One problem that I has messed with me doing my work is my laptop not being powerful enough , like I have mentioned my CPU crashes due to me having a lot of plugins used ,(when I use a lot at the same time ) some of the plugins consist of , electric , Hive 2.0 is a very big one when it comes to crashing i have learned to control it but adding it as the last plugin and being cautious of my sound selection , Omnisphere doesn’t work no more due to it not being able to use all the sound samples because there so detailed.

I tried to delete some things to try and fix this problem , however there is a lot of things I use so it’s not that easy to delete things so I end up with an even bigger problem.

Some solutions I have come to is 1, I used critical thinking. I didn’t use as much  plugins and making my beats less complex , which goes into making  my music more simple for people to put vocals on ( also not putting vocals and the track on the same project , bounce out the project then add the vocals on the wav file.). I have done this is one of my songs which has saved a lot of my tracks and also saved me from loosing all of my tracks when my Fl went into trial mode.

The next solution I had was from an class discussion , a student from my class Valentino said “ I should put all my plugins on and hard drive” which isn’t a bad solution but i think it’ll be a bit confusing for me because i don't have a usb and also i do have a lot of tracks to finish with a limited amount of time left.

The other solution in the class discussion was one of my teachers (Bhum) mentioning  “use the college computers if your laptop crashes” , if my laptop wasn’t working then it was best to use the computer than doing no work at all , and also mentioning that I’m in college 5 days a week so it was more than possible to do. in which i did , i did go over my media work (photoshop) on the macs and even created some projects on there.

One more less major problem is me breaking my headphones , I broke the my headphones to my focusrite , which has damaged my work rate a bit because I can't really use my microphone without them , so to overcome this is started to book the studio more to use the microphone in the college, the other solution that I had was to actually buy some new headphones with an aux to plug in the focusrite. however This doesn’t always work for me also because I use the speaker to mix my songs. I fixed this by asking one pf my teachers (Grant) for an audio jack for the foucusrite because i realised i had a spare set of old headphones , they wasn't the best but they could do the job and will help my work rate.

In my fmp laptop stopped working , I wasn’t sure if it was the actual laptop or the charger , so my teachers Grant and Simone helped me and told me to go up to the IT department in the collage, I went up and I got my charger tested ( the volts coming out of the charger , there wasn’t anything coming out of the charger so I ended up just buy another one a couple days later when I had the money to , couldn’t book the studio since I had nothing to book it on which was quite annoying and even if i did on the school MacBook's i couldn't access any of my work due to it being all on my laptop , however when i did get my laptop back i was able to do all these things.

Another big problem that I had was a lot of my work wasn't auto recovery , I saved it, but I just didn't save properly so now I don't have a bunch of my work that I did which has delayed my fmp work. I'm going to try to replace all the work that I previously did but I will be difficult to do.

To solve this problem in the future , and something unexpected happens in my fmp , I will double save all my work so I don’t waste any of my hard work.

I have lost both research about audio recording and learning how to mix tracks , however I will try to recover the information I lost throughout my fmp , and made sure to double save all my work that i did on Microsoft word.

In contrast Some problems that I may face in the future with tracks is not having artists to be ready to rap as soon as possible , a lot of artists do have other work to finish so I may not be a priority in this time , so if worst comes to worse ill do my own vocals on each song ill produce with all the knowledge that i gave gained from my research.

So expanding from this problem I haven’t really had any progress on actually getting rappers on my track that I have met through social media , however its not really a problem with getting them to actually do vocals on my track , but rather the time there doing it , and if it doesn’t reach the deadline that I have so it’s looking like I have to start recording tracks myself. It is a bit late and my time management with these tracks hasn’t really been the best since i lost all my work , however I’m sure I could overcome this problem by booking a lot of studio time through the days that I have in college.

another thing that has hindered me again is my focusrite having problems with my microphone , I have fixed the issue with my focusrite headphone jack , however the microphone seems to be making a buzzing sound in which I cant control, so to solve this problem ill ask my main teacher if he has any spare microphone wires.

I have to still bring my microphone in because we figured the wire was fine , however since then I have been booking the studios to use the microphones in the rooms.

My teacher suggested i leave my microphone in a plastic bag because when moisture does build up in a microhome i does make that type of noise , however it still didn't work , so to fix this problem i just booked more studio time to make use of the microphones.

The last problem i have had in this fmp is I cant actually use Fl properly , since I was using someone's account ( my friends ) but he changed the password , I don't speak to him anymore since I lost contact so I'm not able to open any projects I have saved so I am in a bit of a problem , I have some tracks saved but I wouldn't really be able to provide screenshots in detail.

I ended up remaking tracks because i had the stems bounced out for one of them , and the vocals and instrumentals for some of them also which was good.

How did i make the track?

