Development Diary year 1 term 2 by

Term 2 Week 1

aaronbird59 — 2025-02-03 12:06:16 UTC

How did year 1, term 1 go?

Overall, it was a learning curve. getting used to the the tasks in hand, getting to grips with time management and work strategy. I could have done better with these two however, it has helped me to learn where my weaknesses are and where to focus my energy moving forward.

I have learned that time management is a problem for me and prioritising written work and documenting my research is just as important as the practical and creative side of things. additionally I have also come to realise that I feel I am unlearning allot of stuff ignorer to relearn it in new and more in depth ways, this is good to know as to not get disheartened with my work as I take on more knowledge and information during my studies.

Term 1 Week 2

aaronbird59 — 2025-02-03 12:13:31 UTC

Visualise and write down what success would look like this semester

. Complete the assignments with a clear time structure

. Don’t over do the work and split it into lost of small chunks

. Spend more time planning and researching before starting

. Relese some music/ mix it myself and have it mastered

. Record vocals onto at least one of my assignment tracks.

. Cover all points on the assignment brief and assign a word count for each one

How will I know if you are successful ?

. Will have stuff on Spotify to listen back to

. It will be a noticeable improvement on my last works

. It will reflect in my marks when I hand in my assignment

What’s stopping you ?

. Home life and personal struggles

. Work play balance

. Time management

. Nothing if I apply myself

Strengths and weaknesses from previous assignment

Weaknesses,

. Started the bulk of recording work too early and didn’t give it time to develop

. Started the writing section too late and rushed it

. Stopped doing my weekly diary after a while and had to catch up with this work closer to my deadline

. The mixing process was difficult as I wasn’t happy with the idea at the source, ended up going in circles and loosing touch with the overall vision

Strengths,

. I completed everything and didn’t leave everything till the last min

. I picked interesting subjects and was happy with the ideas that I came up with

. Persevered at a task that I was not familiar with

Make 5 SMART goals during my semester

. Make a time management timeline/ and give myself small deadlines during this

. Create multiple sketchy ideas and pick one by a certain date set on my time management timeline

. Organise what parts will be recorded in the studio and organise this based on the time chart

. Learn to move on from tasks

. Write out a plan before my assignments

starting my music project

aaronbird59 — 2025-02-28 11:51:35 UTC

for this project I decoded to have a look through some of my old work folders to see if there where any ideas that I wanted to develop. I came across a demo acoustic guitar track that I had recorded some time ago and thought that it would be a good one to develop further. I started by creating some instrument tracks in my DAW and putting together a framework for the sections and compositional elements that I may want to use. it was important to me that I made quick decisions at this stage as to capture the fist emotions that came to my head. I played a few electric guitar parts straight into my DAW though a DI and did a quick multi track for a left and a right channel, as to give it some width. I actually decided to record in Midi drums over this as it was the quickest way to get the idea down over the song. I was actually very happy with how these turned out so I decided to use this for the final project. this also gave my a much easier time whilst editing. using a velocity sensitive keyboard played a huge part in allowing the drums to feel dynamic and expressive. once I had the drum takes that I was happy with I did not quantise this as I really liked the character and imperfections of the takes. following this, the song mainly consists of additional lead guitar elements though amp sims a bass part also DI and a Midi strings section to accompany.

developing my project

aaronbird59 — 2025-02-28 12:33:48 UTC

once I had played down the basic blueprint for this track and I was happy with section lengths and overall vibe of the song, it was time to start cleaning stuff up and deciding where these elements should fit around each other. after listening to the song in this form, it was clear that it had a real sense of space and depth so I leaned into this as I continued and tried to give the instruments there own space in the times that it was necessary. one thing that really helped to achieve this was through editing. cutting out all of the noise that did not need to be there and paying attention to detail when fading parts in and out. this allowed small things to be heard and not masked giving the illusion of depth and made the transitions seam smooth and seamless. as the lead guitar elements where clear over this minimalist mix, it was very important that they all locked in together and followed the timing of the whole song. this also required a small amount of editing to make sure that they really sat well timing wise. as the string section was all string samples put through a sampler and played in Midi, I had to find a way to make it sound natural and realistic as to not take away from the other instruments. I did this by layering multiple harmonies of different timbres and panning them separately to make them wide and take the focus away from one sole instrument. I also reduced the attack through an enveloper on the strings buss which put them further back in to mix along with a long reverb. this combined created a blanket like effect and made the strings sit below the lead elements.

