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Unfortunately, I was absent for this lesson, so there s a lack of 'in-class' work to document, but I contacted the lesson's tutor after the lesson had concluded to ask which subjects the lesson covered so that I could fill in the gaps in my knowledge.

The main focus of the class was finding our feet, so the group spent some time looking at the very basics of guitar musical theory, which was also to be covered in next week's lesson, so I focused on the other part of the lesson, 'The Lick'.

The Lick is a jazzy and groovy set of notes, which is famous for being used very widely in a range of media types and in all different variants of music. I spent around half an hour learning this lick based on the tabs provided on Canvas.

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In this lesson, we focused on the basics of recording. We discussed the minimum equipment required to record Audio into a DAW, and looked into the process o setting up recording channels to prepare for recording.

We then had a small dive into the world of MIDI, and used loops from the Logic library to practice adjusting notes and velocities within MIDI loops.

I feel as if the lesson was useful to me as it helped me brush up on my DAW skills, which haven't been used in a short while. However, once the explanations started and I found myself remembering the process, I realised that the lesson was covering topics which I had commonly practiced and revised through my previous 5 years of Music Production education.

With that being said, it was still useful to have a brief refresher to remind myself of the basics.

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The Live Performance Workshop is probably exactly as you would expect. The groups that we were split into in the Pre-Production lesson would be our groups for this lesson too, and we would get a chance to perform our version of the song up on stage in front of the rest of the class before receiving some feedback.

I was very nervous to perform in front of people for the first time in multiple years, but once the song had started and I had gotten into the rhythm of the song, I found it very easy to continue playing, and ended up very much enjoying the performance.

I managed to get a recording of the performance which will be attached below.

In terms of my opinions, I believe that I did well in terms of filling out my role. I was on lead guitar, which was a good role for me in this song due to the regular rhythm of the lead parts. My previous practice of the structure helped quite a bit too as I was confident enough in my knowledge of it to get into the playing without worrying about counting the bars.

Unfortunately, I had learnt the entire solo and the nerves of being on stage got to me, meaning I completely forgot the entire solo. I ended up having to improvise using random phrasing with the notes that I knew were used in the solo. I would have loved to have played the solo accurately, having spent time learning it note-for-note, but I am glad that I didn't completely stop playing and get lost.

However, I found that my main issue was stage presence. I have very little self-confidence so find it very difficult to move around on stage and draw attention to myself. This meant that, while the actual music was confidently played, I seemed like I wasn't enjoying it which ruined the energy of the performance as a whole.

Overall, I would have loved to have played the song better, and I know that I could've, but I am still confident in what I did play, with the exception of the guitar solo.

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For Pre-Production, we were given the song 'Go Your Own Way' by Fleetwood Mac.

We had a short discussion about the process that Pre-Production and Live Performance Workshop (LPW) lesson would take for the term, which was very useful as I previously had next to no idea as to what these lessons would contain.

We then were split into groups and given a room to practice in. We had all been given the songs beforehand, as is the recurring process with these lessons, and had all learnt the song before attending lesson. This meant that we would have to then spend our Pre-Production lesson trying to mix our styles together to prepare to perform the song as a group.

I was unable to get a video of the practicing process, but we began without a vocalist and focused on the structure of the song, as this was the part that we knew would cause us the most issues. We had a couple of run-throughs and had the song sounding relatively organised, and found ourselves to be in-sync with each other.

We were then joined by our vocalist, who was informed of any sections that may sound slightly different to the original, before having a few run-throughs. We managed to get the song sounding well-versed in a surprisingly shot amount of time, but we would have liked to have had more time to practice as we definitely could have been a little more in-sync with the vocalist.

I could have definitely improved on my guitar rhythm. I had learnt the song but was occasionally tripped up by the structure, despite having talked it through with the group.

I worked on this at home in the evening after the lesson though, so that my knowledge of the structure was more solid for the LPW lesson.

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This layout will be colour-coded so that each item correlates to the lesson that the material originated from.

Red - Guitar Technical Development

Orange - Production Tools

Green - Extra Activities done in Study Group

Blue - Pre-Production

Purple - Live Performance Workshop

Black - Overview/Evaluation

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These are the ratings, 1 through 5, that I believe my skills are at whilst at the beginning of the course.

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This is the full video of my performance in the Live Performance Workshop lesson.

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For my Academic SMART Target, I aimed to work on my time management. To do this, I aimed to get all of my work done at least 2 to 3 days before I had planned to have it done by, as I usually tend to procrastinate.

For my Production SMART Target, I chose a more long-term target. I aim to complete a full mix of a song, mixed and mastered by myself, and aim to include at least one example of the techniques or skills learnt in each week of Production Tools, so the diaries will come in handy.

For my Professional SMART Target, I aim to ensure that all of my write-ups (Diaries, explanations and work for the Navigating assignment) are written to a professional standard in terms of grammar, tone and vocabulary. I can occasionally slip into a more colloquial tone when writing about topics that I am passionate about, so I aim to avoid this.

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For this week I believe I did well to settle in. I understand how the term is going to work moving forward, understand what I need to do in and outside of lessons, and know how to progress with the things that I would like to improve.

I'm happy with my performance, for the first of many, and while I know to practice more before my practical lessons in the future, I still believe that I performed adequately.

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For this week, we were focusing on guitar music theory. We worked on learning the pentatonic scale shapes, as well as the notes of the scales in order to begin learning all of the notes on the fretboard.

