Greg Lester

So I'm playing my very first gig ever tomorrow and I'm pretty excited. I will be the DJ at the xmas clubbing of my school and there will be approximately 180-300 people and most of my friends will be there so I feel quite a lot of pressure since if I mess up it will be in front of all my friends instead of a random crowd who I wouldn't have to see again. I will be playing 4 hours which is a big amount of time but it will be split in half, since the first 2 hours I'll be playing for 10-14-year-olds and my set will mainly consist of mainstream radio dance music. The second half will be the fun part because the older 15-19-year-olds will be there and I'll be able to play a lot of different genres of music. I started preparing for this gig 10 days in advance, the first thing I did was try to get hold of a dj-controller because I had left mine in England and unfortunately the venue didn't have one. Fortunately, the organisers are friends of mine they said it'...

Recording process: On Wednesday the 23rd of November 2016 at 10o' clock my group (Project Group 9 with Will, Lewis, Louise and me) had an assessment where we had to go to the audient studio, use the adjoining live room to set up microphones for a guitarist and a vocalist and recording through the Audient Asp 8024 mixing desk. We arrived 15 minutes before our scheduled recording time and did a quick run-through of which mics we were going to use, how and where in the room we were going to place them and who would be responsible for which task.  The mics we chose were large diaphragm condenser microphones because we wanted a bright and clear sound both for the guitar and for the vocal.  We used the TLM 103 from Neumann for the vocalist, our reasoning behind this being that the TLM 103 has a treble boost and a very bright and nice sound so it is ideal to record female vocals and we also wanted a contrast to the guitar, so not to use the same mic as on the guitar. Fo...

I'm very happy about the grades I received and I am motivated to further continue with this standard when handing in my assessments. I received valuable feedback on which I will reflect and try to incorporate in future. Particularly on Task 2(c): Game Audio Analysis the comment from Mark Taylor where he pointed out that I could give more detail on the music theory parts which I think is definitely true because music theory is one of my weak points and I will try to practise it in order to make it strength of mine. I really appreciated that Shae enjoyed my track and that he gave me very positive feedback about the vocal chop pluck lead which I used for the drop.

I attended the Networking event on the 3rd of November hosted by Kieron Pepper in the Billings with the goal of meeting a couple of business students from whom I could learn a couple of things. I arrived at 18:00 when the event started and wasn't quite sure what to expect but the place was completely packed to my surprise. There were too many people in the room for my liking but I still managed to grab a seat. Kieron started off the event by introducing the business students and the tech services students and then gave us 5 minutes to talk to them. This repeated for about 4 times and it was very chaotic but I was able to talk to two business students and I have followed up by adding them on facebook and writing with them.  Tomorrow I have a meeting with one of them to discuss publishing and to ask some questions and talk about how we can work together. I really found the event useful because I actually made some contacts and it wasn't very formal so it was easy to ju...

I chose Sony because if I was ever to sign with a major or rather a subsidiary of a major then I would choose Ministry of Sound or Ultra Music which is part of Sony and specializes in electronic music and particularly EDM. A lot of artists that I like are signed to Ultra and it hosts a number of festivals around the world, the probably most famous one in Miami (Florida). Sony is the second biggest of the three major labels (Universal, Sony, and Warner in order, biggest first) and has a very extensive artist roster. Ministry of Sound was founded in 1991 by James Palumbo and started out as a nightclub in London. Now they are also a Record label company owned by Sony. The current CEO of Ministry of Sound is Jonathan Bevan and artists like London Grammar, DJ Fresh, Sigala and more are signed to the label. The nightclub was the first London based club dedicated to American house music. The Label and it's subsidiary brand Hed Kandi put on about 1,500 global events a year. Ultra Mu...

