When going back and reviewing what I set out to do in my proposal and comparing it now at the end of this project, I would say that I have achieved a lot of what I set out to do. I have reimagined the music for both of the selected advertisements, this strongly being helped by my use of reference tracks to differentiate my results from the original; I have recorded the drums that I aimed to do, also not requiring to reach out to a back up drummer which I stated I may be a risk; and the use of synthesis in my project added more impact and excitement, this being particularly seen in the use of ear candy in my 1st composition.
However, there were aspects of this project that weren't achieved. I am still awaiting on a response from Felt music (sync agency) regarding my submission. This does not necessarily mean I was unsuccessful in getting it uploaded, but in regards to my proposal, I was aiming to use their response as a means of evaluation on my compositions, and unfortunately not having this response doesn't give me the professional review on my work I was hoping for. Another issue is raised through this, which is that I don't know if they will respond if they don't want my work, so I may not be able to get any review on the professionalism of my work. This has lead me to implement a section at the bottom of this evaluation dedicated to their response, in which I will evaluate their response or if I don't receive an email back, I will make an assumption that they did not want my work, as to be able to evaluate this process. Another part I was unable to achieve was the multiple edits for my compositions, this being due to time constraints from believing that 1 week to mix, create edits and sync the advertisement would be enough time, this leaving the creation of multiple edits out of priority and causing me to not do them.
These unachieved points may have affected my outcome. If I had got a response back from Felt, I may have been able to effectively evaluate my compositions to a more professional standard, this helping me to understand how to move forward in this area of the industry if I decided to continue. If I had done my edits, I may have increased my chances of getting my work synced, as it is standard to have multiple edits when viewing Felt's libraries. If I had managed to complete the mix, edits and sync within that week, this may, again, have helped me to submit work due to the addition of the edits. How I may have achieved these could be through sending a composition to Felt as soon as it's done and providing notice for the next one to arrive, this helping to give them plenty of time to respond; reduced the amount of time mixing the song to do the edits, however, this may have affected the quality of my mix significantly and may have reduced the possibility of getting my work accepted due to quality.
As for what made this project a success: I was able to create, record and sync my compositions to the advertisements. This was helped a lot by the structure I set for myself in my proposal as it allowed me to easily set goals for myself each week. I also found that my collaboration went smoothly, not needing to contact and gather back up collaborators, and each of my collaborators being easy to communicate with. This helped to make the process of collaboration go smoothly. I also gained a lot of useful information to help develop my knowledge for both this project, but possible projects in the future. This was helped through such sources as 'yapa', who helped give me insight into the business side of music and advertisement, such as expected pay and the importance of a publisher; and my interview with Matt, who gave me a lot of useful, practical ideas for my projects and how to make myself stand out in the industry, such as by using a speciality.
As for the factors that may have made this project unsuccessful: I didn't prepare for the fact that Felt may not respond in the time of this project. As I previously mentioned I could have sent one composition over as soon as it was done and told them to expect another soon as to give them plenty of time to respond. I also, again, failed to do the edits for each song. In retrospect, I could have possibly considered collaborating with an editor for this, as this would have helped me save more time to do other aspects and still be able to get the edits, however this could have been too much collaboration for me to keep track of and could even have taken more time as I may not get a response for a while. Finally, some possible further project development was unavailable to me due to cost. A good example of this is TAXI, which would have allowed me to get actual music briefs for advertisements and would have given me the professional response I wanted for my project, making the process of this project much easier and much more realistic. However due to it costing a lot of money, I decided not to use this.
