atmos1-lofi-blog

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Tape Cassette

Here I have printed the artwork and cut it out to fit the correct dimensions. Although I may not be able to record to tape, for the time being, this is ongoing and the plan is to finish the tape by putting it out on cassette. Overall I am really happy with how the cassette looks!

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Editing the Artwork

The artwork has been edited to include the title of the EP and also my artist name 

I will now be printing the artwork in the correct dimensions to fit the cassette format.

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Here are the pictures of the cover artwork sent back to me by Matt. I am really happy with these!

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So I’ve finished my EP...

So, I’ve finished my EP. What I have learnt is that planning and time management are essential when creating music. I figured out that my workflow was not fast enough, however, during the final part of the project I increased my workflow by creating a new template. 

I have currently had lots of issues recording to tape and can not seem to find a manual for the Technics M216 anywhere. I feel with better preparation this could have been avoided.

Overall I am kinda happy with the tracks, I feel like it is a step in the right direction. I will be continuing to research into production techniques used by bsd.u and Mr Dibiase.

Overall I had lots of fun with this project and can see myself continuing to make lots of tapes myself as I now have a new format to distribute music with. 

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Finally, I have recorded all of the tracks through the SP-404 using its “vinyl-sim” function.

This was directly inspired by Mr Dibiase’s use of this technique.

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EP Completed

Today I finished my EP! Overall I am happy with the EP for now. I feel like it was more of a project used to benefit my production for tape releases in the future. I think I will push myself more within production and pushing out tape releases in the style of lo-fi hip-hop

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Here is some screenshots of the word document (brief) to Matt for the artwork.

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Here is a screenshot of my email to Matt

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Success!

Today I have managed to contact an artist (Matthew Dalton) for some artwork.

To give him an idea of what I wanted him to create, I sent him a brief which I compiled on Microsoft Word

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Format

So the whole idea is to record to tape cassette at the end of this project.

To do this I realised that I would also need some artwork as well to go with this, so today my plan is to get in contact with an artist to create some original art for my project.

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Today I have ordered some blank tapes. This will be for when I record to cassette at the end of the project. 

I decided to buy Type 1 cassettes as this would add some noise and unique characteristics of its own to the tracks. 

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Here is a screenshot of my master project.

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Tying all the tracks together

In order to record to cassette, I decided to create a “Master” project with all of the bounces arranged and effected with transitions to make the EP more cinematic. 

This also allowed me to reduce the volume on some tracks. 

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Track 6 (Bounty Bar)

This track was made primarily as an intro segment to the EP.

The focus was to create something cinematic which challenged the listener upon listening.

I used the plug-in Halftime to create the slow effect of the track. I used halftime on Smoke Again, with the idea that this would become almost like a motif used in music for film. This was inspired by my Music for Film and Television module.

There isn’t much else to say about this track as it was more so for cinematic purposes and to set the tone of the EP.

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Track 5 (It’s just Business)

For this track, I decided to re-visit the old drums posted earlier in the blog. The intention of this was creating something with a bounce, which had a vibe and didn’t require much concentration. 

The drums made previously provided the bounce I wanted in the track to begin with, so these drums were kept.

The sample was listened to with the intention of finding something which works well with the bass and the other instruments. The final sample used had a bassline I really liked as this complimented the drums. 

Disabling Ableton’s “fades” function was also used to create choppy and raw sounding edits. 

For this track a tape recording by Chet Baker was used as the main sample, I really liked the quality that it gave to the final piece. 

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For this track I also decided to try something new by routing all of my return channels to separate “returns.” channel. This was so I could effect all of my returns at the same time, using effects such as parallel compression and EQ, allowing me to clean up all of my returns at the same time.

This is a method I think I will continue exploring after the project.