Drums were recorded by Thomas Joy in Cromer, North Norfolk, UK

This Reference is for our rhythm guitar tone, which starts at 0:04 seconds in.

This guitar tone is very warm and wide in the stereo field, which is exactly what we will try and capture

Vocals are being recorded in my home studio with an Shure SM58, Going into my Universal Audio Volt 2 interface finally ending in my chosen DAW, Logic Pro

With no acoustic treatment in my home studio, I've been forced to get creative by using a towel hung over my wardrobe door. I then set up the microphone facing it with a pop filter.

The idea behind this being that the microphones polar pattern is cardioid, meaning it will pick up from the front, there for without the towel, picking up reflecting frequencies from the wood. The towel is used to help absorb frequencies around it.

This was footage taken from our last show (shot by) with the mastered audio edited over

We wanted to match the energy that was portrayed in the song "Wake" coming across as dark and scary

When looking at the insights, This was posted on Monday at 6pm. This is because historically, this is when other posts on the same days have achieved higher numbers

Our chosen inspiration comes from bands such as Interpol and Editors, as well as bands like The Smashing Pumpkins

This has ended up becoming a fusion of the best parts of indie-post punk in the 2000s and grunge in the 90s, which aesthetically are rather different

Interpol used to have very minimalistic features throughout their art work and photography, where as smashing pumpkins had very low contrasted, natural and faded imagery, reflecting on presumably camera qualities (which is now very sought after in 2015).

I have created a Pinterest board in order to convey our ideas in this field. DISCLAIMER: these are NOT my photos, but publicly uploaded images by other people

https://uk.pinterest.com/kaicargill/blanktalk/

This piece of short form continent went up on Instagram, Youtube shorts and Tik Tok for our song "Wake". This seemed like a natural to tease lyrics while showing some stylistic visuals.

when designing a social media schedule, we wanted to make sure we had a good balance of quality and quantity.

Green: Admin / Red: All socials/ Blue: Facebook and Instagram

The findings from this first week of promo was that we posted too much in too little time. Posts where going un-noticed and not performing as well as others before, despite being posted in peak times (known using insights on all socials)

I have set out targets per week on what I should be achieving to keep on time with my workload

I opted for this over using a more traditional gantt chart for the whole reason that the my time and workload at the moment is so vague and up in the air with other commitments

The way this has worked so far has meant that I am filling in my writing work around free times in evenings and because of my work flow style, this id ideal as I work the hardest at night.

Stereo width is something that I have worked hard to achieve since I started producing

One technique I found is mixing in mono. This allowed me to focus my Time on making sure frequencies really fit in the mix well, before then panning and create some really well placed mixes

My guitars are all double or triple tracked in the mixes, as well as the Toms and Overheads, all panned hard left and right.

We decided to record isolated takes due to many factors, however the main one being financial reasoning.

To just record drums in a professional studio cost us £30 an hour (4 hours work).

To record bass, guitar and vocals could've added the hours up to 16 hours work (providing everything took 4 hours each), which would've ended up costing us £480.

As a sound Engineer with a home studio , it was only valid to record drums away from as a necessity due to not having the right equipment.

However guitars, bass and vocals where heavily fine tuned as I have the equipment to create the perfect elements.

Above is a version of the drums in All The While with and without the room microphones (1st half without, 2nd with)

The room mics make the entire drum sound really polished and aggressive

The room mics have been processed with heavy compression, reverb and EQ as well as saturation

My portfolio is going to come in 2 pieces:

1) A show reel of music to advertise on my website and social media. This will be music mixed by myself to show off my production work

2) A creative CV with my current and up to date production experience will be uploaded to my LinkedIn for a look into my work at a more professional and formal level

For the Lead in All the while, we wanted something really drenched in fx, while still able to be articulated in the mix

This meant looking for something mid heavy to fit in our mix, almost as if looking at a tonal spectrum like a jigsaw

This also meant picking an amp type with more pronounced mids, this ended up being a Marshall JCM800 amp VST by a company called STL tones

One of the main advantages of live streaming is "real time engagement" which allows you to get instant feedback and a personal touch of marketing

It is also a cost effective production form of marketing as you only need a smartphone to reach people.

I believe this could be effective for our third song as it allows us to reach our small audience with all marketing news.

In my Guitars, there was a lot of low end mud and clutter around 170-250Hz.

This became more apparent when panned hard left and right

Side EQ became the best tool as it allowed me to EQ The side channels (ie right left) without affecting the middle (mono), resulting a huge clear up.

at the time of writing this, Wake has been out for 11 days.

