This week was one of our busiest. This two-week window, including next week, is the busiest time of the project. We must write, record, and edit the music; write/storyboard the play; have a tutor tutorial, and meet with Dan Fox the theatre technician. Now, this week we were due to have our ‘experiment’ in the theatre, however, we postponed it to next week as we needed time to record. Apart from that, we had all those tasks to do.
To start, we had three songwriting sessions in the week. We spent the time adding to our mind map, as well as trying a new method of lyric writing, where we take lines from a text (e.g., poetry), and assemble them in a vague order. The lyrics can then be edited to go with the song (we changed some words and shortened some phrases to make them fit). We then improvised playing and singing to figure out melodies to go alongside the chords, as well as the song structure we wanted. I then went home and continued writing the song (changing the structure and vocal melodies).
On Wednesday, we had a 1-to-1 session with Alex Gordon, our tutor. Instead of being individual, we felt doing it as a group would be more beneficial. We then went through our objectives so far to see if we had met them (from the main timetable), as well as our future objectives to see how we were planning them. We also went through our websites to compare evidence. Alex also recommended areas of research for us individually. The meeting was a great way of reflecting on our performance so far, as well as looking over our goals long term, meaning we don’t get absorbed in the ‘now’, and forget about setting ourselves up to achieve future tasks.
On Thursday, we had a session where we focused on storyboarding and website editing. We split the session into two to address both objectives. We looked to storyboarding first, discussing how the show would look, how we would use lights, etc. We decided we would open with darkness and the Sufjan Stevens song “Mystery of Love”. After this song has ended, we will have a heartbeat play (like a heartbeat monitor at a hospital) which eventually ‘flatlines’, to suggest someone has died. The lights then fade on, and we will have an actor facing a gravestone, possibly holding an umbrella. They will then turn away from the grave, a first hint to the theme of ‘denial’. In the second half of the session, I noticed that the audio players I put onto my Easter blog are displayed on all my blog posts. I had to rectify this in the session. Wix has a feature where you can link to songs on Soundcloud, so I created a new account where I will upload all future audio material to add to my website.
On Friday, we had permission to be absent from college, as we would be starting the recording process (this would also continue Saturday). We agreed to do it at Bluebell Gilmartin’s house, although on later occasions we may do it at mine. Last week I said timetabling would be important, so I created a timetable for the two recording days as an attempt to maximise efficiency. We finished the Denial song on Friday and nearly completed the Acceptance song on Saturday. Bluebell and I mastered the Denial track on Friday and will do so for the Acceptance song, as well as all the other songs. We looked at various articles describing the mastering process in Logic. I am familiar with the process and have experience before, but with other software. Bluebell has less experience but knows Logic better than I do. Although I can say that after this week, I am fairly fluent with Logic, and have learnt how to use it efficiently, and fast.
When recording the Acceptance song, I decided to use the old plug-ins from the tracks from the Denial song, as we would be using the same instruments (except the piano – which will be mastered from scratch). This would give a base setup for the mixing and mastering of the song, which can be edited later. It hopefully will save us time.
Last week, I said that I wanted to organise the group better and gather feedback on the work we did when recording. I believe our organisation was better than last week. We have more timetables, and the larger quantity of evidence shows that we have produced more because of this organisation. This will definitely be something I will continue, as I’m pleased with our work this week, and can be sure it’ll carry on into next week. However, we haven’t managed to get all the feedback yet, the 1-to-1 did mean we individually got feedback on our work so far, which was very helpful, but we haven’t had any for the songs we have recorded yet. But this has already been solved: we have further expanded our communication networks by creating a Microsoft Teams chat involving the three of us, and our tutor, Alex. Here, we have sent the recording of the Denial song for him to comment on. As well as this, we will create another Teams group for the three of us, as we are looking into virtual meetings where we can tackle tasks that don't need to be handled in person, saving the time in-person to handle the top priority tasks (something COVID has taught us).
I was concerned that Logic may take too long to get used to when we started recording, however, I am used to it now, and know it just as well as Ableton. The skills are transferable, and the processes are fairly similar. So going into next week we should be even faster when using the software.
Another concern last week was the uncertainty of the number of actors we would be using. While this hasn’t been addressed, I have spoken to the group about it, and we are leaning in the direction of using only two actors, which will make our workload less stressful.
Going into next week, I hope to keep the organisation up (we have already started planning sessions to record), and keep productivity up, or even higher. If we could finish recording and mastering, and finish the storyboarding next week, we would be setting ourselves up for a smooth project following that.
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