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A year ago, I fell out with my slowly rising band over silly things such as everyone talking behind other's backs, and eventually everyone became vocal with eachother over how much we disliked one another. The only member not involved was the singer, who had only been with us for a few months before things spiralled. This sent me into a period of depression given not having not having anything to participate in musically.

So, when I eventually moved to Brighton with my close friend, who was the singer of the band, we reformed the band 'Velvet Johnny' that we had put together at college, and since then have started to put songs together, recording regularly and getting together for rehearsal. Since then thing's have started to pick up again. In future if I feel opinionated about someone I will be keeping my mouth shut, and keep a smile on my face to keep things moving.

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Weeks 4 and 5 showed that i had prepared so far as an idea for what was originally going to be my summative recording. However upon trying out demo's i couldn't really think of where to take it that would really show off what i can do behind the kit because the song i started writing was more aimed towards guitar. However, my friends Riccardo and Lara had written a song that they wanted to use for their summative tracks, and had asked me to play drums for them. Seeing as Riccardo hadn't put any drums to it yet, he gave me the job of writing my own drum parts for the song, and given I was looking to do something for the summative that showed what i could do best behind drums, i took this up and started planning parts for the song.

So far I've got a basic idea down. The influence of the drums are taken by drummers like Brooks Wackerman, Travis Barker and Dave Grohl, all of whom have played in various grunge, pop punk and hardcore punk bands over the year, which was how I interpreted the song to sound. The happy upbeat tone of the song had reminded me of bands like Blink 182, and the hard hitting drums I'd planned on putting in were based around the style Dave Grohl played with in Nirvana.

Next week i will start planning out the more in depth aspects of the drums such as the dynamics, the groove and the selection of drum fills I am going to add in.

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Being at Waterbear so far has been very inspiring, and mostly, I have been looking forward to meeting people who share similar influences and interests so I can start my own band where I can put all of my own ideas forward to be shared and worked on by everyone else. Other's input I feel will help me to develop the song-writing skills needed in order to grow as a musician.

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This week we delved into the world of AI by looking into different pieces of AI software and how we can use these to our advantage.

The first one was ChatGBT, a piece of AI software that can do almost anything you ask as long as the generator can scan and find the resources anywhere on the internet. We were also warned that any work that we submit that isn't our own, is scanned by software and can be checked for unoriginal work, copied from the internet.

The other one we looked at was LANDR AI Mastering. This is a piece of software that seems fairly self explanatory by the name. This AI software allows you to input a song that you've created in an audio format such as an MP3, or a WAV, and render the song to create mastering presets that you can apply to the song in order to get the fullest possible sound out of your track. This can be very useful for those who don't know how to master, or for those who simply don't have the means of mastering by themselves, or the time to learn.

As part of the learning process, I went to ChatGBT in order to get to grips with it, and to test it out so I could report back here with my experience of the software. When I opened ChatGBT, the first thing I did was ask it to write me a chord progression in C minor, using a variety of chords, minors, minor 7ths, major 7ths, and half diminished 7th chords. The chord progression ChatGBT came up with was:

(Cm→Gm7→Abmaj7→Fm7b5→Bb7→Ebmaj7→Dm7b5→G7)

After this was generated, I immediately went to my guitar to try out the chord progression. I actually really liked the progression, and I am currently in the middle of attempting to write a song out of it. Overall my first impression of ChatGBT was positive. I will be using this in the future to my advantage. I will most likely use this as an assistant when it comes to writing songs however, and not writing up coursework, as I find I can do that just fine on my own. I have not yet found any issues with the platform, however I will keep using this, and report back when I find something worth making a note of.

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Gibbs Reflective Cycle and Summative Track

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Gibbs Reflective Cycle and Summative Track

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This week, we looked at the Gibbs Reflective Cycle, a tool that we can use to reflect on our work, how we can improve on our work, and then put our further developed and creative ideas into practice.

This week in particular I dived deeper into my song writing ability. I feel like my song writing ability isn't bad, however I really wanted to push myself in order to create something cool for my assignment in which I need to submit a recording of mine, accompanied by a live version or an early demo of the track.

I have been looking into more intricate chords I can use to spice up my songs, chords that differ from the typical minors, majors that I use when writing.