This was really useful for me as I have always struggled with learning guitar theory, as it seems like a chore and doesn't always make sense to me. The way that the graphs and scales were laid out made it very easy to understand, and with some deliberate and targeted practice I should be able to learn this part of the theory pretty easily.

My only issue was that the lesson was very fast paced as everyone else already had a solid understanding of these theories and practices, so the lesson was a bit overwhelming in general. I'm happy that I now have some easy to understand diagrams to help with this section of learning though, and will spend some time here and there over the next few weeks and months working my way through different scales and note patterns.

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For this week, we focused on signal flow in our lesson. while this is something that I've got a lot of experience with in an actual studio, the DAW side of signal flow, which involves using buses and aux channels, is something that I have never had a proper look into.

We spent the first section of the lesson focusing on the DAW side of signal flow, which I found extremely helpful as it gave me some solutions to a few issues that I had faced in the past with no real idea how to fix.

We then spent the rest of the session in the studio looking at the signal flow on the desk. This was much more in my comfort zone and was much easier for me to get the hang of thanks to my history, and I look forward to being able to use the studio.

I feel as if the lesson was very useful for me as it filled in many gaps, and I am confident that I understand new information that I did not know before. Having seen and understood the desk now, this also sets me up well to record and produce projects in the future.

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For this week, the song was Treasure by Bruno Mars.

One of the threats that I discussed in the SWOT analysis in Study Group was that my mental health is a challenge and a struggle sometimes, as well as my hemiplegic migraines.

This threat did impact me this week, as I had a major migraine on the morning of my Pre-Production lesson, and it left me with severe brain fog for the rest of the week. I couldn't focus on playing long enough to make it through one rendition of Treasure, and in the end decided that it was better for my health to excuse myself from this lesson.

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After having not rehearsed with a group in my Pre-Production lesson, I was not feeling confident enough to try and join in with a live performance whilst still fighting through my brain fog, so had to give this lesson a mess and rest through it too. I was unable to focus on any work for the majority of the week and ended up having to do my reflections on this over the weekend.

This was a real shame as I was looking forward to performing again and had learnt the entirety of Treasure, only to be unable to play it live. I am hoping to be able to combat this threat in the near-future with medication so that my full focus and energy can be put into my learning.

I very much enjoyed learning treasure, and learnt from the first week that I needed to focus on the structure more. Luckily, the structure felt easier to learn than 'Go Your Own Way' so I feel as if I did a better job in my practical work this week, only to have nothing to show for it.

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For this project, this is my SWOT Analysis:

Strengths:

I am confident in my ability to learn songs at an accelerated pace de to my strong memorisation skills.

I have a good sense of rhythm and have an urge to explore my own playing, so can put a lot of focus into my performance and practice to ensure its quality.

I have a well-founded knowledge of DAWs and production techniques, meaning that my digital version of my chosen track will be of a higher quality.

Weaknesses:

My main weakness is my tendency to procrastinate, leaving work until the last minute and then rushing through it to completion, diminishing its quality.

I have very limited funding for equipment, so do not have access to music software at home, meaning that any work that I wish to do for my project must be completed during booked sessions, which can limit available time if the session is unfocused or slow to progress.

Opportunities:

As a Waterbear student, I have access to very high quality equipment and studios for my recording sessions, meaning that I can use these professional spaces to create professional-degree products.

I also have contact with very experienced musicians almost daily, as they are my tutors, meaning that I can ask for help if needed and be given genuinely useful advice.

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This week was a struggle as I missed out on valuable opportunities to make progress as a musician, but I did what I could to keep up and ensure that I am not falling behind my peers.

I am by no means proud of the progress made this week, as I failed to complete some work, and the majority of the work that I did complete was behind schedule.

Obviously there is very little that can be done about this in my current position, but in the future I am hoping to be able to avoid this issue altogether.

My main goal for next week is to complete as much work as possible (Within reason) in order to prepare for similar scenarios.

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Threats:

The main threat to this project is myself and my mental health. In college it led to a low attendance and a hard time completing work within the deadlines, and I need to work very hard to keep up and stop history from repeating in this sense.

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This week we continued looking at the music theory side of the guitar, expanding on the work from last week.

We had a small revision of the scales and notes before moving onto chord shapes and structures, which was much easier to understand after last week's lesson on the notes and scales.

I was glad that we focused on how to form chords anywhere on the neck as I never understood the theory behind it beforehand. It was kind of complicated trying to form chords with notes that I was still in the process of learning, but with the scale diagrams available it was easier to figure out the shapes, even if it took me a little while.

While I understood the theory behind it, the actual memorising of the shapes and scales will still take me a good while to get use to and memorise.

My goal for this week is to learn one full new scale and all of the notes within it, and then when I have that memorised I'll spend more time working on figuring out some chords using that scale.

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This week we focused on microphones and recording.

We spent a large portion of the lesson covering the different types of microphones, their polar patterns, the difference between bright and dark sounds and microphones, and eventually moved onto recording some acoustic guitar.

For the acoustic guitar I set up an audio channel in Logic and used a dynamic microphone. We focused on how different the tone of the guitar was when the microphone was placed in different positions. The change in tone was drastic, and was something that I hadn't had much of a look into before, so it was great to have more knowledge on the different sounds that can be made from the same instrument being played the same way.

I learnt a lot about sound quality and the difference you can make with small tweaks during the recording process, which will be super useful moving forward when I need to record sounds and find a specific tone that I like.

