Melissa's Blog

I did some last development on my final piece and almost finished the written work. I feel that I can now fully move on and concentrate on my second project.

I was very pleased with how the last section of the piece sounded. All the cutting up at the end really transmit a sense of chaos, which was what I wanted. If I had had a bit more time to work on it, I would’ve probably recorded more live instruments, like bass and guitar. We would’ve probably made it work in music class but now we’re moving on to the next project so our teacher can’t really dedicate the whole lesson towards this project. I definitely think my final piece could’ve used a lot more elements but it’s good enough. I’ve worked extremely hard on this project but don’t want to be obsessive about it cause I won’t have time to finish my second one, otherwise.

The feedback I got from my teachers was a lot more straightforward, which I appreciated, and made me aware of the mistakes I was making. Thanks to the feedback, I fixed a large portion of my project and made it a lot better. This caused be to go a bit over the time-frame I had established for myself to finish the project but I still have enough time for the second one.

I think my final piece and sketches are strong (even the sketch I didn’t like serves its purpose). I did struggle in the experimentation process but I think I’m beginning to understand how to force myself into broadening my creative potential. I also think some of my recordings were a bit noisy but I’m becoming a bit better at detecting when an audio file doesn’t sound very good and I feel my ear is a lot more sensitive to detail in general.

I will continue using this blog to post about this new project and figure something out in order to avoid confusion as to which posts belong to which project.

Edit (19/04): I have now sorted all of my posts into 2 separate categories (for the two projects) and hopefully this makes it easier to tell them apart.

I’m generally happy to see how it turned out and look forward to getting some final feedback on this project.

Edit: (19/04) At this point I still didn’t know Ed wouldn’t be rapping so in this post I thought the potential of the piece had been fully taken advantage of. I definitely would’ve loved to include something new and work with all the equipment it implied but the pandemic didn’t allow for it.

As for my next project, I’m thinking about maybe creating a score for a scene in Baby Driver, or John Wick, or another movie with lots of things going on. I want to write a very active piece of music for some reason. I’ll have to consider which movie’s scenes are easier to download and what the particular scene from the movie I choose might be.

These are some of the movies I think I could score a short scene to. I still have a lot to think about but I’m excited to be making my own brief. I think it’s gonna be a super fun project!

I recently started reading a book called “Arranging for Strings” which has been very interesting because it explains the difference between arranging for folk violinists and classical violinists. It mentions how the former emphasize bow changes and the latter do the exact opposite so that gives you clues on what type of musicians to recruit when writing for an orchestra. It also has information on how to get the most out harmonies for string instruments but I haven’t yet reached the basis of that theory, probably in the coming days. I’ll probably not be able to use it for the current project because it’s almost finished, but hopefully it’ll come in handy for the self-initiated one.

This is what the book looks like; I got it from the LRC on campus.

To further my learning, I also joined an online course for film scoring in Udemy. It was pretty cheap and it has given me some great tips to create tension in music and to convey a particular emotion. I am excited to complete that course soon.

Today I almost finished my written work. I wrote an introduction to the project as well as my original concept. I also transferred my notes to the document regarding why I recorded what I recorded in my SoundCloud playlist, that is, my ideas behind all my audio recordings and where they came from. I also finished my short description (50 words approx.) for each track on my Spotify playlist but found that even when I wrote a bit beyond the 500-word limit, there still wasn’t enough analysis being made; This troubled me somewhat but I assume a deep analysis wasn’t expected in that specific area of the project because otherwise, the word count limit for each song would have been larger. I provided as much information as I could but I’ll go into full analytical detail in the writing section concerned with my final piece as well as in the conclusion.

I feel a lot more satisfied with my work time-wise and quality-wise as well but I still want to polish my sketches. Overall, this was an incredibly productive weekend and I’m happy to finally start wrapping up this project to start the new one with a clear head.

Today I touched up my 6th sketch. It’s the one inspired from what I thought would be my final piece. While developing, I tried keeping in mind not to go over 10 seconds but it was very hard so it turned out to be just under 20 seconds, which I hope is okay since it only happened once, but expressed my idea properly.

I’m still feeling a little bit uncertain and there’s a lot on my mind right now. I feel like I could really use that rap section from Ed but I also know that we’re all very busy with all the course work and I don’t want to bother him too much so I’ll see if there’s a way around that.

So far, I think I’ve been really constant with my work and haven’t left it until the last minute. I think this is one of my strongest qualities but being this organized sometimes affects my creativity and makes it difficult to think divergently, which is what we’re being taught in class. The way I’ve learned to overcome this problem is to ask for honest feedback from my teachers so that I can’t trick myself into thinking when I’m far from it, and to use whatever comes to me as a “final piece” as one of my experiments so that I make myself come up with other ideas instead of sticking with the first thing that comes to mind.

I really hope this project works out for the best!

I’ve been listening to some crazy music lately for inspiration and I have added some of these tracks to my Spotify playlist. I found these tracks in a playlist someone else made of “disturbing” music. It’s mostly weird video game tracks that someone has collected. Two of my favourites were from Pokémon: “Drought” and “Lavender Town”. This last track generated some crazy conspiracy theories of the game it was in due to its creepiness. (I added the piano version of the track to my playlist because I couldn’t find the original, but the original is way more unsettling).

