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I would like to make a note here that my original bassist decided to not show up to my final summative performance without telling us, and so my final performance suffered as a consequence of the cello player having to play the bass guitar, and my mind being completely preoccupied with the fact that he wasn't there. I feel like this negatively effected my performance and would like that to be known during the marking process.

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This week I spent a lot of time filling out and improving my diary entries, whilst checking with peers and tutors about the mixing on the track I have recorded for the studio version. This allowed me to double check whether my work would be considered professional and whether or not my work would be received with credibility.

Overall, this week has been fairly minimal as I have spent my time just writing out and expanding other diary entries, and with LPW and pre-production ending last week there isn't much in terms of videos I can add.

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Key features of my track include:
- 90BPM throughout the whole track
- 4/4 throughout the whole track
- D minor key
- The structure is very straight forward, it takes at the original idea and continuously layers things on top of the original part, then in the final 2 bars it strips everything back to go into the main idea again by itself.
- The track is 52 bars long, it is broken up into 12 bars intro, 8 bars distorted guitars come in, 8 bars low lead line comes in, 8 bars of the harmony, 8 bars of the distorted guitar playing the main clean idea and then 8 more bars of the original stripped back clean guitar part.
- There are only 4 chords in my track, 3 of which are all Sus2 chords (Dsus2, Fsus2 and Csus2) and one Bbmaj7#11 chord.
- The chord progression is a I VI III VII progression with Dm as the I chord.
- The only scale used is the D minor scale.
- I used a 3rd harmony during the lead section (Bar 29) which is polyphonic as the melodies are slightly different and weave in and out of each other.
- Since I have used a Bbmaj7#11 chord as the 2nd chord in the progression, and the rest of the progression is made up of sus2 chords, the song technically has no real key centre as it could be major or minor in 3 of the 4 chords. This allows for more freedom in the playing and writing allowing for the harmony to be implied by the other instruments, such as the lead guitar or the string section.

The inspirations (listed previously in the column before week 1) for my track are apparent in the songwriting, tone and overall feel of the tracks. The harmony idea came from the song "voice of the soul" by the band death, the tapping intro idea was inspired by the work done by Sammy Boller and the outro where the chords ascend to an octave higher rather than descend to stay in the same range comes directly from the outro to the song "Floods" by pantera.

I have learned a lot about my own sound through working on this track, I have realised that my playing and writing style more suits an ambient guitar style crossed with metal guitar, specifically progressive metal.

For production techniques, I have used double tracking on the rhythm guitars to give the sound more width, as though 2 guitars were playing on the stage together and playing the same thing. This was done by simply re-recording the exact same part over the top of the original part. Because humans aren't perfect, there are always some subtle differences between 2 recordings of the exact same part, and so this adds extra layering to the track and again increases the width of the rhythm section.

I also used a lot of compression on this track. I used it on the kick drum and snare, as well as the lead guitars to make them more punchy and in the case of the guitars, to help them rise above everything else happening in the mix. I also did this by using EQ and making sure that every instrument had it's own range, including each part of the drum kit.

I used tapping in the track in the main clean riff to add a softer sound. None of the intro uses a guitar pick and that creates this warmer, soft clean tone that, combined with the reverb and delay added to the track, adds a nice depth to the part.

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This week I finished my studio version of the track. This includes mixing and mastering of the track. This leaves me only to work on these diary entries and the recorded live performance version. This frees up a lot of time for me to rehearse and write these entries and the live performance.

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My target audience is a bit of a niche one, I would say that it is along the lines of fans of artists like Sammy Boller and other  ambient guitar led musicians. Doing some research into both Sammy's and Plini's instagram audiences, I found that a majority of them are male from western countries, specifically the United States and the United Kingdom, however Plini has a large Australian audience which can be attributed to him being  an Australian musician.

I believe my track would be received with credibility by the target audience as it uses a lot of the standard practices within the genre. When writing it I had also considered something I had heard Plini say. In an interview with Guitar World, Plini explained how you can take a simple chord progression and add extensions to the chords to make it more interesting without learning new, complicated chord progressions, however you shouldn't repeat the same chord progression forever with no changes to the track because, as he puts it, "...Because in the progressive world, everyone has the attention span of about a bar and a half before you want to hear something different." (Guitar World, 2018) This formed the basis of my track as every 4 bars something new was added to the track to keep the listener engaged, to keep them guessing as to where the track would go next. This is effective and would be received with credibility by the target audience, as it has been already proven by people such as Plini who is reputable and highly regarded in the modern progressive music world. I have also used some interesting chord extensions as Plini explains in this video. I have used a Bbmaj7#11 chord as the 2nd chord in the progression, and the rest of the progression is made up of sus2 chords, meaning that the song technically has no real key centre as it could be major or minor in 3 of the 4 chords. This allows for more freedom in the playing and writing allowing for the harmony to be implied.

