1. PERFORMANCE EVALUATION
This performance was completed in the timeframe that was set, this is important because time is highly valued in a studio setting, as professional studios can charge upwards of £100 an hour, so being able to manage your time effectively saves money. This can also make you highly desired in the music industry as an engineer, as efficiency will make you stand out amongst others in the same job role, as it will show dedication and professionalism, as well as what was prior mentioned, saving time and money. We, however, found that we had a lot of time pressure, so perhaps being more coordinated with our individual roles and having better communication about such would help achieve this.
During this session, we avoided having any drinks in the studio, this is important due to it being a hazard to electrical equipment and could cause someone harm or damage the equipment being used. We also tried to make cable organisation another priority, as it could cause someone to fall if tripping up on them. However, our cable management could have been better as it was still in the path of the musicians performing, so in future sessions I will take this under consideration. Also, I think being more careful with levels was something i could have been better with, as the drummer wearing the headphones seemed to be in distress at one point due to there being feedback, so in the future I will be more considerate of that as it could cause harm to the headphone-wearers hearing.
I found that as a team we had a good collective understanding of what we needed to do and we were all on the same page, so if issues arose we all knew what we needed to do. For example, when we were having issues with the PA, we all collectively new what the issue was and acted quickly to solve it. I think, however, that while we all knew what we were doing, we didn't communicate enough about it, and I feel if we had done so we would have been more efficient and been able to manage our time more effectively, so for future sessions I will try to encourage more communication within a group, and also to the musicians in the session, as I found that communication from our group to the band was scarce, so communicating with the band more is definitely something that I will aim to improve on in the future.
In this session, I tried to make sure I wasn't taking too little responsibility, and that also in turn I wasn't taking over the session, as I feel everyone else did similarly. As an example, each of use got to use the daw during the session as we all had ideas in specific areas, and each person had the chance to implement there skills within the session. However, I do feel I have done more to help and I never asked what I could do o help, so in the future I will be sure to communicate with them about anything i can do that would be helpful to the group and the session.
with the performance, I found I was most happy with the bands cooperation. My communication with the band could have been better, however the band was competent and understood what they needed to do with little input from the engineers. This helped the session move along a lot more swiftly and smoothly, however this will not always be the case so learning to achieve such efficiency without a lot of reliance on the band is important and I should be more mindful of this in the future.
As I have mentioned frequently already, communication with the band could have been improved more, as it tended to be quite sparse, in the future I may help to tackle this issue by asking for the bands preferences more often, such as if they would prefer the headphone level quieter etc, and I would frequently ask if there is anything they are unhappy with. I will also ensure to commemorate the band after takes and sound checks as to build a better relationship between the engineers and the performers and this helping the session to run more smoothly and make the performers feel more comfortable discussing preferences and other concerns.
I feel our planning was rather good, as we had set up on a different day to the recording date, this giving us more time to prepare the studio and plan around any change in instruments or members in case there were any, as an example, we set up the piano with condenser mics, however if it turned out we didn't need a piano mic'd up we were able to quickly transfer it to a different instrument. However, when the band turned up, it seemed cramped for them to move around due to there being more members than first anticipated, so making the studio more manoeuvrable by moving mic stands into out of the way spaces and having better cable coordination would have made the studio more space efficient and would have allowed the band more space to move, which may be important as it may become restricting to the musicians performance.
When planning for the performance, we each shared our role in micing up each of the instruments, however we mainly divided it by two people setting up the mic stands, and the other person setting up the mics and plugging them into the wall. I was partially in change of setting up the mic stands and set up the stands for the drum kit and the guitar amp. I thought I did a good job of this however when it came to the day of recording, the musicians seemed rather cramped by the amount of stands in the way, so for the future, I will try to find ways to avoid this. I was also in charge of patching the cables from the live room to the audio interface, and also setting up the headphones and making sure that I could be heard through them when speaking through the mic. This ran smoothly and we had no issues with it, however if i wasn't reminded to set up the headphones, we would have ended up doing it on the day of recording, which while it doesn't waste much time, could still make the session run less smoothly and if there were issues with this it would have been more effective to tackle on it on the day rather than the day of the studio session, so in the future I will consider making a checklist for each role so I don't forget to do things.
When comparing roles with other members of my group, and even others from the band recording, setting levels for each instrument is something that we all collectively do, the contrast being that the engineers will set the levels that will be heard after recording and being played through the DAW and the performance members will also be setting there own levels within the studio so that each person can hear themselves, the difference between these two being that the levels set by the engineers on the DAW effects the end result of the levels in the song and the levels set by the performers themselves only affect how much they can hear during the recording process. The engineers may end up changing the levels within the studio if an instrument isn't being picked up enough by the mics, however this isn't always the case as most of the time this can be resolved by turning up the gain of that channel, but this doesn't not affect the mix on the software if the levels are re-adjusted. We found that we needed to come in and solve an issue with the levels that we couldn't control through the DAW, this was because there was a PA plugged into one wall input that was allowing 3 vocals to be recorded onto one track, and the levels on the PA weren't correct, so we needed to go in and solve the issue or communicate it with the performers. In the future, we should anticipate this issue and check this on the day of setting up so it doesn't become an issue on the day of recording.
Everyone was sure of what they needed to do in the studio and each job was carried out well and correctly. The only issue as I have mentioned already is that our communication wasn't the best, so some of us weren't sure exactly what to do when others were fulfilling their roles, so communication in the group should be encouraged and I will try to encourage it in the future.
