• misogyny and enforced subordinance.

  • the way women are treated in low income and/or Islamic countries like Afghanistan and Sudan (https://www.concern.net/news/worst-countries-for-womens-rights)

• the government turning a blind eye to poverty in the UK while the rich becoming wealthier over the pandemic than they had in the previous fourteen years. (https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/ten-richest-men-double-their-fortunes-pandemic-while-incomes-99-percent-humanity#:~:text=Billionaires'%20wealth%20has%20risen%20more,billionaire%20wealth%20since%20records%20began.)

• the fact that microplastics make up 0.5% of the weight in human brain samples (and that people with dementia or Alzheimer's have 10x more plastic in their brains than those that are healthy) https://davidsuzuki.org/story/plastic-is-polluting-our-brains-and-bodies/#:~:text=The%20Guardian%20reports%20that%2024%20brain%20samples,brains%20than%20people%20without%20those%20health%20issues

• the difference between eating a cow and a horse - the horse meat scandal.

• self-victimisation/narcissism, indoctrination, social media feeding into a victim mentality via external validation.

My album will have a variety of topics ranging from personal issues to political issues. I am taking inspiration from a variety of bands I listen to like Lacuna Coil, Puscifer, and Ludovico Technique lyrically and instrumentally, maintaining originality but having some influence. 

This relates to my wider career as performing my original songs is the largest of the many branches I am hoping to climb. Therefore, writing and releasing an album is one of my next steps; writing for this album is evidently alongside producing, mixing, and graphic design, all of which will aid me in various musical pathways from sound engineering to marketing. 

I have also been allowing myself a buffer of several weeks at a time in case of issues or unavailability of session musicians. For example, I have blocked out approximately a month during December and January to give my session musicians a break over the holidays and took this time instead to work on independent work like songwriting and graphic design.  

I have a synth player in place, Nathan, but due to his own busy schedule, I have been writing and experimenting with most of the synth (of which there isn’t a lot in general) and have started learning to use Ableton as I feel that the instruments on that are better than the DAW I primarily use, Logic Pro X.

Similar is true of bass guitar, as I noticed the bassist did not have time to concentrate on what I had sent him and "went with the flow" by improvising, which did not work for the recordings we had taken, and I was ultimately unhappy with it. I am working around this by writing my own bass, and may potentially end up recording it by myself, but will keep my bassist for live events. Recording it by myself is not ideal as I'm already doing guitar and vocals on my own.

I always have a bank of notes to hand because of how often I have a creative epiphany and how infrequently I take the time to piece my songs together. By the time I start the instrumentation, I have a lyrical outline which will change again once the instruments have been written or recorded, so my development timeline for a song is often: lyrics-instruments-lyrics-done.  

I started the instruments for this album by experimenting with guitar phrases and writing down my favorites in Guitar Pro to share the tabs with my session musicians while also developing new ideas for bass, synth, and drums. I always find it a lot easier having the lyrics prewritten because I will have a more definitive idea of the song structure. I’ll have the guitar written down and the bass runs off that, and I have a beat in mind for the drums, which I will send to the WhatsApp group with my musicians for them to scrutinize. During rehearsal sessions, this is refined further until it sounds recordable, and it normally only takes an hour or two before we are all happy enough with it. 

For the first few weeks of the semester, I was sending a couple songs a week to my bandmates for our Monday evening rehearsal. At first this was effective as we were banging out songs here, there and everywhere, but after about a month there was too much for anyone to remember or want to rehearse back-to-back with the exception of myself; I don’t expect other people to care about my music as much as me, though, so I wanted to come up with a viable solution. This is when I decided to begin recording, because at least after the recording is done, everyone can have a break from those songs for a little while.

With that in mind, we started recording and rehearsing every other week from each other. On days when instruments weren’t required it was just me and my audio engineers, Ben and Harrison, or us and whoever else’s turn it was to record (generally the drummer, because the bassist was happy to do it from home). It was a little confusing and I must admit that I need to reorganise my files because it was ridiculously easy to have lost an entire week’s worth of recording in the endless pit of phone-recorded demos, song lyrics, tabs, and whatever else I have backed up to my OneDrive (but it’s there somewhere!) - therefore, one of my targets for the new semester is to keep it together and label my files properly. No more “recording 1”, “recording 2”, “song 1” - a name will always come first. 

