Greg Lester

On Wednesday the 13th of June 2017 I booked Pro Control to record the vocals with Lauren Walton. The session started at 16:00 but since Lauren had a tutorial since 17:20 I used the time that I had to set up the mics and prepare a logic project. Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures of the recording session.   I used a TLM 103 by Neumann to record the lead vocal because Lauren has quite a high voice and because the TLM 103 is so bright and airy it really fits. I went for a very clear and clean sound so I used a pop shield to get rid of excess air and sibilants. Because I wanted to try something new and experiment I recorded the sound of the room with the AKG C414 by setting it up further away next to the mixing console on the left to the singer, with this mic I planned to capture a duller and darker sound to blend with the crisp and clean lead vocal. Since there was, unfortunately, a second band playing in Demo 2 I had to set up the mics so that they wouldn’t pick ...

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 ...

Week 1, Monday 24th of April Goals: Have a clear idea and end goal of what kind of song I want to write. Create a cohesive plan on how to approach the writing process, the recording process, the mixing and finally the mastering process Write chord progression on the piano, write down the inspiration for the lyric writing process Resources: Piano, Midi keyboard, DAW (FL Studio), YouTube, Soundcloud, Spotify, Microsoft Word Diary: During this first week, I wrote my Project 4 proposal and part of the task was to complete a “Project action plan and timetable” this really helped me to set deadlines for myself and get a clearer overview of when I needed to start working on a certain task. Till now I’ve held in all the self-set deadlines and I’m on the right path to completing my work and handing it in on time. Having a timetable like this will also be very crucial to securing enough studio time because I can book it ahead of time to ensure that I am able to use it during t...

In the week from the 30th of January to the 3rd of February, we had a formative assessment week in which our knowledge about the lectures we attended in Term 2 was tested. I received decent scores for all my formatives and I'm pretty content with how it turned out. There were some questions that I didn't answer correctly in for example Studio Production, where I didn't identify the right frequencies sometimes and I think that this is valuable feedback since I can see my weaknesses and practise until they become strengths.   I've learned a lot in the time that I have spent at ACM but I strongly believe that I could have learned even more if some of the classes covered more advanced subject matter.  In my opinion, they should split the classes into more basic and advanced groups for the second year to push the advanced and help the people who need more basic knowledge. I strongly believe that this would benefit everyone since some of the classes are hard to g...

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...

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.

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...

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...