Throughout my project, I found what went well was that I was able to gather lots of useful research to benefit this project, this including the interview with Matt which gave me a huge insight on this part of the industry, as well as a lot of useful tips such as using a speciality to help myself stand out, this helping to strengthen my knowledge on what it would be like working in this part of the industry and approaches to be more successful. Another good example of useful information was the video talking on how to pitch your music to sync libraries, which gave me lots of useful information on how to grab attention, how much you should write, good topics to bring up etc., this helping me to communicate and submit my work to Felt. This also helped me to develop my communication skills in a more general sense, understanding how to introduce myself politely and engagingly and what topics to bring up, this helping to create connections with collaborators This is a very useful skill in the music industry as a whole. If I hadn't learnt these points, my outcome from this project may be more negative, as not having a good insight on this part of the industry may have caused me to lose important information that could have been required to get my work accepted by Felt. It also would have affected the way I approached submitting my work, this potentially causing it to have a different result due to informal communication or lack of interest from the agency. This also applies to any sync work outside of this project that I may decide to do in the future. I also found that my use of reference tracks went very well, particularly on my second composition as I used Felt's library to help find reference tracks, this helping to make a song that sounds like something they would employ, while still differentiating itself from these references. If I hadn't used these reference tracks from Felt, I believe I would have had less of a chance to have my work accepted as it is less tailored to them. If I only used 1 reference track, I would have likely created something too similar to something that already exists which would make it come off as unoriginal and perhaps not worth accepting, so having multiple references was the right decision to prevent this.
What didn't go well was that my time management would sometimes slip away from me. An example of this is how I didn't finish all the recordings in the week 3. This raises a question on if this is poor time management or poor planning and giving myself too much to do. I would say that this was poor planning, as I had to combine 2 weeks into 1 to keep on schedule and I didn't fully consider the risks of this. However whether it is poor planning or poor time management, it would still be a similar flaw in the music and advertisement industry, as hitting deadlines is highly important to show your reliability as a worker and to successfully fulfil the employers wants. Another thing that didn't go well was that I didn't take fully into consideration that a weeks notice for a response from a sync agency isn't a substantial amount of time, this referring back to what I previously said.
What did I learn from these experiences: I should set myself highly achievable goals, perhaps by giving myself less work within a given time, as to ensure I can hit deadlines and achieve what I need to. I should also be aware of this delay time for a response from sync agencies. If this was a real world of work scenario, I should expect this and not let this control the how I judge the quality of my work, as not to halt my work flow. This differs from this project as I have a limited time and therefore limited time to receive results as to review and evaluate them. Again going back to what I previously said, I could have sent the first composition and told them to expect another soon as too give them more time to respond or view my submission.
In giving myself less work within a week as to make it more achievable, I may cause myself to achieve less than I have, as setting highly realistic goals may cause me to discard some parts that could be too time consuming. Also, if I were to have submitted my first composition as soon as it was ready, I may have been able to get a response back by the time I wanted it. However, I may not have received a positive response or a response at all, as this 1st composition is less tailored towards the sync agency, and this could have deemed me worth less checking on submissions, causing an even longer response time.
If I were to do this project again, I would have set more achievable goals for each week as to ensure I don't fall behind and have to remedy this, perhaps at the expense of other goals. An example of this is my week 4 in which I mixed my 1st composition. I gave myself a lot to do in this week and it cost me doing the edits for this song. If I had set better goals I might have been able to achieve everything I set out to, however as previously mentioned being less optimistic may have also caused me to achieve less. I could also have maybe better divided my goals over each week, however this may have affected the flow of my work by focusing on multiple different things.
I also could have been more aware of issues that might cause me to be a unreliable collaborator, in order to avoid it. An example of when I may have been an unreliable collaborator is shown in week 3 of my blog, as due to train issues I wasn't able to record drums with James on the day we arranged in advance. While this is not necessarily my fault, I still should have made sure he knew my commute and the risks that may come with that as to perhaps help him to understand that he may be able to do his own work if I don't show up, rather than wait for me. Not informing him of this could have caused his schedule to have to change around mine, maybe affecting his work for his FMP, as well as my reputation as a collaborator.
My collaborators were highly reliable and flexible around my work, as well as easy to communicate with. James was very flexible when rescheduling studio sessions in week 3, being able to work around the times I had available, as well as being highly efficient and being able to lay the drums down within a 2-3 hour recording session. Harry was able to provided me with results within an ideal amount of time, helping me to keep working more consistently with little delay. Marcy was very easy to communicate with in the studio and helped to make the studio sessions comfortable and efficient, and therefore go smoother. Overall the impact of the collaboration on my project was highly positive and helped to achieve goals I set in my project.