My Soundcloud:   https://soundcloud.com/itskittn I work under the artist name KITTN which is short for Kitten, I chose this name because I believe it fits me as a person, I can be really nice and "cute" but also very fierce and dangerous. The name is very brandable since it's one word and you immediately associate the image of a cat when you hear it. It's easy to pronounce and to remember so when people see it they will also recognise it easily again. My logo was made by a friend of mine, it's very simple and consists of the word KITTN written in capital letters on a black background and the I in KITTN is replaced with a cat, all in all it looks quite sleek and I like just using black, white and grey because it reflects my clothing style. The banner for my Soundcloud page was also created by a friend who is an artist and photographer and he came up with the concept of a cat skull and the a black texture with cat heads that have X's as eyes in the b...

On Tuesday October 13th I went to the Mixdoctor pro workshop that Prof Strech holds every week. The workshop is in the SSL studio and it was my first time in there. I was very impressed when I saw the mixing desk and the studio monitors mounted on the wall. Strech came into the studio and set up everything so he could beginn. Students handed him USB sticks with their songs on them and he gave them feedback, mixed them, mastered them or both. I really enjoyed listening to the stuff the other students were making and got a bit of inspiration from that. When it was my turn I gave him a remix that I finished back in July and hadn't mastered yet. He listened to it first and gave me some feedback, the main points were: - some parts of the song are too busy - too much sharp high frequency in the sides of the mix - too much low energy in the drop Then he mastered my track, I watched him during the whole process of using various brainworx plugins, the SSL desk and external analog pl...

Today we learned a bit about mic theory and how to setup and route a mic using on a mixing desk using the patchbay. Our task was to use the Pro Control studio to practise. Joe, Kyle and myself went to the Pro Control studio to do the task, I had brought my Rode Nt-1a kondenser mic and an xlr lead with me. First we made sure that the phantom power was off, the gain was at 0db and the fader level was at 0db. Then we plugged the xlr lead into input 1 on the desk and turned on the phantom power next we put the fader to 0db and slowly raised the gain until there was a signal. After that we used a patchcable to path the Tie Line 1 into the Insert Send 1 and lastly we recorded the signal into Logic by opening a new project, then a new audio channel, selecting input 1 and pressing arm record and then recording the signal. It all went well and smooth.

Odeon sessions on Fridays are a great way to start off the day. We came into the room and DJ Hadron (Josh who I actually know in person) played some house tunes and it felt like I was in a club. At first a really good band played and then Ace talked about events this week. Later there was a video about the things that were happening at Metropolis and it sounded quite exciting. I really want to visit metropolis and check out the amazing facilities. After that a representative from a company called Pledge Music came and I thought that was really interesting because I had never heard of them before. He explained thatit was a site where they help you set up a campaign to crowdfund the production of an album, ep or just a single. Apparently they have a 95% successrate which is incredible, I was quite intrigued by the whole thing and decided to do some research. Basically Pledge Music works a bit like kickstarter or other crowdfunding platforms. You pay money to fund the project and if th...

After I heard at the odeon session, that Beyoncés bassist  and creative director Divinity Roxx was holding a masterclass I immediately signed up for it. I've never heard of her before but since she had wirked with Beyoncé I figured that she must have loads of experience in the industry and I could definitely take something away from the masterclass. So on tuesday the 27th of September 2016  I went there and when she came in and played her first song I was very impressed. She mixed rap with incredible bass riffs and I just enjoyed listening.  She then did a lot of q&a and talked about how she got to the level she is on now and what really surprised me, was that she first started playing bass after graduating highschool. So that was a big eyeopener to me that you dont necessarily have to do something for an extremely long time to succeed, you have to be driven and work as hard as you can! What I also learned from her is that you should live your life and en...

At the moment I'm trying to learn to play drums, I'm currently collaborating on a coupke of tracks with my very good friend Tom who is a extremely talented drummer. One of my favourite things to do when producing a track is to programm the drums, not just accoustic and/or electronic but also epic cinematic percussion. My hands and feet are usually tapping on something in a rhythmic way (I'm very bad at sitting still) and because of all this I figured: why not just try playing drums? Three days ago I was in the studio jamming with Tom and he taught me some basic drumbeats which I picked up pretty quickly, I really enjoyed it.... So yesterday I went to the drum pods and booked one for 1:30 hours and just jammed along to tracks that I liked and it was so fun! So today I bought some used drumsticks from Max and I'm going to try to practise at least 3 days a week to hopefully be mediocre by the time of christmas. Atleast that is my goal.

