This week’s meeting was orientated around the preparation process – making sure everything is in place so that the weekend’s recording session would run smoothly. This involved communicating with all appropriate parties to ensure they know what they are playing, when to arrive at the studio, when we’d take breaks and when we’d be finish by. I expressed to David that this was a key area I wished to develop; having the ability to be thoroughly organised when it comes to collaborating with individuals and groups, so that everyone is up to date with all of the relevant information.

David expressed the importance of booking time in the studio for trying out the external hardware, allowing me to interact and get a feel of how they work prior to the recording process, ensuring a fluidity when it comes to my workflow on the day of recording.

By the next recording session, I wanted to present the edited drum and bass recordings.

Prior to this meeting I had established that I wanted to ask about how I can go about the research process for this module, as I wanted to take a more ‘outside’ approach (objective) when critically analysing my written work. This being an ongoing development within how I tackle my own work – not being able to recognise my flaws, as this isn’t an issue, but more so what steps I can take to improve these flaws so that I am able to articulate my thoughts, feelings and situations better.

We started the meeting by discussing the practical progression of the project since the prior week. In terms of finishing off our rough drum recordings (discussed in Sessions with Pete #2), we are set to complete the rest of them during our third session together (15/03/17, we didn’t have enough time during our second session, 1/03/17), so I was unable to provide anymore physical items than the week prior.

We agreed that during the time of this meeting and the time of recording the drums properly (2/04/17), I could practice the production techniques I had researched, meaning that when it comes to implementing said mentioned techniques I am aware of how they work with relation to the various musical elements within my songs. Though I would not be practicing on the final product, it would at least allow me to recognise how these techniques work and how I can implement them into the final product.

Alongside this, I had also learned that opposed to keeping organisation notes, practice notes, recording notes and progression notes to myself, these are elements I can incorporate into my blog, which would allow external parties to understand the process of how we are progressing throughout the project. Thus, from this point onward I will be ensuring all prior and future developments as prior mentioned are uploaded onto the blog.

Week 6’s meeting covered me having traveled back to Nottingham to practice my tracks with the drummer, allowing us both to feel more comfortable performing with each other and knowing exactly how each other are going to perform our respective musical parts throughout the duration of tracks, thus giving us a better feel and grasp of the tracks prior to the recording process. David was happy I had done this and expressed how important it is for all of the instrumentation to be locked in with the drums, with the rehearsal process aiding this relationship of musical elements.

David expressed the importance of my research addressing my learning outcomes i.e. providing examples of ways various producers (not just the ones I’ve deeply researched) utilize vocal production techniques.

For the following week, I am going to do complete the research for the three main producers I have looked at (Nigel Godrich, Anton Newcombe, Beck) alongside researching production techniques that pertain relevance to my LO’s.

For the following week, I am

During our meeting this Friday we began by discussing where the project currently was in terms of collaborating with musicians. David suggested that I should arrange some rehearsal dates with the musicians I am collaborating with between now and the day of recording drums (early April), so that when it comes down to tracking everyone knows exactly what they should be doing and we’re all on the same page.

Following this, I asked David what he thought of my blog post on Anton Newcombe, in particular how I went about displaying his production approaches and how I intend to implement them. David was very happy with how I worded this blog post, so I will definitely follow a similar way when writing future blog posts (i.e section of research followed by section of integration of research into project).

During the following week, I am going to complete the lyrics to all of my tracks and try to schedule a trip down to Nottingham to rehearse with the main musician I will be working with.

The aim of this week’s tutorial was to go over the Aim & Objectives alongside the learning outcomes I had developed for my project to check whether these are suitable parameters in which my project can be critically assessed against. After having shown and discussed them with David, it was apparent that there needed to be a few tweaks to how the old Aim and Objectives related to one another*.

From this week on, the Aim & Objectives are as follows;

Aim

Creation of a coherent 4 track EP

Objectives

• Source a range of musicians to collaborate alongside with
• Capture their unique performances
• Mix their performances alongside my own to create cohesive songs

These changes have now replaced the prior Aim and Objectives found in the ‘Project Synopsis’ blog post.

The Learning Outcomes have also been refined;

• Mix vocals better via implementation of industry-standard vocal mixing techniques
• Implement the production approaches of key record producers in my work
• Acquire guitar tone using analogue equipment prior to recording

*Old Aim and Objectives

• Identify & research the recording/production techniques of the key producers that underpin the musical direction of the project
• Identify, collaborate and coordinate with musicians within the industry
• Recognise, understand and incorporate the recording/production techniques of well-established producers
• Collaborate with various musicians that are able to perform key parts within the project’s songs

**Old Learning Objectives

• Mix vocals better via implementation of industry-standard vocal mixing techniques
• Use recording/production approaches of the key producers that inspired the creation of the project’s songs (implementing the production approaches of key record producers in my work)
• Use amp simulator plugins as a tool

Our meeting in week 4 was moved to the following week, so during the following week further research is going to be conducted, expanding on the prior information documented on Nigel Godrich and Anton Newcombe’s production approaches.