The Aviation EP (Major Project)

My Free Release ‘The Aviation EP’ Is Available to Download Now.

Koyaanisqatsi (Final Major)

A few weeks ago Mark suggested that I put one of my tracks over some existing footage. Prior to this Phil had played one of my older tracks ‘Dune’ alongside the film ‘Koyannisqatsi’ and had shown me the result. It worked really well and so today I decided to edit some of the film’s footage to my track. I was sifting through over an hour of clips and found some that I really liked so I cut them and muted the original soundtrack. Then I imported ‘Dune’ and did a more precise cut so that the shots would change as the music developed.

When the percussion in Dune kicked in I place footage from the film that was shot at night and i think this gives the visuals an almost menacing undertone.

Below is the video.

I think that this is a good representation of how my music could be used in a professional environment. I know I can cater to different briefs and contexts so hopefully this will show people I can make effective music. I’ve already got some cool feedback after making the video public.

Jonti says:

“Think you’ve done a really good job here,
You’ve captured the actual feel and context of the video very well, your music emphasizes the Japanese (I believe its Japanese) instruments and atmosphere, But mixing that up with a very relaxed tune, which contrasts with the footage, showing fast, urban life.
It comes across like meditation music and the sort of themes and sounds you would hear in the more rural parts of Japan.“

Promo Promo Promo (Final Major)

Today I’m really gonna push the promotional side of my release as much as I can by getting people to follow my SoundCloud, which should hopefully then direct people to my Bandcamp page.

As I know that I’ve got some awesome followers of this blog I’ll also use this as an opportunity to promote my free music.

Below is an embedded clip of the title track. I’ve posted this on Twitter and asked people to follow or share it if they like it.

I’ve also added the track to various groups on Soundcloud.

I’ve added other tracks to Groups before.

I’ve found that on some of my tracks this has been a really effective way to get feedback, shares and followers. It’s good because you can specifically target a group of people who all share a similar interst in music.

In the description of the track I’ve added a link to my Bandcamp profile and a little bit of information about the EP. I’ve also advertised that it is a free release as at this stage of my production career I feel its of great importance to build a following.

I’ve also just been hitting up Twitter. A form of social media that I’m not so great with. However from hash tagging I’ve gained 4 followers in the last 15 minuites. It’s a bit annoying that they havn’t followed the Soundcloud, but 4 new followers on twitter is potentially 4 more people to hear my work.

My main hope is that once the cover art is released it persuade people to listen to my tracks. I was thinking about this yesterday and realised just how effective it could be.

For example I was searching for record labels that I’m interested in on Bandcamp and found the page for Terrorythm Records.

got a few Terrorythm releases myself but saw some of their recent album artwork and realised that I was listening to the tracks that had artwork I really liked to accompany them.

I found that these 4 covers were particularly appealing.

I even ended up downloading one of the releases.

My EP cover isn’t as vibrant as these releases as it would not suit the vibe I’m trying to put across however I think that It’s a great photo which represents me and my music on the release.

WordPress Followers get Rare acess to the cover art.

Hopefully people will see the cover and want to listen to the tracks.

Loose Ends (Final Major)

Today, apart from listening through to the same 4 tracks around 100 times each. I’ve been making last minuite changes to them and preparing them for the bandcamp platform. One of the steps I had to do was add Metadata to the tracks. Metadata is the information that is saved in the file data. This can include the artist, album, year ect.

Here is the Metadata for the title track ‘Aviation’

As well as this I’ve uploaded the EP to my Bandcamp profile. It is currently available for private viewing only as I’m planning to release it to the public on the 18th (The day of the crits).

Here is what it looks like at the moment.

Official artwork, to rare to show before release.

I really like the way it looks. I think the colour of the text suits the cover art. The text used to be lime green but it just looked wierd.

I also decided on how much the EP will cost to download… It’s absolutely free. My tactic at this moment in my journey as a producer is to establish my self as an artist. My main goal is to develop a fan base through downloads and shares. That will hopefully lead to future sales. I have however enabled the option to donate money to me if people download the EP.

Last week Mark also reccomended that I connect my social media accounts to my Bandcamp and try to all give them a similar theme or brand.

As you can see I’ve tried to keep the same theme consistant on my Twitter page.

As well as Twitter, I updated the look of my Soundcloud.

The options to customize the design of your profile are much more limited on soundcloud.
I links that lead to all my relevant sites on the left.