The small details about being in phase and out of phase still confuse me, so I would like to do more research into that moving forward to fill in the gaps in my knowledge.

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In study group, we focused a lot on the navigating task and spent most of the session working through portions of that assignment's workload.

I did ask a few questions about my weekly diaries and gained some further clarification so I will spend some time working my way back through and filling out any parts that I have missed.

We did have a small discussion on safety hazards and risk assessments, but I plan to work through that part in study group next week so that I can focus on my Navigating The Music Industry assignment this week as I have still got a lot of work to complete before the formative. This is despite having written a large amount and conducting large amounts of research already.

I feel happy with the point that I am at, as I can definitely get my Navigating work completed before the assignment is due, and can still find time to progress through my guitar technical development material, as well as learning the songs each week for Pre-Production.

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The song for this week is Crosstown Traffic by Jimi Hendrix, which is one of the songs that I have most been looking forward to due to the range of styles that could be used when improvising the lead parts.

It turns out that I was on rhythm, but when I learnt the rhythm part I realised that it is also very fun to play. The rhythm of the hammer-ons in the groovy backing pattern was super fun to get involved with and the small differentiations in the lead from verse to verse gave me room to experiment a little bit too.

When we began practice, our drummer and bassist were amazing and we were all in-sync extremely quickly, and had the song down to a very refined state in a short matter of time. We were then given a vocalist to practice with and we all ended up having an amazing practice session, being confident enough to start adding small changes to the guitar parts to keep it more interesting.

I kept my part more true to the original while adding in small details like ascending notes to match the lead while the bass kept the low part filled.

It was a very productive practice session and the work we completed was very efficien.

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In the actual performance of the song, I feel as if it went very well.

The parts that we had worked out in the Pre-Production lesson all went together flawlessly and sounded great in my opinion.

The tones on the guitars went well together and harmonised well, and the complimentary parts we wrote all worked in harmony with the singer.

We had to talk our new singers through our ideas before starting, which was good communication, because our original singer was absent from the performance.

I do feel as if the volumes could have been adjusted slightly. My guitar was much quieter than the other guitarist, and even his was quiet in comparison to the other instruments. At times I could barely hear myself despite standing less than 2ft away from the amp that I was plugged into.

The end of the song came together nicely too, which was great as we were the only group to do the 'crash-out' style ending.

I do also think that my stage presence still needs work. I was trying to put more energy into it but the most that I actually did was just bobbing my head and rocking back and forth, but it is annoying that the singer stood directly in front of me and gave me no room to move. I could have still figured out a way though and want to focus on this moving forward.

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This is one of the last run-throughs of Crosstown Traffic in the practice session.

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This is the live performance of Crosstown Traffic

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I'm very happy with my progress this week in all of my lessons, I feel as if my guitar playing has improved, I have learnt how to improvise a bit better, and my understanding of guitar theory has improved too. On top of that, I got a lot of written work done.

I also know that my stage presence is still my main flaw when it comes to performing so I would like to work on that as much as I can moving forward.

Overall, I have progressed a lot and figured out how to progress further moving forward, so this week was a very successful one for me.

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For my song choice, I am going to be using a song that I wrote with some others in a rehearsal session at Small Pond studios. The session was recorded and the adjacent recording showcases the product tat we had at the end, even if it is a very rough version.

We got together and wrote a song, and now have a full song prepared, but need to get it recorded onto a mac for a demo.

Once we have a full demo ready, we will all take away our separate parts and learn them, as well as writing lyrics and a melody for the song. We can then move onto practicing together for a live performance.

If the lyrics take too long, my fall-back plan, as of right now, is to change my song choice to a different song, but that depends heavily on how efficient our group is moving forward. There is a good chance that I could also end up just doing an instrumental version of the song for my final project if we cannot get lyrics organised with enough time to practice before the performance.

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Unfortunately, I was absent from this lesson, but I have contacted a few of my peers to find out what the lesson materials were.

The class apparently covered Modes, so I will be doing research into those moving forward.

For this lesson, we increased our knowledge on our scales, looking into dominant and minor scales while building off of the previous week's learning. While I was able to follow along with the theory of the lesson and understand the general idea of the new scale types, I was not able to play the things we were asked to as I didn't have the practical understanding of the scales yet.

This simply means that I will have to find more time to be practicing my scales, so that I can begin to understand and play the modes.

I am realising the lack of theoretical knowledge I possess, and would like to improve this and fill the gaps as fast as possible, but this may take a while as theory is something that I have never properly practiced. My SMART Target for the week is to learn at least one new major scale in any key. (Video Evidence Uploaded Seperately)

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This week in production tools, we looked at mixing a full set of drum tracks from the recordings we looked into last week.

We looked at how to manage the levels, how to choose which effects to add for each part of the kit, and how to make sure the pieces of the kit fit together nicely.

I understood the volume mixing already as I had experience with this, but the use of effects was something that I needed work on and this lesson helped with that a lot. I now understood which tracks could use which type of compression.

I had already done a lot of work with drum EQs so knew the rough idea, but the EQ for the crashes was different to the way I remember and was so much simpler now, so the lesson helped fill that gap for me. I will be looking to use this knowledge when doing my mix for my track.

We didn't get into how the compression is used as we ran out of time, but if we don't cover it next week then I will conduct some research to fill this gap in my knowledge.

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This week in study group, we looked back and reflected on our SWOT analysis, and chose some areas of our weaknesses that we could do some research into improving.