mixing

aaronbird59 — 2025-02-28 12:34:11 UTC

at this stage, I decided to do a general mix on my song to give myself some context into how this may sound at the end. one of the things that had stood out to me was the drums sounding to upfront and polished. I wanted to make them feel like they had some room sound to them, and were more buried in the mix without losing any punch or pokiness. I started by just durning the drum bus down and side chaining some other elements to this allowing them to still poke through without overwhelming the mix. additionally I added a small amount of short delay to the bus and some reverb to give them a sense of space. I did however push the pre delay on the reverb as to not kill the initial transients of these hits as I did still want the drums to poke out. this along with the right compression put the drums much closer to where I wanted them sonically. the lead guitars felt as though they where disappearing at times but I did still like the dynamics that they had. I decided to use a multi band compressor and only compress from around 2k upwards. this evened out some of the harsh frequencies and made the quiet ones more audible without killing the dynamics in the low mid information.

additionally I used allot of automation for the volume of parts between transitions and for the reverbs and delays used on instruments. this gave much more movement to the track and kept in interesting as the sounds felt like they where changing throughout the song.

starting my remix

aaronbird59 — 2025-02-28 12:34:23 UTC

As i have put allot of focus into the first song in my assignment, i thought that it would be a good time to take a break from that and get started on my remix project.

I started to have a look for good songs to remix by just flicking through playlists and seeing what vocals jumped out at me. I eventually landed on the song, "we are the people" by empire of the sun as it had a catchy chorus and I believed I could do allot with it. I started by isolating the vocal recording from the song in the program Serato. I wanted to change the chord structure which meant playing keys over the original sample until I found something that fit well over the top. this prompted me to start adding some sample elements and electronic instruments to really change the feel from the original track. it is still in an early development stage but I look forward to seeing where I can go with this one.

aaronbird59 — 2025-02-28 13:14:19 UTC

Influences and references

aaronbird59 — 2025-03-05 12:24:14 UTC

these are some influences for my original pice. I took allot o inspiration from sections of these song in order to create the general vibe for my own. I also used Coldplays "yellow" as my reference for guitar tones during the mixing stage. its not an exact copy but it was a good point to refer back to to make sure I was in a good ballpark while mixing for extended periods of time.

Risk assessment

aaronbird59 — 2025-03-19 11:55:47 UTC

something that was good to keep in mind throughout this project was, managing any potential hazards and risks before they could happen. this was mainly encoded good cable management to ensure that there where no Tripp hazards around the work space. I also made sure that I was not overloading any plug sockets to ensure that I did not end up with any fore hazards ether. additionally, just making sure that the space was tidy in general helped to keep all the entrances usable and further prevent trip hazards.

Mixing Second song (remix)

aaronbird59 — 2025-04-02 11:01:48 UTC

As this is very contrasting to my first track I created, I mixed this with a very different mindset. my aim was to create an EDM style song that could be played in the clubs. this meant using only synths and drum samples throughout the process. additionally, I wanted to put my own spin on the original track to really emphasise that it is a remix. from this point, I took what I had already made and decided to implement tension and realise in the form of multiple drops throughout the track only letting the full beat appear at these drops. another way that I built tension is though the use of white noise risers and buildup FX along with EQ automation to give movement as the parts where building up. as it is a very busy mix at times I had to be careful to make sure each element had it own place in the track and wasn't being masked buy other layers. making sure that the timing was pretty much perfect through quantisation was a great way to ensure that all of these elements sat well with one and other and where perceived by the listener as one whole sound that could be easily followed. another way that I overcame this was by giving each track its own prominent place in the frequency spectrum. this along with careful EQ of reverb and delays gave each element its own pocket to sit in audibly. I made sure that the vocals were clear and audible over the top of the track and being that it was much more full that the original, heavy compression was needed to achieve this. along with increasing the envelope attack to bring out the transients within the vocal.

it was mixed with the intention of high energy which resulted in allot of top end boosts, saturation and exciter plugins used and often quite drastic or bold mixing decisions throughout. I designed all of the synth sound myself using the program VITAL. this gave me full control over the type of sound I was after and helped me to achieve the overall vibe I wanted for this track.