So as I said before I was heavily inspired by the track TSU from drake , the reason for me making this track was because I wanted to make a track that was really complicated , but I still wanted the track to sound full without me having to add a lot of drums or melodies which is what I do a lot of the time , i started the track off with the drums , so i normally start with the hi hats , the most popular hi hat sound it the 691 , this is from a really large pack which a friend sent to me when I first started producing , its probably the most clearest and cleanest sounding hi hat which i have came across , its not a dull sounding hi hats it has like a metal taste to hit , which really makes the hi hat stand out from the rest of the drums , i also wanted to pick clean samples since it was in my research on the second video and the first video that you should pick the samples your using wisely so its easier to mix and wouldn't distort the track, the next thing I moved to is the clap , now the clap sample i used is actually from a drill kit but they had some trap snares and claps which sounded more clean the an actually pack dedicated to trap snares/claps , also the name Pierre is a very know producers which has produced for drake.

the next thing I added was the spinz 808 bass , now i do use this bass a lot , the reason for is because it really has a punchy feel to it , it doesn't sound drowned. For the 808 i normally boost it so it sounds more clear I do this by clicking on the sample in Fl studio , the turning up the boost a little , and turning the eq up half way.

Another point Finneas made was when he was having an conversation with his mum about song writing he thought that you had to make a song actually based on what you have been through in your life in a way , but his mum explained that you could just make it up it doesn't actually have to relate to you ( quote 1:30mins "I remember one time she sort of suggested that we write a song about like, a plot of a tv show you know , you put yourself in the shoes of some character on tv") , this give me sort of the confidence to write a track also , when you listen to a lot of song that your favourite artist has made you normally think everything there saying is true when this is not the case all the time < writing lyrics doesn't have to relate to you at all , know this helped me write more lyrics because not everything I was saying is true , even putting your self in someone else's shoes Like a tv character is actually quite helpful and has been helpful towards me writing lyrics.

tracks that i have shown this in are bruce wayne . and maybach

I do hopefully by the end of the fmp gained more traction through social media , and also a lot of information on how to distribute and promote music , and i feel like making trap will probably get me the most traction due to me already posting it so much , i would be harder for me to start doing a a completely new genre( like an ep with them) because i have already built my social medias around trap music , however it is something ill do in the future for sure.

From watching this interview i gained the confidence to actually record my self for the purpose of promoting my music , it has helped me a lot with pushing out my music , each snippet i have posted has done quite well in terms of views and likes , it has also helped me be consistent in my work , i haven't posted everyday due to me having a lot of fmp work , but i have most defiantly posted a lot more content than i have before on Instagram. I have seen that when you are consistent with you work you do get more traction , and is something that ill be defiantly be doing after my fmp is finished , also paying for promotion , not being shy so spend money on my music is something that has helped me , i have pay for promotion on one of my ticktock videos which has helped me push my account to a wider audience.

Some of the effects i added in my recoding was the auto tune , chorus , and fresh air .

however i did find a problem with using the plugin fresh air , I'm not sure if its the plugin its self of my laptop but for my track Bruce Wayne at the start of my vocals a clicking sound would show up , at first i didn't hear it but now i can hear it every time i play it , I'm not too sure if using the plugin Fresh air is enterally necessary to use for vocals ,and for my track mayback i turned it off , it does provide a clearer sound but not in all my vocals.

how did i do that?

So when listen to the vocals i realised i missed out on some major vocal mixing , i did rush the track at the start which i something i shouldn't of done , so when i was listening to the vocals they sounded too loud and just not EQ'd very well , so what i did was double up the vocals , so one actual major problem that i had in this track was that i didn't have the paid version of Fl studio , so there was a lot of things i couldn't do like i did before , so because i couldn't make the sending duplicated track unique , which is what i need for the stereo delay i just asked Gallie to do 2 takes of each section of lyrics he did , With that i was able to add the stereo delay to the track to give it a more full sound

However at first I posted it at like 1pm on a Sunday , so I waited a bit but it wasn’t getting a lot of views ,( normally I can tell when a video is about to get a lot of views from how much views the video has in the first hour0 the video was still at 150 views within the first hour so I deleted the video , I reposted the video at around 10 11 pm on Instagram , after this I got a lot more traction on the video , I ended up getting about 1272 views which is more views than I got from the previous snippet.

I do plan on adding the tracks that i have done on Soundcloud but before I'm going to post them on ticktock and probably one more time on Instagram just so i can push the track out to its full potential

tracks that i have used this in "bruce wayne"

The thing drake talks about is his purpose from his album views he states ( quote 13:49 " This was more like what is a cohesive incredible listening experience from me what can i do, for this generation to take .. create distance between myself and anyone else and do something that you know , maybe no one else can really achieve or accomplish") , in this quote it has taught me its good to have purpose in your music , for me my purpose would me to mainly mix vocals but really what would the purpose be for the listener , drake talks about he wants to create distance from himself , i feel like this is very crucial for being in the music scene , creating distance from your other music trying something different is important to expand and learn not just in music but in all aspects of life , if you continue in the same place you will always stay in the same place , so having meaning true meaning for making something's and also stepping outside your comfort zone is important , and i feel like in my fmp i will achieve this , doing things i haven't done before will help me learn and expand my knowledge about music.

tracks that i have used this information is bruce wayne and sweeny

So the main thing i hear is that people distribute their music on distro kid , i didn't actually know what that was so i searched it up on google and made an account.