I have two weaknesses that research could help improve, so I will be looking to improve on my procrastination, as well as my stage presence. These are the two areas that I feel could make the most improvement, so I will be looking up techniques for improving at work production efficiency, as well as conducting my own mini-interview with a tutor at the college to understand the processes behind it.

I will also be looking to research ways to improve stage presence, but I feel as if this is more of a learning process that has to be indulged in by an individual, and text cannot give you all of the secrets to it.

With that being said, the below sections will contain the research that I will be conducting as well as possibly videos of me practicing my stage presence at home. In the coming performance for this week, it will be easier to see if there is any improvement in my stage presence as compared to last week.

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General Lessons end here, the last Tech Dev sessions were just reminders of previously mentioned content. The Diary now goes as follows:

Green - Study Group

Orange - Produced Digital Work

Purple - Live Performance Work

Black - Analysis and Reflection

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This week we continued working on chord shapes and the theory behind them, expanding on our triad theory to look at 7th chords and harmonising with them.

While this is just building on the previous lesson, it is still a very important piece of information for me to possess as it will help me with my chord progressions in future projects and writing.

My SMART Target for this week is for me to experiment with our song for our assignment, and see if there are any areas where a 7th chord would fit nicely, as well as seeing if there are any parts of the chord progression that we could change to give the song a bit more of a variation during the verses.

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This week in Production Tools we were looking at how to record electric guitar through an amp, looking at the different mic positions in front of the amp, the tones that can be captured by different microphone types, and how effects will effect the sound of a guitar recording.

I understood the lesson very well and managed to get a pretty good recording of my peer playing guitar, and spent a good amount of time experimenting with effects in Logic to see the difference that they make to the sound. It was very interesting to hear the stark differences in the possible sounds that a simple guitar recording could make, and I would love to experiment more with this when I do my mix at a later date.

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this week we did Call Me by Blondie as our song.

The focus is on Triplets and Shuffles for the week, so I will specifically be aiming to get the shuffled feel down for the song.

In general, the song isn't all that hard to learn, it has a simple chord progression and was easy to follow as it didn't have any strange timing and was a very predictable song.

I enjoyed performing it but in practice it was a bit confusing as neither of the guitarists had learnt the solo part, but in the end the other guitarist volunteered to learn it and play it on stage at the performance lesson.

In general though, we all managed to get in sync pretty effectively and all of the band members were playing correctly and in-time.

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In the actual performance I believe that it went well. Our song was played almost perfectly the entire way through, without any very noticeable mistakes, but one of the main drawbacks was that I was so focused on playing the shuffle and groove correctly that I ended up being too quiet and only I could hear myself because I was focused on my own playing, and had to turn myself up mid-performance.

The groove was accurate though, and I played the song correctly, hitting a few off chords or transitioning to the wrong note once or twice but quickly correcting.

I was happy with the general state of the performance but the vocals didn't match with the guitar tones, because we had expected to have a different singer but ended up switching last minute, meaning we didn't have time to adjust and the guitars seemed to overpower the vocals at times.

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For this week, I feel as if I did well to progress, I managed to fit in a rehearsal session at Smallpond with my band, and practiced and finished writing the song (Video Uploaded alongside project). I also did well in my LPW lesson, making good progress and starting to understand my strengths and weaknesses more.

I could have put more time into my revision at home, as the chord shapes were unable to be recalled by the end of the week when this is being written, but I can definitely pick them back up again quicker when I want to thanks to having learnt them once.

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Other than that, the dynamics were the main focal point, as we didn't vary our dynamics much across the performance, meaning that it was all at a set level of energy for the entire performance and had no tension and release element.

Working on dynamics is my main goal for the moment as it always seems to be something that I cannot get right or forget to focus on when learning a song.

Because of this, my new SMART Target that I am setting is to have at least one song by the end of the term from my LPW lessons that I receive good feedback about the dynamics for.

(Video Uploaded Alongside Project for storage space reasons)

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We managed to book a Smallpond session this week to practice our track, and finished up the writing of it, putting all of the sections together to have a fully structured song.

We now had:

Dylan's Intro, Verse 1, Pre-chorus, Chorus, Drum + Bass Line, Dylan's Intro (Distorted), Verse 2, Pre-Chorus 2, Chorus 2, Drum + Bass Line x2, Solo (Verse 3)

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This week in Tech Dev we covered Modes.

I didn't really understand them. I got the general concept and thought that it was a scale in a certain key but with a different note to start on, but seeing as I am still trying to learn my scales, which could take a while, I wasn't able to engage properly with the lesson, so will do more external research here to better my understanding.

It turns out that it is simply a scale with a 'Specific feel'. According to multiple sources, changing the spacing between the notes gives the scale a different feel by starting in a different place in the scale.

It would take me time to learn them as I am still working on my regular scales, but I am hoping to have put enough time into my scales and modes to be confident with improvisation in my 2nd term.

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This week in production Tools we looked at Multi-Mic recording, and used a drum kit as an example.

We took all of the different mics, from the overhead and room mics to the snare and tom mics and looked at how placement affects the sound, and how to choose microphones for the different parts of the kit.

This was a really useful lesson in the sense that it gave me more of a thorough understanding of the mic types, but in terms of recording drums I don't have any plans to in the near future so won't find it useful for this project, as Reuben is going to be recording the drums for our track in his own session and then just send them to us, but this will be at a later date.