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My formative went to plan and I got some valid feedback that I intend to work on. A big part of my recorded track feedback was to work on the mix and the drum writing. I was told the kick in the track is "unrelenting" which I agree with and plan to change it up completely to groove more.

I am still on track of my original schedule, although now I will be reallocating more of my time to working on the drums and the mix.

As mentioned before, my priorities still lie with the performance aspect of the assignment, however more time will be spent on the recorded performance.

So far, everything seems to be going according to plan and I am now working on getting the band rehearsed and ready for the live performance.

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I learned lots about mixing metal tracks over the last few weeks, this includes learning about things such as Panning, Equalisation and Volume balancing. "To achieve the required tightness of sound, the drum sound will usually be dominated by the spot mics, so be careful not to overplay the level of your overheads and any room mics. Overdoing the overheads will very quickly lead to an abrasive mix that will soon tire the ears of the listener. " (Mynett, 2021)

Mynett, M., 2021. Mixing Metal. [online] Soundonsound.com. Available at: <https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/mixing-metal> [Accessed 27 October 2021].

I also learned a lot about how guitarists of bands I take inspiration from get their sound and tone. The band "Architects" have harsh yet beefy guitar tones that compliment the drums and bass nicely. I picked up on the types of amps they used and the types of guitars used. “There was a Victory Kraken in there too as the KSR we originally tried wasn’t doing it. And in front of the amps, we always had a stock Maxon Tube Screamer or a TS9. There were four tracks for rhythms, so two tracks with the 5150 left and right and same again with the Kraken. Everything was going through the same cab and overdrive pedal. Our strings are low [B-tuned] and heavy gauge.” (Middleton, 2019)

Sharma, A., 2021. Architects: “Tom is there throughout the album in ambient tracks, clean parts and more”. [online] MusicRadar. Available at: <https://www.musicradar.com/news/architects-tom-is-there-throughout-the-album-in-ambient-tracks-clean-parts-and-more> [Accessed 27 October 2021].

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This week I put a band together for my summative performance assignment video. This band includes 2 guitar players, a drummer and a bassist. I felt relieved to have a band ready and to be able to make sure that I will be able to finish the assignment easily. This is relevant because it directly effects how the final submission for the summative assignment will go. I achieved what I set out to do and I learned how to form a band. This will be valuable in the future of the degree as putting together groups and bands is very important. The next steps will consist of making sure that everyone knows what needs to be played and getting everyone together to rehearse the track.

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I rerecorded the parts mentioned in last weeks diary entry, and this time recorded some bass parts too. I was happy with the bass line considering I had come up with them on the spot so I had bass in the song for the formative assignment. The recording went well, however when I tried to mix the demo for the formative assignment I didn't really like the outcome. This was because I didn't really know what I was doing and just changing stuff arbitrarily, getting more and more frustrated that it wasn't sounding the way I envisioned it would. This can be solved by during production tools lessons asking for help and guidance. I can also try to book some mentoring sessions to improve my skills and get more focussed feedback to the parts I am struggling with. I will ask for help and opinions on Monday from my production tools tutor and I will look into booking mentoring sessions for the future.

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Call me - Blondie
Video is from small pond during a rehearsal of the track

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This week I worked on my formative assignment and rerecorded parts I wasn't happy with. I was content with the result, but know that I can do better. The recording process went well, however the guitar tone I had just didn't really fit the bill and stood out like a sore thumb. This was because I didn't take the time to actually find a suitable sound and just plugged in and recorded with the sound there. This can and all be easily solved by rerecording the parts with the right sound over the next week.

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This week we worked on the CAGED chord system. Going into it, I already knew exactly what it was and had already developed some ways to utilise it, however the lesson was a nice reminder and did introduce some new ways to apply this system to my music.

We had an opportunity to utilise this in the song for LPW that week, specifically using inversions to raise the main chord progression of the song "Roxanne" (show in the videos) which was a nice way to practice using the system.

This will contribute to the assignment as my song is very chordal for the most part which makes CAGED useful since I can use the system to change some of the chord voicings I used when I originally wrote the song.

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This is the song I will be using, I had started and written it a while ago but it needs some polishing as it is very rough around the edges as it stands.

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This is the song I will be doing for my submission

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This is the song I will be doing for my submission

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Inspiration 1: "voice of the soul" - death. 

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Inspiration 1: "voice of the soul" - death. 

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The inspiration came to me from a couple of places. I was very into the band "death" at the time, and their song "voice of the soul" was very inspirational to this and was what gave me the general idea for the lead lines and how the harmonies would work. It also shaped the distorted tone I end up using on the track. I have provided a Link to the song above.

