elliot-corfield

[elliot-corfield]

UNIT D10 PROMOTIONAL MATERIAL

I have now made a playthrough video and put it on the Instagram. As i said before i think they are valuable to do so you can have that interaction with fans and also allow them to learn from you. It lets you become a teacher and a role model whilst also doing something fun that brings in more fans and money, it's nice for a band to be close with their fans and it always makes the interactions better. Even better yet you can take this concept and turn it into a tab book for guitar and then a drum book and a bass tab book and suddenly you're making a lot of money from these aswell and you get to network with book publishers who might commission you later to write more books or you can network with someone to write the books for you and save you the time.

[elliot-corfield]

UNIT D8 bibliography

This video was used to research dissonance in week 2 skill 1 and week 2 skill 5 for making a song heavier.

This video was also used to research week 2 skill 1 for dissonance and week 2 skill 5 for heavier songs.

This was a really useful video for learning about licks and techniques for week 2 skill 2

These 2 videos helped me learn about using drums for an intro when doing song structure in week 2 skill 4 and also helped me with song structure in general in terms of writing an intro in week 2 skill 4 they also helped me in week 3 skill 3 with writing drum intros.

This video was very useful in helping me develop my song structure skills in week 2 skill 4

This video taught me all i need to know for programming drum beats in week 3 skill 1

[elliot-corfield]

UNIT D9 CONCLUSION

Overall I'm really proud and happy with my personal project for D9, I love the 4 songs I've recorded and i think they're done to a very high standard. I've learned a lot throughout the project about writing songs, recording songs and also one of my goals which was programming drums. I come out the other end of this project feeling like a much more confident and strong musician. I can happily say that the project is a success, anyone who's heard the EP has said they like the music on it and in my intro i said that would be a good measure of success for me personally. I wrote my music according to my target audience and my songs would definitely hook them in and get them excited for my music. I have some very complex and fun sounding riffs, heavy breakdowns and diverse choruses, enough to excite any metal fan. The brief wanted me to focus on my skills and developing them and also on the requirements of my target audience and I've done just that. I was also thinking about D10 and my promotional material while writing and naming the songs and my material feeds right from my personal project and the two link together really well. I'm very happy with the outcome. My show reel is really nice too and adds a layer of personal touch by having the visual aspect as me playing the songs as the audience get to see me and see me playing the songs I've created and see that I'm passionate about my work and really connect with me which helps with promotion because it's much easier to promote something people care about, I've created a whole brand with this project and promoted it in many ways, some of which are seen throughout the show reel. People can also use the show reel to learn the riffs in them too so people watching who are interested in my work have something educational to go off too. One goal I had with the project too was to have essentially a portfolio of my own work that i could hand over to future employers or bands and i definitely have that now too, i would happily show off my work to an employer and so this project will definitely help me in my future career too and this show reel of my work can always be added to as i make more music too and so it offers a lot of networking through self promotion and just generally getting my name out in the world of music.

[elliot-corfield]

UNIT D9 PRESENTATION / D10 PROMOTIONAL MATERIAL

Today i did my show reel presentation to sign off unit D9, the 1st one i made was a bit plain because i wasn't aware of how in depth we needed to make it so i took my feedback and improved the video when i got home and I'm really happy with the end result. The video is good to watch and keeps your attention with a visual aspect of me playing each riff. I mentioned D10 with this because a show reel is used to self promote and show off what you can do and within the video i advertise things like I'm looking to make or join a band, i advertise my Instagram for people to follow and get in touch and i also advertise the EP with a release date and so using something like a show reel is a good way to show off what you can do, it's essentially a video version of a portfolio, i can send this to potential employers or band applications to show them what i can do and how creative i am and why they should pick me so something like this is very valuable to have in your arsenal and it's yet another way to promote yourself and your music and it's easy to make, with what it could open up for you. Why not take a few extra minutes to make one. Overall i think this show reel presentation is good and definitely highlights my aims and goals with unit D9 and it also showcases my work nicely by playing a verse riff from each song.

[elliot-corfield]

UNIT D10 PROMOTIONAL MATERIAL

I have also created some album art to go with the EP to add that extra layer of professionalism and promotion to my work. This art can be used to make physical copies of the EP and things like vinyl covers etc. The album art can also make some cool merch and it's always nice to have a bit of visual work to go with an album. This can offer some networking in the future with a graphic designer for example who makes album art for you, the bigger the better. People even go as far as getting tattoos of album art to show their love for a band so it's definitely worth investing in.