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This week we looked at the Gibbs reflective cycle.

This is a really good way to lay out and understand my reflections, so I will be using it to assess my SMART targets moving forward, as well as for my final evaluation and my essay at the end of my diary.

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This week our song was Son of a Preacher Man by Arethra Franklin.

I really enjoyed learning this song; it had some very unique chord progressions and some odd timings but was very fun to learn.

I was in control of the free-time element of the song, and was very confident in my timekeeping ability, so this section went very well.

I was also very confident in the song's structure and chord progression, so the song in general went well during our rehearsal time. I feel plenty confident going into my performance session.

(Rehearsal video linked separately)

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In the performance of the song, another singer was added to our group that I hadn't worked with in rehearsals, so it changed up the dynamic a bit, but in general the performance went well.

The parts that I played were all good, the free-time section went flawlessly and there weren't any noticeable mistakes, however this may have been partly due to the fact that the levels were not balanced correctly on the stage, and I could barely hear myself as my volume was too low. I can be seen in the video turning myself up a couple of times.

I wasn't very happy with my stage presence during the performance, as I was in a small space behind our new backing singer so I couldn't move without hitting her or the bassist behind me.

I was happy with the dynamics though, as the free-time section made it very easy to have the dynamic shift that I had been working on.

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In Week 4, I set the SMART Target to receive positive feedback from my dynamics in my performance.

This week I really focused on that, learning how to strum slower to achieve a lower dynamic in the track.

I received positive feedback about it in my LPW lesson, and was glad that I had achieved one of my targets. I now needed to work on the chord progression of my song to see if there was any way to meet my other SMART Target.

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I think this week was a realisation for me. I had done my research into modes and realised that here is so much that I don't know about my playing, from scales to modes, and my dynamic practice showed me how much tonal and dynamic difference can be made by the way you play.

This gives me a new perspective on my current skill level and opens up a lot of paths for me to explore as I move forward.

My learning for the week went well, I feel confident in my performance this week, but now understand that I can do better moving forward.

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This week our song is From Eden by Hozier.

For this week, I decided to change things up slightly and was playing and singing at the same time. This is a skill that had wanted to learn for a long time, and I was surprised by how difficult it was at first.

I had to learn the guitar part enough that I could do it from muscle memory alone and then focus on the vocals, which I also had to have a good understanding of in case I lost my place on the guitar chords and had to focus on that for a second.

By the time rehearsal came around I had the guitar part completely memorised and the vocals were almost there. We had organised different parts between me and the other vocalist, and I knew my parts and the lyrics, but kept forgetting the final line of the verses.

I was happy that I had managed to get the guitar down to the level that I did though.

(Rehearsal video attached separately.)

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I was happy with how the performance went. I had managed to stay in key for the vocals the entire time. I still struggled with the last line of the verses and forgot it each time, but felt that the overall performance was well-played.

In terms of guitar, I lost my place a couple of times when I had to focus harder on the vocals, but in general the entire song went well other than that. there were a few very small mistakes where I transitioned to the wrong chord, but that was purely because of my focus on the vocals, due to it being my first time singing in front of a crowd.

I got good feedback about the dynamics again, and the overall timing and tone of the song was great. The vocals being shared between me and my female peer made the song play into its 'folky' feel according to my peers.

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For this week I had learnt the F# Major Scale, as that was the target that I had set for myself. I was proud of the fact that it only took a few minutes to learn, but getting it to stay in my long-term knowledge will be a challenge when I start learning others of similar but slightly different shapes.

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I feel like this week wasn't as good as the last in terms of progression, but I did well in my performances.

The practice for doing both parts was difficult but helped me work on playing more subconsciously so that I can focus on things such as my stage presence.

This week was a success but I could have done more to improve and build up my theoretical knowledge other than learning just one scale, but it is a start.

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This week in Tech Dev we looked into warm-up exercises, and focused on getting the mind and body ready to perform.

This was very useful to look into as I now have some exercises that I can use that work on my dexterity, agility and my stamina, which will really help to improve my playing.

Overall this was a simple week as there wasn't any real theory involved, but it was very useful for the performance side of it as I usually don't warm up or prepare before I play songs at LPW, which could be part of the reason why I make mistakes and don't feel too confident on stage.

Thanks to this session, my SMART target for this week is to warm up before I play on stage so that I am prepared for it and see if it helps me battle nerves.

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This week we did a deep dive into EQ.

I learnt that there were different types of EQ, being Creative and Corrective EQ, but these were processes that I had already been using without knowing the term for them.

I was already happy with EQ and was confident in my ability to use it, so this lesson didn't give me much in the ways of new information to work with, but was useful as a reminder and a recap.

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This week our song was Cochise by Audioslave.

I really enjoyed this song, it was much more in-line with my usual listening habits, and was a song that I enjoyed learning and playing the riff to. I also really enjoyed the uniqueness of the beginning as I got to be the one to cover the intro.

Usually the intro is played by slapping your hand on and off of the strings, but I had a 7-String guitar at my disposal and used the low string, tuned all the way down to Bb but an octave lower, and did alternate picking to recreate the intro.

The rest of the song was pretty simple though, as the riff was repeated a lot and the structure wasn't too confusing. The only confusing bit is the one bar of 2/4 in the bridge but it was alright when w played as a group in rehearsal as it felt natural.

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I am very happy with my performance for this week. The intro went well and I kept up the speed until the end of it despite it being draining on my stamina, I made very few mistakes with the riff and chords, and in general the band fit together really well and played well.

