atypicalemo

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The reflection of our project done by myself

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The execution of our project by Sophie Livingston.

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This is the planning part of our Portfolio written by Sophie Livingston.

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Rationale On The Flipside Headliner Event

Our Rationale

 Our creative vision for On The Flipside was to break into Cheltenham’s music scene with our powerful, heavy (yet) melodic music, which we hoped people would take a real interest in.

We aimed to put on our first ever live show, after nearly 2 years of many rehearsals, a few studio sessions and, also, just generally trying to figure out what our sound was.

We also wanted to give 3 other artists the chance and a paid opportunity to put on a show as supporting acts, who would perform before us, no matter if they had done so in the past or not. These artists could be anyone, as long as they were alternative sounding and fit the music scene we were going for.

Alongside this, we needed promotion, we wanted as much of a turnout for our first show as possible, so we knew as part of this project we knew we wanted to use the graphics collaboration task to help establish this. We needed a poster which gave all the basic information of our event and we wanted to have as much input on the look and style of the poster as possible.

We wanted our promotional side of things to be more long term too. Using the same colours, theme and aesthetic taken from our poster helped us incorporate a band logo, image and design and merchandise to give people an immediate insight into our whole bands persona.

- Written by myself.

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The last couple of points made on our Vision Statement by myself.

Sources used:

https://www.festicket.com/magazine/discover/top-10-eco-friendly-festivals/

https://www.insider.com/reading-leeds-festival-lineup-women-female-artists-reactions-2020-2

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The first couple of points of our Vision Statement made by Sophie.

Sources used:

 https://accessaa.co.uk/20-of-uks-small-venues-closed-over-15-years-says-study/ 

https://www.creativebloq.com/features/join-the-fight-for-gender-equality-in-design

https://www.vulture.com/2019/02/interview-cass-mccombs.html

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Creative processes

· We wanted to use simple sketch designs and combine it with vibrant and bright colours on a black background to make it eye catching and appealing.

· This type of design went well with our bands look, aesthetic and alternative personality.

· We even had a specific font that we wanted too, we started planning it out by hand and our Graphic designer finished it off for us and made it look better than we first imagined it to be.

Communicative/Development process

 · Communication between ourselves and our graphic designer was really great.

· While in the planning of our work and delivering the first brief to her, we felt she understood what we had to say and asked us further questions to make sure she knew what she was going to be doing.

· Later on she sent us her work and we gave her constructive criticism on what she had done and what we would change, she went away with no hesitation and completed it to the best of our abilities.

· If we had the choice to work with her again, we 100% would do.

Finished Product

· Overall, this product exceeded our expectations, we are extremely grateful ad happy to have the poster we have. It took us a lot of planning to think of and tonnes of work for our graphic designer to do.

· It’s something we will now be using a lot, we’ve been using it for promotion, our header and profile picture on our pages and have also thought about using it for merchandise too.

· Was there anything that could have been improved? I don’t think so, because again, it turned out much better than we thought it would and has helped us out, in promotion, advertising and gives us something to show off within live shows.

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My Portfolio on my Solo Project - Music Journalism

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Vision Statement – Planet, People and Profit -Music Journalism

Sustainability and communities – Currently the project I’m working on is a small scale style of reporting, looking at smaller bands who are trying to breakthrough into the mainstream. I do this all via YouTube and online, proving that not all reports and reviews have to be published onto paper based magazines.

Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure – I have helped the music industry potentially by innovating it. Currently, I’m seeing a number of my local venues closing down because of the lack of people attending and because certain parts of the music industry just aren’t as popular as they used to be, an example of this is Lakota, one of Bristol’s most famous music venues, which has been shut down within the last week or two. So, me doing these videos can help bands get recognition without them necessarily having to play. If my videos were to get enough attention it could potentially boost the amount of people going out to see these new bands, in turn creating money for these bands and keeping certain parts of the music scene, including venues, alive.