Reflecting on the importance of collaboration, specifically within this project, I have noticed these benefits: Different skill sets benefit you, a good example of this being when James helped me to fix the sound of the snare, as he is a drummer and understands this better than I; collaboration allows you to see different perspectives on a project, a good example of this being Harry mastering, as it helps to take me away from the song and the mix, as mixing or working on a song for too long can make you hear the song differently, perhaps ignoring significant flaws; and it helps you to reflect on your work, as well as your benefit to the collaboration, a good example of this being my work with Marcy as she was able to help me reflect on my work by giving me a different perspective to my own when recording, as well as being able to benefit each other as she worked on sound engineering for her FMP.
Overall, I would say that my communication skills could have been better. Specifically, I could have emailed Harry earlier to inform him to expect work to come through soon. I also could have, as prior mentioned, made James more aware of my commute and how it may affect our collaboration. So I would say my communication skills could have been improved when reflecting on these experiences. From my collaboration I learnt the importance of advanced notice and from this how I may affect other peoples schedules. If I had provided better notice, I may have been able to gain results back from Harry even sooner which could have helped me to achieve more, such as doing multiple edits. I also may have been able to better arrange another studio session with James and have more time to record the bass for my composition 1, maybe giving me more time to get multiple edits of the song done. This also would have improved my reliability and reputation as a collaborator.
A significant Issue I faced during this project was to do with planning an extra week in my proposed plan, this causing me to have to try and fit this week of work into my project. The way I decided to tackle this issue was to first start by selecting the shortest week of work, this being the week in which I had to structure my second composition after reflecting on my previous week of structuring my first composition and reviewing each weeks proposed plan. Next I looked at which other week I could fit this week of work in to. I originally thought I could do this work at home over the Easter holidays, however not having access to the required materials lead me to decide otherwise. I decided to do this extra week in my week 3, as I only had recording to do and it seemed the second shortest week, as well as fitting in linearly and logically in my project as a whole.
As for other solutions that may have worked, I could have split this missed week of work up into parts and divided them accordingly across other weeks. However, I found that implementing the shortest week into the 2nd shortest week worked better, as I had to record this second composition the week after and combining the two shortest weeks made sense as to keep a more steady flow of work; and splitting 1 week across many weeks would have affected the linear flow of my project and confused me. If I didn't make this decision and instead decided to completely ignore this week, I may not have had enough time to record the second composition, as this structuring phase would have naturally gone to the recording stage, and not being prepared for this may have caused me to spend too much time in the studios, time I may not have had due to their being other students who required this for their FMP too.
This significant issue caused me to not be able to record bass that week, as I prioritised the bass as the lesser important part to record in comparison to the guitar and drums. This lead me to record bass in the following week, thus removing time from the mixing of this week and potentially moving time away from doing the syncing and the shorter edits. However, when looking back, I do not regret making this decision, as looking back over what I previously said, this made the most sense linearly and helped to not confuse me.
During this project, I have seen an increase in my skill set and knowledge. One skill I have gained from this project is the ability to sync music to advertisements. What helped me to achieve this was both practically doing it as a means of experience, but also the research I had gathered. A good example of how the research gathered helped to gain skills in syncing music to adverts is through my interview with Matt, in which he said that making a song with parts that are easily loop-able makes it easier to sync to an advertisement. This proved very useful. Another skill I gained was the ability to write music to advertisements. What helped me gain this skill was the use of the reference tracks video in my week 3 research, this helping me to broaden my knowledge and understand how to best write a song for an advertisement that follows the same energy and emotion. This was also helped by Ewing's article, viewed in week 1, in which he highlights the importance of tapping into emotion and how it can be used effectively in advertisement. This helped me to tailor my songs to an advert, as well as helping me to select relevant reference tracks. I have also gained knowledge on business side of music and advertisement. What helped me gain this knowledge particularly was the article by 'yapa', in which he discusses important aspects such as pay and the importance of signing with a publisher, helping to gain some knowledge on what the business side of music and advertisement is like. What helped me to further this knowledge was the interview I did with my teacher Matt, in which he talked about things such as how to make my music more likely to get synced when uploading to a sync agency and how to target my music to a demographic. These examples of research helped me to gain knowledge and better understand the business of music and advertisement.
