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Kane and I have been working together since last year where we created a music project called 'Music, I Think', where we played originals and covers, made a video and made music to fit between the clips.

This year we intend to create an EP, fully produced and mastered at home with our recording gear. This will be mostly originals. We meet every week to work on ideas, complete previous tracks and we also go to certain places or situations to get inspiration.

We have started recording these tracks already. We mix to some extent, but are leaving the most part until one time where we can sit together and mix them all after recording.

As of July I have now mixed all tracks, final adjustments are always being made but we are almost ready to move into mastering.

Track listing:
1- Welcome To The Words of Someone Left Behind
2 - Stay
3 - Can't You See?
4 - My Ugly
5 - Sinnerman
6 - Everyone

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So far we have written 'Stay' and 'Can't You See?', both of these tracks are ready to be produced now. We have since written 'She' which is a song with imagery of damp, dark places. Desperation pushes the character of this song but no words are ever enough for her/ him to let out the pain. It's a song of defeat, with the repeating imagery of chalk being used to write of a mossy wall, but it just smears instead of writes and crumbles at their feet. They look down later in the song and see the chalk dust on their shoes. This song is in open C tuning. Most of our others are in standard or whole step down.

After that we wrote the title track, 'Welcome To The Words of Someone Left Behind'. Like most of our songs so far we both write lyrics and music, and in this song Kane wrote the verses and I wrote the choruses.

We are yet to record this song on Logic so this week we will do that and tidy up any parts before we record. This would be a good song to post on social media to get some interest in the album.

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This week we wrote Welcome To The Words of Someone Left Behind (the title track) and started on mixing it. We added a drone to this song, so while we were at the desk we decided that mixing and getting things sounding glued in would be good idea.

We also started writing a new song which as yet has only lyrics i've toyed around with. We like to write lyrics together, so I will bring these to our next session and see what Kane makes of them.

I've been working on some mixing on Stay, adding vinyl simulators to certain chords and phaser and reverb to Kane's vocals to get them sounding really airy. The usual effects like compression, EQ and panning have also been used. I panned my vocals on Stay hard left and right with some reverb to get a similar sound to what i often hear on Lennon's albums, because I like it.

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Recording Stay we used an SM57 for the guitar parts with and LDC room mic. After tracking these we added the vocal tracks, recorded with the LDC and a reflection filter.

Once all tracks were down, the guitar and vocal tracks were parallel processed so we have three of each. They will each take a different direction of the stereo field whilst being merged together after having different effects added to them. The effects might be the same on some tracks, but they are varied, for example, the EQ in the left field on the LDC mic might sit more in the high end, but with the SM57 mic, I'll also pan that to the left and have it sitting more mid or low range. This means I'm using the mics to their full advantage for the sound we like.

I've added compression to the vocal tracks to make them pop out of the mix alongside the EQ use. I also add reverb and phaser to them in this track. I also used a DeEsser. I have added a Vinyl simulator plug-in to one part of the song which makes it sound very warped and moves around quite a lot, which with Kanes phased vocals sounds great.

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I think a theme for my vocals in this album will be the hard L/R in the stereo field along with some reverb. I've used this again in this track, along with some compression and EQ. Kanes vocals once again have the phaser and reverb on, these effects really suit his vocals as they're already very airy and 'haunting' (in the best way possible!). We used the same mic set ups and processing as in Stay.

We had a lot of fun writing this track. We came up with a different character for each verse, and each character has a problem society either doesn't like to admit, or sweeps under the carpet. The first character is a homeless man who has turned to drugs to soothe his life. He has lost everything.

The second character is a woman who is being abused at home, she made herself everything for the man she loves, but unfortunately it is a toxic love.

Character three is about a couple who are only together for materialistic reasons. He's old and rich, she's young and attractive. It's a personification of materialism.