Today as I was working on my 7th sketch, I got the inspiration I needed for my final piece. I just worked on how to deconstruct a melody and slowly guide it towards chaos in order to inspire a similar section for the ending of my final piece. Thanks to this, I progressed a lot (on my final piece) and quite quickly. There’s still some more experimenting I want to do before considering the final piece as done but the 7th sketch is finished and I’m much more relaxed now. I feel my final piece is much more adventurous than my previous ones and am very excited to see what my teachers think of it.

A big reason for this progress, I think, was going to see the orchestra yesterday. I went to see the 9th symphony, which I was hoping to see for a long time. A few minutes before they played, instead of their usual tuning, they sort of started rehearsing independent parts so it was just total chaos. This was very unexpected but also quite useful for me because I recorded a big part of that on my phone and used this recording on my 7th sketch and some of my past ones (the more chaotic ones) the enhance them. I’ve also included it in my final piece for the last section (the chaotic one) I was unsure about.

For this chaotic part, aside from including the recording mentioned above, I’m planning to mix two of my previous sketches : the one in which I mixed all of the chaotic recordings with the one that is all cut-up. Concretely, I’m thinking about slowly adding the chaotic sketch under the main melody (during the middle section) and then gradually cutting up bits of the melody so that it slowly loses its structure.

I’ve also been talking to Ed (another music student) about the possibility of him recording a small rap section so that I can also deconstruct it parallel to the melody. He sounded quite pleased about it so we’ll see how it works out!

In general, I feel this piece is a huge step forward for me and hopefully that fact will be reflected in my music.

This is a picture of the concert hall of the Barbican Centre, which is where I went. The place is incredibly beautiful and seeing the orchestra play one of my favourite pieces was absolutely astonishing.

Today I started working on my final piece. It’s turning out to be quite different than what I had planned, which was the whole point. It’s a lot more innovative and feels genuinely original because of how it incorporates elements from different genres. It has a much stronger character than I imagined it could. The 6 sketches I have started influenced me a lot and I imported some bits and pieces from them to this final project.

At first, it incorporates the main idea from the 3rd sketch (pad), but I added some electronic instruments underneath so that it doesn’t feel boring. It also includes the small key change that I experimented with on the “Accordion” sketch. Then, it progresses to the “Witchcraft” sketch and it adopts a more rhythmic aspect.

Next, I want it to progress to a chaotic theme but I’m struggling a little to accomplish this. To solve this confusion, I’ve created a brand new project to start my seventh sketch in order to experiment with ideas for this ending. I’m actually going tonight to London to see the orchestra so I can get some inspiration.

To further my creativity, I’ve been listening to a group recommended by my teacher called “The Art of Noise”. They use lots of creative ways to make music and they have helped me think “outside the box”. I’ve added one of their songs to my Spotify playlist and listen to it continuously to feed my own imagination.

Here’s an image of this group. They’ve sadly disbanded some time ago, but their music is still available online.

As a side note, I finally decided to keep the “Accordion” sketch even if it didn’t work out the way I wanted it to. While I still don’t like it, it was very helpful for me to understand how key changes work in Logic X and it’s having an influence in my final piece, as I’ve discussed above.

Two days ago in class, we talked about what could be missing in our project and we evaluated ourselves against the criteria that will be used to evaluate us. I realized that I wasn’t as far behind as I thought and that I could possibly conclude this project pretty soon.

I’m now working on a new sketch (my 6th) and it’s this one that is inspired by what I thought would become my final piece. I’m currently using some of my chaotic recordings to create a messy introduction. For this I’ve taken as inspiration the 2nd movement of Shostakovich’s string quartet no. 8. It’s full of short chromatic runs that really bring out the element of chaos. I’ve recorded some of these scales on the piano to incorporate to the beginning of this sketch. Next, I need to work on how the peaceful section enters and the chaos dies away. After I’m done with this sketch, I’ll be ready to begin working on my final piece.

In case you’re unfamiliar with him, here’s an image of this incredible composer.

On a different note, yesterday, we talked about our new project, the self-initiated one, and I started to think a bit about what I wanted to do. I knew I wanted to score a minute or two of a film but add something creative to make it stand out more but I feel like I can’t seem to concentrate properly due to this project still being unfinished. I will work to finish my sketches from this project so I clear my head a little bit.

I’ve been combining some of my past ideas lately with original techniques such as playing with the order of sounds (what goes first and what goes after, etc), the pitch, automation (automatic increase or decrease) of volume and cutting audio material into pieces (as suggested by my teacher) and it has proven to be very beneficial. I feel a lot more confident in regard to my sketches and they do feel a lot better.

Above you can see what automation looks like in the software we use.

I’ve basically taken some of my previous ideas and made them more original by applying these aforementioned techniques and layering sound to hopefully make it more compelling to the listener. For my 3rd sketch specifically (the one with the synth pad), I added an electronic section that directly contrasts with its original concept.

I’m feeling a lot more positive about how I’m doing after having had a chat with my teachers today and after seeing that I do have most of the work already done. It also helped me to know that I can make 6 or 7 sketches instead of 10 which means I’m doing a lot better time-wise.

It was brought to my attention that some of my H4N recordings were noisy and I came to realize that it’s due to the air vents in my room (which I can switch off). I tried to fix some of the recordings (the last two) but the noisy recordings came out better than the phone recordings after having shut off all the fans so I’ll leave them as they are for now and fix them if I have enough time by the end of the term.