If I didn't have these resources to help gain these skills and knowledge, this would have most likely changed how my first sync to advertisement turned out, as not having this idea to make the song easily loop-able would have made it far harder to sync efficiently and affectively. If I hadn't learnt how to use reference tracks effectively, this most likely would have resulted in songs that sounded very similar to the ones in the background of the original advertisements used, leading me to not achieve one of my goals set in the proposal being to re-imagen the music. Also, if I didn't use the research on appealing to a demographic, I may have created music which didn't forward the message of the 1st advertisement to the targeted audience.
As for the skills I developed from this project, I thought I had seen an increase in my communication skills. What helped me to develop this particularly was the video on how to pitch your work to sync agencies. This provided a lot of useful communication tips such as bringing up topics outside of music and ways to structure emails as to help build relationships and better communication. I was able to apply this to one of my emails to Harry, in which I mentioned topics outside of music which he had previously mentioned to help create a better relationship through communication. As this was applied on my last email to Harry, I feel that if I hadn't used this new knowledge, the outcome would probably have been the same; however this is a good practice to have when working in the music industry.
I also found that my song structuring ability developed in this project. What really helped with this was my experimentation and use of the 'Block method', a method in which I used MIDI regions to show where each part of the song would be introduced. This helped me to effectively note ideas for structures and also helped to envision the song through the view of where each part is introduced. If I hadn't created or used this method, my songs may have taken longer to structure, causing there to be less time spent on other aspects of my FMP.
There were 2 types of research I used throughout this project. One of these types is primary research, examples of this from my project being the interview I did with Matt, asking teachers questions, experimentation with recording and mixing. The benefits I have found from using primary research are that you are likely to have a higher validity, as you are able to choose someone you deem valid for information as your source, but also on top of this you are able to ask more specific questions of a trusted source, allowing you to get valid information about topics where you may not be able to find a trusted answer from secondary sources. This has benefitted me as I was able to get information that I trusted was truthful, giving me confidence that I was on the right path. Another kind of research I used was secondary research, this including research through YouTube videos, articles and websites. What I have found to be the benefit of using secondary research is that you are able to find answers to questions or gather information very quickly, as this information is very accessible. This has benefitted me throughout my project as it allowed me to quickly gather information.
What I have learned about the use and importance of research from this project is: using research can help to solidify knowledge on topics I know only with a base knowledge or can help to refresh knowledge, a good example of this being the use of compression research in week 4 which helped to solidify my knowledge and ensure I knew what I was doing. I have also learnt that research can be useful to validate questions, a good example of this is when I received mixed results from searching whether it was standard to provided stems when uploading to a sync agency; I asked Ian if it was, helping me clarify my workflow.
The last point also highlights the importance of the validity of your sources. I asked Ian when receiving mixed results as I knew he had experience directly relating to my question, so in by asking this I was assured of an accurate answer. If I hadn't checked the validity of my sources through this project, I could have had conflicting answers and advice that could have drastically changed my workflow and therefore the outcome of my project as this might have led me in the wrong direction.
The main thing I changed throughout this project was the way I approached mixing between my 1st and 2nd composition. The reason for doing this was to help manage my time better and provide myself with more time for editing to the advertisement when reflecting on the prior advertisement in which I left myself little time to edit due to the length of the mixing process. If I had decided not to change this, I imagine that I could have left myself again with less time to edit the song to the advert, rushing or possibly even not finishing the 2nd composition edit. However, in hindsight this seems less of an issue as in fact I had plenty of time the following week to edit to the advertisement; it is hard to tell as the time spent mixing can range quite significantly. Nevertheless, being cautious and leaving myself time felt like a positive improvement.
An important decision I made during this project was that I decided to not record real piano in my second composition which was something I was fairly certain I was going to record. This was because I wanted to spend as much time making my guitar sound good in recording and I prioritised this over recording live piano. What influenced this decision was the research I had gathered from Matt about how a speciality can benefit you. Since my speciality is guitar, I wanted to demonstrate this best by having a higher quality recording for the guitar. Another factor that played into my decision was that I wanted to use a synth double on the piano and this is far easier to do in MIDI format. This was something that would also help shorten my mixing stage, helping me to manage my time better.