This week I've made a start on an acoustic piece I believe is a step up from what I'd typically write. The chords for the verse and chorus are as follow:

Amaj, B7 (Verse Chords)

Emaj, Amaj, C6, D add 9, Dm add 9, E aug (Chorus Chords)

Link to a video of the chords put into progression:

https://waterbear.instructuremedia.com/embed/8054ec7e-20b5-442e-afe9-c30c35512ca7

The skills I've developed so far I feel have helped me a lot, and I feel like what I've made blows a lot of the basic songs I was writing before out of the water. The area I've been working on I feel will be beneficial to my work as when I submit my demo, and the further developed version of the song, I want to show my development and demonstrate my capabilities.

I believe overall my development has gone very well, and I feel I have gained a significantly better understanding of more intricate chords. From this I have been inspired to write more songs that use more experimental chords.

The only thing that really went wrong was me forgetting the shaping of the chords at times, and having to spend extra time practicing switching between chords to get used to the shapes.

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This week we looked into health and safety, risks that come with touring, how they affect certain people such as the artists or the crew members, and how we can prevent these risks from occurring.

Some risks could be such simple things such as fires, tripping, passing out possibly due to illness, dehydration, heat stroke etc. However, some risks could be more complicated, and related more to the artist or a member of the crew internally such as maybe addiction, home life and may be eligible for extra support to prevent downfall or further issues.

When planning a musical event that involves a large amount of people on stage and off stage, it's extremely important to take into account things that will benefit everyone's safety to ensure maximum security, and a good environment, and healthy workplace, as well as an efficient workflow. If a risk assessment is not carried out, in some circumstances, it can become a matter of the law and can involve a lot of different people, and a lot of money, therefore such a simple matter is actually quite an extreme precaution for any aspiring musician or crew member, and also just the casual audience member.

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This week we will be delving into our own 'perceived weakness' and taking one of those weaknesses to develop on, in order to benefit our coursework.

I have chosen song-writing, as it's something I feel is not at the level I want to present. This will be a beneficial skill specifically for the assignment at the moment where I need to write a song to demo and then properly record and hand in.

More specifically on song-writing, I want to do more research on more experimental chords, scales and how I can use these in progression. On top of that I want to look into how to come up with more intriguing and less straight forward lyrics. This ties into the more experimental side of song-writing I want to develop.

What is citing?

Citing is when you quote, or give credit to the provider or author of information you use in your own academic by including who you got the information from and when the quote was made.

What is a bibliography?

This is a list of sources that take you to where you get information.

What is Harvard references?

Full details of all references made used to carry out your research, listed alphabetically by authors surname.

Harvard Referencing example:

Source 1

SHUKER, Roy (2012) Popular Music: The Key Concepts. Routledge

Source 2

Cerrato L M (2010) The Role of Popular Music in the construction of Adolescent Identity. Journal of Youth. Pg 255-269. Vol 13. Issue 2

Source 3

American Academy of Pediatrics. The Influence of Popular Music on Youth.

https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/124/5/1488.full

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This week, following the recently submitted formative assessments, we started looking into how we can apply "critical thinking" to not just our assessments, but also our lives in general, and to our own skillsets.

Critical thinking is something that those in a professional environment, like a work environment or university are ideally preferred to have, as it demonstrates a level of growth mindset, and maturity.

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This week, Me, Riccardo and Lara started piecing together the song for the summative. We got together for a rehearsal session at Brighton Electric, where we spent most of the time going through the structure, and what kind of drums Riccardo wanted on each section. For the most part, its a fast paced punk song with double time drums, and a lot of 'pushes' where the next phrase starts on the '4 and' of the last bar. In the verses is where the dynamics shift into a quieter, softer part which ramps up through the pre-chorus, and into the chorus. The chorus is this catchy part where i believed some half time drums would work well with the section. I tried this out and the other band members liked it, so i kept it, and built on it.