After i made the account i had different plan that i could pick for distributing music , the most popular plan that you could choose is the "musician plus" a few options that you get with it is , unlimited uploads , daily streaming stats , creating royalty splits and mobile app access.

DistroKid. (not known). Compare Plans. [Online]. distrokid.com. Last Updated: 2025. Available at: https://distrokid.com/plan/?social_sign_up=google [Accessed 12 May 2025].

However it didn't really help me know what distribution actually is , so i searched how to distribute music and came across a website called .indieartistpulse.com , the article that was on the website is called (The Ultimate Guide To Distributing Your Music Independently)

The website clearly talks about how to distribute music and what it is.

What is distributing music ?

Distributing music is the process of getting your music heard / into the hands of the listener , this could include CD's or vinal which is physically or digital which is streaming platforms.

The website then has a section talking about traditional distribution and digital distribution , it talks about briefly how more physically / traditional ways of distribution has had a decline in sales due to digital distributing being more accessible , this is the reason why things such as vinals isn't really as popular , unless its from an artists or group with already large fanbase.

Now after this there is an section talking about choosing the right distribution platforms, the section has a list of different things you should check on distribution platforms.

some of the things on the list were :

• Distribution reach - making sure the distributor you choose works with the streaming platforms you want.

• Royalty Collection - some distributors offer more comprehensive royalty collection services than others, look for a platform that simplifies the process and helps you collect royalties from various sources.

• Additional features - a lot of distributors offer extra services that could help boost your growth , a few examples of this is playlist pitching , promoting tools e.g. , so look out for each distributor you come across and check for these

A lot of this information has help me understand what distribution music actual is , and also how to distribute my music and things to look out for when doing so , the additional features will be something's ill be looking for the most just so i can really push my tracks too their full potential.

So the first thing i did was book the studio for me to record in , the studio i choose was different to the studios i normally record in , this studio was next to the big main studio but in a smaller room , the reason i choose this room was because i wanted there to not be any background noise , since all the microphones in the studio in the college are condenser microphones , they tend to pick up a lot of background noise from outside the studio , or if someone is blasting music it will also pick up the bass, so choosing the less popular studio was an good decision to make.

However there is one problem , there isn't actually a microphone in that studio , so i did have to ask for a focusrite and a microphone to record my vocals , i had to set up the microphone and put it in the corner of the studio so i can record my vocals clearly.

For the track I started with the bass first that was the thing i wanted to perfect the most however i didn't mix the track fully so i didn't really reach my full potential , nerveless before when i was making the project i choose a bass that really hit the listener , i wanted the bass to have an impact and not just to be boring and dull , i choose a bass from and ken Carson pack called "Amethyst" the bass had a very punchy feel to it , i EQ the bass like i did in the Instagram video a found about how to make punchy basses , i also boosted the bass to make have a more punchy feel , this ended up not being such i good idea because the bass becomes too loud in the track , i copied the bass melody slightly from the track "ILMB" just with some minor changes.

After this i moved onto my hi hats , now for my hi hats i choose the same type of hi hat sound i choose in my last two projects , however not for the same reason as them , the reason i choose these hi hats was because when the bass kind of distorts the track (which is a style i go for sometimes) it makes the hi hats sound distorted which makes the track sound more raw , with these hi hats you can really hear that distorted sound which add a more aggressive aura to the track , much similar the (Ken Carson tracks and also 2Holllis)

I added a normal clap pattern that was in the same time with the hi hats , i choose a clap from the Singul@rity kit called " En1gma" , this clap carried the punchiness with the bass and gave that aggression with the track , a few perc's i added was a snare roll and a crash , the crash wasn't for every bar and neither was the snare roll , wanted to keep the track changing because i was going to keep the melody the same just like the track "RCXD".

(linking back to the interview with drake)

I listening to a lot of my favourite rap songs , and different rap artist that use auto tune , one great track that i took inspiration from for the vocals was travis Scott Astro thunder

, in the vocals you can hear the autotune and also a sort of chorus in his voice , i wanted to kind of recreate that sound for my vocals , it made the vocals sound more ethereal and trippy which was what really got my ear and was what i want for my track.

to kind of prepare my voice , i started to think how the song made me feel linking back to the video about Kendrick Lamar talking about how he writes lyrics , i sat in the studio for about think about what to say on the track , however i ended up just freestyling lyrics just to help me have a vocal warm up ( linking back to the list of things to do when recording) , while rapping i would say a good bar and keep it for example in the intro of the song i said " and i ran up all these racks like my name was Usain" , i would then think of this to rhyme with that word , in much i got who saying and Bruce Wayne the title of the song.

However firstly i recorded with autotune on , i could hear myself with the autotune which i have done before in the past when trying to use autotune , however it kept throwing me off , i couldn't hit the right notes because it would sound weird so after doing a couple of take i turned it off , even though it didn't sound how i wanted it too it was much easier to rap , i didn't have any delay on my voice and my laptop didn't crash due to an overload of plugins added to the recording channel.

i was able to have a lot of takes on the lyrics and i ended up with about 20 vocals saying the same thing , however i choose the ones that sounded the best and mixed them , now in the four versions i had some of the lyrics were different toward the mid section so i had to also choose which ones i wanted to keep.