Stream Numbers for Spotify are sitting currently at 185 streams, which is a lot lower than past songs.

When looking at what caused this, I believe it is partly due to so much concentrated and similar content being uploaded in one time, diluting the effects of the release details its self.

For All The While, I will try and create more vastly arranged visual content as well as trying targeted ads and make it more widely available utilising all social media platforms.

Search Engine Optimisation is a great way to generate online traffic. It allows you to optimise your website in the most effective way to be found on search engines, higher than other websites.

Using the target Key words in your industry within your website is the best way to get your SEO score higher

Long tail words are key words that are broader versions of your original keywords. if key word is over used by lots of different websites, a long tail version means you could be more likely to be found

Using links on a website not only keeps people on the site longer, but also give your content some extra marketing.

Hypothetically, this business for my production would be registered as a sole trader company. This is because I as the individual owner control all off it.

However the band is not solely mine, so a business partnership would be the best option there to make sure every contributor is covered.

By organic social media content, I mean something innovative and "regulated", rather than pumping out random videos to please the algorithm.

My reasoning in favour of this is solely due to creative direction. In my opinion and experience, the general public enjoy something fresh and well thought out, rather than 20 second clips in the same format posted 3 times a day.

One of the techniques I have implemented while producing our band content is to put the song on my phone that we are going to be producing things for that day, walking around Norwich and if any scenery clicks in my head that I think would work great song, I will setup and start filming something.

I think drawing the psychological link between the song and its surroundings gives the Audience the best insight

Above is an example of short form content where we have used this

Picking the Room is important and trying to find a balance between using somewhere that is dead sounding with a fair splash of room noise is also important. This why I have picked my home studio in my bedroom. The furniture and duvet for the deadness mixed with the reflections from my mirror and windows is ideal.

I have also positioned the microphone away form the walls to allow minimal reflections, resulting in minimal low end mud.

I am using a dynamic microphone (Shure Sm58) in order to get one directional recording (due to its cardioid polar pattern) as this will eliminate a lot of the relocations in theory.

High end: I wanted the the vocal to sit in the high end mostly as there were not many elements. This meant I could spend time planning on a really full sound by balancing them across the sonic scale. in order to this, one thing I tried and really liked is beating proximity effect. What I recorded was my SM58, stood back from it by about 20cm with the gain slightly higher than normal. This allowed some of the room noise too which added to the "vibe" of how stripped back it was.

Middle frequencies: I used the acoustic guitar to sit in the middle frequencies due to the room sound that came with it. I ended up over equalising when approaching the mix, so instead leaned into the middle frequencies, which allowed the acoustics to cut through the guitar.

Low end: The low end came from the 2 panned electric guitars and reverb guitars. This allowed for the width in the track to fill the mix, giving the track a sound of doom and darkness.

Studio: The next steps for the band includes heavily recording more music in order to continue our moment of release every 3 months (roughly). The google drive link above is for access to our demos.

Brand design: With the autumn coming up, we have talked about capitalising on the cold weather and the themes it brings, ie darkness, browns and oranges. This to me describes a minor tonality or suggestion for lyrics, which is where the ideas are as we speak

For the guitar on the acoustic version of ATW, I have recorded it using a Shure SM57 and Senheiser E609

The 57 is on axis but to the edge of the dust cap. The reason for this being the 57s ability to capture more low end, which can be found on further out from the middle of the speaker (frequency spectrum below).

• The 609 is on axis, but unlike the 57, is on the middle of the speaker which is capturing the high end.

• When blended, it gives a really full sound because of the mixing of the 2 different frequency spectrums

After trying multiple angles, I decided to use an sm57 pointed at the 12th fret around 5cm away.

This was a great balance compared to the 57 pointed at the low body or sound hole as it picked up string noise and room noise, giving the guitar sound some "life".

Strength: My strength in my career is objectively my multi-creative approach. Meaning I can effectively manage multiple different kinds of workloads and services. This becomes not only a sales approach, but also an effective skillset of managing workload.

Weakness: My opinion is that my weakness is giving up my creative control. This is not a good weakness when working with clients to create music. This is something I am working on to put my ego aside and do what's right for the song and not for me.

Opportunity: my opportunity comes from having so many different tools and skills as services that i can help on moist aspects of a creative project. This could be sold as a package and is something I am looking into. The package is producing a song start to finish, with all marketing and digital image created.