This week has shown a large step up from last week upon hearing the track for the first time, and the progression of writing the drums is going smoothly. Next week i will focus on the small parts of the drums that will hopefully make the track a little more effective

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This week I started looking into how I can spice up the drum track just a bit, and started preparing for the small pond session we are due in a couple of weeks, as well as our feedback at the venue, and the final performance video. in the chorus I added some ghost notes on the snare to add to the groove. This makes the drums for this section feel a little more alive, and almost danceable. As well as this i started working on things technique wise such as staying in time to a click, and still managing to keep good time without the click. To do this i set up my own click track in cubase which would play for 8 beats at around 170 BPM, then cut out for 8 beats, and then the same but with 16 beats instead, which tested my ability to play without the click for 16 beats, and still come back on time when the click came back in. After doing this for a couple of days, I already started to feel the improvement, as i could use the tap feature on a metronome whilst listening to myself back, and for there to not be much of a fluctuation in the tempo.

As another piece of preparation, i practiced making sure i could hit the rim of the snare consistently when playing the snare. This I know is going to be another crucial skill to have in a studio setting when it comes to recording the track, as it means when mixing the song, there's going to be a consistent drum sound throughout the song. This multiplied with the progress of the metronome timing should hopefully result in a good sounding track.

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This week was definitely the busiest of them all so far, as i had to do recording sessions, and performances for 2 different bands in 4 days. However as far as my band goes, i feel like this week went smoothly.

On Tuesday, we booked 2 recording sessions at Small Pond Studios where we finally got to record the song for our summative assignments. This i felt went as good as it could go, as we had plenty of time to get each part down, as well as extra time for more guitar layers, drum takes, time to try different drum sounds etc. To start off, we did the drums. Due to lack of warmup, it took a couple of takes before i got into the swing of things. However, i soon picked up and started to lay my parts down. It took approximately an hour to lay down all the parts. Halfway through we changed the tuning of the snare drum as me and the sound engineer weren't entirely sure about how it sounded in the mix, so we lowered it, and also put dampening on the drum to deaden the sound.

When it came to mixing, it didn't take a whole lot to get it sounding how i wanted it to however i did my best to create the fullest, and fattest sounding mix i could with what we had.

Drums:

To start off, i raised the level of all the drum stems, and applied the Vintage VCA compressor to a track stack I created with all of the drum tracks in. This automatically made the drums sound fatter, which got me excited for how the whole thing would turn out. I put the threshold to -30db and the ratio to 4:1:1 with an attack of around 60ms. This was just enough to equalize the level of all the drum parts, and also give it a fat punchy sound which i felt was necessary.

After this, I added EQ to each part of the kit to get the less prominent parts of the drum track to stand out a bit more. I boosted the 5KHz -8KHz range on the toms so i could get a bit more of a bright tone out of them in the verses, and in the fills, and also made a small boost in the 150-250Hz range just to bring out the resonance a bit.

For the snare, i had to made a cut within the high frequencies, as the hi-hat was bleeding through quite badly, which meant i couldn't boost the top snare mic too much. Once i did this however, it took a good amount of the hiss from the hi-hat in the top mic away, which gave me more freedom as the compressor only made it louder before.

As far as panning, i panned the rack tom and the floor tom 50 cents left and right as upon listening, i found that the left and right cymbals were caught on the left and right tom mics, which meant i didn't have to do anything to turn the mono overhead mic into stereo. In fact i removed the overhead mic completely as i felt it deemed a bit useless as a mono channel.

Guitars:

For the guitars, the tracks were labelled, so i knew what to pan left and right. I panned the main rhythm tracks 40 cents left and right, and the extra tracks all the way left and right. This made the louder parts with more guitars sound wide and bright, and complemented the guitar tone a lot. For the lead guitars, i kept 4 of the 6 lead tracks panned hard left and right, and kept the 2 solo tracks panned center.

Vocals:

The vocals were all done in one single take, which meant there was technically no way of having doubled up vocals anywhere. However, as a bit of a hack, i took the vocals from the second chorus, and mashed them with the vocals from the first chorus. On separate tracks, and panned left and right, this gave the illusion of 2 takes being done for the same part, which also sounded better in the mix, complementing the overall wide, and big sound i was going for.