After i did this i played with the options on the autotune since i knew all of the functions of each of the four controls due to my research , When i played the vocals through the auto tune i added some of the notes sounded very weird , so i played around with all the options and found out the natural vibrato was making the vocals sound off key , so i turned that option down , the flex tune and retune speed i turned all the way up because i wanted the autotune to be noticeable in my track, the humanize option what turned down slightly because again i wanted the auto tune to be noticeable in my track and if i turned the option all the ways up it would ruin that type of auto tune sound i wanted.

The vocal EQ was better at cutting out the bass and also boosting frequencies without it being to harsh ( more like a soft EQ) it was easier to identify were different frequencies were coming from which helped me a lot in mixing the vocals.

Now for the compressor i turned the Gain down in the track like i did for the track "RCXD" i left the threshold the same because it didn't really effects the vocal , just the gain because it made the vocals unnecessarily loud, after this i added the noise gate on the limiter plugin , like i mentioned before in my research it cuts out all background noise that isn't part of the vocals , this helped with the noise of the headphones a tat bit , the plugin is not like AI where it can identify where all the sounds are in the vocals , it just takes out all the parts that isn't part of the main vocals , with is the loudest part of the recoding.

the other auto tune i added was autotune effects , now this plugin added autotune ,but also had the option to add different effects in your auto tune , so some of the options was and ( compressor , echo, chorus ,reverb e.g.)

the options i choose was the echo , chorus and the echo,

now you might be thinking why would i add an echo i have done research on a side chain delay , well the sidechain delay wasn't working at the time ,the limiter didn't let me route from the side chain so i didn't go onto the vocals , i ended up just deleing it and added the echo because it sounded a lot better than the delay and was easier to add , i tried to fix the problem but due to me not being able to open the project again one i closed it i just scrapped it.

And the very final effect i added to the vocal was adding a love philter , fruity love philter has a wide range of effects such as phasers and filters like i have mentioned before , however i used it for its filter , i used it on the last couple of seconds on my track , it was a good way to end the vocals , it sounded like an old telephone in away which i thought sounded different and cool so i used it in the end.

He also mentions in the interview that for some beats he uses fl 11 because it mix sounds better just how like 24 sounds better than 21 for me, soon i definitely want to try the older versions of fl studio just too see how it sounds and if it would sound better for the type of music i make.

What have i gained from this interview is to keep my options open of what daws I'm using , so for example for my track "Bruce Wayne" i used Fl studio 24 whereas for everything else i use Fl studio 21 , so i switched between the 2 , i was going to download Fl studio 12 , however i didn't have time to install it and also i didn't have a lot of space , but switching between the 2 has helped me realised the differences in each one , for example Fl 24 sounds a lot cleaning when I'm actually making a track and has a lot more different options that you can use , but on Fl 21 i can use a lot more plugins since i had an account on there before , for example i can use a gross beat plugin on 21 but on 24 i cant use it.

I also did some research on distribution music and how distribution works , and also collaborating with artists was a big thing i did in this week.

I also did a lot of primary research in this week , this includes interviews and statistics with production , and also with my social media and learning about different times to post on my social media.

I also started my 3rd and fourth track slightly in this week.

I also did some more research on marketing music.

I was also trying to get as much research that i could do to try to make up for a lot of my work deleting .

How with most of my tracks i did bounce out a rough instrumental mix for example with Bruce Wayne i bounced out my vocals before hand and also the beat for my evidence , so i actually ended up using them to recreate the whole track again , i did the same thing with the track sweeny also , but it idi effects my other songs because i wasn't able to show as much screenshots as i wanted to.

How i made the beat?

For this beat i was heavy focus on my sound selection from my production research , on this track i choose sounds that didn't have too much distortion except from the bass , the hi hats and claps where all already mixed so it was easier for me to mix them with everything else in the track.

So for the melody i actually did something that i haven't done before in a track , first i made a melody using ( Electra x)(nexus)and (serum) at this time hive.20 would crash quite a lot so i did avoid using this plugin , i added all my tracks to lays and routed them into the mixer ( linking back to my production research ) it did make it a lot easier to mix however the process was a bit longer because i wasn't used to keep on checking to the main mixer , i would just mix my tracks using the volume knob however i did make the track sound cleaner.

After i mixed my melody and drums , i bounced out all the melody ( so like 10 bars ) after i exported them out as an wav file i revered the whole melody , i wanted to try something new and it actually worked very well , i messed around with pitching the melody up and down however i left it how it was, at near enough to the end of the track though i added the original stem just to give the track some diversity. hopefully after my fmp i will get the vocals for this track and mix them using all my information i have gained from my research.

The reason for why i wanted for this type of approach is because i wanted some sort out outliner in my tracks , all of my tracks that i have done are trap/ hip-hop so i wanted something to showcase that my talents are not just in rap music but in other genres as well.

So while making this track i wanted to take that funk house type of approach , the reason for this is because of nostalgia , i wanted this track to have purpose , due to me doing the interview with Lucian i realised at least one of my tracks should have a story to tell.