I'm very happy with the feedback I received and I am very motivated by it to continue working hard and putting in the extra effort to submit an excellent assignment. I'm looking forward to further assignments, because it gives me the opportunity to do in depth research in areas that I would normally not delve into.

Last week was very successful, all in all I finished 2 tracks, released one on a big label, started 4 collaborations with very talented artists and worked on my improving keyboard skills and theoretical knowledge. I also sent loads of promo emails which I haven't really done a lot in the past. The two tracks I finished still need to be mixed and mastered but one of them is ready to send to the manager of a big rapper with whom I have collaborated before. The second track is ready to be sent to label and promo channels to try to release them on there. On friday the 23rd of september I released a track on Tribal Trap, they have 95.9k followers on soundcloud and over 550.000 subscribers on youtube so that was a huge opportunity to gain some exposure and legitimacy. My track also got reposted by a lot of other big labels which I look up to and I hope this is the chance to be able to ask them if I can send them mails to be able to release on their labels and thst they'll ag...

I picked the role producer because I enjoy giving feedback to the artist and adding my creative input to the recording session to make it better and help communicate between the artist and the recording engineer to make the session as smooth as possible and get the most out of the artist. A producer is responsible for overseeing the musical product and to communicate with the artist, give them advice on different creative aspects of the track and particularly help during pre-production in terms of trying to figure out in which direction the song will go and what could be made better in the track before even heading to the studio. In the studio the producer is the middle man between recording engineer and artist and help make the recording session efficient by coaching the artist, helping with crucial decision-making, giving feedback and proposing new ideas that can quickly be included into the session. Producers need to be able to communicate with the artists so they are require...

Woke up at 10 this morning to pack my laptop, usb etc. eat a quick breakfast and get ready to the studio. Unlike last time I was prepared for the studio session today, I had my list of what I needed, goals for the day, what I was gonna do first and most importantly I had enough time! First I went to the tech hatch to get some mics then I set them up while Tom got the drums ready. Everything went pretty smooth until I encountered a small problem in logic which I fixed itself after a couple of minutes. We recorded for about two hours and it went very well! After the session I saved the project to my usb and collected the mics, rolled the cables together and brought them back to the tech hatch. It was a very rewarding experience because for some reason I thought that we wouldn't be able to make everything work but it did and I was quite happy about that. The whole point of the studio session was to record a lot of fills and chops for a sample library and the second reason wa...

So I booked the PRSF studio on friday but since i only had 45 minutes worth of booking credits left it was kinda a letdown because I was stupid enough not to have a pre-prepared logic project with the stems I wanted to mix on it. Basically I had to import all the stems from my usb into logic and that took a long time... The good thing is I listened to mix 1 version of the track and wrote down a lot of stuff that I needed to focus on and now I know that before I go into a studio I have to make a list with my goals that I want to reach and the preparations I have to make beforehand so I can make the best use out of the time I have and be efficient. I guess that was one of those learning by doing experiences.. Today I pretty much finished 2 songs and emailed one of them to the manager of a rapper with whom I have previousely worked with. The other song is a colaboration with some great friends of mine: Tom (drummer, Nick (vocalist+guitar player) and Andrew (bass+guitar player) . ...

Today I was pretty productive... I had lectures in the morning and learned some cool new stuff and as soon as I got out of the last lecture I went to the "Pro Control" studio which will had booked. It was a bit daunting at first because I always feel like I'm gonna break something but the stuff is sturdier than it looks ^^ Anyway while Will mixed his kick and sub I practised my scales on the keyboard after that I hooked my laptop up to the speakers and checked my mix of the track I'm working on right now (I'd post a link but I don't want to show it to anyone yet). I noticed that the snare was way to loud and not sitting correctly in the mix, the risers are too overpowering at the end of the buildup, the bass noise in the buildup needs to have a highpass filter with an automation controlling the frequency envelope and last but not least that the transition after the drop is great but I continue going into the main verse which I shouldn't do but rather ju...