When uploading to Soundcloud, I will upload the EP as a Playlist of tracks. I will make download links available but these will re-direct people to my Bandcamp.

Branding the Release (Final Major)

A few weeks ago my mate George took some photos for my release. The whole release is influenced by purple, bars, and cocktails and I wanted the cover to reflect this. I talked to George about the shoot and I already had a location that I wanted the shoot to take place in. It’s in the bar that we both work in. I chose this for two reasons, firstly the colour scheme and interior design is the perfect blend of taccy looking artwork and purple decor. It’s also a place I spend a lot of time in (working not drinking) and some weeks I spend more time at work than I do at home (excluding sleep).

Below are some photos of the location.

Classy Ting

It’s reem

So I had this location sorted after clearing it with my boss. Then I started to think about how an album cover can sell a record.

I looked into some album covers that I really like for some inspiration.

Dizzee Rascal – Boy In Da Corner

Essential Grime

What draws me to this album cover is the colour scheme initally and the presence that Dizzee has on it. The album itself is cold and raw sounding and I feel that this is mirrored by the positioning and pose of the artist.

El-B – The Roots of El-B

2 step vibes.

Again the way the artist is hunched over reflects the cold nature of this release’s sound.

Yung Lean – Unknown Memory

😦

What draws me to this cover is the text. I love the font that has been chosen. Seeing this made me think about how the text should look on my cover. I’ve asked Shoma to design a “swag font”.

So with these influences in my mind I felt said a bit about me. One of these was my Maschine hardware. The other is a bottle of Kwai Feh, a lychee liquere that I’ve developed a lot of affection for.

Feeling like emporer Ming

Then I started thinking about my outfit. I made my mind up almost instantly that I wanted to be wearing my full black tracksuit. This is the type of clothes I wear all the time, so it’s a good representation of me. Then I remembered seeing a picture of me wearing some funny shades that make me look a bit like an alien. I chose to wear these in the shoot as I feel that they give me an almost awkward/detached look which I like.

Below is the final image that George Drake shot and edited.

Minus the font.

Im planning to have the text in the top right hand corner. As well as representing various aspects of my lifestyle I wanted the cover to have an element of humour to it. I showed it to Maceo and he looked at it and said “that pose… just screams I don’t give a fuck” Which is the vibe I want to give.

So Many Drafts (Final Major)

Drafty.

Above is the current ammount of saved projects (mostly drafts) that I’ve worked on in the last couple of months. As you can see many of the files have multiple versions. These versions are usually adjustments in the mixdowns of the track. I estimate that as well as these drafts there would be around 100 projects that I didn’t like enough to save.

This is the current project file for The Aviation E.P.

I’ve already decided that two of these tracks, ‘Get over It’ and ‘3000’ will not make the cut into the final release. I feel they sound a little out of place or the quality of the productions are not up too scratch. ‘Purple Day’ is the original project name for the title track ‘Aviation’. which as you can see has multiple exports with differences in EQ and compression.

I’ve learnt that being critical is key. I want everything to sound as polished as It can be with the time and resources that I have. This is part of the reason why I have so many drafts that I will probably never upload publicly. It’s frustrating in some ways as some of these tracks have certain elements that I really like and nobody will get to hear them. However, I feel like it’s really important to know when not to upload things and to pace yourself with how many tracks you put out publicly. I don’t want to be that guy who feels like he has to upload a new track each week and then have to cut corners during production to achieve this.

Brand & Identity (Final Major)

Today I had a tutorial with Mark and he asked me about how people can listen to my music. I told him about my SoundCloud, my BandCamp and my new WordPress site. He thought that these were good platforms to be using told me that there was room for improvement. For example connecting all these accounts to each other so that it’s easy for people to jump from my SoundCloud to my BandCamp and so on. He also told me that I need to loose the student vibe on my music blog and writing in a more confident, professional manner. Part of this push for professionalism includes purchasing a domain name for my music blog. Mark also suggested that I create a linked in page to start networking with people in the creative industry.

As well as this I’ve started to plug my release online.

So I havnt given the artwork away and tried to make it as much of a teaser as possible.

I talked to Mark and we both decided that It would be a good idea to start promoting my work before the release. At first I wanted to keep it hush right up until I released it, but I’ve decided to plug it a bit and let people know there’s something to expect from me and that it’ll be free. I’m really excited to release it and hope that I get some constructive feedback from people and most importantly that people enjoy it.