Our fourth character is a serial killer who does it because he can't stop. It's an addiction, an itch he must scratch. We wanted to write about how maybe these people, though evil their actions are, are perhaps just very ill and need help rather than being killed off. This was the most difficult one to write whilst still showing that we obviously do not condone anything like that! It was however the most interesting, because putting yourself in the mind of a person who has to kill for satisfaction is very strange. Usually if we write a character it's about something like love, or being broken up with, something nearly everybody can relate to. This was a challenge because we have no idea what goes through their minds. We had to read into people and learn about conditions for this verse to work.

The last character is a prostitute, who only does it to feed her children. The last two characters interact, though we never say what actually happens to the lady. All we mention is the killers type of car, and then in her verse it mentions about getting into that car. Did she get killed? Did she get spared? Who knows. However, by creating this interaction, we've brought up a final situation that gets the public divided in views. The murder of sex workers. Do people feel sorry for the prostitute, or do they take the stance of the job being unlawful and therefore 'the woman's fault'. This definitely sparks controversy in opinion, and that's exactly what we wanted from this song. This song is about things people don't want to admit, or feel, or know about. Ignorance is bliss.

I've added some Leslie rotor cab to the guitars and flanger to the vocals, it makes it sound like there are whispers coming from underneath the vocal lines, and also as if it's underwater. It makes the song stand out a little more against the others now, and the mood has changed slightly. It now feels more mystic and strange alongside the already existing emotions.

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This song is the least developed so far. We have acoustic lines, lyrics and a slide guitar part but we're not sure what else to do with it just yet. I think we might go back to the drawing board with this one.

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Welcome To The Words of Someone Left Behind

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Welcome To The Words of Someone Left Behind

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This is the song we have that is most completed so far. The song takes a view on a post apocalyptic Earth, whilst also being influenced by loneliness and soldiers returning home with PTSD. The song is a fingerpicked melody, like the others, and is in half step down tuning.

So far this track has quite a lot of the production completed. EQ, compression, reverb, phasers. All the previously used effects in the same places with some tweaks. This time we used a drone sound to give the song a bottom end. The drone was made of arpeggiated keyboard notes, washed with delay and reverb, with the EQ adjusted to it doesn't have much of a rhythm to it, more just a drone sound.

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We didn't write much today, but we got some ideas together, went on a walk to the forest this week and felt this time was used in good spirit - we can't just sit in the room all day and expect a song to come. I've found a load of demos from the past few weeks which I will put into Studio when it comes to submission. These really show how far the songs have progressed since their conception.

Kane wrote some chords which may become the final song on the EP - 'Six'. We have yet to finish writing this song, I've come up with some lyrics so far but we haven't decided on what to do with these yet. I've written more lyrics since and enjoy those more, and I love Kane's lyricism so would love for him to write the lyrics for this one too. I always enjoy working together on lyrics, Kane really brings the best out of me, my more creative side has blossomed thanks to working with him,

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Much more progress this week. Kane and I wrote a new song which we will either add to the album, or just keep it at 6 songs and make this the final track.

This song is heavily inspired by Operation Grapple. A set of early British nuclear weapons tests in the South Pacific Islands, in the 1950s. These tests involved troops witnessing nuclear explosions with their own eyes, distanced mere tens of miles from the explosion. It's a truly frightening use of human guinea pigs. Many of the men involved died of unnatural causes, cancers and many of them were even left infertile from their exposure to the radiation. One sailor described the serious health affects his newborn daughter had, who died very young and was conceived after he was exposed to the radiation.

As we were writing this song, war broke out in Ukraine, so our song has also been influenced by the terror involved there.

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Everyone is written in a minor key. The chords I'm not familiar with, having not played them before. In fact, I've never even seen some of these chords before. However, I find the movement of this song feels very 'Radiohead' and 'George Harrison-esque'. Awaiting recording. It's been great fun to write, not knowing what i'm playing has made it really enjoyable, as it's all done by feel and sound. We wrote the song first, then the lyrics. Having both we got the structure in place and now we are ready to record.

