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Project 4, Session Diary 6: Writing the concept of the lyrics

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Week 3, Monday 8th of May
Goals:
Write a lyric inspiration sheet which states what the lyrics will be about, what the anticipated emotional response of the audience is, what the message of the song is and the story of the song. Send the lyric inspiration sheet to Lauren and talk to her about the concept. Jam with Jonny. Start the Research Task A.
Resources:
DAW (FL Studio), midi keyboard, No Art Poems, Helmet For My Pillow, Notebook
Diary:
This week I successfully completed writing the lyric inspiration sheet which will be the guidelines and inspiration for Lauren to start writing the actual lyrics. I poured all my emotions into it and thus don’t want to share a screenshot because it’s a description of the pain I felt when a tragic accident happened in my family. Because of the incredibly powerful emotions, I had during this time I thought it would be a good opportunity to further process these feelings through music and write a gripping and authentic song.

I sent the sheet to Lauren and spoke to her about the core concept and what exactly I want to achieve with the song, which is to tell a story about how I went through a very rough period of time in my life but manage to get through it with the help of my friends and loved ones.

I also managed to show Jonny the instrumental and he played some guitar parts which I liked a lot and we are going to record them next week. Ruairi a friend of mine bought the Strymon Big Sky (Reverb) and the Strymon Timeline (Delay)  which are both incredible sounding high-quality guitar pedals.
Image result for strymon big skyImage result for strymon timeline
I will utilize these during the guitar recording and possibly also for some of my other instruments. I will do this by using the DACCAPO Re-amplification box from Palmer which I bought recently. I can connect the output of my interface to the input of the re-amp and then run the audio signal through guitar pedals to affect the audio in different ways for example with distortion or reverb and then record the signal back into the DAW through my audio interface. This allows me to use outboard gear and manually manipulate the sounds by turning knobs which makes the experience
more fun and intuitive.Image result for daccapo reamp
Another great thing that happened this week is that I got accepted to two jobs which means that I will start earning money after half term and be able to save up towards gear I want to buy like for example Komplete Ultimate 11, the Korg MS20 mini, the Qcon Control Surface, etc.
Since I will be working for about 16-20 hours a week I won’t have as much time for my Project 4 work so I’m putting extra effort in to finish it after half term so that I just need to polish things up after half term and do the mixing task.

On the Sunday 14th of May, I shot a music video with Lauren for her YouTube channel and it was an exhilarating experience. We searched for a location in the woods and then found a beautiful clearing with a forsythia shrub. I directed Lauren to stand in front of it, there was a slight breeze which blew through Laurens hair which really put the cherry on top of the whole performance. It looked amazing and some strangers walked by and praised Lauren for her amazing singing.
This really inspired me to shoot a music video of my own for Project 4, I have already gone location scouting and I'm contemplating using multiple locations.
I will try to get at least two people filming so that we have multiple angles which we can edit together.
I started with my research task and decided which songs I want to research and write about. I chose the following titles because I believe that they vary quite a lot in genre and style and are good examples of professional recordings:
  • Song 1: “Mick Gordon - BFG Division”
  • Song 2: “$uicideboy$ - PLANTING THE ROOTS JUST TO FALL OUT OF THE TREE”
  • Song 3: “Porter Robinson - Sad Machine”
I wrote a more in-depth blog post about how I will approach the task and what my main focus points are.


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