MPR6C001R~001_YIN23084123 _Coursework & Project Context (MPR6C001R~001)

Project Proposal

Jason Yin SS3 Proposal Download

Production Project Files

The New Year’s Rain Download

The Moon Represents My Heart Download

Tonight’s Flower Download

Night, Resign, Comprehend Download

Hey Jude Download

Progress and Management Records

Planning and Execution 422

Methodology

The primary approaches to planning and execution were retrospective planning and Kolb’s reflection cycle. Retrospective planning requires detailed analyses of the assessment and breaking the problems into viable steps (Association for Psychological Science – APS, 2025). Kolb’s reflection cycle consists of four parts: Observation, Reflection, Abstraction, and Experimentation. The first step is to examine the experience by evaluating one’s feelings and the objective events that occurred during the event. For example, when reflecting on the efficiency in setting up microphones and instruments in a recording session involves remembering one’s fatigue level, speed, and potential unnecessary procedures. Then, it’s crucial to abstract that information by searching for patterns and tendencies. For example, one might conclude that time tends to be wasted on untieing cables. Ultimately, improvement plans could be created and experimented with in further experiences. This process will lead to consistent marginal gains as cycles of experiences, reflections, and experimentations are executed (NHS, 2022).

Gaunt Chart

Final Project GANTT CHART – Initial Plan Download

Final Project GANTT CHART – Actual Execution Download

The halfway milestone is to complete most of the composition and arrangement work on the three tracks by the beginning of the Winter Holiday, 8 Dec. 2025. Then, finish the recordings of guitars, drums, and pianos around the end of the Winter Holiday, 25 Jan. 2026. Major details are listed below.

Composition

Tonight’s Flower

18 Dec. 2025

The Moon Represents My Heart (Abbrev. The Moon)

16 Dec. 2025

New Year’s Rain

27 Nov. 2025

Arrangement

Night, Resigned, Unity

March 2026

Modal Song (omitted due to time limitation)

March 2026

Hey Jude

March 2026

Arrangement

Tonight’s Flower

18 Dec. 2025

The Moon

16 Dec. 2025

The New Year’s Rain

27 Nov. 2025

Vocal in 116s

Drum Moon in 115 (smaller room with slight analogue saturation from SSL Gain Preamp)

Drum Blues in 113 for a larger space live sound

Electric guitars were recorded in the guitarist’s home studio for flexibility.

Other instruments were all recorded with the MIDI keyboard from the conservatoire.

Microphone Selection

Vocal moon WA-251 with Pop filter (Valve for silky vintage sound)

Vocal Blues SM-7B (dynamic for aggressive rock sound pressure)

Drum Moon (SM 456 for less top-end than SM57 to maintain the tight low-tuned R&B sound)

Mixing & Mastering

The New Year’s Rain

22-28 Jan. 2026

Tonight’s Flower

30 April 2026

The Moon

30 April 2026

As you can see, the plan after December 2025 has been vastly delayed. The following will evaluate the influences of major obstacles across the project and provide solutions for future improvements.

Challenges and Countermeasures 700

Psychological Influences 218

Psychological burnout has been a primary issue. Because of self-ruminating on overlooking my improvements by comparing them to reference tracks, I began to be afraid to proceed with music arranging. Induced worthlessness led to addictive behaviors, such as short-video addiction, which caused sleep deprivation and sedentary problems. Hence, a lot of time was wasted, and my ability to concentrate and think deteriorated. This is the root cause of the breakdown from December to March (See Appendix 9).

However, crucial breakthroughs were still attempted. Unexpectedly, my guitarist accidentally met the drummer in the conservatoire, and the drum recordings were realized. It brought The Moon Represents My Heart astonishing grooves and lively dynamics. Thus, confidence was raised, and plans were revised and reinitiated.

Although the self-rumination was diluted, the arrangement still sounds amateur in comparison to other reference tracks. To overcome, apart from the arrangement bursary class, I continued to ask for help in production hubs with Bhupinder and Romesh (See Appendix 10). The solution lay in obtaining a stable and pleasing central element, vocals. Bhupinder pointed out that I was generating unnecessary problems by mixing towards the wrong key material, Vocaloid and Hammond organ. Then, I recorded and mixed with the vocal demo immediately, and it’s been resolved easily, as the vocal can easily sound focused.