I still need to work a bit on dynamics as i didn't focus on that this week, but the feedback about dynamics was aimed mostly at the drummer and the band in general. I still need to work on stage presence but because I really enjoyed this song, I was able to express myself more and put a bit more energy into it.

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I did not meet my SMART Target for the week, as I did not find time to warm up before the performance, which was disappointing. I do feel as if this was for the best though, as if I had tired my hands out before playing then I would have had to slow down on the opening picking which would throw off the timing for the rest of the band.

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This week was very good in terms of performances, but once again did not contain the most improvement in terms of musical theory or knowledge.

I will aim to focus more on my theory practices next week if I can find time between completing project work.

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For this week, we continued working on exercises, focusing a little bit more on the picking hand, doing exercises for alternate picking as well as working on Hammer-on and Pull-off exercises.

I already felt pretty confident in these, but I will use the drills that we practiced in my warmups moving forward to improve my overall readiness to play.

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This week in production tools we looked at compression. I had previously done limited work with compression but had a basic understanding of it.

I learnt the ideal step by the process for applying EQ and this will help greatly in my mixing process as it made everything much more efficient and made finding the right compression levels a great deal easer.

I also could hear a real difference on the drum tracks, but could barely hear any difference on the vocal tracks, which makes me believe that I simply need to improve my ear for vocal effects through practice.

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This week, as our last week of Pre-Production and LPW, we did Ain't It Fun by Paramore.

The song was surprisingly easy to learn, and I enjoyed the groove and rhythm behind the track, it was easy to get behind and feel.

The song in general didn't have any odd timings that I noticed, and was pretty easy structure-wise too.

The band synced up well in rehearsals as we had been working together for a few weeks in a row now and were understanding each other, so the way that the song came together was very good.

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This week went well, we all performed well, didn't make any super noticeable mistakes until the end and it went well in general.

The ending was a little bit confusing as we played an extra 4 bars that we didn't do during the rehearsal and it threw everyone off, but we managed to bring it back together for the end.

I am very happy with my performance this week as I didn't have any huge mistakes and the track sounded good upon listening back, but could have, yet again, put more energy into my stage presence.

That is the main thing I need to work on, so for our performance of our final song for this project my SMART Target is to put more energy into my stage presence until I am happy with it.

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I did manage to complete a smart target this week.

From a few weeks ago, I set the task to experiment with our song and find some variations of chords to raise the bar for how interesting the track was. This is especially important as we have not yet got a set of vocals, despite asking a vocalist for help, who agreed to sing for us.

I managed to change the chord at the end of each of our verse phrases, so it drops down to the G for the first ones and then stays up at the A when going into the Pre-Chorus for a bit of variation.

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Now that we are at the end of our LPW and Pre-Prod classes for the term, I am glad that we did them. I am so much more confident in my performing now and know what I need to work on to become even better at the performing aspect of my playing.

This week was very helpful for me as I got chance to practice our song once again, (rehearsal video attached separately) giving us a fully finished idea of what we want to play, which means we can now start the recording process.

I am happy with my performances this week and feel as if I can finally understand what I need to work on to progress in terms of guitar.

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This week in Study Group we did a risk analysis for our projects.

Here are the Risks and how to avoid them:

Trip Hazards - Could harm sound crew and/or performers. Solved by clearing stage and using Cable mats to keep cables covered.

Fire Hazards - Anyone could be harmed by this. Solved by having fire suppression systems, fire escapes and extinguishers.

Electrical Hazards - Anyone working around the electrical equipment or performing could be harmed. Solved by ensuring all equipment works without fault and any plugs, sockets or wires are secured properly.

Hearing damage - Anyone can experience. Solved by using protective measures such as earplugs or ear defenders when around loud sounds.

Straining - Performers or crew can experience by lifting heavy equipment or straining their voice/hands from playing. Avoid this by using proper technique and warming up properly beforehand.

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For producing the track, we booked out the studio at Bond Street and spent 2 hours recording our guitar and basslines.

We already had the drum tracks sent to us by our drummer who recorded those separately. We managed to get almost all of the recording done, but would have completed it if it weren't for technical difficulties.

The WA273-EQ was not functioning properly, so after half an hour of trying to get it working, we ended up having to plug the guitars straight into the Universal Audio Thunderbolt to record them. This diminished the quality of the sound somewhat, but we still got some decent recordings.

I recorded the power chord strumming for my part and Dylan recorded his lead lines, as well as a rough solo which we soon swapped out for another one.

We didn't have time to begin our mix but were happy to have the recording done.

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We did one more practice session this week, which we used to figure out how to end the song, but overall we didn't change much. We decided to use the bass and drum fill to end the song as it was catchy, but the general structure, playing style and tones didn't really change.

Dylan did improvise a solo that we used as a baseline for his future attempts, but for now this would do, we would just have to finalise that version at home and get it recorded when we have a chance to.

My main thing that I want to ensure is high quality during the performance would be the dynamics and my stage presence.

We went to an assessment session where we play the song and get given feedback, and the main thing was that we hadn't worked on dynamics, so we simply aimed for the drums to be a bit quieter during the slower parts, and I would work on filling the sound less with my strums so that there is some dynamic variation.

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I am very proud of this song, and I am confident that it fills the criteria. If we had vocals this would be amazing, but our vocalist told us last minute that she hadn't worked on it and did not want to assist us moving forward, which was annoying but we simply adjusted the track to be more interesting as an instrumental by adding lead parts to Dylan's playing.

