Project Proposal
Production Project Files – Follows order of Album (30m29s). (80%)
Progress and Management Records (20%)
All forms of writing, instrumentation and production were completed by myself. My original aim for this project was to be a full demonstration of what I can do individually as a musician, producer and songwriter, so ensuring mostly everything was completed by myself was key for this project’s identity. I felt that approaching it this way would give a much clearer idea of my own artistic abilities rather than a heavily collaborative project would have done, and it also meant I had complete creative and organisational control over the direction of the work throughout the year. I felt that this level of control enabled me to demonstrate my influences listed within the project proposal to a higher standard. It is also worth noting that I originally intended for this project to be 7 tracks long, however it ended up having an extra track added on to it due to the fact I had more work than I thought I would have.
I collaborated with both friend and vocalist, Emily Whincup, for the track titled “Wonderful”, and directed her to sing the parts I had wrote for the project. I wrote the vocal melodies and lyrics myself and communicated to her how I wanted the performance to come across. This meant I got to take on more of a director role with another performer which was something I hadn’t really done to that extent before and found to be useful experience within the project. Working with Emily also gave me a better understanding of how much preparation goes into a vocal session when you’re directing someone else, as opposed to recording yourself where you can be a lot more flexible with how the session runs.
I also designed contextual, post-production elements such as art for the Album to help further convey my artistic identity to the listener within this project. I felt it was equally as important to keep the visual side of the project as personally relevant as the music itself, so designing the artwork to reflect my own individual identity was a significantly key aspect for the project. Using my own tattoo as the basis for the image was a deliberate decision as it’s something tied directly to me, which I thought suited the nature of this project well. The manipulation of the original image which held snakes, to headphones, intended to connect the personal imagery to the musical context of the project, which I thought worked well as a concept. I personally feel that Album artwork is often the first thing a listener engages with before they’ve even heard any of the music, so I felt the same level of thought and effort that went into the production should also go into how the project presented itself on that first-impression basis.
Listening to reference works across the production of the album directly informed my own artistic style as less of a contextually serious approach and more of a tongue-in-cheek outlook to music. This reflects my own individual personality and is something I have struggled to come to terms with within my own art, more specifically, publishing and releasing due to the overwhelming amount of artists that are deeply reflective and stray away from my unserious nature. I can therefore say that the undertaking of this project as a whole has positively shaped not only my production process for the future, but also understanding my personality much more.
Throughout this project, I made use of direct-input recording methodology frequently. The electric bass, guitar, vocal, and some of the synthesiser elements were recorded mostly within the 108 Studios. Recording via this method enabled me to be highly creative with the clean, unaltered sounds that I was capturing when I was in the mixing stage.
The microphones I used for vocals within this project were the Brauner Phantom C and Neumann TLM102. Having access to both within the studio made a noticeable difference to the quality of the vocal recordings across the project, as opposed to the entry-level quality microphones I own at home, such as the Audio Technica AT2020. I made the decision on which microphone to use on a session by session basis depending on the character of the vocal performance required for a given track, which I think gave the recordings the best possible outcome in each case rather then defaulting to one microphone across the entire project.
I almost exclusively used the Korg Bass Station, Minilogue, Serum VST, and TAL-UNO-LX VST for the synth parts. The Bass Station and Minilogue are both analogue synthesisers and using them alongside the software instruments gave the project a quality I think would of been harder to get from software instruments alone. The Bass Station was used mainly for the bass synthesis side of things, and the Minilogue brought some of the more warmer saw sounds that are heard across the project.
Serum and the TAL-UNO-LX, were the software instruments I decided to use for this record. Sticking to mostly the same instruments throughout kept everything sonically consistent from track to track. Limiting myself to a specific set of instruments was also a deliberate choice in terms of workflow as having a set toolkit meant I wasn’t spending unnecessary time auditioning sounds and could focus more on the composition and arrangement side of things, which I found made the production process a lot more efficient across the year.
As featured in my project proposal, I changed the reference material and ultimately the genre the project correlates to. The screenshot above demonstrates my organisational methodology when selecting the tracks for this project, separating the tracks from my original project idea into the folder titled “EP 1”, and the tracks for this project into the folder titled “EP 2”. The tracklist for this project ended up extending to a full album’s worth of material and therefore I decided to submit the newer project as opposed to submitting two EP’s of different genres as I felt the album was stronger in quality.
The screenshot below demonstrates that the material I ended up producing was substantially more than the assignment criteria which meant I had to refine and select the most viable tracks for the final project.
In order to ensure I did not fall behind on the production of this project, I ended up creating a timetable that I adhered to across the year, outlining when in the week I would complete tasks related to this assignment. The timetable below demonstrates I allocated 5 hours per week on to this specific assignment, however I most likely extended this selected timeframe by a significant amount as I often worked on this project in the evenings as well.
This timetable allowed me to make progress more consistently across the year rather than letting my workload increase closer toward the deadline, which was a mistake I did not want to make. As mentioned previously, I set the 5 hours as a minimum amount that I would dedicate across the week, whereas the extra time I spent on the project in the evenings ended up reflecting how much I enjoyed working on this project in particular. However, harder periods did often occur throughout the year whereby other assignments and commitments made it more difficult to allocate extended time to this project. This was aided by use of the timetable as I always made progress each week regardless. Retrospectively, the decision to formulate a timetable was probably one of the more important decisions I made across this final year as it meant that the album never fell behind or became unmanageable which has happened previously in time mismanagement across my academics.
Overall, I am quite happy with the finished product of this project, especially considering the change in direction it went through across the year. What began as a fairly different idea, became a body of work that represents me more clearly as an artist and instrumentalist. I feel like that concept comes across in the finished album in a way that the original concept would not have done.
I am most proud of my individualistic outlook towards this album, as I can look at this work as truly my own. This did not mean I did not collaborate in other ways such as recieving constructive criticism from trusted people within the institution such as my one-to-one module meetings with Andrew Potterton, as well as a variety of other opinions too. However, overall the finished body of work reflects my own dedication and artistic identity better than it would have done if it was a heavily collaborative project.
For future commercial aspirations for this project, I have considered repackaging the work into a shorter, more digestible medium such as an EP or single, to then send to different record labels who I feel may be interested in the music I have made. This was not something I had considered before consulting with Andrew Potterton, which I am thankful for the opportunity it has given me to pursue commercialisation of my own music. I believe the three strongest tracks to be “Wonderful”, “Compression”, and “Cherry Lips” – this is what I intend to repackage and send to labels, under the same project title “Wired Connekshun”.
Bibliography of References
D’monk and Yoofee (2024). Shine. Touching Bass.
Gray, M. (2007). Borderline. Altra Moda Music under exclusive license from M. Gray.
Harris, C. (2007). I Created Disco. SONY BMG MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT (UK) LIMITED.
Harris, C. (2009). The Rain. Sony Music Entertainment.
Helden, A.V. (2007). NYC Beat. Southern Fried Records.
Last Nubian, Sweet Fruity Bunch and Achanté (2023). babylon shuffle. Touching Bass.
Metric, A. (2009). It Starts. Marine Parade.
Saul (2019). Slow Man. Rhythm Section International.