Now the story for this is the actual sample that i recreated for the track i have been trying to find for a very long time , i remember the track from when i was younger my mum used to play it in the car as well as other funky house tracks, i did really enjoy listening to them but struggled to find a lot of the track when i got older , and you might be thinking why didn't you just ask your mum for the track name the reason for that is because i forgot to , every time i would think of the track it will be somewhere where I'm learning example collage , and by the time i got home i would forget.

So one day i actually saw the track on a YouTube recommendation since i was looking at funky house tracks ,

at first i wasn't sure if it was the track but then i heard the melody and i knew it was the right track , so as soon as i got home to my grandmas house i started to make the beat.

This also links back to when drake talked about him listening to songs he enjoyed when making his album for inspiration.

Funky house is a subgenre of house music that blends elements of funk, disco, and soul with the traditional four-on-the-floor beat of house music. Some key characteristics in funky house are: upbeat tempos syncopated rhythms, and funk-filled basslines that drive the music forward. Additionally, shimmering guitar riffs, jazzy piano chords, and vibrant brass sections.

The funk house scene became popular in the late 1990s to early 2000s and carried a feel good vibe

The video that i added to this section is an example of what funky house , , the things i like most about funky house is the drums , and in this song i tried to replicate them to some sort , a lot of these songs have a calm feel to them such as this track that I'm using for a reference , however a lot of them are more upbeat which is what i want to use for my track.

The reason why am learning about sidechaining is because in a lot of videos and interviews i have watched in the past , a lot of producers/ engineers use sidechain in there songs for the drums for for other aspects , so watching this video will give me an incite on how to use sidechaining , and will it help my producing.

What is sidechaining?

sidechaining ( quote 0:19 "sidechaining is essentially using the audio signal from one mixer track to trigger an effect on another mixer track").

So the most popular type of sidechaining is where i thought sidechaining was is using it in an kick and 808s , what the sidechain does to the kick and 808 is duck the initial transient of the 808/bass anytime that the kick drum hits.

Going back to waveforms again , the 808 at the start of the 808 will be more quiet so the kick can take that starting punch , then the 808 will clear the rest out. What this does is makes sure the kick drum is not competing will the mix / bass , and offers a much cleaner sound in your mix due to the kick and 808 not clashing.

I know i did say i was going to produce all projects for my track but i did really like this track and i thought it was simple to but vocals.

The Genre?

So for this track the genre was supertrap , now i used to make supertrap a lot in the past so i am quite familiar with it so that's why i wanted to do vocals on the track , the track zeeko made was from an sample from an ai ticktock video , the sound consisted of weird synths mixed with like a robotic ai voice which you can hear in the intro of the track.

I did ask him for the stem of the track however he has the free version on Fl studio like me so he actually cant open the project which was a shame but the mix wasn't bad for the instrumental its self so i just kept the beat.

this has gave me confidence on using samples for my fmp , he also talks about how he wants to link with the culture with Morocco and also explains how most things in the city fez is yellow which is what inspired his ep colour. He also takes about the song he sampled , he used a popular song in fez and turned it into trap , with his ep having a theme and a purpose it has made me reflect on my track ,even though i have a purpose for myself which is recording vocals and getting more traction across social media , i don't have really another purpose i could really say to people like Lucian has , in future i would dedicate my tracks to and particle purpose that will be interesting to other people. I also talked about somethings about my own tracks and different mini purposes i have for them. Lucian says something that has really stuck with me "Direction and also gives for the people that are listening kind of like a journey to follow" , the reason this has stuck with me is because when people have an understating of something its easier to listen to for example , there might be an artist who drops an album that is more based on sad experiences , when the listener is sad they will click on the album , so definitely for the future ill build me album on a feeling so people can relate back to .

using colours in my track , so now know this information i realised there is already a certain colour that i use with all my music without even really knowing , the colour is use is purple and also pink , i feel like i have build most of my ep around this colour due to all my media work most being pink and purple ( my photoshop covers) so for when i do drop an ep i will use pink and purple as my theme.

Another good point that Lucian made is when he was talking about how he promoted his tracks , he said he pithed his music to playsits which got him from 50 to 600 overall listeners , he told me it was a good way to push out your music and it will be something ill defiantly be doing with my tracks after my fmp is finshed.

Also knowing that i don't have to relate my lyrics too my actual own experiences linking back to the finneas interview it was mush easier to write lyrics.

What would my voice sound like in the track?

So for the track i wanted to have like a more melodic approach mixed with rap lyrics , so some inspiration i took was from old lil uzi songs , i know it might sound a bit cleche but how he conducted his lyricism mixed with an melodic sound really had my ear , and obvisoly he has had a lot of success with his music carrer so i though i would take inspiration in how I'm saying my lyrics ( no copying his lyrics at all)

So i then said what is your favourite song by DNB and they said "UFO" no ufo is an quite popular song from this rap group so i was familiar with it , the artist in group both use a lot of autotune in there voice which has made me gain more confidence to use more in mine know thing that people around my age like that type of sound .

i then asked there favourite part of ufo , they then said "I'm not gonna sing it its a bit inappropriate" so knowing this I'm assuming she likes the lyrics and also there voice , and also means they like lyrics that isn't so family friendly , which has also gave me confidence on being a bit more (PG) with my lyrics if it is to catch the attention of an audience

I then proceeded to ask if she listens to trap music , she said not on a daily basis , so then i asked what trap artist do they listen to and they said drake sometimes.