I named it ‘The Aviation E.P.’, ‘Aviation’ is also the name of the first track. It’s named after my favourite cocktail. This is what this release is all about, it’s my interpretation of bars, cocktails and purple.

Aviation

I think the tracks I’m putting in the release all have a similar theme running through them. They are all mellow pieces that I feel would work well in a bar environment. The final track which is a small outro to the E.P. is a little different. It’s an ambient piece that has a much darker tone. I wanted to incorporate some of my ambient work in this release and thought that these style of tracks would be suited to an outro.

The outro, currently named ‘Sin’ was my way of showing my versatility in production styles. I also wanted to make a track with a more melody driven core to it than the other pieces that feature. It’s the shortest track on the release but also I feel the most expressive. I think that people who know the music I usually produce will like this track the most as it has something dark and edgy about it.

Reasoning

The main reason I’ve been working on this release is to show people that I’m not just a grime guy or an ambient producer. I also wanted to challenge myself, take my productions out of my comfort zone and to experiment with different tempos and genres.

Working with Swoop (Final Major)

The other day Adam (aka Swoop) asked me to provide a soundtrack to his project.

This is Swoop. (Right)

He messaged me on Facebook.

Here’s a segment of the conversation.

I accepted and got to work straight away. Swoop gave me a link to a track that he thought had the right vibe to it. The track is embedded below.

I listened to it and like it a lot. I listened to the track a couple of times and new that I could produce that style of beat. Something I picked up on was small changes in pitch in the track that made the piece sound dark and trippy. Automating pitch shift is something that I haven’t used much in my own productions so I thought I’d give that a go.

I set the master tempo to 119bpm so the track is fairly slow paced. I began with laying down some ambient sounds such as vinyl crackle and some small atmospheric effects which I panned from the left to right speakers. Then I loaded up a grand piano and began to draft some melodies down. Initially the keys were far too harsh for my liking. I added some attack to the sounds so that they didn’t start as sharply and then I applied some reverb but applied it to the front of the mix so that the detial of the piano wasn’t lost in the backing ambience.

The mix function on this effect controls how vibrant the reverb effect is in the mix of the track.

I wrote a small melody that was fairly simplistic and then looped the pattern for 16bars. After this I began to gather some drum sounds for the main beat. I wanted to keep these fairly atmospheric and relaxed. I thought about how artists like Four Tet and Burial use their drums.

Below is a Burial Track.

The drums patterns he uses are all really deep and quite dark and skippy. I wanted to have this sort of feel to the drums for Swoop’s track but at a slower tempo. I also wanted to give them a realistic sound, nothing too artifical as this complements the idea behind Swoop’s piece. I found a kick and filtered it so it had an almost muddy sound to it. Then I added some reverb to the kick, something I hardely ever do, purely so that the sound had a sense of space to it.

Then I wanted to replace the ever common clap/snare with something different so I found some sounds of woodblocks being hit and thought they would suit the piece well. I lowered the inital sample down one octave and then added some rever and a beat delay to make the sample sound more atmospheric and skippy. Then I automated the beat delay to activate on every other hit.

I had a basic beat sorted so I started adding some more atmospheric percussion elements. these included shakers and small glitchy noises. Combined with the piano melody and ambient parts of the track this gave me a nice little beat to develop. I thought back to the track that Swoop linked me and the producers use of pitch shifting so I switched the vibe of the track up for the next 16 bars and added a choir sound to run continously throughout these bars. After filtering it slightly I automated some pitch shifting so that the choir would get lower. Unlike the other sounds I had this running on a 4 bar structure so that it would repeat 4 times whilst the main beat was still running. This left me with a good structure for the main body of the track.

Adam told me he liked what I had so far but asked me to include some small noises that would give the track a sudden unsettling sound. He wanted me to try and bring the negative effects of climate change into my track. I wonderd for a while how I would go about doing this. in the end I added a series of claps and snapping noises which were delayed and reverbed. To me these signify the idea of ice falling and a sense of darkness. I played these back to Adam and he really liked them.

I had almost finished the track. Adam asked me to end the track with a deep menacing line of sub bass to play and eventually fade out. He thought that this would add impact to the message his piece is showing. I did this and then I added some distortion and fuzz to it. It did exactly what Adam said it would and turned the track into something dark.

