Final External Unit

Task 1: Planning 

My candidate number: My centre number: 17343

My name is Samuel Robertson. The softwares I will be using for my composition demo are FL Studio 11, VOCALOID4 and Alter/Ego.

 Through my compositions, I want to achieve the following personal goals:

1. Personal Goal 1: I would like to explore a range of genres through my compositions.
2. Personal Goal 2: I want to develop my skills with emerging vocals in a song.
3. Personal Goal 3: I would like to develop my knowledge and skills on lyric writing.

To help achieve the above goals, I think I have the following skills that I can use:

1. Skill 1: My first good skill is that I am quite creative and inspired by other artists to experiment with obscure musical genres.
2. Skill 2: My second good skill is my skill at mixing and equalising musical tracks.
3. Skill 3: My third good skill is that my writing is often quite abstract and creative which I would hope will be reflected in my lyric writing..

 I will know if I have achieved my goals at the end of the assessment because by the end of having composed my full 15 minutes, I should have a demo consisting of a range of different styles of music and have at least one successful song involving lyrics of some form.

The audience I am playing my compositions to is the Artists and Repertoire Label. Their expectations will be quite high; a fairly short demo (at least 15 minutes however not too far over), demonstrating your personal skills through different genres of music with high quality audio and a professional sound. I will meet their expectations by putting together a thought out demo of my music with a thought out order based on which tracks will fade in and out of each other smoothly and a selection of my strongest songs that show off my range of skills across different softwares and genres.

 I will compose my music in the styles experimental, hip-hop, minimalistic, glitch, psychedelic and trip-hop. This is because I am quite comfortable with composing hip-hop and trip-hop but I want to experiment and create something unique and obscure.

My ideas for my compositions are to make song that are unique and exciting by incorporating elements of other musical genres into another and creating something new. I had the idea to just have one track completely random and packed full of percussion and exaggerated drums at a high tempo with distortion and gates and experiment with vocal synths such as VOCALOID and Alter/Ego. I intend to expand my own skills while showing off what I can do with 15 minutes. I will do it by going for it and composing whenever I feel inspired, taking notes from albums and songs that I like along the way.

 The requirements of the brief are To produce a 15 minute long (or over) demo of my work and music to be presented to the A&R Label. I must show off where I am strongest in terms of musical skill and knowledge and whatever I want to achieve in music. I will meet these requirements by making sure I'm always putting in the effort and planning out my compositions to fit to the requirements and limitations of the brief.

I will need to involve the following people in my performance: myself. This is because I am composing as a solo and producing my own work of my ability and skill.

I will need the following resources and equipment: a laptop and headphones.

 I will need to spend 20 hours at school preparing, performing and evaluating the event. I will spend my time by doing 10 hours of composition because it makes up the majority of my work for the brief. Then I will have 5 hours to evaluate my work on my blog and the other 5 hours for planning, writing lyrics or writing down ideas/inspiration.

When composing, I will need to consider the following health and safety issues:

Health & Safety Issue 1: Volume. Keep the volume at a fair number so that I don't deafen myself.

Health & Safety Issue 2: Tripping hazards. Wires from chargers, microphones and headphones should be kept organised and to the side so I don't trip and die.

Health & Safety Issue 3: Strained eyes. When composing on a computer, you shouldn't have the screen's brightness high in a dark room and you shouldn't stare at the screen for long.

To compose at least 15 minutes of music I will need to compose the following number of pieces:

1. Composition 1: Style: Hip-Hop // Pop Song title: september Length of song: 3:54.
2. Composition 2: Style: Glitch // IDM // Sampling // Experimental Song title: CO2 Length of song: 3:29.
3. Composition 3: Style: Synth // Minimal Song title: untitled_01 Length of song: 2:02 .
4. Composition 4: Style: Experimental // Deep House Song title: w h a t ? Length of song: 2:20.
5. Composition 5: Style: Experimental // Trip-Hop // Sampling // Psychedelic Song title: 4AM / 'Zetsubo-Tekina Romansu' Length of song: 1:50.
6. Composition 6: Style: Lo-fi Hip-hop Song title: summer Length of song: 2:22

The total length of my demo will therefore be 15:17 minutes. 

