MPR6C001R~001 DZI22082878 Coursework & Project Context

Project Proposal

Production Project Files (80%)

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Petra Master Download

Memory of She Master Download

Mind of the Bereft. Master Download

At World’s End Download

The Farm Master Download

Progress and Management Records

Synopsis:

The tracks above belong to an album called “At World’s End.” The project is, despite my dislike of the term, a concept album meant to explore a few different aspects of grief. It does this through the lens of several different kinds of prog rock, trying to blend elements of the old and the new. The music and lyrics were written by me, and I undertook the production side of the project as well along with playing some of the instruments. The timeframe spanned this past academic year from September 2025 to May 2026.

Project Management and Planning:

Initially made a Gantt chart (available under project proposal) with rough timeline of the process
Outlined equipment/locations I would likely use (see appendix 1)
Tried to stay on top of everything by doing as much recording as possible before the crunch time at the ends of semesters when studios are constantly booked out
Started the project at start of the academic year with writing/demoing.
Of course things didn’t go perfectly to plan but issues were dealt with through contingency planning.
Kept a journal and log of necessary equipment (see below)

Contingencies:

Asked friends on the production course who wouldn’t be using their allotted studio hours to book additional studio time for me in case I needed it.
Prioritised studio time for anything that I couldn’t record/complete at home, just in case.
Kept one or two alternate songs to include if I needed to for whatever reason.
Because I was working with quite a few musicians, I tried to be as proactive as possible with getting them booked in and speaking to them well in advance to work around their often busy schedules (see appendix 2).

Feedback:

Received feedback from my 1-to-1 (see appendix 3)
Sought feedback from friends and fellow students/lecturers on the production course
Booked into session with Romesh Dodangoda held at LCoM (see appendix 4)

Journal:

August – October:

Started thinking about possible ways to go with the project
Began writing most of the songs and working on demos and scratch recordings
As I got more of an idea of where I wanted the project to go I began messaging people to see if they would be interested in taking part in recording
Had most of Petra written except for the verse over the key change
Had most of the Farm written
Sorted out demos for the two tracks and showing them to the instrumentalists
Had parts of Memory written
Recorded Petra and the Farm instrumentals (see appendix 5 and 6)

November:

Laid down most of my parts on the drums, which mainly consisted of guitars, basses, clarinets
Began writing At World’s End, finished writing Memory, started working on some of the ambient stuff

December:

Workshopped lyrics with my vocalist. They were mostly written but he had some ideas to change certain lines to make it more natural to sing, so we spent a few sessions over the winter holidays sorting those out
Didn’t do too much work in December due to upcoming deadlines in January for both myself and many of the musicians

January:

Demo’d At World’s End
Recorded vocals for Petra and Farm

February:

Recorded most of Memory
Lots of recording for Memory

March:

Started mixing Petra and the Farm

April:

Finally recorded strings and percussion for Memory

Mixing Memory and At World’s End
More mixing and revisions
Mastering

Notes on Individual Tracks:

Petra:

Overview:

This was the first track I had written for this project. Apart from the verse over the key change and the middle section most of it was written quite quickly, within the span of a day or two. Over time and with the input of the musicians which would play on it, I added the verse over the key change. The breakdown section was something I knew I wanted from the start, but it took a while to figure out what I wanted to do with it.

Notable production elements:

Because of the complexity of the breakdown section, I wanted the rest of the track to be quite simple production-wise. The most interesting part aside from the breakdown was the reversed vocal reverb, achieved by reversing the lead vocals, feeding them through the Bricasti M7, and then reversing that. The idea came from Hawkwind’s Magnu [CITE]. The breakdown itself was a layering of about 50 percussion tracks I recorded and putting them through various effects, such as pitch shifters, phasers/flangers, reverse effects, etc. On top of that was placed the cello (similar to Rodriguez’s Sugar Man), along with some spacey, heavily effected guitar. The drum “solo” was achieved by simply feeding the drums through a delay, then phaser and flanger and manually changing the mix amount of the affected signal. Some other sounds were made by making odd recordings, like opening the back of a Strat and scraping the 3 springs holding it together with a spoon, then affecting that in a sampler.