[elliot-corfield]

UNIT D10 PROMOTIONAL MATERIAL

Some more promotional material embedded within my work is naming the songs and having a story almost within the names and this could flow through the song lyrics too, many bands use songs to tell stories so i think that would be a fun thing to add to my work too. I also have a title track that as mentioned before can add a lot of hype to the song and the EP as a whole. Overall i think i have lots of mini bites of promotion within all of my promotion and this project has taught me a lot about effective promotional tactics and helps show me why things work and what i can do in the future to help spread my work.

[elliot-corfield]

UNIT D10 PROMOTIONAL MATERIAL

This is the logo i created for Code Black. It's simplistic but i like it. This can make some cool looking black and white clothing merch too which would be fun.

[elliot-corfield]

UNIT D10 PROMOTIONAL MATERIAL

Here is the poster that i have made to advertise the EP too

[elliot-corfield]

UNIT D10 PROMOTIONAL MATERIAL

Here is the link to my Instagram account used for promotion of the EP. Incase it doesn't work. code_black.music is a public account that can be viewed.

[elliot-corfield]

UNIT D10 PROMOTIONAL MATERIAL (my own work)

I would like to discuss the visual material I've been working on for this side of the project and what I've learned from it. First off i started with a logo to go with the artist name I picked. Code black, i went for a fairly less is more approach, something that gets the message across but what i have is also very marketable as it can go on clothing or anything you want it to really and that's the key part here, it's not just a logo and a name, it's a brand. Personal branding is key for a band as fans need something to actually get behind and support and that is your branding. You can even get smart with it like my approach and use it for promotion aswell and have a whole theme going throughout your work, this makes some really stand out promotion and will definitely generate a lot of attention for your music. Having a brand allows you to make merch aswell to sell at gigs for extra monetisation through your work, more money per release is more money to spend on the next idea or increase your music video production budget. More production and better quality can only increase the hype and fans gained from a release and there can't be anything bad about that at all. Your band could become heavily famous for your creative and fun marketing and each time people will love getting involved and look forward to your promotional plans. Another thing I've made with this branding and the thing that started my thematic ideas for promotion was a poster that could be posted in the local area or when you're bigger it could go on a billboard for example. Having a poster is a good way to interact with fans and gain new fans, local people love having bands and musicians to support in the local area. Take bring me the horizon for example, when they do a local show in Sheffield, the atmosphere is electric because the local people love them. All of this branding lead to me making an Instagram account for the EP where i have teased an EP release, showed the development of each song and then done a little 30 second teaser for each of the songs. As i mentioned before, using reels and Instagram for teasers is a very powerful form of promotion for your music and I've made my own account to show an example of how it can be done and how i would do it if i were promoting my own music to actually release professionally. I am also going to make a playthrough video of one of the songs and i think this is a powerful form of music video as it gets the players interacting with fans and they can learn from the person who wrote their favourite riffs or you can even sell a tab book with the EP that people can buy to learn your songs and play along with you, this is another way of monetising your work. If you plan to make lots of videos and books you can then even use this to network with writers and editors and video editors too. That's it for the examples I'm making, i think it's a nice selection of things to make and explore personally. A logo and branding, promoting my music and then making educational content about my music for people to enjoy and learn from. There are also the methods I've written up in more detail too so that i can discuss my ideas and opinions on the modern ways that i think are the best for promoting your musical content. I think it stays in line with professional practices and the most modern ways we have and i know from being a metal fan that these methods are definitely relevant to my target audience of metal music listeners.

[elliot-corfield]

UNIT D9 RECORDING / D10 PROMO MATERIAL

While creating promotional material for D10 on the Instagram account. Code black kept making me think of a blackout and so i decided to have a theme with my teasers about a blackout and so i have now decided to rename the album to blackout Instead of head trauma and thus song 2 is now also called blackout. I think this is a worthy mention because it shows the detail I'm putting into promotional material and the fun you can have with it. By having a title track and a theme around the promotional material and the music itself, it really brings everything together and makes it feel thought out and cohesive. An example of this and what inspired me to make a point of having a theme is the work of John Mayer promoting Sob Rock, he made lots of posters and themes to promote the work and it was a really cool concept and so it's nice to have my own theme running throughout my own work.

