My favorite band at the moment is Pink Floyd. I love the blend of ambient/psychedelic sounds, with the beautiful, introspective lyrics, and incredible instrumental work. This is the inspiration for my ep: I would like to make a collection of songs that flow nicely into one another, taking the listener on a journey.

In terms of research, there is a lot to be done. I want to understand why artists like Pink Floyd evoke the feelings they do with their music, for example: their choices of chords, progressions, harmonies, and ambient sounds. Furthermore, I would like to learn how to mix and master properly; all well and good making a cool song but if the eq of the mix is terrible then the music won’t be as enjoyable.

I will keep a diary that I update week to week, ensuring all my work is accounted for. I will use this diary to update my Padlet, providing week by week information on what I have been working on. This will also make it easier to structure some sort of plan, and decide what to work on each day.

The ambient, psychedelic songs, with random talking and sound effects, creates a stunning soundscape, taking the listener on a journey. To me, it evokes a feeling of being lost, wandering through the stars of one's mind.

Throughout the album, the listener is subjected to many different experiences: the strange, eariness of tracks like "Speak to Me" and "On The Run," can be somewhat uncomfortable, expressing the anxiety that life can cause us. This then followed by "Time," where the running stops, accepting that there is no escaping the endless ticking of the clock.

"And you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking, racing around to come up behind you again" This passage reflects on our lives: we are constantly working towards something greater, but at the end of the day, the clock will keep ticking without us.

This understanding that all things will come to an end, and that we are all simply a moment in time, is a common theme throughout the album, and one that resonates powerfully with me. While I don't intend to have lyrics on this project, the message behind them inspires me to try and evoke those feelings through instrumental alone.

A perfect example of this is "Treehouse Days," the opening song of the album. With it's steady groove continuing throughout, and amplified with hauntingly beautiful melodies, it is an ideal opening track, setting the tone for what is to come.

My personal favourite song on Pulled Into A Dream is "What the World Needs Now is You." Despite being only 58 seconds long, this song leaves a lasting impact. The gentle picking of the guitar, along with gorgeous, delay and reverb soaked chords, creates a familiar, lullaby-like sound.

Sean Angus Watson has found his niche, and knows exactly what he is doing. Needing nothing else other than his SG, his amp, and his Ditto looper pedal, he crafts stunning songs, crammed with twinkling melodies, but never overcrowded.

His music has had a huge inspiration on my own playing: creating songs with looper pedals is one of my favourite ways to spend my nights. I hope that in this EP, and in my future playing, I can resonate with the listener at least half as well as Sean Angus Watson does.

This incredibly in depth video on mixing has saved me a lot of trial and error. While I enjoy figuring things out myself, Logic Pro can be incredibly annoying and time consuming if you don't know what you're doing - this video has helped with that.

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Despite most of my project not having any drums, it has been very useful to learn how to mix and blend drums properly, and I have made use of this in my song "Clouds."

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While listening I have been focusing on the parts of the songs that really have an impact on me, trying to identify the factors that contribute to this.

Keeping these ideas in mind, I have been jamming on my looper pedal, slowly beginning to work out initial chords and melody ideas.

I am finding it difficult to stay within a lane, as every few days I find new songs with an entirely different feel, inspiring me to change my project ideas. I am trying to push this aside though, and continue with my initial ideas.

After finding a new artist, "Ryan Bingham," through watching the show "Yellowstone," I was inspired to craft a pretty acoustic piece on my steel string.

This came about through jamming as I was watching the show, and after finding a few fruitful ideas, I have been trying to work out where the piece wants to go.

I will continue to work on this piece throughout this week, while the inspiration remains. I think this may be an interlude of sorts, as I think the song stands alone well, and may not require additional instruments, though my mind may change.

I am finding it a little overwhelming: the insane amount of choices available to me are making it difficult to settle on a certain sound. I think part of the problem is that I don't have a set idea for tone and sounds yet: if i did, it would make it far easier for me to make my decision.

I will continue understanding and messing about with Logic Pro over these coming weeks, and my indecisiveness will keep me on my toes.

• Track 1: Sean Angus Watson type piece, built around a main loop of 7th chords, with layers, harmonies and percussion

• Track 2: acoustic piece with a country feel, written in an alternate tuning (DADGBD)

I have been recording both by plugging directly into Logic through my audio interface, or by miking up my amp or the acoustic guitar.

I have also began crafting my Pink Floyd song, using a synth in "Alchemy" to create an ambient soundscape. Over this I have added another synth playing, some dissonant chords. I intend to add layers of piano, bass, and soft, sparse drums to round out the song.

I have also been experimenting with the Binaural Panner in Logic Pro, this allows me to tailor exactly where in the mix an instrument sits. I intend to have some tracks moving left and right around the listener, enhancing the experience.

