Research project

Genre Research

Vildhjrta- Lavender haze

This song uses Many different types of keys and chords, in fact a lot of the time you won't hear them repeat any chords in the same section.

The Guitars are tuned down super low to double drop b.

The rhythm in many Vildhjarta songs is one of the key aspects that makes them a unique band.

They’re rhythms can be traced back to a lot of early Djent bands such as Meshuggah, Ion dissonance, Katatonia, The Mars volta. These bands Are very Smart in who they involve Polyrhythms, Odd time signatures, and off beat rhythms in their songs.

chordify.net. (n.d.). Vildhjarta - lavender haze Chords - Chordify. [online] Available at: https://chordify.net/chords/lavender-haze-vildhjarta-topic [Accessed 19 May 2022].

Buster Odeholm

There is no video of buster explaining his drumming technique, but from what i have observed, Buster keeps a very firm grip on the sticks, using his whole wrist to move the stick. When hitting harder he will even use his whole arm to whack the drums.

Whitechapel Anticure

Whitechapel are known for contributing to the start of the Deathcore scene. With drop tuned 7 strings, blazing fast drums, and brutel vocals. However their latest album kin has portrayed a different side to them. Their are still some very heavy songs, but there is slightly more slow songs than any album before.

Phil Bozeman's singing, Ben (lead) Alex (rhythm) Brandon (3rd rhythm) chords and overall structure of their playing. Alex Rundingers slow but still complex drumming, and Gabe crisps punchy bass lines, are all contributing factors to this amazing song.

chordify.net. (n.d.). Whitechapel - Anticure (OFFICIAL VIDEO) Chords - Chordify. [online] Available at: https://chordify.net/chords/whitechapel-anticure-official-video-metal-blade-records [Accessed 19 May 2022].

Alex Rundinger

Alex is extremely consistent when it come to using his own techniques on the drum set. From observing this particular drum cover of his, a lot of his technique involves moving his fingers whilst keeping his hand almost completely still.

By holding the stick between his thumb and index finger, almost acting like a bearing point, he is able to push the stick down using his middle and ring finger. You could even say that gravity plays a roll in this motion.

For his foot technique, his most notable change is when he plays at mid to fast tempos. At slower tempos Alex move most of his leg to push down onto the pedal. but at medium to fast tempos he will use his ankles more than if he was playing at a slower tempo.

My drumming technique

Over the past few months I have started to wonder myself what my drumming technique is. I feel that if I can understand my own technique better then it will help me to compose original rhythms/music, which is a large part of this project. The other big part of the project is collaboration with my band mates, so again understanding myself as a drummer may help to collaborate. I never had a proper drumming technique or at least tried to develop one. so I decided that I should focus on finding new ways to make drumming easier or just more fun through my own techniques.

For my stick technique, i use the American grip. so my hands are angled slightly further up away from the snare and i use my thumb, and index to hold the stick in position. When drumming i will typically use my middle and ring finger to move the stick down to strike the drum. For a metal genre technique this strike must be consistent and strong at all times and so improving my stick technique will help with my metal genre collaborations.

Recently I have made a few breakthroughs in my double bass technique. My technique involves placing the ball of my foot onto the bottom of the footboard and using the tension to quickly reset my foot. But sometimes if i am playing a simple part that does not involve to much double kick, i will move my foot further up the pedal to push down with more force. Similar to Chris turner's technique.

This video goes into a lot of detail about how to set up pedals.

Before then I had no idea how to properly set up my pedal settings to make them more comfortable to play. But now that I think I have set it the perfect spring tension and footboard placement, I can focus on my foot technique.This Website Has loads of helpful info for people who are starting out with double bass.

Metal is a very physical genre, speed and hitting hard are the two most important things. The techniques above are commonly used in the metal genre and so are essential to my drumming practice for this project and beyond. I do also believe that having a wide range of techniques will actually be beneficial for my drumming a s a whole, but for this project we were focused on metal.

Making Music Magazine. (2009). Beginner’s Guide to Double Bass Drum Pedal. [online] Available at: https://makingmusicmag.com/beginners-guide-to-double-bass-drum-pedal/ [Accessed 3 Jun. 2022].

www.youtube.com. (n.d.). Double Bass Lesson | How To Set Up Your Bass Drum Pedals | Drum Tutorial. [online] Available at: https://youtu.be/PqJTXP2CjP8 [Accessed 3 Jun. 2022].