Finalising and mastering

aaronbird59 — 2025-04-02 11:02:08 UTC

mastering is still fairly new to me and it is definitely something that I would like to explore further in the future as I am not 100 percent positive that I managed to bring the best out of my mixes after they where done. this is however difficult as I did not have access to a well acoustically treated room for this stage. I did however do the best that I could give my circumstances.

I did however try to ensure that I got a decent loudness throughout the tracks and that they would adequately compete with other commercial records. along with limiting the songs enough as to not reduce to much dynamic range but still encores the overall loudness. this was more heavily used on the Remix as the style of music is so-posed to sound very full and loud.

another useful thing that I did during the mastering sage was listening to the mixes through multiple speakers such as my studio monitors, various headphones, a phone speaker, my car speakers, and in different studio spaces. this was to make sure that the mixes translated well thru different systems and would song as good as possible thru as many listening devises as possible. along with covering allot of the primary listening devises that consumers would listen to the tracks on. this also allowed me to hear and pick out things in the mix that could not hear through my own speakers.

using studio room in uni

aaronbird59 — 2025-04-02 11:02:35 UTC

spending time in the studio in uni was great for my development throughout these projects. we spent allot of time analysing different mixes and listening to separate the individual elements of the mix. this included mixing decisions, instrumentation and overall arrangement of tracks along with identifying how the dynamics/energy of a track are presented. I believe this has been major beneficial in my development as I have been taking on this project and really helped to me to think creatively about my tracks as a whole. we spent some time using the outboard gear available in the studio such as compressors and synths. this also helped me to wrap my head around some of the more complex features of the equipment and get a better understanding for how these techniques apples to my own production.

Reaserch

aaronbird59 — 2025-04-02 11:18:23 UTC

one pice of research material that I found very informative when creating my tracks what this Mixing music E book,

it really helped me to hown in to the right mental approach to take whilst mixing both my tracks. it also takes into account perspectives from many different mixing engineers and creatives and how their process differs from one another. this too helped me to further understand the differences and similarities between my techniques and others techniques along with new perspectives or ways to approach my work that I had not yet thought of.

here are some useful quotes from the book that I found to be key pieces of research information for the project,

"My approach is hardly refined, but I do hope it is distinctive. I feel that many mix engineers end up producing under-par productions by overworking a mix, rather than allowing it to breathe. Ultimately, I tend to try to remind myself that less is more. It’s been useful to ask, ‘what can I edit out?’ rather than, ‘what can I add?’ when mixing a track"

Mixing Music, edited by Russ Hepworth-Sawyer, and Jay Hodgson, Taylor & Francis Group, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/falmouth-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4756215.
Created from falmouth-ebooks on 2025-04-14 09:06:05.

"before the mixing session. I’ll usually remain open during mixing, and I’m happy to try new things. In fact, my approach to the mixing process is to try all the ideas that enter my head, to see if they work or not. It’s trial and error, but trial and error within the parameters and guidelines of what technically works."

Mixing Music, edited by Russ Hepworth-Sawyer, and Jay Hodgson, Taylor & Francis Group, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/falmouth-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4756215.
Created from falmouth-ebooks on 2025-04-14 09:10:56.

"In electronic music there are dominant elements such as the kick drum, bass line and perhaps a lead or two. In most other genres, it’s more cohesive where all instruments play an equal role. Now, this perhaps isn’t true for all electronic music but it certainly it is for a good majority."

Mixing Music, edited by Russ Hepworth-Sawyer, and Jay Hodgson, Taylor & Francis Group, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/falmouth-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4756215.
Created from falmouth-ebooks on 2025-04-14 09:19:46.

aaronbird59 — 2025-04-14 10:31:22 UTC

these where few of the influences that I used for my remix. thieves gave me a good point to go off when deciding on the overall feel of the song along with an arrangement for my own. the last song in the playlist has a very similar arpeggiated synth as the one that I came up with, so I used it a good reference point when designing the sound.