SHR6E032F-002 (WHI23085557) – Portfolio and video evidence – Jake White

1. Project Overview

For my collaborative project I worked with a visual communications student (Lois Parry of Squee Studios) from Leeds Arts University. Our vision for this project was to create an audiovisual experience in which people can enjoy both the musical aspect as well as the visual elements that accompany it.

I created 10-12 minutes of original dance music that I would later be mixing together in a DJ set, which would be complimented by the various visual elements of Squee studios and presented in a short video. The video would highlight the different visual techniques used, such as fluid visuals and audio triggered lights, as well as having several different angles to show the use of technology and performance techniques used by myself.

During my researching I found a quote that backs this idea up, that “Live visuals… [create] an interconnection between sound and image, which sometimes becomes apparent and at other times remains intuitive.” (Correia, Castro and Tanaka, 2017).

Collaborative team

Lois Parry (Squee) – 3rd year visual communications student at Leeds Arts University

Describes her practice as art direction and production with a focus on live events and visuals (moving image, lighting and shadow). Lois is currently trying to align her work within the music scene, looking to focus mainly on raves and festivals. Lois’ previous work has been based in prop building and set design for film, with a few smaller jobs for live events where she was the spatial designer and decorator.

Jake White (myself) – 3rd year production student at Leeds Conservatoire

I mainly produce electronic dance music, exploring genres such as House, UK Garage, breakbeat and Dubstep. Currently, i’m regularly producing and releasing my own music under the alias ‘Jake Upstairs’, and have an EP in the works, involving collaborations with several different vocalists and artists. In recent years I have also expanded into DJ’ing, performing at a range of small gigs and events, while steadily building my presence within the electronic music scene.

2. Panopto Video – Final Product (10-12 Minutes)

3. Chronological Monthly Diary

OCTOBER

Project conception

Began to think of ideas and gather inspiration from a range of sources for this collaboration project
Presentation which I would present to my class to help gain feedback on how viable my project was

NOVEMBER

Presentation (Project viability study)

Presented my idea(s) to my class
I began creating initial musical ideas that would act as the base layer for several different tracks
Started searching for potential collaborators and sent emails to heads of departments from several different universities (APPENDIX 1)

DECEMBER

Confirming a collaborator / initial meet

After seeing one of my emails, a Leeds Arts Uni Student (Lois Parry) contacted me, showing interest in a potential collaboration (APPENDIX 2)
Arranged to meet up before the Christmas brea – shared our initial thoughts with each other

JANUARY

Production

Progressed with the production of several tracks which I would use in the final project (APPENDIX 3)
Started to research mixing techniques used by professional DJ’s

FEBRUARY

2nd meet at Leeds Arts University
Filmed some footage that would potentially be used in the projected visuals

MARCH

Further planning

Met at Leeds conservatoire to see if this was a potential venue
Contacted and confirmed the videographer who would be helping with the project (APPENDIX 4)
Decided we would film the event at Leeds Arts Uni as a lot of the visual equipment needed was here

APRIL

Project month

Got confirmation of the room booking for the project (APPENDIX 5)
The project was filmed 17th April – we had the studio booked 15.30-20.30
Re-filmed the project again on Friday 24th of April, to get some better quality footage

I also created a Gantt chart / flow chart to summarise the completion of these events (see APPENDIX 17)

4. Evidence of Planning/Process

I used the ‘5 Stages of `Project Management’ when working on this project (APPENDIX 6) . “This framework helps define objectives, allocate resources efficiently, manage risks, and ensure project goals are met” (Singh, 2022).

Stage 1 – Project initiation

After coming up with my initial idea for this project, I was able to get in contact with a visual communications student at Leeds arts university (Lois Parry). I could see on instagram that her past work was in set design for gigs and festivals (APPENDIX 7) , so I thought that it would be perfect if we worked together, as I was looking for some visual elements to help bring the music to life. I explained to her over messages my vision, and we agreed to work on our ideas and meet up at a later date to properly plan things.

Stage 2 – Project Planning

After both putting together ideas to show to one another, we met up in person to discuss our plan of action and the logistics of the project. We needed to find the perfect location for this video shoot, so we arranged two different trips, one to the conservatoire, and one to Leeds arts uni, so we could see which was more suitable. Due to us both being in university, we were also both lucky to have amazing facilities at our disposal, so we realised it would be possible to execute this project for free.