Composing drums

Interviews

I did these interviews to research how to compose as as drummer. I think this has been the hardest part of the project for me. I felt that without the melody that it would be almost impossible to compose and so I asked two musicians how they went about it.

Somin

Focus group. I managed to find someone on my street who was willing to do an interview a producer named Somin. I managed to get a very good insight into how he works and his genre of music.

(I wasn't alone in the room so there may be some background noise.) One of the most interesting questions we asked was:

Do you make music for yourself or for over people?

"Initially it was for me and then i went down the route of- to build a level of commercial success or to even develop a career from it, i needed to build things that were, in a certain vein, or had a certain similarity to what was popular and being released in a certain set of record labels. I did that and it didn't really work, and now im coming back round to, (i'll just do what i wanna do) and make what i want to make for myself, and trust myself that there is an audience out there. But now ive got the opposing thing of finding the best way to market it and the PR element of it to get it into the right peoples ears."

Somin said that being a drummer was not his focus now and that when he composed he was more interested in melody and chords, but it was really interesting that right at the end he came back by saying actually that as we were talking he had realized that rhythm and drums meant more to him than he had thought. He said it was great to talk because he had changed his mind about his focus. he then went on to say that he now sees that he really "collects" different rhythms without even thinking about it and that often a new composition would start with a beat.

This last statement gave me some hope that a beat can be a good place to start.

This is the interview with Somin and some others.

Tim Walter

Tim Walter is the drummer for the original band from Bath called Family rain. I was lucky enough to email him some questions particularly about composing from the pov of a drummer. I myself found writing on my instrument a struggle, and this did lead to not being able to record a track written by me.

I asked Tim several questions related to composing as a drummer. I wish now that i had talked to him a lot earlier in this project, because his answers seemed to be the same as my own thoughts. for example i have been struggling with writing on DAW'S and i know that i will need to get better at it. But Tim when asked about his method of composition said,

"As much as I would have liked to have a process in place- I do not. Our songs are influenced by anything imaginable, many start with a lyric, some start with a drum beat lifted from a TV show- others are influenced by great bands that we have seen play live. I’m into the adventure of never knowing how or if it’s going to work, all I’ve recognised is that it’s useful to have a few ideas on the go at once- and the best one will usually stand out next to the others."

This made me feel more confident that songs can appear as Tim says, "organically." I also liked that he looks at rhythms and sounds from all different kinds of places, even tv shows.

I also asked him if he felt that it was important for musicians to know multiple instruments.

"I imagine being completely engulfed by one instrument would have it’s advantages, you would be less distracted in the room and completely tuned into your corner. I know a lot of drummers who play drums and nothing else, I admire that approach."

I am not saying its not useful to know another instrument, or to be well practiced on DAW'S but being an instinctive musician has also got its place.

This is a document with all of Tim's answers.

I feel these interviews have been really helpful for me to have more confidence in my instrument as a way to compose. The only down side is that I didn't talk to them sooner, because this project has been really intense and short on time which meant we didn't get to record my song.

Target Audience

To find out who was interested in our concept, i created a forms survey. The survey mainly focused on gigs and finding new music out side of your comfort zone. It seems like most people had a good understanding of what a concept album was. how ever i did send the form to a lot of the people who were on my course. These are the results.

Analyzing the results.

The majority of people who participated were under 16. Also most of these people were music students, and their preferred music genre was overwhelmingly rock. For me this was encouraging as i would like to appeal to my own age group, and what we are doing as a group is relevant.

Over 50% of those who answered said that they listened to music through streaming. and when i look at the results i can see that all age groups use streaming. Its interesting that quite a few listen to CD's for their superior sound quality. But what was interesting was how many people do not regularly go to gigs. 2 years of lockdown didn't help people who used to attend gigs. And now it would seem expensive or not worthy of time to attend them when you could stream it.

Personally i love live music, anything, whether it be music, comedy or even theater. There's nothing like it for the complete experience. As a band we are committed to playing live. and so we'll need to find ways to pull people in. This may be accomplished by good advertisement, online and though word of mouth. perhaps some merch as well as supporting bigger bands.