I’m specifically doing punk, rock and alternative bands just because this type of music is just as good as pop, Drum’n Bass or R&B but it seems to get less attention and is hardly ever played on the radio. So I am attempting to try and help this part of the music genre as much as I possibly can because there will be bands out there that could end up being the next Muse or Led Zeppelin, yet, these bands don’t get as much time as they need. So the more locations and venues that remain open the better, creating more jobs and money within the music industry.

Reduced in equalities – Here I am looking to reduce inequalities by having anyone being part of my reviews regardless of sex, religious views, race or backgrounds. Out of the current 2 bands I’ve looked at, The Chats are 3 straight white males and Milk Teeth consists of 2 females (1 who is frontwoman and  1 of whom transitioned from male) and 1 male.

Also, the weirder or wackier the group, duo or artist are the better. This is because it shows they have a unique selling point something aside from their music that makes them that bit more interesting or intriguing. Different is good. It’s an important point to look at because people are nosy and like to know everything about their favourite musicians, in this day and age. Therefore, having a quirky personality, a mysterious past or just being out of the ordinary might be just what musicians need sometimes, to gather a following and active fan base.

 Vision Statement

How, for the future, does this project I’m working on help the planet, connect people and make some kind of profit for others?

My plan here is to eventually be a part of the music journalism “world” by reporting and reviewing music and bands that are in the alternative, punk, rock and metal scene who may have only a few million or even thousand followers or streams.

My vision for this is to create a greener world, one way to do this is to keep all the work I do online, whether it’s videos, an article or photo albums. This helps the planet because less paper is used to publish thousands of copies of magazines but content is still provided and also helps content created last longer, it’s more efficient for the majority of people these days.

In terms of people, my work helps the growth of the community of people that fit in within the genres I write about and brings them closer together because liking the band will become something they have in common. The comment section on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter is a good place to find this kind of information. Also, anything posted on social media these days can get spread around like wildfire, so I’ll take advantage of these tools and use the power of the people to help spread word of my reviews.

When looking at the future for the profit of my work, may aim is to at least try and increase streams and views for the bands I talk about, even if it’s one person because that one person could be the key to that bands success as they’re the one that tells other people about the same band and before you know it that band are now on a world tour and making a profit, like never before.

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My Second Album and Band Video.

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My first Album and Band Review video.

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These are the lead sheets for our original arrangement we composed.

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Before we started the remix we had a reference song. Lisa chose ‘Gone ‘by Christine and the Queens and Charlie XCX. We used this song as the sounds that were used were similar to what we wanted to use.

For this task I decided to choose the MIDI sounds for our song, I thought I’d know what was best for the remix sounds as I’ve created songs before using MIDI alone, before. However, Sophie actually recorded it in and chose the rhythms and patterns to use for the song.

I tried to find a range of different sounds with different tones, so we had some, bass, mids and treble sounds. I decided that the structure would be similar to the original song but at the end instead of having a bridge, we had a breakdown which is what really made it different and experimental compared to the other two versions of our songs.

I suggested we use samples from Lisa’s vocal recordings and to chop them up as this is what a lot of re-mixes do. I also decided it would be a good idea to layer up different drum beats because it really built the song up once Sophie had recorded them in.

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MD5313 - Songwriting and Context - "Live Version" Arrangement

The live arrangement of the song was different because we decided to strip it right back and remove all drums and percussion. We also had a different tempo. I decided that I wanted it to be slower because our original was quite fast and up beat already. However, when it came to the actual performance, we unintentionally played it faster than the original (it was hard to keep it slow because we had no click, no drums or percussion.)

We also changed the structure of the song. Again, we started to change the structure of the guitar to begin with and worked the bass and vocals out around that.

We started the song off differently using a couple of the verse chords as an intro. The sound of these chords were different too because I palm muted them. As we got to the chorus, instead of playing the full chords I picked the individual strings.

