TERM 1 - Planning for Recording my Track - Part 2

 In the last week, a lot has changed again. With the ongoing circumstances due to Covid-19 and everyone I was planning on collaborating with being students with completely different timetables, it was proving significantly difficult to organise any rehearsal and recording slots before the deadline of the 11th.

Because of this, I have decided to go ahead on my own and record an acoustic version of the song, which I will hand in alongside a video of a live performance with the full band, in order to showcase what it was meant to sound like initially. I have booked in a slot at Small Pond Studios on Monday 7th of December at 4:45-7:30pm. This is extremely close to the deadline, however unfortunately due to having spent two weeks trying to get 5 musicians together, I missed out on all the earlier available slots. Having said that, I know that I will be able to record a stripped back version of this by myself in two hours. This will consist of me playing guitar, singing lead vocals and then harmonising over the top. I will then also potentially overdub some simple bass/piano parts at home. Currently, there seem to be no available mixing sessions available after the 7th, so I am going to email Tom (my course leader) and ask if he can help me arrange an extra slot back to back with my recording one. Otherwise, I will have to do this myself at home to the best of my abilities.

Edit (30/11/20):

I have spoken to Tom and successfully booked a mixing session from 2-5pm on the Tuesday after my recording session. This will be perfect for getting my track completely finished, ready for the submission. I have also been talking to Chris and he is now going to come along to help me out and add some keys to the track, which I think will fill in the sound really nicely. We are planning on recording the track as a live set up.

TERM 1 - Planning for Recording my Track - Achievements and Struggles Faced

 Shown on the left is a list I wrote last week to start planning out how I am going to get my track recorded. (I added the stuff in red today seeing as a lot has changed within a week).

I am really happy that I have successfully written my own song and have been running through it with the house band in the LPW sessions. We also have the structure down completely and I have a lot of ideas for elements I would like the song to include.

Chris, an MA student who is also the keyboardist in the band, has offered to collaborate with me and help me produce/record my track. This is awesome, however unfortunately he has needed to self isolate till this Friday due to coming into contact with someone who has coronavirus so we haven't been able to start anything yet. This has made things a lot more challenging than I expected. Having said that, yesterday in LPW, I ran through the song with the rest of the band again and we are looking at what days everyone is free, so that I can book some rehearsal slots and get the song down to then be able to record it. I have also been talking through things with Chris and have sent him my lyrics and an explanation of the meaning of the song, so that he has a better understanding of the message I am conveying in this track. This means that when it comes to producing the song, he can help me get these things across as best as possible. Furthermore, yesterday in LPW, I realised that  before I go and book a recording slot and use up my available time (we are limited to one recording studio slot per term), I need to book some rehearsals with the whole band to get the song tight and make sure everyone knows exactly what they are doing. 

Luckily, if all else fails, I now have a basic DAW set up at home and could potentially track/mix everything to the best of my abilities in my bedroom. However, this would have to consist of programmed drums and would probably not sound the best, but it is always good to have a backup plan/last resort just in case!

TERM 1 - Arrangement Ideas/Overall Sound For The Song.

Here is a photo of my notes for some arrangement ideas I wrote out last week. At first I wanted the song to start off with just acoustic guitar, but after talking to George in our Songcraft lesson, I decided it would be way better to have the whole band come in at the beginning, with a repeated riff over the top to catch the listeners ear and immediately let them recognise the song; similarly to High and Dry by Radiohead (Yorke, 1995).

We also thought that skipping beat one on the first bar in the second verse would work nicely to vary up the song, create more excitement/alteration in the track and keep the listener on their toes.

Here is a link to the video of the run we did after introducing some of these elements into the track:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1A75rhv5U_1lOa39mUdCWhJ43O7U-MKWj/view?usp=sharing

It all worked really nicely, we took the slightly variated line of the melody in the verse and translated it onto the guitar for the introducing hook. This worked perfectly as I only sing this melody line once in the verse, as the rest of the lines go down. It means that when I go to sing this line, the audience is already familiar with this variation but wasn't necessarily expecting to hear it on the vocals. This adds further to the idea of 'confusion and uncertainty within what you perceive to be true or not' that I am trying to create for the listener. 