Resources and Techniques

For Rehersals.

For the first few weeks we plan to use the college practice room's, but hopefully on one of our days off we will hire a practice room outside of college. We will be using the equipment there. The room we like most has two boss katana amps, and a mapex drum kit. Unfortunately every room is fitted with a noise meter, which means if we make to much noise the power is cut to the amps and PA system.

For recording

If we manage to record all of our songs, i have multiple variations of drum micing techniques that i would like to try out

Roles, responsibilities and collaboration.

I myself, am trying to get into the role of Time management and studio technician. I was not sure about this role before but during out time at college i have learnt a great deal on how to work in one and be an affective technician. So much so i may even consider this as a future career.

Trying to keep rehearsals documented and trying to get band members together is difficult. But through understanding other peoples motives and mind sets, I've become better at trying to motivate the other members. One of the best ways was to find time when we were all free, which for us was Tuesday, and so i organised a rehearsal studio at tazma. It was very useful and we had no outside distractions to stop us this time. And in future projects i would do this earlier.

Tom is the lead guitarist, songwriter, and in charge of production and post production. Out of all of us in the class he has the most experience in this part of the songwriting process.

Oscar is our rhythm guitarist, a songwriter, and our social media manager. Oscar owns our official band page on Insta, and keeps it up to date. Clearly having social media is one of the most important aspects of being a band. As shown from my survey.

Collaboratively we all work together and our roles overlap, but we try to work to our best strength. The one thing we all share is our passion for music and performing.

Pre-Production

Studio rehersals. Recently we decided to book a rehersal room outside of college

2 studios in local area. https://tazma.com/ https://www.brazensound.studio/ I talked to other members of our group, to set a time and date. I booked it for Tuesday 17th for 3 hours, and split the cost. We mainly did this to test out our new gear without limits.

This is the rehearsal from my drum cam

Google.com. (2022). Avertissement de redirection. [online] Available at: https://www.google.com/url?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.brazensound.studio%2F&sa=D [Accessed 22 May 2022].

Google.com. (2022). Avertissement de redirection. [online] Available at: https://www.google.com/url?q=https%3A%2F%2Ftazma.com%2F&sa=D [Accessed 22 May 2022].

Production

We didn't manage to use the college facilities for producing the EP, which was very disappointing but we did manage to produce the EP using on DAWs. Because we were using programs the tracks lack the live feeling that I had hoped for. It would have been much more useful to use the recording studios at college and I feel we would all have got much more out of it.

The lesson learnt is again about Time management and I will need to be more organised and communicate better in order to achieve my goals as well as the goals of the group. my personal goal in production was to learn and become better at mixing and setting up drums for recording. I already feel that I have a theoretical grasp on what it takes I just need to make sure that I focus on my own goals as well as everyone else's

Post-Production

So the Ep has only two fully written tracks, but there is also a partly formed drum track that I have written which I intend to work on over the summer. The second part of our proposal was to perform at the gig. This seems the more important part as well agree that live performance is our strongest area, and personally it's always been my main focus.

Gear Review

Recently i purchased some new cymbals and snare. The Mapex black panther persuader and the Saibian AAX promotional set promotional

Saibain AAX

These cymbals are extremely well made and produced by only the best in the industry. These cymbals are extremely bright and brilliant, with a very clear and crisp tone. However what sets them apart is their un lathed bells, which gives them a slightly darker tone on the bells as well as affecting the tone of the overall cymbals.

www.youtube.com. (n.d.). Sabian AAX Promotional Cymbal Set - 978/1222g, 934g, 2453g,1299g (25005XCPB-1061619T). [online] Available at: https://youtu.be/vUp6CtOn4gI [Accessed 25 May 2022].

Mapex black panther persuader

This snare drum is probably one of my best investments on my drums. Its one of the loudest snares i've ever heard. This snare is made of hammered brass, with Mapex signature saver hoops and two snare adjusting points, the amount of technology that has gone into this snare is insane.

www.youtube.com. (n.d.). Mapex Black Panther Persuader Snare Drum | Drumshack London. [online] Available at: https://youtu.be/yDgOOowEjfM [Accessed 23 May 2022].

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