I have chosen to write these songs in this order because I want there to be ups and downs in terms of dynamics, I want to surprise the listener with different genres.

Task 2: Diary

I will compose on the following dates and I will work on the following at each session:

Week 19 Thursday 18th January 2018 (2 hours):

The composition name I will work on: Composition 6 | [currently unnamed]

Describe what I will work on:  I want to create something strange and experimental, much like Aphex Twin's glitch and bass songs, including lyrics and singing using the synth voice 'Marie Ork' from Alter/Ego.
This composition meets the brief because I had always wanted to compose something in this style, not to mention involving lyrics. It will demonstrate how my skills from FL Studio will translate over to using Alter/Ego and what musical features and elements I can include in such a complicated genre.

What needs work: I must get a start next lesson on getting the drums either started or finished and start on the melody. I also need to get lyrics done so that I can MIDI them into the track once I've got a basic structure and melody finished. Once I've got the whole track finished I can load up A/E and tune in pitch bends, gender factor and any manipulations to 'Marie Ork' and enter the lyrics to be sung.
I also made a short cover of 'Respire' by nostraightanswer using 'Marie Ork' from Alter/Ego to test out the VST. I wanted to get comfortable with phonemes and x-sampa and also pitch bends so I played around with the first verse and this is what I ended up with:

Week 20 Thursday 25th January 2018 (2 hours):

Plan: Today I wanted to nail down and get a complex drum beat finished and add effects to percussion and samples. 

What went well:  I began to add in SFX and effects/filters to the drum samples and machine samples and I basically created a random drum beat. I chose a synth for the melody and made a start on chords.
This composition meets the brief because it isn't an easy genre or style to master at all and I feel it is going very well so far.

What needs work: I need to go home and work on it some more so that I can get it done quicker in order to focus more on vocals. I can listen to some other tracks for inspiration and maybe work on some lyrics.

Week 21 Thursday 1st February 2018 (2 hours):

Plan: I thought of composing another track incase my other idea doesn't go to plan.

What went well:  Decided to begin composing a synthwave track and i got a main melody and drum beat finished.
This composition meets the brief because synthwave is quite a unique genre as it isn't that well recognised. It has a common structure as of now and is easy to listen to.

What needs work: Lyrics are still not finished and I need to be working faster if I am going to be doing two.

Week 22 Thursday 8th February 2018 (2 hours):

Plan:  Work on chords and a singing melody.

What went well:  I got the chords and a simple singing melody finished (the melody needs to be gone over and fleshed out) and I added some filters to the synths.
This composition meets the brief because it includes lyrics and a good structure.

What needs work: Dynamics at the moment are quite random and about the place and a lot more needs to be added.

Week 24 Thursday 22nd February 2018 (2 hours):

Plan: At this point I had multiple incomplete tests for composition and at home I had been working on the one I started in class but I kept trying to perfect it so that it sounded perfect in my ears. However I knew it wouldn't work so I decided I would return to something that I had started a while ago.

What went well:  I began to add a singable melody and began to flesh out the structure a bit more.
This composition meets the brief because the track is quite different compared to my other pieces and it displays my range of skills within other genres.

What needs work: Lyrics need to be revised to suit the change of genre and key as before the lyrics were quite strange and moody which wouldn't fit with the cheery tone of this composition.

Week 25 Thursday 1st March 2018 (2 hours):

Plan: Get lyrics written and start inputting into A/E.

What went well:  I got the lyrics finished.
This composition meets the brief because it involves first hand lyrics and a range of softwares.

What needs work: I need to tune Marie Ork so that it doesn't sound messy and overly robotic.