[elliot-corfield]

UNIT D10 PROMOTIONAL MATERIAL

This is a topic that I'm going to actually make to show how it can be done but i also want to do a little written piece on it too, to discuss my ideas on using Instagram, Instagram reels and youtube shorts. I think this is another one of those up and coming gold mines, teasers and little reveals have always been around but now we have the power with one button press to send that to anyone and everyone on social media. Bands are constantly going on Instagram and posting a short 10 seconds clip of a new song they're working on saying new music coming soon. All you'll see in the comments of this post are millions of excited fans talking about just this short 10 second clip, analysing it in detail to see what's on the horizon. People love teasers and sneak peaks and so using this to your advantage is always going to be a good idea and you can get really creative with how you do it. You could do an encrypted message that when decoded is a url to a clip of the song or a secret code that when deciphered is the release date for the album, people go crazy for that sort of thing so it would generate so much hype for the album and attract a lot of attention to it, this would obviously be huge for the band and would help with the monetisation aspect by getting more fans to buy the album later. You can even get this post made into an advert that'll be posted at the top of everyone's page for a while and there's loads of little bits that all add up in the promotion game, that's the key i think, covering as many aspects as you possibly can to maximise the gain yielded. Now for the other part of my conversation, the shorts and reels. These are fairly new additions to youtube and Instagram, it follows the trend set by tiktok, having a focus on short and sweet bursts of content, what better way to tease a song than with a reel posted and then carried along by hashtags and algorithms for all your fans and even some new ones to see. That's the 2nd key point i think about promoting, keeping it modern and keeping up with the evolving technology available to you. It used to be just posts on Instagram and now a whole world of shorts opens up too and soon we'll have even more available to us so people need to keep up with the times to really get the most out of their promotion and the more you get out of it, the more successful you'll be.

[elliot-corfield]

UNIT D10 PROMOTIONAL MATERIAL

Now i want to discuss a few other methods that are more honorable mentions as they don't apply massively to a musician starting out but they are still widely used and are very popular in the modern day. One way is to do a tour to promote the album, as a bigger band with a following there is no better choice than a tour, the bigger the better. You'll earn a lot of money from it to fund my other promotion ideas and also just earn a living off of it which is always nice. Going on a big tour will get you lots of exposure and new fans aswell as building lots of hype for the album as people will be listening and just thinking of how awesome it'll sound live. There are 2 ways you can go about this and both have different networking opportunities. If you the band are doing the tour then you'll network with lots of venues, venue staff and lots of staff like lighting and roadies and managers etc. You can also get some bands to be support acts and now you have networked with them and they might ask you to be a support act in the future too but also very importantly, you share each others fans and that can net you a lot positively. On the other hand is where you're a smaller and newer band or you just have the ep available and so you are the support act for another band, you go out first and perform a few songs to get the crowd warmed up. It's still a great amount of exposure you're just obviously not the main focus. You could even play at a festival corresponding to your genre, everyone there will have the same interests so why not take advantage of a large pool of new fans. In terms of monetisation from these I've already said most of it about being paid by the venues etc. Another way of promotion which I've experienced personally is fairly situational but still very powerful and worth a mention. If you're already on a tour but start releasing singles for the next album or just some singles on the side, you can premier them at them tour or just add them to the set list, this generates a lot of hype for the singles and album as we already get a taste of what it sounds like live and see the direction the band are taking with it. But also imagine the honour each and every fan would feel to be the first ones to hear a new song live with you on stage, it'll bring a lot of intimacy between the band and fans and you can even exploit the occasion for a live music video. I experienced this when i saw Bring Me The Horizon live, they were doing a tour for the last album but had also started releasing new music as covid set the gigs back a lot and so they started adding the new music to the set list and so it's really cool when you get to hear a 2 week old song live for the first time, it really adds something to the atmosphere of the gig and definitely gives you a new perspective on the song as you gain a personal memory of the song. It's definitely a good way to show your fans you care about them and bring them closer to you as a band because in the end of the day a band is nothing without the fans and so doing anything you can to please them is key. Another point to mention really is the use of singles and ep's rather than just an album out of nowhere. Singles are incredible for building hype and spreading your name around the music scene, you can release the heaviest songs on the album or some heavy and then a clean song curveball, you have complete freedom. Releasing 4 or 5 singles and then either an ep followed by the rest of the songs or a whole album after the first 5 is the usual practice and when done right, each song will gain so much hype and you'll be constantly gaining fans and popularity along the road all the way up to an album release. That's all i have for the side points, they are just promotional methods that i wanted to discuss and share my opinions on as i see them as still very popular methods, they're just not too relevant to someone like me releasing a first ep.

[elliot-corfield]

UNIT D9 RECORDING PROCESS

Today i recorded song 4, the final song on the ep. I have named it awaken as a nice homage to song 1 lullaby. Having links like this is an extra layer of detail and it's always nice to see and appreciate all the little details in music. This adds another layer of promotion through concepts and links in the music, everything goes noticed in music. The song is really fun and will definitely wake you up so it's a fitting name too, it's definitely a good way to end the ep on a high. I really like how the breakdown turned out and i got some use with eq on the track so I'm always getting lots of production practice while I'm working to ensure this project helps me creatively but mostly helps me in my future career. My only goal left is to create the show reel and presentation for D9 as all the writing and recording is now done.

[elliot-corfield]

UNIT D10 PROMOTIONAL MATERIAL

As mentioned before, it's my personal belief that there is a new and untapped gold mine in the form of reaction channels on twitch and YouTube. I know this from my own personal experience. When i was first getting into metal music, i didn't know what i liked or who to listen to and then i found the 1st metal reaction channel niknocturnal, he had loads of videos of him listening to metal music and reacting to it. Through his channel my gateway to metal music was opened, each day he'd release a new video with a song that had come out. Over the years since this, loads of react channels have started and it's simply just them reacting to new music, but it's so much more than that, it's a relationship between them and the band, a link between the fans and the band, you can watch them to find new bands or find out when your favourite band has released a new song. The band doesn't have to do anything and yet these channels, maybe 20 channels at a time are making videos on their song and suddenly all the fans of the 20 channels have now seen your song and even if just 25% of those people enjoyed it, imagine how many new fans that is for you. React channels are still fairly new on the metal scene and already bands are starting to get in on it, for example on niknocturnals streams on a friday he often has a "new music party" where he'll get people from bands on his stream for a while and they'll both listen to new music together and react or if a band drops an album on that day he'll get a member of the band on to take him through track by track and react to it together, that really gets the musicians involved with the community and their fans and adds a nice personal level to things as they'll reply to people in chat and things like that. React channels are also big for music videos because it gives them a cool visual element to have on screen while they listen and react and that's what i mean when i say having a good music video will attract the react channels, it's just one extra thing you can add to your arsenal in order to promote your music better, the return you'll get is well worth the money you put into it. In terms of networking it's mostly what i touched on earlier, there's a big opportunity for you as a band to really connect with the community and the channels themselves. If you connect with your fans they'll feel closer to you and you'll be able to show you care and appreciate your fans and that'll make them want to listen more, people who don't know the band will see how kind you are and how connected you are and check out your music and if you get on with the channels and support them, they're more likely to have you back on in the future and are more likely to feature your music in their videos. If you combine the gold mine of a react channel with the hype you've built with a music video and a youtube premier, you're well on the way to being successful because your promotion game will be so strong, having that sort of foundation is invaluable. In terms of monetisation for this you can claim royalties from the channels playing your music so it's basically just passive income too so that's really useful for the next album and more videos etc. To put it into perspective of helping me as an up and coming musician with my ep, i could send my tracks over to the channel and see what they think and maybe even get them to react to one, it'll be a bit harder as a new band to make this happen but if your material is good you'll have it in no time. Overall I'm very interested to see the future of the relationship between bands and react channels and to see how helpful the channels become, i think they're a key aspect to bands promoting new music and i think more people should use them.