The only thing that needs to change is the half time drums we introduced in the Pre-Chorus section. Despite them being a great idea, whilst performing it and listening back to it, I felt as if it was slowing down the natural flow of the track and was making the section sound sluggish. Therefore, I have decided we should keep the original drum idea, but maybe add some cymbal crashes on the word "Back" during the bit where I sing "Back, do you want it back? Do you want it back?..." to bring out the floaty, dreamy feel I want to get across.

TERM 1 - Final Song Idea - Back Against the Wall

 After working on the songs I spoke about in my previous posts for a few days, I decided they weren't for me. They didn't feel right and I think that they could potentially be a songs for another artist, instead of for myself.

After UNI on Monday I sat in Queens Park and played around with some chord ideas - I took some of the chords from both of the compositions I have posted about previously, and combined them/added more chords to create an entirely new song. From there I hummed melodies over the top until I found something that I really liked. When I got home I started writing some lyrics (shown on the left) which I carried on doing in my Songcraft lesson on Tuesday.

Then, I brought my idea to the house band in LPW and it went really well; everyone loved the song! One safety hazard I spotted whilst on stage was a bunch of wires tangled up on the floor. I had to move them out of the way with my foot so I could stand in front of the mic, and looking back on it, it would've been good to tape down the wires, or have them in a way that was less dangerous for the people on stage.

Here is my reflection for the Formative Assignment: 

Before writing this composition, I listened to a bunch of my favourite Radiohead songs as the source for my inspiration. In his writing, Thom Yorke uses a lot of metaphors and very odd, descriptive lyrics which set the scene really well, whilst still leaving some ambiguity for the listener to interpret them however they like. Another thing that he does is transition from major to minor chords a lot, so I tried to incorporate this into my writing.  

This song is about the feeling of misplacement and confusion; when everything feels as if it is in the wrong place and you do not know why, or how to fix it. The title is “Back Against the Wall” which, portrays this idea very well. You would assume I am talking about having your back against the wall; however, it is actually about wanting everything that has been ‘misplaced’ back where it belongs. In the pre-chorus, this is shown repeatedly through the lyrics: ‘Can you tell right from wrong at all? It’s all fallen into place, its back. Do you want it back? Do you want it back? Do you want it bad? Will you wrong it?’ ‘Are people acting how they should? You misplaced it now it’s sad, it’s gone inside, it’s gone, it’s sad. This home is bad, it’s come alive.’ I purposefully used words that sound remarkably similar because it adds to the feeling of everything being a bit too familiar. Staying the same, but not quite, they have been changing in a very sly way - they are not what they seem. 

The verses are made up of two chords, which repeat in a loop (F# and E). Throughout them, the melody line is the same but changes very slightly. My vocals sound quite soft and muffled and it is difficult to understand what I am saying. I wanted it to be like this, because it amplifies the uneasy feeling I am trying to get across to the listener and makes for a bigger contrast between the start and end of the song. The first time around, it goes from the pre-chorus back to the verse, there is no chorus. This adds even more tension, as the pre-chorus ends on a line that sounds haunting and mysterious, begging for release. However, this does not happen until the second time around, when the chorus finally comes in. With its long, sustained notes it asks: ‘do you want it back against the wall?’  which creates an explosion, releasing all the emotions that have been building up throughout the song and makes for the perfect resolution/end to the story whilst still leaving the audience with the feeling of disorientation, but this time somehow familiar. 

I am happy with the structure and the melodies in the song and I really like the atmosphere I managed to capture in this live performance. I still have not settled on exactly what all the lyrics are going to be. However, from here, I plan to develop and tweak little details, to then record a proper version of this song on logic, to hopefully release as part of my first EP. 

Here is my performance for the Formative Assignment: 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/15_hULJyeq-0QhyDY2sbOatMu_XEjd3QR/view?usp=sharing 

(The recording cut out at the end of the solo, so here is another link to the last chorus):

https://drive.google.com/file/d/15m0jhzBwsEOzuHaJ4gs-5F76OmcuSwWl/view?usp=sharing 

TERM 1 - Having new ideas.

 Over the past week I looked into three of my favourite songs at the moment (You Only Live Once - The Strokes, Subterranean Homesick Alien - Radiohead, Brain Damage - Pink Floyd) and what chords they use. The similarity I found between the three songs was that they all used mostly sharp chords and 4th, 6th or 7th chords. So I wanted to try and write a song using more of these kind of chords.

