• Good communication with the house band

  -Enough to support the song but not overpower it.

• Tone of my voice fits the song.

• Wanted to see more audience engagment. Wants me to make sure the audience feels the emotions. Glance at each person indvidually to make it feel more personal.

• Make the decision to stand up. This creates more presence on the stage while also allowing for a clearer vocal performance.

My final notes-

• The change from the chorus to bridge needs to be cleaner and more exaggerated. The houseband know and will individually be working on it.

• More reverb on my mic.

• Need to balance the volume of the instrumentation. Will communicate with the sound tech on the day to ensure I'm getting the exact sound I want.

• Warm up my vocals more. Consistency is key and I need to be as warmed up as possible to sing my very best for the performance.

Knowing the idea that you wanna write about.

"The concept of your song is more important that the content"

Bob Lefsetz

2- Music first. Write the topline first and then refine the lyrics.

3- Improvise within a band situation. Focus on writing the topline and lyrics, then refine the instrumentation.

• I believe i could have changed the key of the song to be higher, allowing me to sing in a more comfortable range and properly project the notes. Futhermore, I could have communicated better with the band and sound tech to make the instruments quieter and my microphone louder.

• In the future, I will ensure that I know exactly how i want the song played and sung, eliminating the risk of a bad performance.

• To handle this situation better, I would like to work on my music theory knowledge, allowing me to easily communicate a change in keys to the band to fit me comfortably. Futhermore, I would like to improve my mic technique, making sure i'm using the mic properly to project the cleanest notes possible.

Action plan:

-If a similar situation arose again, I would change the key of the song to fit my range. I would also communicate a volume check to make sure none of the instrumentation or vocals is being drowned out by other instruments.

-Some indicators that would help me realise a similar event in the future are struggling to hear myself when rehearsing, finding it difficult to comfortably hit the notes without having to push too hard.

-To improve in the future I plan to watch some youtube videos and online courses about music theory and refresh my knowledge. This would help me if I ever need to transpose any songs to give to the house band in future LPW lessons. Futhermore, I plan on finding a vocal exercises to better vocal projection and power.

• Ensure the sing is in the right key for my range before I start rehearsing.

• Ensure I properly communicate absolutely everything to the houseband and sound tech.

• Use the proper mic technique and ensure i'm using a healthy technique to project my voice.

• My ability to write lyrics that I am happy with in just a short amount of time.

• Coming up with chord progressions to fit the emotions I plan to convey with the song

Weaknesses:

• Free flow writing , I find it difficult to just freestyle to a progression, instead i have to write and think about each lyric at a time.

• Creating more than just a chord progression, I find it difficult to create and alternative melody.

• Production, I still lack the skills I need to fully record and mix my own tracks.

Opportunities:

• Open Mic nights, I have been attending and performing at some open mic nights recently.

• One on one sessions with tutors to help develop my skills in a desired field.

• Writing music with friends, I have been meeting up with a few different people recently and jamming out and attempting to write music.

Threats:

• Working too much, I need to prioritise my Uni work over my job so that I don't get behind with my work.

• Illness, recently i've been quite ill which has been putting me in a situation occasionally in which I cannot practice or rehearse.

• Work on how I blend my harmonies with others

• Have more input

• Have more confidence

Begin brainstorming ideas for my two versions of the same song.

Week 3-

Attempt to write verse 1 and maybe come up with a chord progression

Week 4-

Attempt to write a chorus for my song

week 5-

attempt to complete writing the verses

week 6-

Attempt to write a bridge that will pull together the whole concept of the song

week 7-

ensure I have chords in both a major and minor key

week 8-

polish any imperfections and start rehearsing the song in full

week 9-

begin recording the song to allow me to start mixing the DAW version. continue rehearsing for the live version

week 10-

have everything fully polished and recorded and mixed to submit for Summative!!

• Live performance- A version of the song with a full band (house band). This will include small additions from each instrument to compliment the mainly acoustic song. I would like the evoke the emotions of hurt and remorse into the song and will communicate this to the band so they can alter their playing style around that.

• DAW- A recorded version of the song with clean sounding acoustic guitar, midi strings (unless I can find live strings) and a main reverbed vocal line with stacks of harmonies to compliment.

The song is called Agnosthesia which means "The state of not truly knowing how you feel about something" where you look for hidden clues in your own behaviour to try and decipher your feelings.

After finding out I ad been selected for this opportunity I realised how well this would work for my project. As the live string quartet was going to be recorded into a logic file, it will allow me to take the individual stems and use them on my DAW recording.

The string quartet demo I created was also a perfect opportunity to work on one of my smart targets, composing for other instruments.

Overall I am very excited for this opportunity and the networking I will be able to do.

To develop this song I would like switch up the melody a bit to ensure that the song has contrast. Expanding on the point of contrast I would like to add a very powerful bridge that is almost entirely different from the rest of the song. This bridge would be a point of release in the piece and I think would compliment it very well in the live performance.

I have also had the idea to not use the bridge in the DAW recording as a point of contrast between the two tracks.

For the rest of the term leading up to our summative assignment I plan to hold myself more accountable for work that I may want to push back. I will be using a method taught to us in week 3 of our songwriting project management lessons, Eat The Frog. This is a method that requires you to tackle the most time consuming task first, not leaving it until last like I normally would. Hopefully, using this method will allow me to ensure that I don't miss anymore important deadlines.

• Make initial observations informed by your research so far, regarding each Artist/Musician/Producer/DJ’s approaches to creation, recording, publishing, releasing, live performance and touring, distribution, marketing, promotion and selling music. To respond to this i will go into further detail on all the points mentioned, making sure I explain each thorougly to ensure I meet all of the assessment criteria.

• You have made some initial observations of both artists, but so far this is limited to general career comments and songwriting. Please consider multiple approaches to live, studio, promotion and selling music as well as the creative process. To respond to this I will ensure I delve deeper into the ways each artist wrote, recorded, promoted and sold their music, allowing me to get a deeper understanding of exactly why they are each successful artists in their own respect and potentially help me when I start to release music.

• There is no outline of label structure in your current work. Please examine the respective workings of both case studies to compare similarities and disparities surrounding the two artists you have chosen. To respond to this I will be researching each artists label structures, comparing them and going into why I believe their choices of label allowed them to progress in their careers.

• There is no statistical analysis included as part of your work in progress. Please consider using well-sourced quantitative data relating to media and ticket sales among other items to add further weight to your observations and give the opportunity to contextualise your findings. To respond to this I plan on finding detailed statistics for each artist about things such as revenue, tickets sales and networth.

These are:

• Changing up some of the vocal melody lines to show differentiation and progression throughout the song

• Become more confident with the movement between the chorus and the bridge. If I come in sounding unsure, the idea of the bridge will not work and will sound like it doesn't work in the song.

• Brainstorm some ideas for differentiation in my guitar playing, changing strumming patterns or using inverted chord shapes.

For example he focuses on the importance of posture when singing. I have naturally bad posture and just after a couple of lines singing while focusing on posture, I could feel an immediate improvement in the quality and cleanliness of my notes. I also found myself straining far less.

Furthermore, this video stresses the importance of warming up the voice beforehand. I often forget to warm up and skip to singing. After watching this video I will be doing more vocal warmups as a health and safety point to ensure that I do not damage my voice. It will also help me keep my voice consistent when performing as my voice will be fully warmed up and I will be in full control. (www.youtube.com, n.d.)

In a short summary, the most important things I learned were:

• Sing from my diaphram, allow the power to come from lower down to create a louder and clearer sound.

• Opening my mouth more will allow a cleaner sound to come out as there is more space for the notes to resonate.

• Don't reach up for high notes or down for low ones, simply face them head on to avoid a strain of the vocals which creates a bad distortion in the voice and can be harmful to me.

• So far I am very happy with the progression I have made. I feel like I have successfully made an attempt to work on each of my SMART targets, developed myself as a musician and created a song that I am genuinely proud of. I am quite sad how quickly this project has gone as we are nearly as the end of it now. I wish I had stuck to my timeline more, but due to the change of ideas I know that it couldn't be helped.

Evaluation:

• I would have liked things to have gone further, but due to my time management lacking, I feel as if I have set myself up for failure. Despite this I will continue to put my all into this project as I have genuinely enjoyed developing my ideas throughout the project.

• I've really enjoyed refreshing my knowledge of production, and expanding that knowledge over the past weeks. I feel as if I have come a long way from where I first started.

• I am really happy with the opportunities that have been presented to me so far on this course. I have had so much time to collaborate with other artists to create music and memories that I will forever cherish. Furthermore, the string quartet opportunity has been my personal highlight so far. The fact that I got to work with live strings was very exciting for me as I had wanted to something like that for a while. It increased my confidence massively and will help me achieve an incredible sound in my DAW track.

Analysis:

• This project has helped me massively in finding myself as an artist, figuring out what genres I best write in and the type of music I would like to make a career out of creating.

• It has really allowed me to develop my songwriting ability, especially in the form of how I write music. Previously I was unable to write music by just freestyling along to music, but now I can confidently improvise verses and chorus's on the spot. This allows me to write more freely and authentically.

Action:

• In the future I will attempt to manage my time better, creating more accurate timetables to the way i specifically work and to stick to them.

• I will also take more advantage of opportunities such as open mic nights and shadowing opportunities.

• I will continue to create more music, developing my skills I already have and begin releasing my music on streaming platforms.

I am slightly behind in my DAW version due to a setback. This setback was due to being sent the wrong version of my live string stems. I found a way around it by ensuring the stems were audio files instead of zip files. Now I have figured that out, I feel I can start making positive progress on the DAW.

With the knowledge I have learnt in my Music Production lessons, I feel confident that I will be able to create a clean mix with a little help.

In terms of my multimedia diary, I feel confident with the work I am producing. I would like to focus a little more on ensuring I am meeting all of the criteria and to evaluate and reflect more often. I would also like to include more evidence.

• Not allowing myself to put important work aside purely due to the fact that I do not have the energy. We realised that the easiest way to do this was to just sit down and listen to content that relates to the topic. This stimulates my easily distracted brain but doesn't distract me with other topics. I will be using this idea in the next week to trial how effective it is for me.

• Another method is to lay out a proper list of things I have to do. This will allow me to tick them off once I have done them, allowing me to see my progress and motivate me to continue. I feel as though this will be very helpful for me as when I have lots of work to do I stress out, not knowing where to start and feeling as if I have made no progress at all

This week I managed to properly format my live string quartet into my logic file. This had taken me a while due to the fact that I had originally had the wrong files downloaded, which became midi files when added into a logic file.

After that was recorded, I recorded the guitar progression. This took a couple attempts as the timing was proving hard to match. To get around this, I listened to the original demo track I had sent to the live string quartet and played along to it. This helped me get a much better understanding of the tempo and I managed to get a guitar recording I was happy.

I took a demo recording of the vocals to see how it would all fit together. By doing this I can now listen to it and critically evaluate the things that I do and do not like.

I now know that I want the vocals to be more fronted in the track, which can be achieved during the mixing process with things such as EQ, panning and using multiple vocal effects such as reverb.

• Recording the final vocal melody line

• Adding some vocal harmonies

• Mixing the track and polishing

In the actual recording I would like to try and play around with a bit more of my head voice to produce a slightly softer sound which will be perfectly complimented by the strings.

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• I am feeling slightly overwhelmed at how quickly the deadline has come around. Despite this, I feel confident in the fact I will be able to meet the deadline and produce work I am proud of.

• I feel as though I have improved massively as a musician already, meeting so many of my SMART targets and learning so many valuable skills and techniques along the way.