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For last term we submitted our take on Nina Simone's 'Sinnerman'. All relevant information about this can be found in my last term submission.

We really liked the experimental genre we found ourselves working in, capturing sounds from the world around us (storms, conversations, speeches, chains wrapping) and using them to create beats, melodies and atmospheres. We would like to continue this in the album.

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Playing around with ideas for the rest of the song

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More written to the song!

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Full song demo

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This week we recorded 'Everyone'. We may change the title of this track. However, we got the guitars and vocals tracked, and now we are experimenting with sounds using the MIDI keyboard. These sounds will go underneath the track to help push it along, and keep the track listenable. As our melodies don't change much through the songs because the lyrics are the main point, we want to make sure the listeners don't switch off. We've been taking a lot of influence from Massive Attack and just feeling our way through different sounds, modulating them, arpeggiating them. It's a really interesting way to work as for both of us this isn't our usual style. This track will likely involve us using speech samples, and heavily produced sounds from around my home like cups/ glasses clinking, metal on metal sounds. Anything we can get to have a really big drawn out sound using effects  like delay and reverb. Heavily washed with reverb and the delay turning the sound into a rhythmic part for the song.

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Production of title track 'Welcome To The Words Of Someone Left Behind'. We've done a lot of automation on this track, volume, panning, effects coming in and out. Kane had a great idea of using a speech from Harry Truman after the Hiroshima bombing. Having those haunting words in the track really adds tension and character. I had the idea of adding the clicks of a geiger counter, both of these are subtle nods to the idea of this song being about apocalypse victims leaving letters for the survivors to find.

I've been using a lot of busses and sends in this song, it's tested me and taught me a lot about how important it is to listen carefully to the production and from different perspectives (headphone/ monitors). I've added a side chain compressor so the speech can sit underneath the vocals and when the vocals take breaks they can push up in the mix. I really want to get this sounding smooth and everything fitting in its own place, so I've tried to use a compressor on the output channel to achieve that.

It was a great day and I feel like this song is really coming along nicely, and being creative with Kane is always great fun.

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Continued producing "Welcome To TheWords of someone Left Behind". Adding a Geiger counter (added delay and echo to this, increased frequency of delay until it starts to ring at the end of the song - automation), Truman's Hiroshima speech (cut up, reversed samples). Kane is currently working on the music video. Recording more piano parts and getting the timing to sit right, possible retracking needed.

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A week of producing, going out for some inspiration with Kane and finding some interesting art work for the music video for 'Welcome To The Words...'

We travelled up to Bungay, where we walked around an old RAF base active in WWII. We got some great footage of abandoned and stuck in time areas.

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Please see original programme notes from 'Sinnerman'. The second song 'View Down Here' is irrelevant to this.

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Started to master the track for the summative.

Started by adding the WAV of the project into a new project multiple times, panning each to a different area of the stereo field. I added a final compressor to glue things together, and added a stereo field plugin which allows me to move frequencies to certain areas of the stereo field.

Sent this to Kane to add to the video.

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We ended up not going with She as a track in this EP and wrote a new song called My Ugly. This song moved us into a different direction sound wise for the whole EP. We added drum machines and bass loops into most of the songs after writing this as we discovered how much better it sounded to us.

My Ugly still fits the theme for this EP, things people don't want to admit to or talk about, as we all have something we consider ugly inside us but don't necessarily want to admit to.

The other difference in this song is that it's the first song we've used electric guitars on. We felt it really added something new to our sound having electric guitars instead of acoustic, there is more urgency and better control over the effects we added through pedals and plug ins. I could shape the tone easier using the controls on the guitar too.

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Tracks:

Because I use a lot of the same techniques throughout this EP I am going to write in general about how I used certain techniques to get the desired sound. However, most of these tracks have something unique about their production.

