Prior to the presentation I felt confident about the slides I’d written but less confident about how I’d deliver this information without stumbling over my words. I felt during my presentation I did good at pacing my speech well and presenting my topic in a casual and confident manner. I think I could’ve helped my band members more in the way of helping them add more to their slides to make the overall presentation feel more cohesive.

Next time I present I think I will work on making more eye contact with my audience as I feel watching the presentation back I let my eyes wander back to the board a lot. I will also be more supportive and collaborate more with my band members to help the presentation feel more cohesive.

I was happy with the performance for the most part, I tried my best to appear confident on stage and while we were allowed our lyrics on stage I was conscious of trying to not look at them and especially during my solo lines make eye contact with the audience, I thought if this were a performance outside college I wouldn’t have lyrics so I should try my best to treat this performance the same way.

Listening back, I could hear nerves in my voice and I wasn’t super pleased with stability of my voice in certain parts but I think to the general audience this wouldn’t be too distracting or noticeable, but I myself heard it and want to improve on this for next performance.

Next time I’d definitely strive to make the performance more visually interesting, more movement, being less stationary and more on stage interaction between me and my band members.

But overall for my first college performance I was relatively pleased but definitely excited and eager to improve.

I aimed for two software instruments as instructed and two vocal layers, one main melody and some added higher harmonies to emphasis certain phrases.

Originally I wanted something very airy and ethereal sounding, I experimented with using choir hymn-like notes as the instrumental but felt it sounded overpowering and was too complex of a idea for my skill set, so resorted to starting with a basic drum line.

I found Logic Pro very daunting at first and to be honest, I still feel this way. But I learned I worked best when recording vocals first as this is the skill I’m most comfortable in and building the track around that. I felt the harmonies worked to emphasis certain phrases well.

However, I know there’s a lot I will do differently next time. I will 100% be making use of the practice booths to record the majority of my tracks outside of class and at home, and use class time more to mix and seek advice and feedback from my peers, as opposed to trying to do the bulk of my work in class and isolation myself, as I found myself just getting frustrated, making me unproductive and unnecessarily stressed when it came to the final week before submitting my work. I found myself getting worked up and upset, in turn not creating to my highest potential.

Overall, I feel the track is okay but I know I can and will do better next project.

Genre - classical/ orchestral

Style -

Instrumentation - strings/ synths/ drums

Development - Light airy strings and light crash of symbols when the camera pulls up from the clouds. Then a more darker foreboding theme as the dark hand approaches using low drums to convey a sense of danger.

Stylistic Influences - Danny Elfman

I recorded my vocals (using the same original lyrics I’d used for my first attempt) first in sections, and then tried to lay the drum beat over it, while also layering higher and lower harmonies to try emphasis certain phrases. I then tried to add certain synths as well to meet the task criteria of having two software instruments.

I had an idea in my head of a guitar riff to play throughout the track that I knew would flow well with the lyric. However my lack of knowledge of this particular instrument made this unrealistic for me to pull off, hence the use of synths instead.

The drum beat I felt worked better on my original submission, but this time round I felt it sounded off beat with my vocals.

In future, I think I’ve learned I should maybe record the basic drum beat first and sing over it for the recording as to make sure my timing is on beat.

I’m overall not very confident in the track I’ve submitted but I think at the very least it leaves a lot of room for growth in future projects.

For the start of the clip I'd like to create a very dull/mundane feel using just sound, no music. Perhaps the sound of phones ringing off in the distance, the mechanic sounds of the printer and the noises of our protagonist kicking said printer. I plan to try to source my sounds effects for this film through Apple Loops available on Logic Pro and Pixabay. Any "dialogue" throughout the film from our protagonist I will limit to just subtle sounds like grunting when he kicks the printer and a gasp of surprise at discovering the black hole's abilities. But I'd only keep that vibe consistent until about 00:17 when the "black hole" is printed, at that point the establishing sounds would fade out and move into a more suspenseful atmosphere with a light curious kinda sound, maybe using a percussion instrument such as a Xylophone to create a "magic" sounding noise to foreshadow the black holes supernatural-like abilities. I would then create another atmosphere shift again when our protagonist retries his cup from the hole, less subtle and more abrupt this time as it's a pivotal point in the film, perhaps using more than one instrument this time to emphasis the shock our main character feels. I also think whenever we get close to the hole, for instance when the cup is pulled out, there's an almost windy sound to show the depth of the hole. Then at 01:10, the instrumental amps up again, now becoming playful, almost juvenile sounding as our protagonist starts to test the ablities of the black hole to try to retrieve a snack from the vending machine. Almost boarding along the lines of circus style music, he's like a "kid in a candy shop" is what we're trying to convey to the audience. Then, at 01:28 there's another beat, he's spotted the door with the "keep out" sign and as the audience we start to feel his mind has turned to an idea that's more mischievous, almost like a "lightbulb moment" perhaps using another chime-like sound. At 01:33, the music stops, as he walks in kneels down and looks behind him, the office sound effects return briefly to show us he's still very aware of his surroundings and that he could be caught doing something he shouldn't. But then, as he gives into his intrusive thoughts, the circus sounding instrumental returns but now sounding even bigger and even louder as his actions become more cartoonish. as he climbs into the safe, the music crescendos and abruptly stops as the sheet of paper falls, the office soundscape returns once again and the film ends, and the office sounds continue on throughout the credits.

After getting into the room and setting up, we did a brief run-through of our first cover “Ain’t it fun” by Paramore to warm up.

