Monthly Archives: November 2017

Production Post 1

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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.

(Photo by Andie Gilmour, CC BY-SA 3.0)

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

Tutorial 6

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During this tutorial, I presented an updated demo. The structure of the song is nearly finished and the mix was starting to come together. I was told my production was coming along fine and so I should start focussing a tad more on the blog, which is understandable since I have regrettably been avoiding it. I’ve got some research noted down that has been helping me meet my learning objectives. I now just need to write it up in the blog. I’ve set myself the task to get at least two posts created by the next tutorial; one to explain what I’ve done so far – the other to state what I’ve done this week.

Also, I’ve been informed on more possible references including Cid Rim and the Drive soundtrack by Lol Hammond. I’ve also been told to check out Ice Dip by Geoff Petty to help with my research.

Tutorial 5

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During this tutorial, I had presented my demos so far. None of the demos were fully written; most of them were just short loops. However, since I write and mix at the same time, this is does not alarm me – I’m confident I’ll have fully-structured songs soon. My tutor gave me ideas on how to improve the work I had so far. One important piece of advice was to use more automation on certain tracks, and some variation in individual drum tones, in order to keep the listeners interested. With the demos in mind, my tutor kindly informed me on some musicians that I could use as references include Survive and Jon Hopkins.

Tutorial 4

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For my fourth tutorial, I sat with my tutor and made sure that my learning objectives were ready to be written-off. I had to make a few more small changes but it was all finalised in the end. I also checked with my tutor to make sure that my guest lecture blogs so far are written in a suitable format. Since I spent most of the tutorial making the final tweaks to my current blog posts, there wasn’t enough time to get much feedback on my demos. However, with the blog honed, I was in a good position to start making some real progress on my work.

Tutorial 3

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During this tutorial, I’ve been advised to further hone down my introduction post. Although I’m set on what it is I want to learn, I’ve found putting it in word form to be quite difficult. For example, I need to find a better write ‘I want to make my mixes sound wider’. I’ve also been told to number my outcomes and objectives so that I may make quick references to them in other posts.

I have also been told to prepare some demos for the next tutorial, meaning I’ve really got to buckle down with my production work.