I believe we could have been more efficient in the way we structured our studio and rehearsal times, but we managed to get everything done and have next week to record our performance and finalise our mixes. I think we are in a good position.

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In study group this week we spoke about our final reflection and how to structure it, which will be at the bottom of this padlet.

We mostly just worked on writing up some of our diaries during this session.

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During this week we took all of our stems to the mac suit and spent a good few hours each mixing our own tracks. We now had a full track each with a solo at the end and effects as needed. I am very happy with this finalised track as it is one of the best quality tracks that I have ever produced, thanks to the level of the equipment I have access to, and the level of the people I am surrounded by.

This part of the project has really helped me finalise my understanding of the techniques that I have learnt in the past, as it helped me put them all together into one cohesive organised project.

I feel as if some of the qualities could have been better, and the guitar tones could use a bit of touching up, but in general this is a final product that I am proud to have completed.

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We recorded our final performance this week, and it went amazingly.

The levels were good, the song was played perfectly after we practiced way too much, and the solo at the end was perfect and fit with the genre perfectly.

The dynamics were good, as I filled the space less in the quieter parts and sometimes even dropped out completely, but played with a lot of energy during the main part of the song.

My stage presence was also much better than it usually is, as I really put energy into my stances and tried my best to move along to the song, and I did much better than I usually do.

I was very proud of this performance overall and I am so glad that I chose to do the original song we wrote, called Adrenaline Rush.

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Gibbs Reflective Cycle (Musical Analysis Included)

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Gibbs Reflective Cycle (Musical Analysis Included)

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Now that I have the two final products of the project, I will do a large section here analysing it. This is seperate from the 1000 word essay below.

What Happened?

For this project, I recorded, produced and performed the entirety of my band's original track, Adrenaline Surge, written specifically for this project.

Musical Analysis:

At 124bpm, in the Key of F# Major at 4/4, Adrenaline Surge is a High Energy rock song with Funk-based elements intertwined. It is mostly made up of Power Chords (Paired with lead lines on guitar) and well-developed drum beats, being played by two guitarists, a bassist and a drummer. There are no vocals for the track for this project.

The structure is as follows:

Dylan's Intro - 4 bars

Chord Intro - 4 Bars

Verse 1 - 8 Bars

Pre - Chorus - 8 Bars

Chorus - 16 Bars

Bass & Drum Fill - 1 Bar

Dylan's Intro v2.0 - 4 Bars

Verse 2 (Call & Response Verse) - 16 Bars

Pre-Chorus - 8 Bars

Chorus - 16 bars

Bass & Drum Line x2 - 8 Bars

Verse 3 (Solo) - 16 Bars

Bass & Drum Line to end - 4 bars

What Were You Thinking And Feeling?

At the time, I was very happy when we first came up with the intro riff for our song and found some chords to lay under it. We were messing around in a rehearsal session and left with the basis for a new song. This was a really promising start, and as we worked on it more I was more and more confident that we had made something awesome.

I was concerned that without vocals it would be very anti-climactic, but after producing the entire track I realised that we had something amazing and couldn't wait to do my final performance.

After all is said and done, I am extremely proud of how the project has gone and would love to take this band and song forward with me.

Evaluation

In general, a lot went well, and a lot went wrong too.

The recording process went well, and all of the digital work has been very efficient for the entire project. The final product is also very good work in my opinion, and I am happy with how it all went.

We did face some problems though, such as the studio having technical difficulties when we wanted to record, which diminished the quality of our track slightly, but in my opinion the final tones of those recordings are still perfectly fine and give it a bit of personality.

Our singer dropping out last minute also gave us a lot of issues, as we wanted a track with vocals for our final submission, and we hen had to improvise our final piece to fill the space that the vocals would have filled, but I believe this was well worth it in the end.

Conclusions Drawn

I believe that I have achieved what I set out to, having achieved all of the smart Targets that I set for myself. I worked hard on completing them within the time frame that I had set for myself, and managed to get them all complete to a good standard.

The work completed throughout this project has also helped me improve dramatically as a guitarist, especially when it comes to performing in front of others. It has also opened a lot of doors and given me a lot of options to choose from in terms of moving forward.

All of this will be vey valuable to me as it will give me a higher base level of skill for the more demanding performance based projects in the future, and has prepared me well to take the next steps in my career and begin performing properly.

Next Steps

If I was to do this project again, I would have ensured that all of my recordings and practices would be done at a much earlier date so that I had plenty of time to fix any problems that arise. My time management was lacking during this project and I'm lucky that I decided to do things when I did or I wouldn't have managed to finish this project on time.

I think next time I will make a more comprehensive step by step plan to help carry me through the project at a more efficient pace.

I believe my medal would be that my work is always done to a high quality, but my mission would be cutting down on the amount of work I set myself and merely following the criteria to achieve the grade rather than making a full and extensive backlog of evidence and discussions about my work. (Obviously I will include necessary evidence and discussions, but I mean that I will keep them more concise.)

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Why I chose This Track:

I chose this track because it was one of the first songs where I had been involved in the writing process, and I was proud to have made a track that I actually enjoyed. I was originally thinking of covering Take Me With You by Neck Deep, but this was something that I wanted to have properly worked on and finished so that I could show it off outside of my project.

By the end of the project, I was sure that this was the right choice as I was extremely happy with the final result.

