Greg Lester

Xfer Serum Overview of the plugin: Serum is a wavetable synthesizer created by Steve Duda in which you can import your own sounds to create custom wavetables, modulate every parameter with envelopes and LFO’s and add high quality effects. It’s incredibly versatile and thrives particularly in the field of EDM where skilled sound designers and artists like Tascione create heavy basslines, soft chords and metallic percussive leads as can be heard and seen in the following video which is a demo project walkthrough. Cymatics (2016). Tascione - Free Project File Walkthrough (Ableton, Logic, FL Studio). [video] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Nk_rZl2Cog [Accessed 3 Jun. 2017]. (Splice, 2016) The plugin sits at a medium price range of 189$ but through Splice, a site for producers to collaborate, download samples and plugins you are able to rent it for 9.99$ per month which is a great solution for a lot of bedroom producers who don’t have the budget to buy the ...

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. ...

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 ...

Today I experimented with my Volca Bass from Korg because synthesis will play a part in my composition as I'm using synthesizer VST's and possibly even the Korg Volca Bass in my track. Since it's monophonic I tried tuning the three oscillators differently with VCO 1: being tuned up 12 semitones, VCO 2: at 0 and VCO 3: tuned up 7 semitones to create a chord like note. Then I set the LFO to control the amplitude and the cutoff of the sound. I turned up the peak a little bit so I'd get an edge on the sound and messed around with the LFO rate and the cutoff while feeding the synth midi from FL Studio through the USB-to-midi adapter. I plugged my headphones into the audio output of the synth usually I would run it through my audio interface so I could actually record the synth through my DAW. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough space in my backpack to bring my audio interface to class. I will continue trying to create interesting sounds which I can record and incorpo...

Tasks: Task 2: Research and development       Part A: Recording examples research       Part B: Production tools research Task 3: Audio submission Task 4: Reflective evaluation Classes: Project group:  this class basically supports every task because we get the information on how to best approach each challenge. We can also ask questions and get feedback from Steve on our work. Audio Principles: this lecture particularly helps us in our recording examples research and our production tools research class as we learn the theory behind a lot what goes on in the synth world and the physics behind the music, as well as file formats and a lot of other ver useful things. Additionally, the class will provide us with knowledge to get the best sound quality for our audio submission Critical listening: is incredibly helpful for our recording research task because we analyse different genres of music and talk about what elements make it a...

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...

Today I started with my Research Task A, I chose the songs that I will analyse and wrote down the main focus points of my research for example: Performance accuracy Audio quality Recording techniques Mixing techniques Arrangement Production techniques I started analysing the first of the three tracks “True Friends by Bring Me The Horizon”. I listened to the track multiple times and wrote down some key aspects of the track and how it differs from the typical metal song. I analysed the music video and tried to figure out what gear Jordan Fish (the keyboard player and programmer uses) in the studio and for his live performances. I found an interview where he shines some light on this topic and I will probably use some quotes from it. In the lesson Industry Related Project I learned how to cite correctly using the Harvard format and Colin Duran our lecturer showed us a very useful website called “Cite This For Me” which automatically creates citations for your ...