LO3: Writing My Demos (A Catchup Post)

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been trying to create a few demo tracks with completed song structures. However, what I find most difficult in music production is the writing process. I’m confident in my mixing skills but generating musical ideas and developing them is always a slow process for me, hence why I’ve set out to look for ways to improve my skills as mentioned in LO3. As shown in a recent interview, most of Makeup and Vanity Set’s work has been produced alongside visual mediums. His album 88:88 was made as an expansion to the narrative of a film by the same name (New Retro Wave, 2016). I thought I’d try something similar and give myself an image or environment to base my work on. I chose to base my work upon my hometown of Sutton-in-Ashfield. Don’t let the nickname ‘Sunny Sutton’ fool you. During my years of living there, I’ve grown to view it as a preserved relic of a past time. The skies are often grey, many buildings look deteriorated, old train routes have become wastelands populated by overgrown plantation and the town pubs seem to think every night is 80s night, playing songs by the Human League and Gary Numan repeatedly. In summary, I want to create music that reflects this urban and 80s infused visual medium, containing elements from a mix of genres including synthwave and hip-hop.

Sutton-in-Ashfield (Gilmour, 2006).

With a theme set, I eventually created a few short demos. Said demos were presented in Tutorial 4 and can be downloaded HERE.

To help develop the demos in the future, I looked up some ways of maximising my creativity. Geoff Petty’s ICEDIP creative process seems to be something I should take into consideration. It’s broken down into six stages: Inspiration, Clarification, Evaluation, Distillation, Incubation, Perspiration. I’ve already got plenty of inspiration behind my work (that being my hometown and music by various artists I’m interested in). Writing this post and talking to my tutor has certainly helped clarify my ideas. The rest of the stages will take place when I get to them. I’m sure I’ll be evaluating my work throughout the entire project as I write, record and mix my music.

References

Geoff Petty (2017) Creativity. Available from: http://geoffpetty.com/creativity/

Gilmour (2006) Sutton-in-Ashfield. Wikipedia. Available from: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sutton_sundial_4.JPG

NewRetroWave (2016) An interview with Makeup and Vanity Set. Available from: https://newretrowave.com/news/2016/5/18/an-interview-with-makeup-and-vanity-set