Project Proposal
Production Project Files (80%)
Progress and Management Records (20%)
PROJECT MANAGEMENT
Discussed in my project proposal above, I decided to create an electronic album that explores several different genres of dance music, showcasing my skills and versatility as a music producer. As being primarily an electronic music producer myself , I happen to have good knowledge of the sounds and characteristics of each sub-genre (such as House or Garage); I concluded that most dance tracks are normally 3-4 minutes long, meaning I would need a total of around 8-10 tracks in total.
As this project brief was given to us at the start of the year, I thought it would be a good idea to map out a rough timeline of when I would like these tracks and other tasks be completed by. As I had some other assignments that were due at the start of the year, I began planning this project in mid November before the Christmas break.
Initial vs actual timeline
INITIAL TIMELINE
ACTUAL TIMELINE
INSPIRATION
Before starting initial ideas for the tracks that I would use in this project, I made sure to put some time aside to properly listen and analyse different genres of electronic music such as House, UK Garage, Breakbeat, 140 and many more niche sub-genres. I compiled a playlist on Spotify as seen below, containing some of my favourites, and I aimed for my tracks to fit within the same sonic realm as some of these when producing.
In addition to purely just listening to dance music, I was lucky enough to see some of my favourite DJ’s, Sammy Virji, perform live at Warehouse Project Manchester, December 2025. It had an absolutely stacked lineup including Armand Van Helden, Ben UFO, Oppidan and Silva Bumpa – the dream lineup for any dance music fan.
In terms of how this relates to my project, I was able to experience live in the flesh which tracks connected with the audience the most, how they sounded on big professional sound systems and I even made mental notes of the common structure that I heard used in several songs. They often had intros, breakdowns, or outros with just drums, allowing for DJs to mix in the next track seamlessly.
Source: Jody Hartley Photos – WHP – Samy Virji 2025
After creating several initial ideas and motifs, I ended up with 8 tracks in total, and decided to put them in an order that takes the listener through the different worlds of dance music; From bouncy house music, through to moody garage and dark subby tunes, I would order the album so that intensity increases as it goes on.
PRODUCTION
Vocal manipulation + processing
To demonstrate how I manipulated and processed my vocals, I will be referencing my track number 2 ‘Looking For You’, inspired by Conducta’s ‘Needed U’. The vocals I landed on for this track were very dry and in my opinion lacked character. Here is an audio clip of how they sounded:
The first thing I did was pitch them up by 5 semitones, as they were in A minor, whereas the track I had made was in D minor. This pitching up, along with the slight increase in tempo, added some subtle artefacts to the vocal which I liked, as it created that ‘Silva Bumpa sound’ that can be heard in a lot of his earlier songs. He often uses old school 90s R&B vocals and flips them into speed garage bangers by speeding them up and changing the pitch, as they are usually a lot slower in tempo.
To further add character to these vocals I added EQ to cut out low frequencies, to avoid rumble and leave room for the bass. I added stereo delay (with a 1/4 rate on the left and an 1/8th note delay on the right) to help create a slight panning effect making the vocal sound as if its bouncing from ear to ear, and slight chorus to add subtle harmonics to vocal, making it sound slightly more electronic. I added gain at the end of the channel to control levels and ensure there was no clipping. Finally I sent the vocal to an auxiliary which had a hall reverb on it (I added EQ on this channel first, as I only wanted the reverb to act upon the higher frequencies, again to avoid muddiness in the low end)
Here is how the vocal sounds with the effects on:
VOCAL CHANNEL SETTINGS
EQ ON REVERB SEND
Side-chaining bass to kick
One notable track in which I use a lot of side chaining is my track ‘Take Me High’. My reference track for this was ‘Lifting’ by Silva Bumpa and Riordan (see Spotify playlist) in which they use a call and response style bass. Side chaining can be especially useful in the low end between the kick drum and bass. The kick drum is the main driving element in most dance tracks, therefore it is essential that it can be heard at all times without any clashing of frequencies.
To side-chain the kick to the bass, I used a volume ducking plugin called ‘Kickstart 2’ where essentially every time the kick drum hits, the bass ducks in volume to allow the kick to punch through. As you can see in the picture below, I have made it so that only the frequencies below 179Hz are ducking. This is to avoid loss of presence in the bass on each beat, which can sometimes happen with heavy use of side-chaining.
Below you can hear the bass with the side chain plugin off, compared to with it on:
WITHOUT
WITH
Use of delay
In my track ‘Backseat’, I used delay on the chord stabs, helping them to fill space in the mix whilst creating a sense of atmosphere and keeping the pulse going. I did this by sending the initial chord stab sound to an auxiliary channel that had a stereo delay plugin followed by a compressor. I put a compressor on this channel with a large ratio of 18:1, so that every time the chord stab hits, the compressor acts upon the delay effect and essentially ducking it, to avoid too much clashing of sounds here.
WITH DELAY
WITHOUT DELAY
COMPRESSION SETTINGS ON DELAY
CHANNEL STRIP SETTINGS
Sound design and use of LFO’s
In order to make tracks feel more my own, I wanted to delve deep into sound design during the duration of this project. An example of where I used this is in my track ‘Wheel it’. As this was a bass-heavy track, I used the synthesiser Serum 2 to design the main bass sound, a popular synthesiser used by lots of electronic music producers.
To create the bass sound, I first flicked through the presets and found a deep subby sound that was nearly where I wanted it to be, but added a few tweaks. The sound is essentially a filtered square wave with a sub beneath it for extra beefiness. By creating an LFO with a 1/8 triplet rate, and assigning this to the level of the square wave in oscillator A, I created that classic wub sound heard in classic UK Dubstep – a sound re-emerging through artists like Flava D, Hamdi and Skalah. I also modulated this rate throughout this track to help show progression and variation throughout it. My reference track for this was Skalah’s ‘Different Style’ – you can find this in my Spotify playlist.
Here is a screen grab of the serum patch that I ended up creating:
Here is a snippet of the bass with the LFO rates being modulated:
Visuals + Marketing
As this project went on, I saw the potential to actually make something out of it to promote myself as an artist (currently releasing under the name ‘Jake Upstairs’), so I got into contact with a Leeds-based photographer to see if I could get some cool press shots/album covers to make my body of work look more professional:
In todays society, social media plays a massive role in drawing people in to your page and consuming your music, so these shots that we ended up with will definitely be used by myself in the future :
I also got contacted by a graphic designer on instagram DMs who offered to remake my current artworks to push the aesthetic I wanted. I wanted to go for the classic vinyl looking covers, seen used by a lot of house and garage music producers at the moment.
Here is some examples :
Contact with graphic designer:
Because I was considering taking this project very seriously, I also reconsidered signing up to PRS and PPL to protect my music and ensure that I get royalties for any streams. This was something my tutors also told me to look into, so I am currently working on this
Mix-downs + Feedback
Throughout the duration of this project I also stay in constant contact with my family, friends, tutors and social media followers, so I could get feedback on any track demos or unreleased songs. As music is very subjective, everyone has their own opinions, but I took into consideration all their views and implemented these to better my tracks. Some of my peers said the sub bass was too heavy in some of my tracks, so I focused on controlling these when mixing and mastering.
To mix and master my tracks, I took advantage of the mixing rooms provided by my university, as these were professionally treated rooms, so I could hear exactly what was going on within my mixes. I also performed at a few small gigs where I was able to hear my songs on big sound systems. From this, I came to the conclusion that my high-hats needed more presence, so made the production decision to work on this more when producing and finalising my songs, by boosting some EQs and adding saturation. I made sure to also test all my tracks on mobile phones, car speakers and other output devices like laptops – if it sounds good on these then it should sound good in most places!
Conclusion