[elliot-corfield]

UNIT D10 PROMOTIONAL MATERIAL

Following on from what i researched about youtube premiers, i want to discuss music videos as a form of promotion, networking and monetisation. Music videos are definitely on the rise, especially in the metal scene, they are always getting bigger and better. Darker, scarier and more gruesome. They are always evolving and adding a whole new layer to the music, some music videos being basically mini movies, it's easy to see how important they are with the money spent on them. Take the band Spiritbox for example, they definitely love music videos and most of their songs have one, some big production and some just standing around playing, that's the beauty of a music video too, they're very accessible to musicians, just having the visual element is enough. An example of this is memphis may fire with their latest releases, all the videos are shot in the same room with some tvs and each video just has the tvs a different colour or flashing a different way, cheap and effective because it adds another element to the song, it's like your 5 senses, there are more ways than just a good song to hook the listeners, a good video can really make a song perfect or even attract a new audience altogether. In terms of networking, a music video requires many factors on a big budget such as a lighting team, filming crew and sometimes even a director and all those people you can network with and either work with them again in the future or they'll ask you to come back and this creates more work and money for both parties. Equally other people watching the video may then hire your band or the film crew for a job so you can mutually benefit from each other. Equally fans of their work may even become your fans and vice versa. In terms of monetisation, it's very similar to the premier in that you'll get ads etc from youtube that pay you but equally if your band are doing the work for someone you'll be paid by them so there's good money to be made from videos. However the biggest benefit in my opinion is what comes next and that's in the form of using these videos on YouTube to get the attention of react channels who i think are very useful to musicians for criticism and exposure, having a cool video for them to play with the music and react to will definitely get you a lot more attention and i think they're on the rise in popularity and loads of bands now are making videos to get their attention and also for the above reason I've said, having a badass metal song with a really cool video just makes it that level better and being able to have that sort of hype with your song is invaluable to you as a musician. In terms of applying music videos to my own work and how it could affect my ep. A music video is for the visuals and not always production and so filming myself just playing the track maybe with some editing or making my own visualiser with some cool design work or a lyric video or even using the media students at college would all make a successful music video and add that level of visuals to my track to take it to the next level of professionalism.

[elliot-corfield]

UNIT D10 PROMOTIONAL MATERIAL

The 1st of my writeups and explorations in promotional material is the use of YouTube premiers. A YouTube premier is a planned event on youtube for a video, like a viewing party type deal. It has a date and time of release and it really helps build hype for a song, people sit waiting 10 minutes before release to listen to your song, just like they do getting to a gig an hour early. It adds a level of intimacy between a band and the listeners, they can even do it as a stream and be there talking in the chat while people listen for the 1st time. This can also add some networking to the event, you could invite various record labels or producers to give them a sample of your work or someone working there might just tune in anyway, all it takes is one lucky day for the right person to join and watch it and it could set out your whole career. Releasing singles to hype an album is already a very popular practice, it says hi guys we're back and working on something cool and gets people excited, but then if you hype up the song that's hyping the album things start to get good for you as an artist and it generates alot of excitement, youtube premiers is a great way of building this hype. Due to the youtube algorithm and the use of things like hashtags, you can get a lot of new fans from this too as it will be posted over everyone's home page for weeks and it'll say things like "because you listened to this band you'll also like this one" and things along those lines, so just by having the video scheduled on youtube, they'll do half of the work for you aswell for free without you even knowing, if you do one of these for each single you release, imagine how many fans you could be passively gaining and the more fans you have watching it, the more youtube will push it out to people. You will then also get ads and monetisation on the video due to it's popularity and now you have a small income from youtube ontop of the already big income you'll get from all these new fans buying your album and merch and giving you plays on spotify etc. Every small aspect of simply doing a premier all snowballs into this huge money pot just sitting there waiting for you. You can even make a private showing where people can buy tickets to the premier and now you get ticket sales on an exclusive viewing party and that's even more money you've made before the album is even released. This can lead nicely onto my next topic of music videos as the money gained here can create a production budget to start filming music videos for these singles to generate even more hype for the song and album and add another layer of professionalism to your work. Youtube premiers are very accessible and the perfect way for you to get your name out there and start getting a following. For someone like me, this would be my first ep and first time releasing music so a good impression is key, having this sort of exposure on my first release would be invaluable to my continued work and professional life and would really jumpstart a successful career in music for me and open me up to the networking opportunities i mentioned earlier to aid me even more in my future. Another example of networking is that currently I'm a solo artist, so i could advertise that I'm looking for a band or band members on the premier and people could get in touch if they like my work and I'd get a band or band members too so that i can create more and even better work in the future and make this idea even more profitable and use my experience and knowledge to help the band get kickstarted in the same way it did when i was solo.