Mastering:

Before bouncing the track, i added some mastering tools to the stereo output such as a multi-band compressor, which compressed multiple frequencies within the stereo output all at the same time. I used the AdLimiter tool which allowed me to basically cap the level of the whole track, giving a louder sort of feeling to it without going into digital distortion, or introducing peaks in the mix. I also added EQ to the stereo out and boosted the 2-5KHz range by 2-2.5db which was just enough to bring out the brightness of the guitars and the vocals just a bit more. After adding these tools, i bounced the track, and listened multiple times to make sure there were no peaks at any points. I also listened on multiple devices to make sure the sound was consistent throughout multiple sound sources.

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On Wednesday, we had our final performance at the Alphabet which by this point we all knew the song inside out pretty much, and i felt it went well apart from one thing. In the second chorus of the song, one of my drum sticks ended up snapping which meant i had to wait until the second verse to pick up a new stick from the floor while playing still.

On a good note, i really tried to bump up my stage presence for the live video, tying back into the Travis Barker influence for my drums. As well as just my orchestration taking influence from him, I really tried to channel the way he moves about on stage, really going at and pounding on the kit hard whilst still demonstrating plenty of animation in my stage 'persona'

The vibe on stage felt positive, and I think everyone was enjoying themselves whilst still concentrating on their parts. The communication was good, the eye contact helped everyone come together as a whole package instead of just individuals jumbled together on one floor.

A link to the Alphabet performance video can be found just below:

https://waterbear.instructuremedia.com/embed/13499697-2eae-4f39-a731-befaecff3810

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This week me and my band started doing the final rehearsals in preparation for the performance video next week, and also the upcoming small pond session, where we will be recording our original summative track. This week is where we really fine tuned the song, and made any last adjustments together in which we thought would push the song further for each of our own benefits. By this point i was pretty happy with the way the drums were written, now it was just a case of practicing it over and over again for consistency.

On the Wednesday, we had our summative feedback session at the venue where we were told what was good and what could be improved on, before the final performance. I was told that my orchestration was good, and that i made good use of the whole kit. As something to work on, i was told that some of my fills, and the pushes in the song felt slightly rushed. This tied into what i was working on a couple of weeks prior with the timing of the song, and trying to perfect those pushes. All this meant is i needed to spend a bit more time just practicing with a click, specifically practicing those pushes, and making sure i come back down right on the beat.

Next week is going to be a very busy week as I'll be cutting it short as i leave on Friday, giving me only 4 days to fit in the small pond session, as well as multiple performances in various bands. Nevertheless, i feel confident about my performance, and i feel like i am well rehearsed, and prepared to give it my all.

A link to our summative feedback performance can be found just below:

https://waterbear.instructuremedia.com/embed/9832dfe9-6675-4dd2-a107-912f6487477a

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This week we learned about the differences between a fixed mindset, and a growth mindset, and how knowing the difference between the two can be used to help develop yourself into a more routine based, and organised person.

I learned that a growth mindset will typically see skills, talents and over areas of improvement as an achievable proposal, and can achieve these by putting in the effort to make time for development, and by creating an organised routine for themselves, in order to manage the time in which they spend working on certain areas.

On the other hand, a person with a fixed mindset (which I find myself extremely guilty of) will look at possible areas of improvement, and opportunities to grow, and will often put them off and view them as an unachievable effort, and tend not to go very far to develop themselves without a big kick from others to help them.

By knowing the difference between these two ideas, I will hopefully soon try my best to lean into the growth mindset. The first step I could take, would be to get a physical weekly planner to keep on my wall. I can write out my timetable, as well as the deadlines for different pieces of coursework and assignments. I could also in this, include the resources and sites in which the information I need can be found.

What challenges might I face? Where on the mindset scale would I stand?

The only challenge I ever really face when it comes to coursework is putting it off until the last minute. Apart from that, when I actually get my head down, I work fairly quickly.

However, on the mindset scale I would definitely place myself towards the bottom of the scale, and improvement is 100% going to be required as the workflow becomes more dense over time.

What is resilience to me, and why do we need it?

Resilience to me is failing 100 times in order to achieve once, and being able to use those failures as lessons and experience, in order to develop, grow, and go further in the future. It's very hard to be recognised, and to stand out in this day and age unless you put in the effort in constantly in a variety of areas. Having resilience helps you keep your feet on the ground, and repetitive attempts can lead you down the right path to success.

