Project 4, Session Diary 8: My Collaborations

I previously showed friends my audio submission to get some critical feedback on the instrumental and adjust it where needed. Because I am not very good at writing lyrics or singing so I'm collaborating with Lauren Walton to take on both of those tasks. I wrote up a lyric inspiration sheet and sent it to her and personally had a long talk with Lauren about the concept of the song and what it was about. She will give me the lyrics by next week and I will book a studio to record her.

I recorded and produced a couple of her songs and we tested which mic suits her voice best and I decided that I liked the TLM 103 by Neumann the most.

I intend to record a guitar part which Jonny Sands will play for the second chorus and possibly the breakdown to make it more powerful. He will teach me the basics of playing guitar so I will be able to better communicate with him what exactly I am looking for and try to jam myself and experiment with melodies/chord progressions that could fit.

After recording, I will mix the track and then seek out feedback from my tutors and close friends to get their opinions and possibly make changes to the song.

I have helped Callum Buckley by giving feedback on his song twice, I mainly focused on the mixing aspect of the track because he had already completed most of the recording work and I felt like the track didn't necessarily need any more elements.

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Project 4, Session diary 7: Mick Gordon's DOOM soundtrack

Week 3, Monday 15th of May Goals: Optimize workflow, continue working on the instrumental, practice sound design in serum and with the Korg Volca Bass, write notation for instruments to record Resources: DAW (FL Studio, Logic), instruments (guitar, piano, etc.), leads, mics, Diary: I completed 3 of the 4 goals I set myself this week, I practiced sound design and wrote a blog post about how I jammed with the Korg Volca Bass. I continued working on the instrumental and have nearly completed it now. I tested the mix in MIT 3 through the Genelec speakers and wrote down some things I need to focus on and change to make it cleaner. I also restructured my room to create a more comfortable working environment, I moved my bed to the window to create more space to sit at the desk and removed equipment I don’t use to have more desk space. This really helped me optimize my workflow because I didn’t have things lying around and distracting me and additionally I could easily get t...

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

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 ...

Project 4, Session Diary 2: Sound design and foley

Week 2, Monday 1st of May Goals: Work on the instrumental backing track, find out which instruments I want to record live and jam with Jonny who is a very talented guitarist to possibly create an additional a top line or backing melody Resources: Electric guitar, Kemper, Guitar pedals, Midi keyboard, DAW (FL Studio, Logic), YouTube, Soundcloud, Spotify, Microsoft Word Diary: This week I’ve almost completely finished the instrumental backing track, I am very happy with it and I’ve shown it to Lauren and Callum who gave me really positive feedback. I still need to change some minor things, for example, I’m not quite happy yet with the breakdown after the first chorus and additionally, I want to slightly alter the second chorus to make it a little bit more different from the first one. I’ll probably do this by adding a live recorded guitar to it and possibly another synth layer. Even though I’m well on schedule, I unfortunately, did not complete one of my weekly g...

Greg Lester

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