The key was changed too, Lisa decided that I should put a capo on the first fret of the guitar instead of going lower and changing the tuning of the strings manually.

We decided that a stripped back version of the song would be a good idea because that meant when it came to the remix we could really experiment with it meaning we had 3 very different sounding songs.

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Original Arrangement of Song

For this song we wrote and composed an Acoustic-Indie/Pop song which we named ‘Owe You Something’ for this particular song I wrote the guitar parts.

I had the initial guitar ideas for the song and had help from the rest of my group to tweak some of the ideas, however, I ended up putting it all together and created an interesting structure for the song. We wrote the song as a group at home where we came up with the initial ideas and practically finished our ideas in the studio, so we could record as soon as we were finished. I had an important job because all the other parts were formed around my guitar parts, I was also the first person to record my instrument.

I wrote 2 verses, 2 pre-choruses, and a bridge with a double chorus at the end on guitar. I chose this structure because it’s usually the best way to write a catchy and memorable song. It also gave me more to work with when it came to re-arranging the songs for the live performance and remix.

I also had one chord that I kept coming back to, to help transition from the chorus to the verses. I did this because it almost resolved the track and made it clear for when the next part of the song started.

When it came to mixing, I only mixed my guitar part because I knew how I wanted it to sound.

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Songwriting & context - Assignment Proposal

This is our plan for the 3 arrangements of our song.

INITIAL IDEAS

• We are starting by writing on just a guitar first as it helps line up our writing styles.

• This will allow us to look closely at the lyrics while being able to add the element of prosody and lyrical meaning.

• Later we will bring in further instrumentation and production ideas which we will then take into the studio and experiment with more.

• Chords idea: E B C A

ORIGINAL VERSION

• We want the original song to start off clean and then build towards the end.

• We will create this by having a clean tone on guitar then bringing in more distorted sounds by the end.

• As with drums, having a simple steady beat to begin with (hi-hat, snare, kick drum) and then moving onto either the ride cymbal or crash in the chorus can elevate the song.

• Having a good dynamic range can be used to your advantage to portray certain feelings and emotions so we want to implement this in our song.

“UNPLUGGED” VERSION

• Acoustic guitar and soft drums giving an ambient feel to the song.

• Using things such as brushes and mallets on drums will mean they won’t overpower the soft nature of the song but can still be in the song to bring everything together.

• Using reverb on the vocals can create a lot of space and along with a slow and ambient arrangement can be a good mix so we would want this in the unplugged version. My softer vocal style will add a smoother feel to it.

• Applying delay to the guitar will help give this song a really chill vibe. Also stripping back the guitar arrangement will leave room for lyrics to be up front and the main element of the song.

REMIX VERSION

• For the remix version we would like to incorporate the tresillo rhythm.

• We want to use an electronic stance on this version, bringing in a drum machine and using midi technology on Logic.

• We want to still have the lyrical meaning come through so will split up the main lyric lines onto a midi keyboard and play about with the placement of certain words.

• Pitch and tempo can bring new interpretations and change the feel of a song so thinking about that and experimenting with this throughout the production process will hopefully allow us to create a really interesting and musical diverse remix of our song.

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Political Music

Political music is music that is created to prove a point, try and enforce a movement or law or standing up for what you personally believe in.

Some bands that are driven by politics are Skunk Anansie, Rage Against the Machine, System of a Down and Green Day.

Green Day wrote the album American Idiot back in the early 2000′s. The whole album is highly controversial and political. However, the single under the same name (American Idiot) is one of the most famous songs on the whole track.

Depending on how you look at it, the song is famous for the right or wrong reasons. The title itself is risky, as it apparently refers to the politics and politicians who are in power in America today.

The lyrics are mainly about the corruption of America, how no one has individuality anymore and the whole political system is broken and unfair. This song had many people at the time contemplating about the song being Ant-American. The line “Don't wanna be an American idiot, One nation controlled by the media” backs up this point and another point of no one being free anymore because we’re all being controlled.