After this we started discussing our second cover which we had yet to settle on, after holding a poll the evening before on our band WhatsApp group, the song “Rooster” by Alice in chains won by 1 vote over our other choice “California dreaming” The mamas & the papas. As a singer I was unsure of this song choice as in the original key it was too low for my range and the majority of the other singers. However the guitarist argued that this song was more suited to them as it had lots for them to do as opposed to our first cover which felt more geared in favour towards the vocalist.

In the end the people opposed to Rooster were outnumbered by the band members in favour of the song choice, so it was only fair to go with the more popular choice.

However while one singer was familiar with the song me and the other two vocalist weren’t so we opted to let that singer do a run through of the song and we would come back next week having learned to song to be able to rehearse as a band.

We also did a couple more run throughs of ain’t it fun to show Andy and Ni. We tweaked the end of the song to try make it sound stronger using suggestions from Andy and this greatly improved it.

The song choice discourse was overall pretty unproductive but now a second song has been picked we can make rehearsing it and delegating different parts between vocalist our priority for next rehearsal.

and you're not here

i always knew you'd disappear

you had to go you're time was near

it all went down the way i feared

somewhere down the line

you called it quits

made up your mind

and i knew what'd i find

made me blue

waste of my damn time

During this project I developed new skills by discovering different techniques on logic to make the sounds I'd used sound as if they are from a different room to create a sense of a lived in environment, I did this primarily with the office ambience I used at the start of the clip.

I feel in this project I did well in building up to a dramatic point by starting the clip out using only diegetic sounds to make the environment feel lived in and mundane, then starting off the non-diegetic music using something light and playful to create a sense of intrigue and finally finishing the clip by using a overwhelming amount of music and noises to make the final scenario feel tense.

Next time I'd maybe spend longer finding better quality sound effects as I feel the ones I used did the job but looking back they felt too cartoony for the tone of the clip.

When it came to writing chords they were lead by Ava, she wrote the basic chords along with the help of Katie and the rest of the instrumentalist followed suit writing their own parts following that original chord structure.

When it came to writing as a group, our band was split into 2 to write originally, then came together to pick the more developed song, which happened the be ours as we'd already written the first verse and chorus by the end of that original writing session, whereas the other half only had a instrumental concept with no lyrics. Once we'd picked, me and Dorina bounced around melody ideas for a middle 8 and we settled on Dorina's melody then wrote the remaining lyrics. We also as vocalist wrote alternative verses and chorus to flesh out the song and create more cohesive storytelling.

At first we knew we wanted the song to build to a heavier middle 8, but we were struggling on how we'd do this. We decided to use repetition of the previous chorus in a higher pitch after the middle 8 to create a sense of scale, making the song feel like it built more.

I came up with the melody for the intro/verses and chorus, I also wrote a majority of the lyrics with help from Dorina and Nico.

Before this song writing project, I'd never written songs with others before, only by myself. I thoroughly enjoyed this process and learned how beneficial it can be to throw an idea out and let someone riff with you to write lyrics together. I found myself very pleased by the outcome and enjoyed seeing how others write.

Going in to the performance I wasn’t nervous for myself but I was nervous for the band overall as we’d had a shakey morning leading up to the performance. We didn’t get to use our full soundcheck time as unfortunately our drummer was held up in traffic and by the time we were all set up together we didn’t even have enough time to make it through one full song. Then after soundcheck 2 members of our band who hadn’t shown up to practice in weeks and didn’t contribute to or know our original song showed up to join the performance, which prior to the day as a band we were under the impression they wouldn’t be performing with us due to their lack of attendance, communication and contribution. This made me feel uneasy as I was afraid it would throw off the band to have instrumentalists join last minute with no soundcheck and having not learned the setlist.

Reflecting on the performance I feel it went fine. There were a few mistakes I noticed, some issues with tempo in the first song and one mistake from the vocalist’s with Ivan singing some of Nico’s assigned lyrics in Rooster, however obviously from an audience perspective this wouldn’t have been overly noticeable.

When it comes to my performances personally, I definitely feel if I had sang holding the mic I would have been able to incorporate more movement that I feel would have improved the performance visually as other than Ain’t it fun, the setlist was slow in tempo and could've benefited from some more interesting movement going on on stage to off set this. I felt vocally I sang fine, I need to work on having more control over my voice on stage as I feel when I perform I loose some control due to nerves. More interaction between vocalist was much needed, next time I will bring this to my band beforehand and practice incorporating into this into the performance through our rehearsals.

Overall I did leave the performance feeling a little underwhelmed and I can clearly see what needs work before me and my band take the stage again, as I know we can do better.

• stretching, getting loose.

• practing movement

• Positive affirmation

https://youtube.com/watch?v=EkQTD-TnbD0&si=wGnmfPAwb56qUccn

For the most part, the performance went very well! I felt my voice was well sustained for majority of the performance and I stayed on pitch. The only significant mistake was I messed up my words on the second verse, however I don’t feel it was super noticeable watching the performance.

From the mistake I made, I learnt that when I struggle with certain lyrics, even when just practicing, I must practice that particular part of the song consistently till I can’t get it wrong.

While performing, at first I felt unusually nervous. I think this was due to the small intimate audience. However after getting into the song I felt myself ease into the performance and I enjoyed getting to sing solo.

Next time, as stated I would make sure to iron over mistakes prior to the performance. I think I could definitely work on having stronger, more supported belts. To improve upon my overall performance I think I could definitely work on moving around the stage more, not just movement in one spot.

I mostly focused on the vocals, trying to balance them by making the main male vocal the focus.

I think to really see an improvement in my mixing I need to practice in the future doing it more with different tracks, tracks of my own would be more helpful as I’ll have a better idea if somethings wrong or could be improved when I know myself how I’d like it to sound.