I had a sudden burst of inspiration this week, as I remembered an old jam I had with a friend of mine who plays bamboo flute. It was during this jam that I came up with the riff that has inspired "Summer Days." After looking back on the jam, I decided to try and take this song further, and within the day, I had most it recorded and mixed. Initially, this song was going to be a Pink Floyd inspired piece, but after my burst of inspiration I knew this was the direction I needed to go, and I am extremely happy with the outcome.

I am now primarily focusing on my other two songs, the loop song, "Clouds" is coming along well, with most of the guitar now recorded. I am now in the process of adding layers and melodies over the top of the chords. I think I will add some bass to the track as well as some chilled drums to help bring it all together.

This week, on Wednesday 14 May, my band and I had our first proper live performance in The Mash House, in Edinburgh. For many of us it was our first time playing in public, so nerves were very high. The performance went excellently however, and I am very proud of myself and the band for pulling it off.

I am also going back to my loop song, "Clouds," and adding some simple drums and bass to the track to tie it all together.

Once I finished all of this, I made a playlist on SoundCloud and uploaded all of my songs to there under the name "A Kingdom in the Clouds."

Available at: https://open.spotify.com

Accessed: 14 March 2025

EQ is something I struggle with, as I am often uncertain what to add or remove to a mix to improve it. This cheat sheet is perfect for giving a rough idea on where certain instruments sit in a mix.

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An incredible country artist featured in shows like "Yellowstone," Ryan Bingham has inspired me to play more acoustic guitar.

• Vintage V6 Icon series (electric)

• Brunswick BTK50NA (acoustic)

  
  

Despite being comfortable with the songs, a few still require much practice, and rely on me keeping up my technical skills on guitar. This has always been a process I find enjoyable, slowly working away and seeing myself get faster and cleaner at playing.

For this, I have sets of exercises that I like to play, both as warmups and for practice. Many of these involve scale runs, moving through the circle of fifths, and triad exercises (see daily practice section.)

However I was faced with a couple issues. Firstly, the pressing of the loop pedal button was very loud and heavily picked up by the microphone, creating a nasty clicking sound that ruined the ambience of the song. Secondly, the slight human error possible when using a looper meant that over time it went out of time with the metronome I had going.

As a result, I recorded most of the song one layer at a time in Logic Pro.

Another recording issue has been noise: my Fender amp, when on, has a sort of white noise hiss sound, and while normal, I have found that this noise has muddied a lot of my takes. This becomes more prominent the more tracks there are, and despite working with an EQ, I have struggled to remove this noise fully from the tracks.

This problems could have been solved by using my other amp, Positive Grid's "Spark 40." However, due to hardware issues with this amp, I am unable to use it for longer than a few minutes at a time, rendering this idea pointless. This is a shame, as the vast range of tones available through this modeler amp make it an excellent choice for recording.

All of this has added to my frustrations throughout this project, and I have found it hard not to let all these issues sap my motivation and creative energy.

This includes topics such as:

• Circle of fifths

• Arpeggios

• Triads

• Modes

I have found that frequent practice and use of the likes of triads, leads to far better and more interesting chord progressions. It has also allowed me to find harmonies and melodies for chords more easily, which has been especially helpful for some of my songs.

In the beginning, I was very excited to undertake this project, and was full of ideas, keen to bring them to life. I have found that this has faded, and I am now finding every aspect of this project and course very stressful, leading to me not doing as much work as I should. I think that doing projects like this takes away from the joy and simplicity of playing and listening to music.

Personally, I am a perfectionist, and if something is important to me (especially music), then I want it to be exactly as I envisioned. This leads me to becoming overly analytical of the work I am doing, and if it doesn't feel up to my standards, I will scrap it. This can make recording takes very frustrating, as any tiny mistakes seem huge to me.

Overall, this has lead to much procrastination, as the vision I initially had for the project has become more and more unachievable.

This Paul Gilbert educational video is a staple of a shredder's vocabulary, full of exercises and techniques to improve your alternate picking and legato.

The majority of my other sources have just been YouTube videos, or songs on Spotify. I have found many useful YouTube videos to help with this project, on topics such as mixing, track creation, buses, drums, to name but a few. These have helped immensely, even though I am somewhat familiar with using Logic Pro, the insane amount of options and tools within it can be very overwhelming. These videos make it far easier to narrow down what I want to do, and make the process of doing it much simpler.

Listening to the music that inspires me has probably been the most useful tool in the creation of this project. Sean Angus Watson's discography has been on repeat, and while listening, I have been reflecting on what it is that I enjoy abut his music, and the sonic choices he has made. His guitar tone has influenced me hugely with soft, warm chords filling the space, but still enough clarity to allow his melodies to shine through the mix.