Evaluation:

• I am so happy that I have been presented with such an incredible opportunity to take part in this module. It has helped so much with my confidence in everything i do, allowing me to tackle problems that would usually set me back or make me feel like giving up.

• I feel as though out of all of the components of the songwriting course, the writing of music itself is where I have improved the most. While before the course I was already writing and playing my own music, listening back now I can truly tell just how far i've come. Wether it be lyricism, instrumentation or even just creating concepts, I feel so much more confident that I can do anything on demand. This is so helpful as it allows me to write in any situation, which is an incredible skill to have early on as it makes me a likely candidate for opportunities such as being a session musician for other artists, and maybe even attempting to write for films or series.

• I'm so happy with the opportunities I have been given to collaborate with other artists. When joining the course I struggled to work in groups as I have always thought that my unique way of writing could never work in a group context. However, ten weeks in, I am now so happy to collaborate on work. Where before I would sit and allow others to take lead, I will now confidently input ideas and even take lead of a group if necessary.

Action plan:

• In the future I would like to ensure I am making the most of all of the opportunities made available to me. With my new found confidence and understanding of music, I will go into things with my head held high, knowing I can successfully communicate exactly what I Would like to gain from the experience and articulate exactly to people around me what exactly I can offer them.

• I would like to continue working on my knowledge of production, making extra sure to focus and ask as many questions as I feel I need to in my production tools lessons. The more confident I become with producing and mixing, the better the quality of my music will be.

From this experience I feel as though I once again got to grow in my vocal performance confidence, singing a song I was not very familiar with and singing harmonies that extended all the way to the top and bottom of my range.

If I were to have another similar experience in the future, I would definitely ensure I rehearsed more with the entire band, allowing me to get a proper feel for the song and gain some valuable experience in working in a cover band context

Break my walls

make yourself at home

just take it all

rip the skin from my bones

Verse 2

Dug my own grave

six feet down

it's the only place

I can feel safe and sound

Chorus

But, at the end of the day

I wish you would say

that you miss me and you want me.

Maybe, I'm not okay

and I shouldn't stay

my friends would agree and be angry.

Verse 3

hide myself away

erase you from my mind

now i'm sure I shouldn't stay

i'll leave my life behind.

Bridge

But steady

don't make choices in anger

these feelings may linger

but till the end I will not know.

I'm ready

to think these things over

and maybe get sober

just let my burdens go

Chorus.

Verse 4

Broke my walls

made yourself at home

just went and took it all

now my realities unknowns.

I did some corrective eq on the string quartet, cutting some of the high end and boosting some of the frequencies for each track individually. This allowed me to create a more consistent sound throughout the string part, helping it merge evenly into the rest of the track.

I created a bus send for reverb (Bus 11) , applying in to the majority of my tracks. Using a bus is something I was taught very early on during this terms Production tools lessons. The use of a bus allows me to evenly reverb multiple tracks together, creating a smooth distribution end ensuring the attack and release of the reverbed tracks aren't out of time with eachother.

For example, Lana Del Rey makes use of string accompaniment in many of her tracks. The one that I have always been most drawn to is her song "Video Games" from her 2012 born to die album. I was particularly interested in how her vocals were mixed to help blend with the orchestral arrangement beneath. In an interview,Brandon Lowry , who helped with the recording and mixing of the track, speaks about this. Lowry mentions that he took focus on the EQ of Lana's vocals. He speaks about accentuating the lower frequencies of the vocal take. This allows the vocal match the low earthy tones of strings. (Tingen, Producing Lana Del Rey's 'Videogames' 2023)

Mcapline's most popular within the the 25-34 age catagory. However, she is still very popular with a younger demographic, having around 22.5% of her listeners being between the ages of 18-24 (Similarweb, 2023). This is very important information for me to know as if I plan on releasing my music in similar genres, I can adapt my marketing and promotion techniques to fit the interests of these age groups.