The mixing process for my music has not yet begun as, so far, only one song has been fully recorded with another on its way, and I feel it may need extra time in the studio before it’s good enough to use. I want it to sound crisp and professional to hit every streaming platform to exist, so I am taking my time (as much as reasonable, considering my spreadsheet timeline is strict).

I believe I may need to come back to the A&R part of this course because while I understand what I was meant to take from it in theory, in practice I don’t think I was given any sound advice on how to improve my songwriting or anything else I was doing. I missed the second (and last) A&R meeting due to being unwell and did not have any further correspondence relating to it. However, I am constantly on the lookout for an extra pair of ears, and the main advice I have been given by friends and family is that I sound a little tone deaf vocal-wise on my demo of Running Away. This was soidified during recording when Harrison said "don't worry too much - I have Melodyne," which is a pitch editor, but I can't be too offended, because I completely agree with that and while I could blame it on the nerves from the knowledge of a room full of people I can’t hear or see listening to me singing, it’s most likely that I need to warm up more and practice more often.

Other artists like Oddko and N3b work to merge genres with the former using a mixture of synthesisers and string instruments and the latter making what he considers to be “nerd rock”: a blend of EDM and rock/metal-inspired guitar and vocals. Alex Yarmak is another example of an artist I listen to who blends genres, with albums released with titles like “Retrowave Goes Metal” and “Lofi Goes Metal”. 

https://open.spotify.com/track/6Ypq22pYSwhqsNOowHgpEF?si=adbdd358f45a48d5

https://www.instagram.com/shesingsshewrites/

• Independence

• Gratitude for having a healthy body

• My love for my boyfriend and how he has changed my life for the better

• Comedic music about things I enjoy like my pets or food

• Satire

  
  

This is the next song that will be recorded in the studio. I took a different approach to this, taking inspiration from bands like Tool and SPYCAMERA when writing the guitar. I wrote this song because all the others were starting to make me feel like I was stagnating.

However, songwriting-wise I am pleased with this song but I want to work on the way I convey myself vocally to make it sound more emotive as I feel like I sound a little bored while singing it oftentimes.

https://soundcloud.com/chaosdancer/parasocial-rehearsal

As well as marketing through social media, I will begin live performances and marketing myself in-person through events. This is the trickiest part as I will need to organise my band (as not everyone I am currently working with is interested in performing live) but it will undoubtedly pay off.  

https://soundcloud.com/chaosdancer/nobody-midi

Inspiration track linked at top: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9P6kV4DtRdU

The main reasons for this are that it gives me material to show off early on and is supposedly more attractive to the Spotify algorithm in regards to pushing your songs further to more viewers. In my case, I need material for marketing and having a few singles released early on gives me something to push forward to potential listeners while I work on other tracks.

I definitely see a sweet spot in releasing a few singles and then dumping an album on top of those because then you have more music for a person to listen to. Personally, when I discover a new artist I like to listen to a lot of their songs around the same time, so when artists like N3b or SPYCAMERA release singles one-by-one I tend to forget they exist until the next one pops up on my feed.

Another thing that went well was networking and fostering connections: my drummer for this was another student who I would not have met if not for the initiation of this project. I also met other students who unfortunately did not stay for the final months of the project, but now I have several people I will be able to contact in the future to work with. If not for this project I would not have developed the courage to advertise my project and its requirements. 

I didn’t plan to have such a large workload; I hoped I would have at least another guitarist or two, a keyboardist, and people to help record and mix the final products, which would spread out the load more and allow me to produce the full-length album I had hoped to achieve. However, I struggled to find people interested in helping as many had their own projects to attend to (and those that were interested in helping were not interested in my style of music or the longevity of the project, for example). I ended up needing to be a lot more flexible genre-wise than I’d anticipated in order to have the two people able to help me, as neither of them heard of my reference bands and weren’t really experienced in hard rock music. 

At the beginning of the project, I had made a ridiculously detailed plan for the duration of the project, even colour-coding it based on the writing, recording, and releasing phase. However, this didn’t consider the workload of other assignments, time spent at my job, time spent visiting my family, the availability of the studios and rehearsal rooms, the availability of my cohorts, sickness, and more. This made it incredibly difficult to have everyone at the same place at the same time for recording and rehearsing, and a lot of the recording was done separately or via interface at home rather than live for that reason. In the previous six months I have not had a single day off from either work or university to ensure this and my other projects were completed on time and to a high standard which has been exhausting.

In the future I will have a better idea of workload for other areas of my study and work which will allow me to better prepare for the result whether that be adjusting the end goal as I have for my Major Music Project, or by adjusting my deadline.   

This resulted in my project’s result being much different to the original concept, however it was not necessarily for the worst. I originally wanted to record eleven songs, then eight, then whittled it down to three higher quality tracks as opposed to six or more I didn’t like that much. I did write seven completed songs and a couple incomplete ones, the best of which I will continue tweaking to release in the coming months and the worst of which I will either work to improve or scrap altogether (as a last resort). I’m aiming to always have 1-2 songs going at a time to eventually produce a more substantial album with.  

I will be continuing to write and record my music during my Sound and Music Production MSc next year, possibly a lengthier album as I now know what to expect in terms of workload for something of this scale. My next steps with this project are to use it as part of my portfolio to arrange more live events at local venues to work my way up to larger-scale events, as so far my applications have come to a halt when asked for any current material since I haven’t had any that were representative of my aesthetic. My goal has always been to perform at large-scale festivals like Download which will come with time and consistency, but I will start with smaller events like that at the Frog and Fiddle, and I will apply to play at festivals like on Cheltenham Jazz Festival’s free stage.  

My approach to music-making hasn’t changed much since the start of the project except for giving myself time to consider how best to go about writing songs, but I am certainly more independent now as I mentioned that at the beginning of my project it was hard to find people that wanted to work with me. I spent a lot of time in the studio by myself, mixed by myself, wrote by myself; it was difficult however so I would not choose to do it this way. However, I can if needs must! 

Because of how much time I spent by myself in Studio 2, I ended up learning a lot about it such as how to patch in the Kemper preamp (which I was originally too afraid to do in case I broke something) and how different mic techniques impacted the sound (which I felt silly experimenting with in front of others, because they generally told me I was wrong and should do it “like this instead.” I was not wrong – the room mic behind the drums sounds great!) As aforementioned, the main creative skills that I developed during this project were my vocals and my songwriting. 

My practice as an artist improved during this project by learning how to properly organise my time. I’ve always been a well-organised individual, but this was the biggest project I’ve ever worked on, especially alongside working and visiting home, so it challenged me to get things done with tighter deadlines than before. It tested my limits and showed me what I’m capable of under pressure; I didn’t think I could write entire songs in the span of a couple hours, for example, but I can (though the time spent often reflects the quality, in my opinion!) However, I now realise how many external factors I need to take into account when planning large projects like this, as I had totally forgotten to include the rest of my life when organising the project at the beginning.  

I’m still finding my artistic voice and individuality as an artist in general, but I think this project has done well to reflect my individuality by being written about oddly specific experiences only I have had while still being relatable to the broader audience. For instance, my track Running Away was about how badly bullied I was in school and how I chose to be homeschooled rather than stay and be miserable; I thought that was awful at the time and constantly questioned whether I’d made the right choices, but I wouldn’t have progressed with my music or moved away to study music in college and later university if I wasn’t so lonely during secondary school. That’s an experience not many people have had at all, so I was glad to write about it and get it off my chest in a way that’s perhaps more understandable to others and easier to digest; I don’t like to talk about it but putting it into music makes it much less difficult, especially in terms of how vague some of my lyrics are. 

I changed my social media information, such as my Instagram handle, to Tank Animal, which is the artist title I’ve chosen for this work and future works. My only audience is my Instagram followers and they’re all my peers which certainly didn’t help my promotion as I didn’t know who I was meant to promote to! Any response to posts about my EP was from friends and peers but from the outside it doesn’t look so bad. When I’m more regularly performing, I will pay for ads on Instagram and Facebook to spread my music further out and hopefully in turn spread my live events further across the UK.  

I also made a Wix website for people to turn to when they’re interested in my music. I prefer actual websites over Facebook pages because I think they’re sleeker and more polished, whereas social media can be a little difficult to navigate, especially if that’s the only page available for an artist. I’m not opposed to a Facebook page but didn’t think my target audience (younger people, particularly in the local independent alternative scene) would be as interested as an Instagram page and a website.  

In the meantime, it has been uploaded to Bandcamp. https://tankanimal.bandcamp.com/album/running-away

The drums were written and performed by Jezreel Enriquez in each track.

The bass in Running Away (track) was performed by Blue Phillips.

Album art shot by Lila Stancyzk-Ropiak.

tankanimal.wixsite.com

It came as a set of self-criticisms: I overthink too much, I'm incredibly critical (not only of myself, but of other people) and judgemental, I can be spiteful. I later realised that I'm not special in having negative traits; however, it's what I'm choosing to do with them (by working to not be judgemental, spiteful, etc.) that sets me and others apart from one another.

This is conveyed in lyrics like "heartless are the words we choose to share. You know better." I chose to use words like "we" to refer to people as a collective rather than just speak for myself, because especially in terms of the internet, humans collectively spew vitriol all the time often for no valid reason. That upsets me, and it's why I'm working to be better, to make it so that there's one less bad person in the world.

The chorus half refers to being stuck in a cycle of overthinking and half refers to the fact that other people and their negative influence and way of thinking are inescapable. "Lock the doors and swallow the keys" refers to the fact that overthinking is entirely a choice that you can choose to escape, even if difficult. However, "I'm relentless" is referring to the fact that it will not stop me.

It's mainly in response to the term "male loneliness epidemic" which in my opinion is entirely self-inflicted by the behaviour of a loud minority of men who seem blame women for the way they treat other people. When a woman speaks her mind online that is to the dismay of men their comments are often along the lines of "OnlyFans detected, opinion rejected" which is not fair or reasonable (especially considering most women do not sell images of themselves online, yet still end up sexualised). "Hatred without consequence, behind a voice anonymous" is in reference to the confidence people have online to be nasty to total strangers, who would rather cowardly (if that's the correct word) stay quiet in person.

It also responds to the predatory nature of the beauty industry and how it preys on women for natural aspects of themselves such as body hair, healthy levels of body fat, their hair colour (particularly greying hair), acne, naturally coloured eyelids.. the phrase "and it's shiny, lacy, skinny, racy" is referring to the "ideal woman" who is probably more akin to a mannequin than a human. It extends beyond the beauty industry: e.g., the acceptance of "the dad bod" while women must "bounce back" when the dad is, in fact, not the one who produced an entire child.

This is not all to say that men aren't targeted, for example, by the male beauty industry. However, I spent the entirety of my teenage and pre-teen years feeling insecure about the way I naturally was when I now realise it doesn't matter because it'll never reach the impeccably high standard set by consumerists requiring me to spend money on a new eyebrow pencil or something.

I was bullied tirelessly by a group of older boys that decided to pick on me because I dressed differently. They told me to kill myself, called me a lesbian, told me to self-harm - I can't really remember the rest but it got to the point where I stopped taking it seriously because it stopped being original. There's only so many times someone can shout "kill yourself!" at you and you take it to heart...

But I still had no friends and my teachers were all horrible, so I left. This was miserable because I felt at 13 years old that I had completely failed my life and that was that, I'm going to have to work in McDonald's until I retire at 70. I did my GCSEs remotely aged 14 and completely butchered them because I hated my life too much to bother studying.

I don't consider myself to have run away anymore because I know now where I'd end up, but I felt like a coward for not seeing school through and getting over it at the time. I started music in college because it was the only thing I continued to care about and was the only thing I wanted to be good at. This then led to music in university like some sort of messed up butterfly effect. "But I carried on, just stay strong" refers to keeping going even during the most difficult parts of life.