Areas I personally Created

In the track, while I didn't write the original riff or any of the lead lines, I covered the rhythm guitar and came up with the chords and rhythm for the song. I was involved in writing the first drafts of some lyrics, but they were eventually scrapped when I realised that we had no vocalist to perform the song, and it was too late at the time to finish and learn them myself, especially while I was working on the guitar parts and trying to fit everything together in my digital version of the track.

Key Research Undertaken:

During this project, I conducted some research to further expand on my knowledge that I picked up from lessons. This is especially prevalent during my Technical development diary entries where I had to conduct a lot of research to put together the pieces from the lesson, especially when it came to music theory dense areas such as the scales, modes and chord progression sections.

I also looked into the different types of compression and EQ to make sure that I had a good understanding of how to make my track the best quality possible. These areas of research were both very useful to me as they were things I had very little t no clue about before the lessons and research. (Reference list included at the end of the project.)

Project Planning and My Time Management:

In terms of planning, I was very heavily relying on the term's natural course to get through my work alongside my other work, as I would try to balance it. This was not an ideal plan, and in the future I will be planning in much more precise detail with ideal timelines added to ensure that my time management is effective, rather than having a last minute rush where I would complete most of my work in the last week before submission. I definitely regret not planning properly and efficiently; it would have made the entire project much more efficient.

Personal and Group Preparations:

Personally, I spent maybe an hour or two each week covering the chord progression in my own time, and as a group we spent 2 - 4 hours a week, especially in the last 4 weeks, practicing the song, finalising the parts and ensuring that we had a good understanding of it before we attempted to record it. This definitely helped as we all knew the song like the back of our hand by the time we went to perform it, and this is the ideal position to be in. Moving forward, I would probably stick to this level of practice as it was just enough that we were not fed up with playing the song.

Efficiency of Demoing, Recording & Mixing Phases:

As a group we didn't record a demo, but we had recordings of our rehearsals and the full song that we based our recording process off of.

In terms of recording, we were very efficient. We got the whole song recorded in about an hour, as it took Reuben 15 minutes to record the drums before our group took 45 to record the bassline, guitar layers and a rough solo.

In terms of Mixing, I took the stems and spent about 2 hours adjusting, adding effects and finalising the entire project to ensure that it was at a quality that I was happy with. When it was finally done, while it had taken a while, I was very happy with the result. When it comes to recording in the future, I will 100% be sure to make a demo recording, as well as have better understanding of the hardware in the studios to be able to fix things if more technical difficulties re-occur.

Final Performance Evaluation:

I am very happy with this project. I believe that this is the best digital recording that I have ever produced, quality wise. I believe our song-writing skill in this project, along with the quality of the recording, was one of the best I have ever made. It isn't perfect, by any means, but the performance also went very well and gives me a great base level for performances moving forward. I have learnt so much through my lessons and the processes that I have undergone to complete this project, and eel that in the future I could be so much more efficient and complete work at a quality level I was never expecting to have reached in my first year of university, let alone the first term.

I do believe that my planning and efficiency when it comes to written work could have been so much better, as I barely planned and didn't stick to a schedule or calendar, which I will definitely be doing in the future.

What I've Learned:

I have learnt how to record, produce and mix a track to a higher level of skill, as well as how to perform to an engaging, interesting and energetic degree. I have gained more confidence in my performances and in myself, and have become much more knowledgeable about guitar techniques through my lessons and my research. The level I was at before this project began is very far behind me now.

If I completed this project again, I would make sure to plan efficiently, for the most part, to increase the quality of my creation process.

(1000 Words including titles)

All text in this project was pasted into www.wordcounter.net to check for spelling errors.

All work is my own and has been written in full by myself.

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https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/11rsavkJZrwqkEgyLd52WX0IhjRckVfpo?usp=sharing

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Works Cited

Ben Dunnett. “Modes - Music Theory Academy - Music Modes Explained.” Music Theory Academy, 30 Oct. 2019, www.musictheoryacademy.com/understanding-music/modes/.

“ContentKeeper Content Filtering.” Mixingmonster.com, 2024, mixingmonster.com/understanding-eq-types/. Accessed 16 Dec. 2024.

“Guitar EQ Cheat Sheet (Frequency Ranges & Essential Tips).” Producer Hive, 21 Oct. 2022, producerhive.com/music-production-recording-tips/guitar-eq-cheat-sheet/.

Stephanie. “How to Increase the Loudness of Drums in Your Mix | Dowden Music.” Dowden Music, 10 Aug. 2020, dowdenmusic.com/increase-loudness-of-drums/. Accessed 16 Dec. 2024.

Warnock, Matt. “Guitar Modes: How to Learn All 7 Major Modes the Easy Way.” Guitarworld, Guitar World, 10 Mar. 2022, www.guitarworld.com/lessons/guitar-modes-learn-all-7-major-modes-the-easy-way. Accessed 16 Dec. 2024.

Whitehouse, Kieran . “4 Types of Audio Compressors & When to Use Each of Them.” Producer Hive, 8 Oct. 2023, producerhive.com/ask-the-hive/types-of-audio-compressors-when-to-use-them/.

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This project was completed in my personal padlet, as opposed to the Waterbear Official Padlet. Due to file size restrictions, only the first few videos are available on this page. The rest will be uploaded to a folder which will be uploaded alongside the link to this padlet and the PDF version of it. The link to the folder is located to the left.