I've been mixing the tracks more now that we have all of them recorded and the instrumentation is complete. I've been adding a lot of effects that will make sure the tracks are all as smooth as possible before I move onto mastering. Using volume automation, I've created fades which makes the beginnings and ends of regions start and end/ move seamlessly into the next region. I've also been using compressors to glue a lot of parts together a bit better, for example, a guitar part or vocal part would really benefit from a compressor to help it sit in the mix and sound more natural.

I have been listening out for parts where regions may drop or rise in volume, so moving through the songs and keeping track of where I need to automate the volume has been a lengthy process but it means everything will sound better and be easier to master because everything is at the correct volume level.

Automation does not only apply to volume, so I have been using it to control EQ and effects like Gain, Flanger, Chorus. Corrective EQ has been used in this project, but a lot of the time I have found I prefer the sound of the tracks when the EQ is not doing much work at all, so the automation has been really helpful and made working with EQ a lot easier to manage throughout the songs because at different points in the songs different EQ will work better. I have mostly used EQ to push the bottom/ top end up or down and on specific instruments like drums or piano. It's been very useful in getting kick drums sounding denser and pushing pianos into mid frequencies. Combining the EQ work with panning is where things start to sound better as each frequency has its own area in the stereo field, but on differing instruments this area will move due to the position of the instrument in the mix.

I have used some loops from the Apple loop library in Logic but I have been cutting them up and rearranging how they sound so they are totally unique. I only used this in the song 'Everyone' at the end. I have however used Logic drummers throughout, as well as creating my own beats with the step sequencer.

I took a lot of inspiration from Massive Attack in mixing this EP, using interesting MIDI sounds like Gospel choirs which are then sent through a synth, turning the end result into a string sounding instrument with small amounts of modulation creating a pulsing feeling, especially when panned back and forth between the extremes of the stereo field. I also took some ideas from Massive Attack like reversing sounds and bringing them in gradually for effect. One example of this is the piano part at the end build up of 'Everyone' which sounds similar to Massive Attack's 'Teardrop'. I used my MIDI keyboard to play the chord I needed, bounced those MIDI sections in place so it changes to an audio file, then I could use more automation and effects on them such as reversing the sound. The end result is a large swelling piano chord which starts quiet and ends as the chord strikes. To really push this effect further I recorded the chord again on a different track and placed it in normal form just at the point where the swelling reverse chord finishes. This resulted in the chord at the end of the reverse track leading into a chord which is the start of a track. Essentially I added the chord onto the end of the reversed track so it would ring out louder and with more clarity as it's playing the right way around.

I also made use of reversing audio files in the title track, it gives another depth of eeriness and ominous despair when the guitar chords starting each phrase are reversed. I like how it makes me feel almost alert or aware that something isn't quite right because I don't hear it very often. It's not often we use it so liberally but in this case it adds to the story. In 'Everyone' I use this again, as mentioned, but applied differently. Once in the whole song and it's not made to have attention drawn to it like in the title track.

Along with this confusing editing (which is much simpler than i've made it sound!) I have recorded sounds like broken Harpsichords which play a jangling stepping rhythm as the swelling reversed piano is coming in, this builds tension just before the big drum break and the lyrics come in.

I've been practising things I never knew I would do in my musical journey, this new style of music I enjoy making is really new to me and I have to say it's become a really innovative process for me as somebody who is new to mixing and playing a genre other than blues/ rock. It's with this innovation that I've been forced to learn different techniques, mostly from experimenting in Logic and listening to lots of Trip Hop, then trying to figure out what exactly the artist I've been listening to is doing to create certain sounds, how they created a mix in a certain way, how they use the stereo field to their advantage and how they use repetition of phrases in the music to bring the listener back to a certain feeling in the song. I've found it so beneficial to work like this because I feel like I can create feelings for the listener just through the mixing. The music is evocative enough, but with the correct mixing I can make certain parts stand out, add effects around a particular part I want the listener to pay attention to more, or even just totally change the make up of a piece of music and use it as a sample in my own music.

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Please see this from S1 appendix 12.