future, and it could save vinyl from the dying pressing plants which are ran by only a handful of people, whom are the only people that know how to press records as they are from the generation when vinyl was the standard format. It could also reignite dubplate culture in it’s traditional sense, and be better for the environment as there has been experimentation in recycling regular waste plastics into plastic for 3D printers.
In essence, the point I am conveying is that the music industry is coming to the realisation that there is not one single, right, correct way of producing and performing music as an electronic music producer, but rather a variety of ways that suit different individuals.
The track ‘Don’t Wanna Live This Way’ was created almost exclusively out of selected audio samples, excluding two of the bass instruments which included an 808 plugin included on Logic Pro X, and a custom-made instrument created on Logic’s EFM1 synth.
The first stage in creating my track involved importing breakbeat samples, converting them to mono and chopping them into individual hits except on parts of some breaks where there snare rolls where you need to try and make a cut that would keep both sides of the file a similar length so that you don’t get excessive silent zones when you transfer the break to the EXS24 sampler and quantize.
The strings were actually made from a vocal sample where I took a section where the singer’s tone was consistent, then duplicated it into different channels to layer reverb, then deleted the original channel with no plugins, looped the samples to about 1 minute long (so that it will be long enough to play at higher notes should I want to when I import it into the EXS24), created a track stack to insert all of channel layers into and add glue compression to unify the layers. I then exported the track stack as an audio file, then imported the audio file for use with the EXS24.
The problem with Logic’s preset 808 bass is that it often creates a popping sound initially and lacks ‘weight’. To prevent this, I removed all preset effects, and then added about 15db of overdrive with a low pass filter up to around 100Hz. This gets rid of the pop, and also makes it sound softer and warmer. I then applied a compressor with high ratio settings so that the levels don’t drop down so quickly, allowing the bass to have more presence in the mix with lower volume allowing space for other instruments.
With the vocal samples I sampled from a documentary, I carefully adjusted the EQ to focus on the speaker’s vocal range and to compensate for loud consonants (especially ‘s’ and ‘t’ sounds) and quieter vowels. This required more than one EQ plugin as it required great intricacy. I added some tape delay with relatively low wetness, and then added hall reverb on top of the delay to give a deeper, immersive feel to the vocals. Despite the EQ changes, the vowels were still not cutting through the mix so well, so I applied a compressor with a high ratio and threshold settings with somewhat low attack and release settings to push down the consonant’s frequencies. This made the vocals clear in the mix without being over-powering regardless of the instrument’s present.
As with all of my tracks, I created track stacks for different types of sounds/instruments (drums, strings, keys etc) and added subtle glue compression to each track stack to bring the instruments together, and then finally add some glue compression to the output channel to then bring the whole track together.
Veill Presents: Music Production & Performance Level 3 Coursework 