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Throughout this module, i wanted to be part of something that would best test my skill in areas that i feel more familiar with as i haven't quite come out of my comfort zone yet, however still wanted to challenge myself and better myself within that area. The song that i have chosen to collaborate on is a song that not only i enjoyed being a part of, but pushed me to become more of a solid drummer in a studio setting, which feels the most relevant to me as i want to be a session drummer in the future for bands in the studio who need a drummer in order to record albums, EPs, singles and more.

What did I learn:

During the process behind this track, i learned mainly about what sort of things i can improve on in order to make myself tighter. The main thing being the timing. I always thought my timing was decent until i actually recorded myself with a click and could barely stay in time with it without either dragging or rushing constantly. The way i learnt to improve this is something that i still use regularly now as a way of keeping myself from falling back into my old habit again, and also felt like a really efficient way of practicing, as by the time it came to doing the recording session at Small Pond Studios, i feel like i made a big improvement knowing how little time it took to actually lay down the drums.

My contribution to this track felt as if it was the one element missing from the song that would bring the whole thing together and i felt like the drum parts i orchestrated really suited the song. The style of the song as well as the upbeat tone and fast paced rhythm ties in well with my influences as i was able to combine my 3 influences into 1 and i feel like i wore it well when it came to the final performance.

Influences:

The first influence was Brooks Wackerman. I wanted to have the tightness and the technicality of Brooks Wackerman in the studio sessions so I could lay down a solid drum track for everyone else to record their parts to.

The second influence was Dave Grohl. Dave Grohl is one of my personal favourite drummers for how hard he can hit the kit with such precision, such metronome-like timing, and such good use of dynamics. I wanted to take his ability to hit hard and precise and apply it to my own performance as i feel this would benefit the sound side of things more in terms of the consistency of the drum sound, and the feel of the track. The dynamics i applied to the verses in the track where i brought things down a little bit which i felt served the song, and i think the other band members found this to be a nice addition as well.

My 3rd influence is Travis Barker. This track to me personally, has a very pop punky, blink 182 vibe to it, as it's a fast paced, upbeat song in the key of C Major (which some of blink 182's most popular songs are also in). Therefore i thought Travis Barker to be a fitting influence. I took his influence and applied it to my stage presence as he is quite the show-off on stage. I didn't want to be a show-off however, i wanted to be animated and show my confidence and how i can still have the eyes on me at times, even sat behind the kit.

Preperation:

Upon planning for the early rehearsals, i spent time with Lara and Riccardo getting used to the structure of the song, and discussing what kind of feel we wanted the drums to have. Once the structure was clear in my head, i had it written down, therefore for the following rehearsals i was still confident with where i was and what parts needed to be worked on. By the time it came to the 2nd rehearsal we were all solid on the structure of the song, so i just has to spice up my parts and add to them what i thought would benefit this whole project. It didn't take long before everything came together, and the result i believe was how i hoped it would turn out from the start.

Good areas, Bad areas, Areas of Improvement:

What went wrong:

Not a lot really went wrong. There were times where mistakes were made during rehearsal, or there were times where there was a bit of confusion. This however was quickly sorted out and little mistakes that threw people off were reduced to minimal. Sometimes i would forget a certain fill i had specifically put in one place and changed it to something simpler. This was a mistake on my own part that only i noticed, but made sure i had those certain fills implanted into my memory ready for the performance. Sometimes i would forget the pushes in certain places, and play the 4 into the 1 of the next bar as a straight beat. Once i sorted that out, the song as a whole felt like it flowed better. I ended up scrapping my original idea and ended up just collaborating on someone else's track. Luckily there was still plenty of opportunity for my own input.

What went well:

Rehearsals went smoothly from the early stages, and challenges were tackled on the spot rather than after the fact, which sped up the process of everything. This meant every rehearsal we had learnt from the mistakes made in the previous rehearsal, and minimized those ready for multiple smooth run-throughs of the song.

What could I improve on for next time:

Next time i will make sure i have my own ideas planned out much earlier so i can prepare to put them into practice, and create a better documented process behind the whole project, as things seemed quite rushed at times towards the end.