I also really love the idea behind "Clouds," the bounce of the tune is very catchy, and the 7th chords add to the beauty of the progression. The layers of triads, octaves, and harmonies, tells a story, and creates a really pretty mix, busy and full, but still retaining space. This is a song I will work on in the future, as one of the vocalists in my band has expressed interest in adding lyrics to it. During a jam session, Jacob came up with some beautiful lyrics over the track, and it really added to the feel of it. In future, I think we will work together on it, and craft a really pretty piece of music.

• Solo acoustic piece

• Layers of harmonies and melodies

• Altered tuning (DGDGBD)

• A "summery" feel to the song

• Percussion with acoustic guitar

• Loop pedal focused song

• Layers of harmonies, triads, melodies

• Clean, warm guitar tone,

• Dreamy, ambient sound

• 2 chord progressions: a main verse section, and a chorus part

• Chord Progression 1: C#m7 - Abm7 - AMaj7 - Abm7 - F#m7 - B

• Chord Progression 2: EMaj7 - Abm7 - C#m7 - F#m7 - E - B

• Altered tuning (DADGBD)

• Beautiful, gentle fingerpicking

• Mainly a solo acoustic piece

• Buildup with an acoustic solo at the end

• Drum/percussion with guitar

  
  

He has also created a technique he calls "Bell Harmonics," involving two artificial harmonics played separately by each hand. A perfect example of this is in the song "Bell's Harmonic," from his "Mulberry Mouse" album. The entire album is an incredible showcase of Alan Gogolls impeccable acoustic skills that he has honed for the past 26 years.

His songs tell a beautiful story, despite never having lyrics or any other instrument. These raw, but technically polished songs, create an intimate connection with the listener, giving the sense that Alan Gogoll is playing for you, and you alone.

While I can't (yet) make use of Gogoll's techniques, I am greatly inspired by his pushing of boundaries on the acoustic guitar. His fingerstyle skills are phenomenal, yet never come off as "showing off." I love his use of altered tunings - typically Aadd9 (EAC#EBE). It's a real breath of fresh air, to step away from the typical standard tuning acoustic songs (as much as I love them). I myself have begun exploring altered tunings, and I'm really enjoying how it changes the way I play.

I am very proud of myself, both for the actual performance, and for not allowing the nerves to get to my head and affect my playing.

The rest of my band also played really well, holding everything together, with very few mistakes.

Despite the inital nerves, this ended up being an incredibly fun experience, and has definitely boosted my confidence in myself.

I received lovely praise from people after the gig, which has really helped me to feel more secure and happy with the path I have chosen. I can't wait to play live again!

This is by no means a bad thing, as I am very happy with what I have been able to come up with, especially within my acoustic pieces, where the altered tunings have forced me to play differently to how I normally would.

If I could go back, I would not change the direction I decided to go. Through much trial error, I have created something far more unique than what I initially envisioned, something that really reflects who I am as a musician. While my song "Clouds" has issues I am not happy with, it has the potential to be a really beautiful song, and I plan to work on it more over the summer.

Possibly in future I would like to make these pieces of music a little more professional sounding, and eventually release them on Spotify.

I am really glad I took on this project, it has been a great experience, and taught me a lot. My procrastination has been a big problem, but having to force myself through that has made me a better musician as a result.

Summer Days: This is another song I am very proud of. I think it's very much my own style, despite pulling some influence from Alan Gogoll. The use of open G tuning is very harmonically interesting, and led to a lot of unique sounds that I may not have created otherwise. The use of harmonics makes the song even prettier, with bell-like chimes adding to the beauty of the track. The use of dynamics also keeps it interesting, with much quieter sections creating a tension before it becomes more powerful again. I don't have many regrets or things I wish I'd done differently with

this song. It came together very quickly and naturally, and is the perfect showcase of the kind of music I love to make.

Clouds: Now onto my least favourite track, "Clouds." While I love the chords I made for this, I feel I should have spent much more time on the mixing and recording of takes with this. It comes across as sounding very unpolished, and is not the vision I initially had for the track. I think this is due to boredom as well - as this project has progressed, I have found myself gravitating more towards acoustic guitar, with pretty open tunings, and as a result I have not wanted to spend much time on "Clouds," as it doesn't really interest me anymore. Furthermore, there are some strange clicks and other sounds between takes that I wish I had spent more time trying to remove, as they really have a negative effect on the overall song. I plan to work more on this song in future however, with plans to collaborate with one of the incredibly talented vocalists on my course, as he has an amazing vision for the song. So, while I may not be happy with the final recording of the tune, I am glad I have made it, and look forward to steadily improving it in the coming months.

Yellowstone (2019). Ryan Bingham on Walker: Artist Spotlight | Yellowstone | Paramount Network. [online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bU3cVVGZX5k [Accessed 23 May 2025].

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