Stage 3 – Project execution

To guarantee a smooth workflow, I thought it would be best to create and finish my tracks with plenty of time to spare before the shoot, so these were finished a week before. This also meant I had a chance to get feedback from tutors, producers and friends about the tracks, to see if there was anything I could do improve on.

To ensure everything ran smoothly, Lois booked out the creative studio space for several hours, giving her time to properly set up everything and ensure the visuals were running smoothly. I got down just before filming started and did a sound check and made sure my equipment was all set up properly. Lois’ role whilst recording was focusing on the visuals and Evie was on camera duties – there were two operating cameras to get different angles (a go pro and a main camera).

Stage 4 – Monitoring and Controlling

To ensure the project remained on time and on budget, I asked myself several performance based questions at each stage of the project:

Is the project on schedule? – at this current point, the project is running smooth and on schedule, due to both Lois and I starting early on our parts. It also helped that we visited and scouted out the best possible option for the location of this shoot, so there were no complications later on.
Is the project sticking to the budget plan? – as we had no real budget plan, due to facilities and equipment being provided by our universities, there was no costs at all apart from maybe travelling to and from venues which is still very minimal (e.g uber or bus). This would only be because of the equipment I had to bring like my speakers, decks and laptop, and would only come to around £5 or so.
Were any issues identified and addressed? – the only issue we encountered, was a faulty battery in one of the cameras, so we did have to reach out and find someone with a battery/battery charger, due to the university facilities being closed at the time of recording. This was addressed fairly quickly and didn’t cause any real problems.

Stage 5 – project close

The initial project shoot took place on Friday 17th April, however we decided to re-shoot it again the following Friday; Lois and I were not happy with the outcome of the footage, as unfortunately one of the cameras died halfway through recording, so we were left with only the GoPro angle . This was okay until we realised that the GoPro was slowly moved due to the bass of the speakers, as it was placed on top. This time in between the first and second shoot also gave me a chance to show the footage to tutors and peers to see what I could improve on. A common thing that people said I could improve on, was having more detailed angles of the art, and overall just better camera quality.

I have also completed a SWOT analysis to assess potential risks for this project (see APPENDIX 18)

5. Reference Material/Inspiration

Musical inspiration

My inspiration for the music that I made for this project was gathered from a range of my favourite artists such as Oppidan, Silva Bumpa and Luke Dean. I made a Spotify playlist containing tracks that I liked the sound of, and that had elements I wanted to use in my own tracks; These tracks were a mix of multiple different genres such as UKG, House and Speed-garage (see APPENDIX 8).

For my track ‘With Me’ (track 1 in vid) the bounce and character of the bass sound was inspired by the song ‘Make Believe’ by Luke Dean and Omar+. I describe it as a fusion between bass sounds heard in tech-house and UK Garage. I really liked the tension and released used by Oppidan in her track ‘Over you’, so incorporated this into my track ‘Don’t wanna fall’ (track 2 in vid) by using lots of risers and white noise in the buildup sections (track 2 in the vid) – I feel this helped add anticipation for the listener. I am loving speed-garage style drums at the moment, such as those used by Silva Bumpa and Riordan in their track ‘Lifting’, so I tried giving this style ago for my track ‘take me high’ (track 3 in vid).

Visual Inspiration

After meeting with Lois, we discussed potential ideas for the visuals and she talked me through some inspiration that she had. Some inspiration for her was the visuals used at Glastonbury 2025 by Floating points; there was a live artist on stage who was creating fluid visuals that were pulsing with the music , and were projected behind the performer (APPENDIX 9). I also had my say, and showed Lois AVAION’s ‘Frequency and light DJ set’ a video I found of a set performed with minimal but aesthetic lighting in the background (APPENDIX 10). The lights in this video were not moving however, which is something I was planning to do in my video, so I made sure to discuss this with Lois.

6. Use of Technology

I used the DAW Logic Pro To produce my tracks that I performed in this performance. I ended up producing 7 tracks for this video, and below I will discuss some production techniques I used in some of them. (see APPENDIX 16 for more in depth production breakdown).

Track 1 in video – With Me (see APPENDIX 3)

For this track I wanted to make some drums that were tight and punchy, but also had a nice bounce to them. Here is how they sound:

To achieve this, I tried to use drum samples that didn’t have too much of a transient tail, and trimmed them down if necessary, to keep the drums short and punchy. (see APPENDIX 11)

For processing the drums, I added a plugin called OTT, which I used to add a subtle saturation and crunchiness to the drums so that they would cut through the mix, and also some slight compression to glue all the elements of the drums and percussion together, so they sound like one instrument/body of movement rather than completely different elements.