I exported the track and then sent it out to him and he seems really happy with it.

Working with Nicholas Young (Final Major)

Yesterday DMP’s resident Ewok Nicholas Young (AKA Yung Whippy) came into the cave room with me so that I could work on a soundtrack for his stop motion piece.

This is Nick Young. He is small. Mischievous and not really that young.

Nick had asked me right at the start of this unit if I could provide a soundtrack to his work. I accepted but the mixture of working on my own sounds for uni, working a job in the evenings and being a full time legend meant that I struggled to present him with any sounds. I decided it would be better and invited him to spend a day in the cave room with me which I would be purely dedicated on his soundtrack. I got in at around 10:00AM and got everything set up. About an hour later Nick turned up. From seeing his project’s set and models develop I knew that the story and visual aspects of his animation would be very dark. Below are some super high quality photos of his current set.

This is where Nick spends most of his days. He can’t get much Vitamin D

A small scene that nick has made out of mod-rock and real rock.

Inside Nick’s little den you can see his main set.

A close up of his character that he’s made.

So having seen the development of these sets and his characters and knowing about the story behind his work I was confident that I could write a track to complement it. Nick told me that he wanted the sound of Vinyl records crackling throughout the whole piece. This was easy to achieve as My software has loads of ambient crackling samples in it already. I found one that was nice and subtle and then clipped a small section off of the end so it would loop seamlessly over 16bars. After this I loaded up a sub bass sound and ran a LFO (low frequency oscillator) through the noise so that it wasn’t just a continuous hum of bass. Then I added a Low Pass Filter to the sound and automated the intensity of the filter so It would give the impression that the Bass was rising and falling away into the Background.

This is what the different groups and scenes look like for the soundtrack to Nick’s animation.
Within each group are a number of sounds and FX buses.

The sound currently was to intense and would have been uncomfortable to listen to for most people so I reduced the low and mid-low E.Q. values a little. This is something I’ve been doing more regularly as I think I had gone from not having a enough bass in my tracks too pushing way too many low frequency sounds into a track. I’d noticed that This was making my tracks sounds really muddy through my headphones. After this I began to add some sounds which I connect with darkness and too an extent the idea of insanity. Something that I had picked up from the story behind Nick’s character. One of these sounds starts off as simple clap drum. usually from an 808 or 909 kit. Then I set the beat-grid in my software to 1/32 of a bar. (This means you can fit more sounds in a smaller amount of time. I then paint the sound into each new space within this bar. When the claps are played back with this new time signature. It sounds horrific and would be very painful to listen to at a high volume. However when you apply a Low Pass Filter to it and sweep it up and down subtly it can sound something similar to a helicopter’s blades passing overhead. Then I panned these filtered claps from left to right to bring a sense of space to this effect. I continued doing this with other sounds, the majority of them were other percussion instruments. The applied filter has to remain fairly strong throughout when this technique is used to make sure the high frequencies of the claps aren’t too piercing on the ears. The I ran some of these sounds through a Flanger. (Flangers can give a warping/robotic effect to some sounds).

You can see how I’ve fitted more sounds in the same space by setting the beatgrid to 1/32

Nick stated he wanted an almost robotic/ industrial feel to run subtly throughout so I thought this would add to that idea. After this I stated working on some subtle noises like drips and small metallic noises that echoed and reverberated around the audio space. I found some that i like and created small, unobtrusive melodies to add some higher frequency detail to the track. I uses a mixture of panning, BPM delays and reverbs to add a feeling of space and time to the project. Like I’ve been doing in my previous project I limited the amount of sounds that played through one area of the speakers at the same time. If I did layer two or more sounds to play together I’d make sure to offset them to the left or right sides of the speakers. Giving each noise more space in the mix. After this it was time to develop the track further so that it would complement the narrative of Nick’s animation.

He explained how he was going to create a montage within his work in which his character loses his mind and goes crazy. He wanted me to create this mood through within the track.

Here is What it looks like.