Week 25 Thursday 08/03/18 Dress Rehearsal of Demo Showcase (2 hours):

Plan: Switch to using VOCALOID4 instead of A/E.

What went well:  I got all the lyrics inputted.
This composition meets the brief because it's unique yet effective.

What needs work: SONiKA sounds scratchy and muffled.

Week 26 Wednesday 14/03/18 Final Demo Showcase (2 hours):

Plan: Finalise & Score.

What went well: I managed to finish tuning and started scoring.
This composition meets the brief because the lyrics relate to the title and genre and I used both FL Studio 11 and Alter/Ego.

What needs work: I need to finish scoring then I'm finished.

Task 2,4: My Compositions

Scores are available via these links:

https://mega.nz/#F!JPIFXS5Z!twfmftDL5CHsBtthWdMoTw
https://mega.nz/#F!0X5zFSQb!XuXT9kRIRgaxmVhSBEW0tw
https://mega.nz/#F!lfBxzJhZ!aTpdYp7e1flwo47igyQDwA

Task 3: Evaluation 

Strengths Reflection:

I was inspired by a range of different artists to experiment and try out new genres which reflects in my demo showcase, but I also had some good ideas and managed to get them down in a song.

Composition 1:  The chord progression was unique and worked very well with every other part to the song.

Composition 2: I really like the drums in this track as the drums make up the overall focus of the track but in my opinion it doesn't become all that repetitive or boring.

Composition 3: I feel the bassline was quite innovative and worked very well to suit the 80's feel that started to develop while composing.

Composition 4: Again, I feel the drums in this track were very catchy, especially during the chorus and I personally feel that they make the track complete.

Composition 5: I found the melody to be quite basic yet effective in this track as it kind of hooks the listener and it got stuck in my head for a while.
Composition 6: I believe the vocals blend well with the instrumental and the lyrics also suited the feel of the song.

Improvement Reflection:

 I found that it was quite difficult to come up with a melody, especially one that isn't too repetitive. Repetition was a common issue for me while composing, but I found that the melody was where it became a lot more of a problem. For me, it is rather hard to compose a melody that isn't too simple or too heavily influenced by already existing songs.

Skills I would like to improve on are:
Skill 1: More dedication to practicing composing often. Even if it sounds bad no one else will hear it other than me.

Skill 2: Stop focusing on perfection - usually when I compose I focus on making every element of the song perfect yet it often leads to the song sounding overworked or just bad. When I compose without a purpose or intention I usually work better and will produce something I'm proud of.

Skill 3: Learning FL Studio 11 more so that I am familiar with everything - although I have a decent understanding of the program, there's still a lot that I don't know.

Improvement #1: Dynamics.

Strategy: I could make this improvement by reading and/or watching guides on how to equalise tracks so that the dynamics make sense instead of being all over the place.

Improvement #2: Repetitiveness.

Strategy: I could make this improvement by composing more often at home to develop more ideas in order to compose something with a good structure.

Improvement #3: Composing a B section.

Strategy: I could make this improvement by listening to a range of genres of music that include B sections so that I can see how they are done.

 Feedback from others:

That some of my tracks were missing elements such as melodies and different sections, making them short in length. However, my compositions were strong and just needed a little more work.

I never thought about adding different sections to the song as I originally wanted to keep the tracks rather short, however adding that little bit extra extended my work further and made my compositions more musically technical.

Conclusion:

 There is a variety of different genres of music included in my demo showcase, including multiple DAW softwares and programs used when composing. This shows off my skill outside different genres and programs but also my flexibility. Personally, I am quite proud of my compositions as they do represent my taste in music and it is something that I would want to show when presenting a portfolio of my tracks and music production. However there are some weaker sides especially when it comes to the length of my songs, for example '4AM' being especially short in length. Additionally some of my compositions don't blend well together, however to an extent that was somewhat intentional because I wanted to surprise the listener. Overall, my compositions are suitable for the event brief because they are of a high quality and show off the best of my skills in composing music.