Technical Challenges 579

Composition & Arrangement 211

Concise composition is essential. Particularly, aiming for 2-3 important instruments or voices in each moment could be effective. Whereas, trying to emphasize multiple voices independently can confuse the listeners. Even worse, you may strive to throw licks and complicated rhythms in every pocket of time. This is fatiguing for both the listeners and the producer. Therefore, paying attention to the key elements (eg, the vocal or solo guitar) and letting other elements support it could be crucial.

The greatest challenge of the arrangements was telling stories with musical elements. Particularly, New Year’s Rain is rooted in a recovering narration. The protagonist’s team has just ended a prolonged journey, and they are on the way home. The core harmonic structure III-IV-V is arranged with acoustic strings and keyboards in downtempo to form tranquility and healing energy. Mixolydian b7 harmony was used with pizz. to create excitement before the climax, which represents the happiness of arriving home. In the last A/B section, tension is released completely after a night of sleep. The listener or the protagonist may feel the breeze in the woods and regain hope to live as the sun rises. The approaches to theme variations came from covering and analyzing reference tracks. All reference tracks are listed below.

Post-production 366

A major failure happened in the first recording of Tonight’s Flower. I spent 2 hours finishing the microphone and drum setups, which led to insufficient recording time. Although I felt hopeless, I immediately reflected on potential issues and practiced 10 hours per week, focusing on basic stand and cable management, procedure simplification, microphone setup, and tuning. In the last session, only 40 minutes were used to finish all preparations (See Appendix 5.1).

A significant turning point happened after meeting with Romesh and Bhupinder at their master class and production hub. The initial mix of Tonight’s Flower’s drum kit lacks thickness and presence, especially the kick and snare. I learned that applying parallel compression with fast attack, large ratio, and medium release, to only the kick, snare, and toms’ group without any cymbals can avoid the air-sucking compressed effect, which enables more attenuation to the transient and provides a stronger body to the dry signals.

To overcome my lack of logic and efficiency in mixing, a workflow was constructed (See Appendix 10).

Besides, whenever a processing is done, I tend to pull the fader to make it sound louder and more exciting. However, this would destroy the fundamental balance structure as everything starts to become the focus. Thus, nothing sounds significant. Efficiency also decreases because these unnecessary balance issues must be addressed again. The solution is to make sure the loudness is preserved throughout each processing step by using auto-gain or balancing manually.

Unfortunately, due to emergency problems from the Final Project, only headphones were used for monitoring. This could cause biased decisions in balance and spatial width, due to inaccurate frequency response and the lack of crossfeed in comparison to controlled monitor systems in studio 115 or 104. Especially, the bass frequency might be overly boosted, although the headphone mix is balanced. Regarding the emergency, the project file that contained three tracks for the final project was corrupted due to overloads of patches and MIDI information. Therefore, I spent 4 days reproducing from scratch. This directly occupied the studio session scheduled for SS3 mixing and mastering. To prevent such issues, the intention of producing multiple tracks in a single project file should be permanently ceased.

Communications & Contingency Assessment 134+98

The key to communication is always clarity and friendliness. Based on that, frequent in-person conversations would be optimal for consistent progress tracking and problem-solving. For example, since I live with my guitarist this year, we have conducted extremely frequent meetings. We would align amendments of the project plan, point out flaws in the current progress, and solve problems at any time. Thus, creating convenient environments was constructive for consistent project development and efficient problem-solving. In contrast, my collaboration with the drummer was unsatisfying. The major obstacle was that he tends to ignore my messages on WeChat and barely practices the given arrangement, although I have provided clear stems, backing tracks, and zoomed MIDI notes screenshots for dedicated fills. However, he is proficient enough to yield satisfying results, even though he doesn’t prefer the styles.

To ensure the possible skill deficiency, I have planned and executed a 4-week periodic learning and practice schedule. I would focus on learning either composition and arrangement, mixing and mastering, or performance and recordings every 4 weeks. This approach has provided a solid foundation for my improvements and the final achievement.

Regarding the equipment and room bookings for recordings, I would always sign online forms 7 days in advance. Although sometimes the technicians might not inform of interference with others’ bookings. Thus, I would ensure the availability by checking with the technicians in person at the studio counter.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the process and outcomes are satisfying. Attributed to the execution of retrospective planning, Kolb’s reflection cycle, and practice routines, technical challenges, involving stylistic and narrative development of arrangement, and mixing process, could be overcome under the psychological pressure. The improvements in task management and production skills were valuable. In future projects, MIDI programming of orchestral instruments could be replaced by live recordings, which can improve both expressivity and efficiency.

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