To add a groove and bounce, I used sounds such as zaps and ghost snares to fill off beat pockets and thicken up the overall drum part. I also added a percussive top loop that although it sits quietly in the mix, it adds that extra layer of texture and dimension to the drum part. These are techniques that I noticed are implemented by a lot of tech house producers such as Josh Baker.

Track 3 in video – Take Me High

As mentioned above, this track was somewhat inspired by Silva Bumpa and Riordan’s ‘Lifting’ (see APPENDIX 8), particularly the call and response style bass, and the fusion of characteristics from Speed-garage and House in the drums.

I used two main bass sounds in this track – A deep subby Reese bass (Speed garage influenced) and a M1 Organ bass (House influenced). These basses complimented one another in a call and response style; The organ bass plays in the first half of the phrase, and the Reese bass in the second. I have grouped these two sounds together as one, with slight compression and the bass phrase is four bars in total, with a little Reese bass riff in the last bar.

Here’s a quick audio clip of how that sounds:

As you may hear, there is a slight ducking/pumping sound to the bass. This is due to a volume ducking plugin I have used to side chain the bass to the kick drum called Kickstart 2 (APPENDIX 12). I have used this to avoid a clash of frequencies as the kick drum and basses are both low frequency sounds – a clash here can cause muddiness in the overall mix.

Essentially, every time the kick drum hits I have made it so that all frequencies below 179Hz duck, so the kick drum can punch through. I have set it up like this as I still want the mid frequencies of the bass to be heard on each beat, and ducking all frequencies can sometimes cause a loss of presence in the bass and create an over the top pumping effect. (see APPENDIX 13)

Track 7 in video – WHEEL IT

When producing this track, I heavily explored sound design, synthesis and the use of LFO’s to shape bass sounds. I used a synthesiser plugin Serum 2 to produce and tweak these (APPENDIX 14).

I crafted the main bass sound from a filtered square wave with a sub underneath, and controlled the level of this with a LFO as seen in APPENDIX 14. In the first drop/chorus I used a 1/8 triplet pattern, and halfway through this phrase I changed the rate of the LFO to 1/4 triplets.

I then added some slight reverb to the bass, to give it more character and create a sense of space and atmosphere. To do this without creating a boomy mess of reverb in the low-end, I sent the bass to a reverb auxiliary where I first filtered it so that only the mid-high bass frequencies were affected.

Here is an audio clip of the bass isolated:

7. Evaluation

Overall, I am very happy with the outcome of this project. It has given me the opportunity to work on my skills collaborating with other creatives, and we have ended up creating a professional looking video that engages the viewer both musically and visually.

Although there were some issues with the initial shoot (see APPENDIX 15), this allowed us to identify issues and ensure we were more prepared for the re-shoot the following week, and raising the overall standard and quality of the overall product. We were able to get feedback from peers, tutors and professionals which was very useful and taught us new things along the way such as different lighting that Lois could use, and several new production techniques that I explored when creating the songs.

Action plan

It has also greatly benefitted Lois and I as we can now both use this video to showcase our skills in our respective fields and expand our portfolios. As all the songs in the video are 100% produced by me, I plan to post this to Youtube and also make clips from it that I can post on my social media pages to tease and promote my unreleased music.

8. Bibliography

AVAION (2025). AVAION – Frequency and Light (DJ SET). [online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhRzLnoWIDc [Accessed 17 April 2026]

BBC Music (2025). Floating Points – Afflecks Palace (Glastonbury 2025). [online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vJxzk6ZuyU [Accessed 19 Apr. 2026]

Correia, N.N., Castro, D. and Tanaka, A. (2017). The Role of Live Visuals in Audience Understanding of Electronic Music Performances. Proceedings of the 12th International Audio Mostly Conference on Augmented and Participatory Sound and Music Experiences – AM ’17. [online] doi:https://doi.org/10.1145/3123514.3123555.

Sam Smyers (2022). Kickstart 2 Tutorial – Everything You Need to Know. [online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyAMvOl3c38 [Accessed 27 Apr. 2026].

Singh, R. (2022). What is a Project Life Cycle and Its 5 Stages? | IPM. [online] Institute of Project Management. Available at: https://instituteprojectmanagement.com/blog/project-life-cycle/.