Assignment 2:

Midpoint Blog

WHERE I'M AT:

It has now officially been a week and one day since I submitted the plan for my final project.

To start, I’d like to declare some additional information that I had decided after working on more parts of my project plan:

I will be potentially using two more software/apps for the final project.
- Bandlab (essentially a counterpart to Walk Band)
- Ableton Live 12 - this one was recommended to me by a friend who does music production as a hobby. It’s not free, but there is a 30-day free trial, which fits the exact timeframe I’ll be needing it. I was told it was simple to work around, and that’s good enough for me.
New actor: my friend Gia!
- While writing the script outline, I realised I needed another actor for a certain segment. I got another friend of mine to agree to be part of my project, but in the case that she isn’t available, I do have an alternate scene in mind. Backups!

I’ll be very honest right now - I’m stretched thin. By different courses and additional responsibilities. This is obviously to be expected, considering that the 3rd trimester is always the shortest and therefore the busiest of the academic year. I am also a member of The Cursor and have been taking shifts for live coverage of the current round of SoliCon and GASC. On top of that, my other course assignments are demanding, as I stated in my previous submission. I am exhausted. I guess explaining my reasons will ultimately sound like excuses, but what else can I say in that regard?

While juggling all these multiple things at once in an attempt to be productive and move progress forward, my anxious tendencies got worse and I realised that it was just counter-productive. To be clear, this was mostly due to my other courses, more specifically, group work. I put a hard stop in my ‘routine’ and instead I started focusing on one thing at a time. At least, with what time allowed me. I was going to do preliminary tasks like the research and writing portion during breaks and any extra time.

It was my way of being more mindful with and of my work. I’m slightly behind my set schedule, but I have at least finished the script.

My progress now:

As mentioned, I tried to keep things within a close time range to each other. I believe that it's still feasible, it's just that I may not be able to follow it on the nose when it comes to dates.

Slight corrections: Research was finished about midway through script-writing.

Units, units, units

The three units were pretty straightforward so when I saw the course manuals up on the site, I thought that it wasn’t as much as I had expected. Then I actually opened it. I took care not to rush through it, I read through them from the week they were uploaded and I took as many notes as I thought was appropriate. During the drafting of my first assignment (pre-production), I had a little bit of an aha! moment when listing out the microphones I would be using, because they were two different types that were specified in one of the units. That small moment made me look forward to learning, in a way.

Unfortunately, I have not been able to participate in forums in a timely manner, or much at all really. I’ve been too busy and I’m not going to force myself, but I am considering revisiting the idea of posting later on. Might be too late by then, though. I have, however, been reading posts when I can as I find value in that, too. While not formally going through many of my classmates’ project plans, I have seen some ideas thrown around that made me think, ‘Whoa, what a great project proposal!’ or ‘How did I not think of that?’ I sincerely can’t wait to see some of the outputs.

Like last term, I am once again unable to join in on F2F sessions due to my status as an offshore student. It’s not exactly compatible with the online learning setup. Despite that, I am glad to say that this course had more content to learn from through the course manual. During MMS 173 Photography, I often felt lost and that led me to seek out external sources on how to achieve what I wanted in my outputs. I may not be directly involved through the discussion forums, but I don’t feel as though I’m just floating aimlessly during this course.

The resources provided in the course manual were good, but I didn’t want to take any chances to cut corners in my understanding. So, I did more research. Here are some videos (there were a lot more than listed; some helpful, some not) I watched to help with my project:

“The Art of Mixing is the way in which the dynamics we create with the equipment in the studio interface with the dynamics apparent in music and songs.”

- David Gibson

Sourced from the course guide. I watched this video in its 2:39:21 entirety over approximately 3 days. I loved every bit of it, and I also now love David Gibson. Learning through trippy visuals and funky music made things more bearable. It was useful in the sense that I could better visualise the placement of certain audio tracks in a mix.

I also looked up videos centred around the specific equipment and software that I would be using, or at least aim to use, as I don’t want to waste time trying to listlessly navigate through them.

[I might not have to use this as much as I thought I would, but I’ll know this for sure when it’s time to actually process my recordings.]

I’d like to give a shoutout to my friend and classmate Allex Huerto for the moral support she’s been offering me. Without her constantly checking up on me and updating me about any course and non-course-related happenings, I probably would’ve been so lost. Out of all my classmates’ work, her ASMR project is what I’m most excited for!

Additionally, I want to extend even more grace and appreciation to my irl friends and my partner, who are going to be helping me with the project (recording-wise, that is; the thought of me just making vocal impressions is tragic).

I swear, I am not crunching on this project, but I’ve also never had to work this much for a trimester until now. Crazy stuff.

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