2. COMPOSITION EVALUATION
My first composition, named Yayzers, fits into the grime genre, however it also includes elements of swing, this being influenced by its very swung drum rhythm, and ambience, featuring many ambient pads. My second piece, under the name "Blues was stolen", is a song in the blues genre.
My piece, Yayzers, would most likely by listened to an audience who mostly listen to grime music, as the song takes much of its inspiration from Grime, and less so from the other influences described above. However, since it isn't completely in the genre of grime, some avid listeners may not like it, so it may reach out to a small sub-audience of such, perhaps those who are also interested in fusions of music. Due to this song being instrumental and not following a melody, it may not be suitable to play live, however, it may be good for those who are looking to find a beat to rap over or do spoken word. My other composition, Blues was stolen, would be best for audiences who like blues music and specifically more melodic and instrumental blues music, as this doesn't feature any lyrics which generally is the reason most blues listeners listen to it as it is what characterises it most and is a main point of attraction for the genre, however I still think this could fit in a live setting regardless, but as a instrumental between songs rather than a song itself, but if I were to do this again i would add lyrics.
With Yayzers, I was most happy with my work on the drums. I managed to do something I hadn't tried before with them and i think it turned out great. This was the reversed drum part heard at the start of the song, which I achieved by programming in the drums I liked, reversing the midi information, bouncing it out to a audio file and then reversing it, which made the drums keep the same pattern I liked, but reversed each individual drum hit. I used this for the intro as well as a riser for the drums, placing the reversed version slightly behind the regular version, making the drums sound like they fade in before each part is played. With Blues was stolen, i found myself most happy with the guitar part, both in a musical and production aspect. For this guitar part, I recorded both through a direct line and with a dynamic microphone, i chose a dynamic over a condenser as i thought it would add a boomier sound and the line was already capturing a lot of detail. I then layered these parts, favouring the dynamic mic recording as it gave it a sort of darkness which reflected the track nicely. I wanted to add a Tremelo to this track, however i favoured a rotor cabinet simulator over it, as it gave a broader sound and fit more with the sound of the song and the sound of the guitar. On the line recording, i used reverb and delay to help fill the sound out and create this really odd sound as it sounded as if the reflections of the guitar were more detailed than the main guitar track, creating, when combined, a really eerie sound that fitted with the dark nature of the blues song.
In the area of composition, i found that i couldn't come up with ideas very quickly so my compositions were very repetitive, with 'Yayzers' following the same drum pattern consistently through the song with only a couple slight variations on the reverse drum and 'Blues was stolen' having the same riff, rhythm and drum pattern repeated for the majority of the song. For future compositions i should aim to write better and more in depth song structures and include more variety and try and come up with methods to create new parts quicker, perhaps experimenting with methods like reversing or flipping midi information to come up with variations. In the production side, I would like to improve on my mixing, specifically my grouping (working with buses) and my spacial mixing to create a sense of cohesion within my compositions. Ways I can achieve this is by experimenting using buses such as making reverb buses to help make instruments share a space, experimenting with linear phase EQ as to help give clarity to instruments that are phasing such as typically kick and bass; and perhaps even exploring the uses of panning nd binaural panning.
3. REFLECT ON WHAT YOU HAVE LEARNED TO SUPPORT YOUR CREATIVE DEVELOPMENT
This term, using the recording studio has given me a better understanding of what it is like to be an engineer, but has also helped me develop my own music and my mixing skills, as since having access to the studio, i have been able to record my own work and explore ways in which i find efficient when working in that situation, and it has developed my skills in mixing real instruments as opposed to midi instruments, of which last year i was mainly using, so having access to the studio has helped me develop many aspects of my production knowledge.
Last year on the BTEC production course, i found it rare that we would work in scenarios which required a group of people, due to it being more focused towards the use and understanding of the DAW, however in this first term i found my skills working as a team have improved from working in a studio scenario, however i still believe i can improve on my team working skills and particularly my communication skills.
When working on my music to film, I learnt a lot, including what a leitmtoif is, what a sync point is and other parts relaterd to thhe subject (drone, ostinato). This would help me start up a career in music ad media if i chose to do so, so learning these key points would help me with this.
Due to me remembering my GCSE theory there wasnnt much i could learn from this, however i did learn and get a much better understanding on Time signatures and how they work, specifically around the differences between time signatures like 7/8 and 7/4, however i now know that the difference between these is the value of the notes. This will help me significantly when learning songs in different time signatures to the standard 4/4 or 6/8, or it may allow me to broaden my musicallity by experimenting with new time signatures and how they change the feel of the song.
When doing research for my tasks, particularly my genre research, i found that after a while of doing it, i was able to take research and make it more concise, rather that what i was doing before which was writing a lot to cover the same amount of information. I think this a useful skill to have, as it can be applicable to anything you do which may involve research, or for anything involving learning. Another thing is that I learnt alot about my 2 chosen genres and how they influenced other genres which i also enjoy. I feel that understanding the roots and beginings of these genres will help me when creating songs in the given genres, allowing me to take the same inspirations and develop my music in similar fashion to how the genre had progressed over time.
Something which I found improved my performance skills was playing in the TV studio and being recorded, as it was a new experience for me being faced with a giant videocamera, and being able to get over my nerves and perform then I believe has boosted my confidence with performing generally.