I would argue this was the right decision, as it allowed me to get a good guitar recording and increased the quality of the sound of my composition in my opinion. If I had decided to record both, I might not have got them both to the same highest quality, and prioritising and focusing on the guitar helped me showcase and maximise my speciality. I also would say that the MIDI piano doesn't sound too dissimilar to a real piano and doesn't severely affect the quality of the song, so in deprioritising the piano I don't believe that I reduced the quality of the final result.
I would say that the best features of my track were my guitar parts for both of my tracks, the drums for my first composition and the more natural sound of the synth bass in my second composition.
What contributed to making the guitar one of the best features in my 1st composition was changing my tactics and using a different microphone (AKG D112) which helped the guitar to sound more powerful, which was something I aimed to do. As for the guitar in the 2nd composition, I found that dedicating more time to it, due to prioritising it over the piano, helped maximise the time available to me to make the guitar recording the very best it could be.
For the drums, I found that my instructions to try and make each section start and end on time, and the re-recordings I said to do to make sure of this, contributed significantly to the drums timing. This helped to make each section of the song easy to loop, being very useful for editing the composition to the advertisement. I also found that my suggested experimentation with using wallets on the snare and putting cushioning in the kick helped to make the kit sound much better and helped them to be more fitting for the composition. Without these additions of the wallets and kick cushioning, the drums sounded to boom-y which wasn't the sound I wanted for the kit. The additions made it sound tighter which was the desired sound.
With the synth bass in the 2nd composition, I contributed to the natural sound by using a sudden attack and decay on the synth, this being done to replicate the pluck of a real bass. This helped to make this sound more natural and therefore sit nicely within my track. If I hadn't made this sound more natural through this method, it would have made the synth sound more out of place in the song.
The biggest flaws I found in my project were the absence of contextual audio in the Borderlands advertisement, such as the gunshots and laser sounds that were heavily used throughout the original. Additionally, the intro guitar in my 2nd composition has fuzziness in the background due to the high gain used to try and pick up the quiet guitar.
To prevent the issue with there being no contextual audio in the Borderlands advert, I could have gone back and edited in background gunshots and laser sounds to the entire track, to try and mimic the audio energy of the original advertisement. However, this might have sounded out of place as most of these gunshots and laser sounds most likely wouldn't sync up with the shots actually fired visually in the advertisement. To prevent the fuzziness in the background of the intro guitar part of my 2nd composition, I could have lowered the gain to pick up less air and in turn played my guitar louder as for it to be recorded at a good level.
If I had had more time to edit the Borderlands advert, I could have tried to phase cancel the song out completely. However this would have taken a lot of time due to it being highly intricate, perhaps taking up to a week or maybe 2. As a second solution, I could have been even more specific with the editing of the gun sounds, getting the gunshots and lasers precisely at the time they were shot, this maybe taking another extra 4-5 hours. As for what I could have done to improve the intro guitar in my 2nd composition, I could have rerecorded this, maybe even done whole recordings of me playing through all of the song to make it sound more natural, perhaps taking up to 2-3 hours more. As with all of these improvements, it is uncertain how much time each one would take, so extra time would have been beneficial in allowing me to experiment with different solutions.
Unfortunately, I still haven't received a response from Felt, so I am unable to have a professional review on my work. As I had previously said, I will review this lack of a response as if it were a rejection, as I may not receive an email if they don't want my work at all and it is safer to assume this in order to evaluate. When looking back on reasons I might not have had my work accepted, I can think of 2 major factors that may contribute to this. The first of these is that I didn't submit more work, as when looking at Felt's libraries, they have full albums of songs that were created by 1 artist. Another reason I can think of is that my songs didn't meet a standard of quality expected. This could be very likely, due to having to shorten the time I would normally spend mixing a song for a professional agency. This may have meant sacrificing a higher quality of work, which might have got these tracks accepted. Unfortunately for this project, I was unable to control these factors due to the timeframe I had to complete my project in, making it near to impossible to create an album of songs and have them mixed to the highest quality. However, this does give me some good points to reflect on if I decide to continue with this area of the industry as a career, as even if these points weren't the reason my work was rejected, it gives me a way to approach it next time that may help better my results or give me a better idea on what I am doing wrong.