I then asked the person what there favourite song from drake was , they then proceeded to say "since way back" but was more certain on the track "passionfruit" now "passionfruit" is more like an exotic type of track , it reminds me of the summer and the Caribbean islands , for my fmp i wanted to include a track that is like this just to be like an outliner for my tracks , because i know most of the track i have are going to be trap due to me building my whole social media pages around trap music , however i do also enjoy songs like passionfruit so that why one of my tracks are going to have that same type of approach , i then explained to the person that I'm doing a song that has an similar sound.

I then asked what there favourite part of passionfruit was , and they said the melody , this was good for me because i do try to focus on the melody a lot , but for my track that would be similar to passionfruit ill add a bit more time on perfecting the melody

After this i asked what's his favourite trap artist , so i know hat would get peoples most attention and also what type of trap they like , the person then responded with drake.

This was because now i know what track would catch peoples attention in my Fmp , so i decided to to a drake inspired by drake , one of my favourite drake songs is tsu so that would defiantly make an appearance in my fmp.

the next thing guy talks about how the settings effects each other , so when you do add the sidechain the mixer channel is set at 100% , so he talks about this being very important ( quote 2:35 "what this is telling us is that we should hear the audio signal from the kick coming from the master channel , but we shouldn't hear any of the kick signal coming from the 808 channel")

the reason why u shouldn't hear anything in the 808 channel is because there is a knob on the sidechain part where its all the way turned down which is right next to the sidechain option slightly on the screenshot i provided)

He then goes onto say you shouldn't turn this knob up because then you will start the hear the kick become louder as you turn it up , by doing this you will be doubling up the audio since its already going through the master channel which is something you don't want.

(Quote 3;51 "we only want the compressor to engage on the 808 whenever the kick drum is hitting at the exact same time as the 808")

So the guy in the video explains what he wants to do with the limiter and then how to add it , he then says he is going to make the compressor only duck the 808 when the effect is on.

Now how he adds this is right clicking the sidechain option on the limiter and the selection the channel which the kick drum is on , this is very similar to how i added the sid chain delay on my vocals , when routeing the right channel to add that effect .

so what i did want bounce out all the drums i made , i used the bass and made a new kick pattern for the newer version of the track , in the beginning of doing the side chain i ascendingly routed the bass to the kick but then after i corrected it , i added the effect and immediately i hear the bass and the kick being more free and not clashing together.

i have also used this in the beat "lbb"

The next day i then listened to the track and to my surprise it was actually similar to my track , one thing that sounded every similar was the bass and the type of effects he used in his song , i used a lot of laughing effects and other effects in my track , which the artist HI-C uses a lot , i feel like its good that TJ showed my this artist because it shows me different artist that i can maybe take inspiration form in terms of marketing , because the same people who would listen to his music , will most likely like mine to how similar it is

One important statistic in this is rap music is most popular to ages 16 to 24 , this important because i need to know what type of audience I'm pushing my music to , so posting maybe relatable content that consist of age ranges from 16 to 24 , rather than trying to push it would to an older audience.

In this screenshot i can see where most of my views are coming from , so in this screenshot you can see that 57.3% of my views come from reels ( which is videos ) and 42.8% come from my stories from non followers and followers , This is good for when i post content because i would know what the best way to gain views is from.

We can also see in this screenshot all the views i have gained in the last 30 days , now i remember seeing before it was higher around 15k but i stopped posting for a little bit so it went down to 12,468k , which isn't bad still but if i was to post more it would rise up.

We can also see how much accounts i have reached and also the views i get from followers and non followers.

However i could understand also why i don't get a lot of traffic on ticktock because i did take a big break on posting and i also did loose a lot of followers because of me being non consistent, so i will try to do different types of videos or make similar ones that i have before to try too keep my audience.

Howver there are like subgenres within the subgenre of supertrap , like for example you have LOVEMUSIC type beat , these type of beats have like an more ethereal sound to it like not as dark , and also sometimes features vocal samples which i have done in my previous track with zeeko.

But to be honest it never a certain type of feeling but its always the same type of sounds , however it is always evolving so people would add parts of other trap subgenre and add it too super trap that why i had a deep love for the genre because it was very different to what I've ever heard.

I had to wait till night to record so everything was some what quite , i turned off the tv and only had my laptop on and the light in my room on , i was thinking of going under a cover too really block out all noise , but i figured maybe the sound of my headphones would show up also so i left it.

I spent about 20mins just thinking of things to say in my track and after that i had some sort of structure for my vocals , so on thing i did differently was i recording with all effects added to my track , this included my autotune eq , compressor and sidechain delay.

It was quite hard at the start but once i used auto key and transferred the key of the track to my auto tune it because a lot easier to rap.