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SWOT analysis I've worked on

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I first found Sammy Boller on instagram and quickly started to love watching his playing and love listening to his style. He heavily inspired the tapping clean guitar at the start and end of the song. Most of his songs use this style and I didn't draw inspiration from any particular song, but I did draw inspiration from his playing. I have left a link to his instagram page where you can find lots of his works, all of which helped inspire my track.

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Inspiration 3: The outro to the song "floods" by pantera. 

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Inspiration 3: The outro to the song "floods" by pantera. 

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This outro follows 4 9th chords moved around the neck of the guitar. This song has always been a favourite of mine from the melodic solo to the dark feel of the verses to the heavy choruses, but the outro sums up this song perfectly for me. This is where the use of the 9th chords comes from too, mixed with the other influences mentioned.

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The lead lines were originally very different. These are both of them together. Originally they were improvised and are now essentially evidence of me messing around with different intervals with the harmony guitar and different melodies. I made sure to keep all of the old tracks so I can use them in the future for a project/assignment like this (thanks past me).

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I used the CAGED system to come up with some inversions higher up the fretboard to add some extra detail to the song. I also did this as this same week we did CAGED practice in guitar technical development and by utilising it here I was able to get more practice.

The video above is just the inversions played by themselves, the video below is the inversions with the rest of the band minus the original guitar as the backing track I used removed the original guitar track

https://youtu.be/rMxyBVm4F14

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I do not have access to proper string sections and I do not have any way to record them, so I made this using MIDI and liked how it turned out. The strings bare resemblance to the lead lines, which is where I got the idea for the rising Motif in the lead lines, I copied the strings but rather than descending down to the low notes, I felt the lead lines would be better ascending.

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Master blaster - Stevie Wonder
Video is from small pond during a rehearsal of the track

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Originally, I used this clean track all of the way through the song, however I didn't like the tone of the recording when the guitar was isolated at the start and end. I replaced the beginning and ending clean parts, but I felt like the original recording had a nice tone that blended well with the distorted guitars and so I kept this track and used it in the demo version here.

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Rhythm section (Bass and drums both MIDI)

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Rhythm section (Bass and drums both MIDI)

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The rhythm section has been lumped together here as they are both very simple. The drums just follow a standard pattern of every beat has a cymbal/high hat hit, on beats 2 and 4 there is a snare hit and the kick is playing every 16th note at 90BPM.

The bass just follows the strings but in a bass register instead of the register of the strings.

Both of these are also MIDI as I do not own a bass nor do I own a drum kit.

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LPW song - Roxanne by The Police. 05/10/21

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LPW song - Roxanne by The Police. 05/10/21

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I learned the song Roxanne for this week's LPW. I also added some of my own parts to the song. These are shown in the other panel

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For my formative assignment, I will focus on bringing a band together and rehearsing the track to a point where we can play it together and have it be recognisable. This will involve developing the original material I already have into a live version that does not use all the layering and MIDI that the studio version does.

My formative assignment will hopefully be presented as a live performance demo video if possible, but that isn't 100% set in stone yet until I meet and form a band.

From producing this work, I will gain the skills to network with other musicians, something I have been lacking the skillset for for a while now.

The main challenges will be the formation of the band but also turning the original track into a live performance version. This will be made easier as the song itself has no vocals, meaning I don't have to find a vocalist, however that will present its own challenges as sections become more ambiguous with no vocals or lyrics to mark the beginning and ending of sections.

Gaps in my current knowledge are primarily production focussed. I do not know the ins and outs of making a good sounding mix, and I tend to struggle dialing in the right guitar tone for the track. I think these will be resolved with my own research and with the production tools lectures in the coming weeks in which I will be working on the track directly and getting advice from people who have experience with production.

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I have plenty of ideas for the final studio/DAW track, however as it stands I have little to no ideas for the live performance aspect. I think it is very likely I may try and ask around and see if anyone else will help me with the live aspect to perform this song, removing the string sections from the final piece and removing some of the guitar layering. I may also extend the song to make room for a full solo rather than just a lead line.

I think the hard part will be finding people to lend a hand with performing the track. The track itself is already written and just needs polishing, meaning I can focus most of my efforts into the live performance part of the assignment.

In terms of possible skills that could be learned from this, I think a big part will be learning to collaborate with people and put those collaborations together. I personally have always struggled with bringing people together to work on something and so this module and assignment will be a real learning opportunity for that aspect of things.

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Sammy boller instagram statistics:

Socialblade. 2021. Sammy Boller Instagram Statistics.. [online] Available at: <https://socialblade.com/instagram/user/sammy%20boller> [Accessed 26 November 2021].

Plini interview:

Guitar World, 2018. Plini Turns Your Power Chords Into Awesome Prog Riffs!. [video] Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToqDrVMRpcs&t=129s> [Accessed 26 November 2021].