To do this I inserted some Kick Drums. I didn’t want ones that had a dancy feeling to them so I found some samples of an old kit in the Mashcine software that I liked. I took these into the piano roll and then Pitched them 4 octaves lower than they are originally set. This made them sound incredibly muddy so I filtered out some of the lower band frequencies to clean the sound up. Then I created a small drum pattern that used different pitches. The resulting beat I had was almost tribal in nature and very dark. I liked it a lot and Nick thought it worked really well when I played it alongside the ambient sections of the track. I wanted to push the sense of menace and rage further and so did Nick. I found a synth sound that I would usually associate with house music or trance, and experimented for a while with it. I applied some distortion, reverb and filters over the sound, which totally transformed it into an industrial drone. Then I pitched it down a few octaves lower and took some of the release and sustain values out of the noise so it would end more abruptly.

So as well as the distortial effect I also used a Frequency Modulator. Something I’ve used befor which can give a metallic buzz or screech to a sound.

It sounded really good and after adding some Feedback within the Distortion effect. I was happy with the sound and inserted it in to the timeline. The resulting composition was really effective and Nick loved it. I looped this sequence for 16 Bars. After this I calmed the track down a bit and revisited the ambient sections. I made some subtle percussion additions but apart from them the track remained the same as the intro. Nick then asked me to finish the track off with a climactic\ crazy mess of noises that would compliment his ‘death’ scene. To do this I copied and pasted the industrial pieces of the track and added and Grain Stretch effect. I don’t actually know the technicalities of what this effect actually does. All I know is that when applied and manipulated it turns all the sounds into a time stretched bowl of audio spaghetti that tangles up and warps in a crazy mess. Nick Seemed to like it though. So I faded it out to silence to mark the end of the main sound track.

You can also see that I lengthened the silence at the end of the beatgrid to allow time for the Grain Stretch effect to fade and filter out.

Here is the final track.

Nick then asked me to produces some small sound effects for him. One of these was the ambient sound to the laboratory he constructed. To do this I took a completely new approach to production. I turned the beat grid off so that nothing could be quantized. Essentially this can remove all structure or notion of beat to the track. I also lowered the tempo to 33BPM which is much slower than the a lot of music. Then I found some synth sounds and took all the release and most of the sustain values out of them so they were small glitchy beeps and blips of noise. Then I tapped as many keys and pads as possible with complete disregard for any type of musical scale. I was really surprised at how effective the result was. It sounded like a living community of computers talking to each other. The sound however was a little sharp so I added a small amount of reverb to the master channel and this gave everything a sense of space.

The different sounds I used to create ‘Lab ambience’ in my timeline.
“All the colours of the bow”

You can see here all the notes I’ve played for one of the many sounds in the piece. It was totally random. with no deliberate melody played as I wanted the track to sound as spontanious as possible.

Here is the Final Lab Ambience Track. It is only 8 Bars long and Nick will be easily able to loop it if he wants it longer.

Development – (Final Major Project)

So for the past year I’ve been focussing mainly on the production of music. I feel like this current unit has tested me a lot. I feel more confident in my music, I’ve learnt a load of different skills and techniques in the past few months that have made my music sound more polished and professional.

This unit has also turned me into more of a perfectionist. The first tracks I ever produced were on the Ipad, and although I could not have expected the same quality in sound that I can achieve now, I do feel that I was too eager to put my sounds up online. I think I’ve become a lot more critical of my work. Roughly 90% of the tracks I start will not make it out of the draft stage. This could be seen as a positive or a negative thing. Occaisionally I feel like I disregard a draft to early and begin a new project. However I’ve accepted that for now it’s the way I work. I have to create something that grabs my attention instantly and then work around it, spending time to develop it into a track.

I’m trying to be a lot stricter with what I export as a finalised track. I’m finding that my project files now have multiple versions, where I have tweaked and re-tweaked different elements. These small changes are often so that the mixdown of the track sounds a bit tighter.

Highlighted, Is a track that is currently under a different name and will feature on my online release. It has 7 different varients (As well as others under differernt names)

I’ve also started to listen through to exports of my tracks through differernt speakers. This has made me realise just how important it is to spend time on mixing your track. It’s still an ongoing battle for me but I feel like my tracks are balanced better than they would have been a couple of months ago. At the moment I use Phils Pre Sonus monitors to produce on, but then I’ll listen through to the track through laptop speakers, my headphones and then through my speakers when I get home. A lot of low frequency detail is lost when music is played through a laptop’s speakers so I’ve started to boost the mids and the highs a little bit in my Bass sounds so that they can be heard through a laptop.

As well as this I’ve occasionally applied a bus compressor to the Master Channel. To tighten all the elements, although I’ve used it very sparingly as it’s so easy to overcompress some elements of the track.