Memory of She:

Overview:

This track was – for me – quite complex to play, using a C-G-C-F-C-Eb tuning inspired by Nick Drake. The chord shapes were difficult and there was quite a bit of intricacy, so that was the greatest challenge, along with arranging all the other parts. Also, this was the only song on which I didn’t do all of the recording work. Because of the complexity of the track and knowing my attention would be split, I asked a friend to engineer a few of the sessions, which led to interesting results that required some attempts at fixing things in post, something I generally dislike greatly.

Notable production elements:

In previous projects, I had recorded vocalists (usually just 1) close-mic’d, then reverbed and panned them around. I wasn’t quite happy with this effect though, and it certainly didn’t mimic a section well. So this time I tried a different technique, with a Blumlein pair and my two vocalists (male/female) moving from spot to spot marked on the ground, quad tracking, in an effort to mimic a section (see appendix 7). I was happier with it, but there were still elements that didn’t work out so well, especially slight pitch differences being stacked 4 times on each other. Because we needed 2 sessions to complete all the vocals, it required some rudimentary trigonometry from me to calculate the same spots in which they stood the first time (see appendix 8).

Mind of the Bereft:

Overview:

One night I was just messing around with my amp and some effects in the DAW and this song came out. I wanted it to reflect one possible desperation that can result from grief.

Notable Production Elements:

The guitar was achieved by scraping my nails across the strings and feeding it through my amp. The pad was created by scraping the strings of an open grand piano and then feeding that through various vocoders, pitch shifters, reverbs, and other fx units.

At World’s End:

Overview:

To juxtapose the at times overwhelming production of some of the other tracks (such as the breakdown in Petra), I wanted a simple arrangement to tap into different emotions. As a result I kept this track just guitar and vocals, almost trying to simulate a person playing this song to themselves in their bombed out living room in the post-apocalypse.

Notable production elements:

As I mentioned before, I wanted this song to be as basic as possible. Ironically it took a lot of sitting down with my vocalist and painstakingly working through each phrase and each chord (see appendix 9), where certain syllables would land, where he would strum certain chords (this was the only guitar part I didn’t play), slight variations in melody, etc. Additionally (this goes for all of the tracks), through persistent slight coaxing I tried to get my singer to sing in his Yorkshire accent. Like many British singers he was initially doing the classic “neutral” voice, but I felt the songs worked better with his real accent.

The Farm:

Overview:

This was a song based on a poem I wrote after a conversation with a friend about his desire to disconnect from this world in which he didn’t seem to fit, and create an almost safe haven away from civilization. I think the lyrics reflect certain lines in Petra, particularly the second verse, and serve nicely as an addendum to the narrative in that song. Looked at from that angle, this song is perhaps sad like the others, but without focusing on the relation to Petra I think it can work nicely as a happy/hopeful tune as opposed to the others.

Notable Production Elements:

The guitar tone on the solo was achieved using my battered and slightly broken Yamaha THR10. The effects on it are completely random and the knobs have essentially stopped controlling the amp which sounds different each time you turn it on, but that forces me to play along to whatever sound the amp is giving me. I wanted the vibe to feel like Camel’s Nimrodel, which the amp generally replicates pretty well. Used PCM92 for some octave pitch shifting and other mods to thicken solo (see appendix 10).

Project Evaluation:

Considering the goals proposed at the outset of the project, I believe it was generally successful, albeit with significant room for improvement. I think the work does sound like prog-rock and has many of the hallmarks of that wide-ranging genre. With that being said, however, I believe certain improvements could have made the product sound a lot better overall. These include better arrangements of the material, particularly some of the keys parts, better mixing to highlight the many diverse things going on in the tracks, and better capture. Of course, the songwriting could have been better. Despite these and many other drawbacks, this was still a great learning opportunity, and I’m certain that in repeating the process, I would do a significantly better job with this experience to draw upon

Appendix 1: Resource list

Technical overview Download

Appendix 2: Communications