After i finished my vocals on my home microphone i didn't really like the parts at the end of the track , i realised that the sound of my headphones do show up a lot in my raw vocals , however i didn't want to redo the whole track just in case i ruined it so i kept me original vocals at the start with my microphone , and mid way i used the vocals from the microphone in my college studio.

However on this i did in this song that i haven't done in the tracks where i included my own voice would be adding adlibs, the reason why i was open to using adlibs is because i referred back to some of the messages of when i asked people what they like about trap music , and one of them was talking about the use of adlibs in tracks , so i thought let me use a few , i didn't really over do it in the track because i was quite new to doing adlibs and i also didn't have enough time to finish my fmp.

As you can see in this screenshot all the different types of drums i have used , the sounds with an number at the start comes from that prodmoney pack i was talking about previously.

Some plugins i used for the melody was (nexus 4) ( and Hive 2.0).

Why did i use nexus?

the reason why i used nexus as a starting point is because the plugin has a lot of realistic sound , this consists of guitars pianos and other sounds as well as synths and pad , some this i used from nexus was guitar sounds / pads , both of the sounds i choose had like an heavenly guitar sound , it was ambient which really match referring back to the track superman (funky house track ) i kind of had a similar ambient vibe , but the when I'm looking at the conventions of funky house we can see it says that shimmering guitar.

I provided an example of this in the audio file above the writing.

I made seven melody's in total , most of the sounds sound quite similar but one other type of sound that i used that wasn't a guitar of a pad was a pluck type of sound , now all the pluck sounds i used nexus for because i just had better sounds for plucks.

We did do a lot of takes in the track because the vocals weren't really coming out the right way due to us laughing a lot in the studio but after a while we got the complete lyrics.

We did adlibs and the main vocal . the main vocals consists of Spanish and English which is why i did want too add parts of reggaeton in the track.

one other thing about the vocals is that in the original song " cure and the cause" there is like a soft woman's voice saying cure and the cause as like a type of adlib in the track.

so Dylan suggested that we get evina a girl in our class who sings to try to recreate that line for our song , however we thought of her not saying cure and the cause because that will be copying directly from the song , so we thought of her saying girl in the club instead of cure and the cause .

In this audio file the original bass and kick is in the audio file but you can hear the mix of the rest of the drums

What i did have though was eq the kick a bit , i did realise that the kick was clashing a bit , i don't know what it actually was but i knew it was in the high end of the kick so i cut-out most of the high end in the kick , but not all so it didn't kill the sound.

the next bass i added was a more punchy bass , the reason i added this because it was similar to the original bass i added but just high pitched and programmed better , the waveform for this bass was a lot less distorted then my first bass i used in version 2 so this also offered a more clean mix with still having that punch and hype feeling to the track which was needed too catch peoples attention.

after i side chained the both i added the limiter which helped it work , right from the jump i could tell a difference the kick wasn't clashing with the bass a lot all.

So i used fl studio 24 to mix the vocals but kept crashing like every time i would place the vocals and add the effects for the vocals my fl would crash which was weird because non of my other tracks did this as much.

The effects i added was first and eq , i didn't really do too much on the eq for the low end because the low end of the vocal gave the track a lot of volume and when i did try to cut it out i didn't really sound the same so i only did a minimal amount of eq cutting on the lower frequency's.

The next plugin i added was a compressor to polish the sound because there was a lot of higher frequency's that needed to be capped so it wasn't damaging for the listers ears , however before this i added a noise gate through an limiter.

Using the noise gate really helped me with this track because in didn't split up the vocals so when i added the limiter all other noise that wasn't part of the vocal was cut which made a huge difference in the mix where as before you can hear all the background noise that didn't need to be there.

After i added all the main plugins used a chorus and another compressor using auto effects , now i didn't really use the autotune since i turned the retune speed down and the humanize up , however the actual effects in the autotune is what i wanted , the chorus in the effects make the main vocals sound really wide ( like i was adding an stereo delay) and the compressor made the vocals sound even more professional.

I added actual auto for the more melodic part where Dylan sings , it really did sound a lot better when it was added , i made his voice sound a lot better when he was doing the more melodic parts of the sound , and it also harmonised with the melody a lot because the autotune was in key.

I did add some vocal chops for when some of his lyrics where out of tune but luckily it only happened when he repeated the same phrase twice or more , so i would just cut and duplicate the vocal to make it in tune with the autotune.

In my Fmp i feel like i persevered quite a lot , i did have a lot of things setting my back such as me loosing work not having my laptop for a while e.g. and i was still able to make 5 tracks and do a lot of research and practical elements.

I have grown as a producer and even an artist in this fmp , i have done things that i wouldn't of ever really imagined me doing (recording my own vocals) , i was able to come outside of my comfort zone when making my tracks , and also not being shy to show people my work whereas before i wouldn't really show people my work a lot if it involved vocals so this fmp has really pushed me to my limits, i was able to recorded vocals and record them to a decent level in which i couldn't do really before and is something that in have struggled with, another thing that i am happy with is me learning about distribution and promoting music , even though i hadn't done major distribution for my tracks i now hall a lot of information on how distribution works and how to promote my music but utilising my statistics and using social media to push my music , which i have done well in.

I was able to also record myself which was also something in was somewhat self conscious about when its involving my music but i have seemed to break those barriers that was holding be back.

Two there things that i did achieve in this project was having a wide range of collaborations , while i was let down by a few artists by not having tracks done in time , i was still able to have 4 collaborators in my tracks in which i wasn't even sure if i would have any in my fmp.

My primary research is what helped me a lot also with getting to know other peoples experiences and how they views music , watching interviews like finneas where he talks about writing lyrics had really helped with with writing my won , and maybe i would i been stuck trying to think of lyrics that only had to relate to me where as this is not the case for every rappers of musician , and also understanding purpose from my interview from Lucian and the interview with drake really helped me perfect my understanding on meaning behind track , while also learning a bout strategies such as playlist pitching which links back with my marketing work.

The next thing was i was able to expand my practical knowledge with my production , even though a lot of my production research was deleted i still manged to learn a lot of techniques about production e.g. using sidechain , and utilising the distortion of waveforms in sound samples.

Also expanding on my vocals production i have learned massive amounts on how to mix and what techniques or plugins to use while mixing which has really taken my production level to an stage higher.

some examples that things that that has helped me the most in my fmp is using a limiter , now the limiter is the most helpful part of the fmp( and being able to use it correctly) because it has a whole heap of functions , the main one i used the limiter was for a noise gate , i learned this when i was doing my research about mixing vocals and helped me take out background noise from the vocals when the main vocal was not recording , so it splits the vocals up for you which saves me a lot of time in my tracks , the next main function i used it for what for sidechaining a kick and a bass , i mainly did this in my track sweeny , learning how to do this correctly while using a limiter has made my mixes so much better when I'm using a bass and a kick , it stops tracks from clashing which was one of the main mistake i made when adding a bass and a kick.

In my fmp there is a lot of things i could of done better , the first thing I'm going to talk about is me not being prepared for the worst.

I was layed back during my fmp because i did really expect the worst to happen , i was a slight bit lazy in terms of not saving all my work not expecting for there to be problems with my laptop , this then hindered my work rate because i had to catch up on a lot of work while everyone else was doing fine , i would sit and write large amounts of research just to get somewhat on my work back but it wasn't all enough , i then started to panic because i didn't want to not get a good grade in my work for when i go to university hopefully.

Another thing i feel like i should of been prepared for is not being able to open any of my projects , to be honest this was probably the last thing that i expected to happen to me , and this also really hurt my fmp as a whole because i wasn't able to provide all the necessary screenshots i needed to describe each track in my practical process , lucky i did de a selected few before but again it wasn't enough and also i couldn't mix a few track to there full potential because i didn't have the original file to do so which was really annoying.

All of this combined really delayed my time with my fmp , i feel like i could of written a lot more if i didn't have these things happen to me.

Also breaking my focusrite headphone jack and also microphone slowed my work rate for my work with also including me not having my laptop charge which cause me to loose all of my written work.

Some more things that i feel like didn't go as well was getting more artists even though i did complete 5 tracks with an extra instrumental i know i could of exceeded that limit if artist wasn't being as slow with the process of writing lyrics.

How did i over come this.

However despite all of this i was able to finish my fmp which i didn't really think i was able to do , i found certain ways in which i could get around these obstacles , for example , when i couldn't make a track unique for stereo delay because i had the free version of Fl studio , i bounced out 2 versions of a vocal with different names so i can use it as a duplicate to use for my stereo delay.

Another problem that i had was also recoding because i had broke my phone previously i didn't really have any good quality cameras to recording with for my evidence , so i improvised and used my aunties old i pad , even though the quality wasn't the best i still recording pretty much all my videos through it.

i feel like having these problems has really helped me grow as a musician , going through these situations can also help me prepare my self for other outside problems , maybe double checking things , preparing for the worst just in case it happens , all these aspects had helped me realise that not everything is going to go so smoothly and often time i expect it to be like that.

Making and mixing the tracks in itself was actually quite hard , due to my laptop not being able to handle a lot , often times when I'm mixing a finished song my CPU would l also crash and would be extremely slow any laggy , this did bug my quite a lot because it was hard not add plugins when trying to mix , or even adding too much drums or melody's would do the something which almost made it impossible to make any tracks.

I also found releasing my tracks challenging i was running out of time and didn't really get to make a lot of snippets for my tracks which was a shame

I also realised that i am good at communication , i was to collaborate and talk with a lot of people and got to know a lot of different artist along the way which will most definitely help me in my future of making music.

What is an EP - An EP is a release containing 4 to 6 tracks or a total running time of 30 minuets

However making sure your promoting your single to keep your audience engaged and also to gain new listeners , some things in promoting your music should include : pitching your tracks to a playlist , adding visuals to each track on social media and also audio snippets.

I also wished that i had money to promote my tracks , i wanted to utilise all promotion skills during my fmp ,however i can still use them when i do get money , and with all the research i have do it will help me push my music out even more .