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 11: More feedback and track changes

In my last entry I stated that I would re-record the vocal but after long and careful consideration and some more feedback from friends and tutors, I decided to keep the take we had already recorded. My reasoning behind choosing not to re-record the vocal is that I really like the take, I think that we captured the emotions of the song. There are a couple of intricacies of her performance which I think could not be replicated. I tested the Rode NT1A with Lauren and in my opinion, it does sound better than the TLM 103 by Neumann. Her voice sounds fuller and more natural but I think for this specific song the TLM 103 was the right choice because the vocal is a bit more breathy and almost heavenly. It’s quite hard to describe but the sound of it melds well with the instrumental. On Monday in sequencing skills, I presented my track to the class and my lecturer Shea and received very positive feedback. He said that I should sit down and mix the vocal again but not re-record it. W...

Project 4, Session Diary 10: Feedback from friends and tutors

Current version of song which I showed the people giving me feedback: https://clyp.it/dvawbtpy Today in Professional Industry Practice I approached a couple of my friends and my tutor Colin Doran to give me feedback on my song. I received very positive feedback overall and the main improvement points from my friends, Callum, Chloe, Alex, and Christie were to record some harmonies with the vocal, add some toms to the buildup before the chorus for extra tension and to make the vocal a bit louder in the parts where Lauren is singing quite low. Colin was very critical about the track but he said it is a very good song and has incredible potential. He suggested to rethink some parts of the arrangement because I the piano melody is very strong and needs to show a bit more sometimes, this could be achieved by some volume automation. The vocal sounded a bit muddy to him and he told me to experiment with different microphones and possibly record some counter melodies and harm...

Greg Lester

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