On Monday (12th of October), I was having a rough day, however this song idea fell out of me.

Sitting in front of a keyboard in a little rehearsal room at BYC (Brighton Youth Club) I was playing the song You Only Live Once by The Strokes - I have been listening to this song a lot lately. I played a random chord (G#maj7) and it sounded really nice so I wrote it down and from there a whole chord progression started to come together. I wrote out what I thought the different sections might be and jammed them separately, whilst humming melodies over the top. I spent a whole hour playing through the idea and I really liked it. 

In the chorus of  'You Only Live Once' by The Strokes, the chords go up progressively, except for the last one, it goes down. So, in my song instead of the last chord going down, it carries on going up. I didn't even realise this similarity until later on when I was looking for what might have influenced my ideas. There are also two chords that both songs have in common, F# and D#minor.

I usually start with lyrics, but this song started completely differently. I had the melodies and the chords but I've found writing the lyrics to this one very difficult, however I wrote out ideas several times and have got basic lyric ideas for a verse, pre chorus and chorus (still subject to change). 

Yesterday, I also came up with the different instrumental parts I would like to have in my song. I am not sure if these will be included in my demo recording, however I am planning to bring this idea to the house band next Tuesday and if it goes well I will use a recording of my performance as my demo track.

I am including pictures of the scratch lyrics in my notebook. On the left is my first draft of me writing out the chords and sections, and on the right are my first attempt at lyrics.

      

Here is some more ideas for the lyrics:

TERM 1 - 'Take a Ride' - Bringing my ideas to the house band at UNI and reflecting on how it went.

On Tuesday, during our Live Performance Workshop lesson, no one else had anything to show, so I brought my ideas to the house band to see if we could put together at least one section of the song. When I got on stage, I realised that I hadn't come prepared enough. I hadn't planned on performing the song or even showing my idea to anyone yet, my voice notes were all scrambled and I couldn't find the good bits in all the audio there was. Because of this, I didn't really know what I wanted in the song or where I was taking it and this freaked me out quite a lot. The vibe was off. 

I didn't feel comfortable with what was going on, but I still proceeded to play through the chords and improvise melodies onstage, because I couldn't get out of the one that sounded like 'Common People'. This was very scary for me as improvising is not something I have done in front of people before. 

By the end of the session, I felt quite negative about the whole song. It hadn't gone to plan so I felt upset with myself. However, I went home and thought back on it and realised that this had actually been a really good opportunity for me to grown and learn. I learnt that I didn't want to perform the song in that style, and would maybe benefit from spending some more time thinking about what genre I would like to put it in. 

I realised that all I needed was more preparation. If I had spent some time doing things such as writing out the different parts on a page, getting down more lyrics and figuring out a solid melody line, I could have better approached the song as a whole and would have found it a lot easier to know what genre, style, tempo and overall atmosphere I would like to give it.

Here are the videos of the performance development:

                  

TERM 1 - 'Take a Ride' - How the initial ideas for the song came about.

Last week, I was trying to look up the guitar tab for the song 'You Only Live Once' by The Strokes (Casablancas, 2006). My WIFI wasn't working properly so the tabs wouldn't load and this frustrated me. I decided to improvise on the guitar instead which was funny, cause that's when I came up with a chord progression that was really catchy.

I spent some time variating the chords, seeing what sounded best and what stuck with me. Then I started incorporating my voice, humming melodies until something stuck. I came up with a variety of different melody lines and listened back to them. At one point I thought I'd come up with something super cool, but it sounded familiar to me. I realised that what I was singing was a melody almost identical to that of 'Common People' by Pulp. I spent ages trying to change it up but the melody kept coming back.😂Following that, I improvised on the guitar to try and come up with some ideas for a guitar solo, then I picked up my bass and did the same thing. I am still not sure what I would like to do with the bass in this song, however I would like to sit down with a bassist and exchange ideas to come up with a catchy, obscure bassline.

The next day I sat on the piano and did the same thing. I simply played the chords and 'let whatever happens, happen'. I came up with a couple of different ideas surrounding the chords, I thought maybe some soft arpeggiated chords would sound nice in the middle 8 section or in the intro, then to break in to a bigger, fuller sounding section.

Here is a photo of my notebook with the scratch lyrics on it: