Equipment List

Electric Drum Kit(x1)



Acoustic Drums(x1)




Roland Keyboard(x1)




Juno Synthesisers (x1)



Upright Bass guitar (x1)



Electric Guitar (x1)



Acoustic Guitar (x1)



Microphones (x7)



Roland Synthesizers




XLR Cables (x7)



Jack Lead (x8)



Macbook Pro (x1)

Additional Equipment 

Keytar



1 x Double/'upright bass
1 x Nylon/classical acoustic guitar
1 x Keytar (which will be run wirelessly)

E.P PROJECT OFFICIAL

I have been involved with music  from the first words that I spoke as a child till now, I always had love for the atmosphere that I used to get from music. Being born in a country of multi-cultures gave me a athletic taste in music, from a young age I remember listening to english songs that I didn't understand the words of, but I understood straight away what the songs were saying and the emotion behind it. I had a very strong country music influence from a young age, and in some ways it still effects the style of music that I enjoy making even though my music is very electronic based.
I started singing from the age of 6, I used to mainly sing country music as a child, but then from the age of 9 I started singing gospel music in a children's choir. I've done quite a few performances in church and i gained a lot of my basic knowledge of music from there. This might be because of most of my friends were session players and artists within the gospel music industry. I also met producers whilst in church that inspired me to learn about the technical side of music.
I've been playing guitar for about two years now and playing the guitar gives me lots of new ideas to compose.

My style of music for this E.P is electro/soul, the reason why I want to stick to this genre is because I feel that it's the only genre that's going to allow me to explore the music that inspires me. I will be making a 6 track E.P about 20-30 minuets long. I would like to release it by May 25th 2014. I want to collaborate with some producers that I have been collaborating with. I also want to work with some musicians from level 3 performance first years. The people that I want to work with are producers: Elliot, Matt, Lemar. The reason why I want to work with these producers is because i feel that they have some similar aspects that i can work with that is similar to my music. They also are very unique with their own work and very good at what they do which would help me to improve my work and push myself to be better. It will also give me an early opportunity to work as a team and build my team working skills.
The session players I want to work with are: Bianca (Guitar), Andre (Bass), Lemar (Piano), Joe (Guitar). These musicians are the people i feel i can collaborate with for this project. Their style are different and that is why this project is going to be so good to work on. This will also be a opportunity for them to get to know each other as musicians. There are two guitar players witch i specifically chose for this project and i specifically chose these two because they can contrast. Bianca is very good at playing to the click whilst joe has a very good sense of melody, and putting them together in a track will be very interesting, so it is also an experiment of musical backgrounds. As for the pianist lemar he has a quite soulful flavour to his piano playing. He is very inspired by soul and r&b and as a person he seems to be open to ideas, yet still sure about what he wants which will work greatly for andre, because andre has the same taste in music and having a bass player and pianist working together will have a major effect on the groove of the song. One problem that I am facing right now is that i cannot find any drummer that suits the style that I want. So for the future my specific goal for the upcoming month is to have a drummer playing in my E.P with me.
Overall working with these musicians will give me an understanding of how each of them work as individuals. My recording skills, my ability of recognising mistakes in recordings and my networking skills should improve by the end of this project based on the amount of work i need to do with every single one of these individuals.

 For this E.P I don't want to work with singers because I want this E.P to feel more like a movie, based on the sounds, atmosphere then a normal composed song. The people that will be working with me at the studio will be Elliot (Sound engineer), Charlie (technician) and me as the composer.

Songs To Be Worked On (Collaboration)

Track 1:

Old Man:

• D.I Box: The reason why I need to use the D.I box is because you need to connect all the cables to the D.I box which converts all the real sounds into data information of the instrument to the software you want to record with, in this case the software I will use is logic. 

• Acoustic Guitar: The reason why I chose to use an acoustic guitar is to add a bit of texture to the sounds that I already have for the track.

• Electric Guitar
• C414 Condensor Microphone
• Amplifier
• X3 XLR Cable
• X2 Jack Lead.

Track 2: 

The Dream - C414 Microphone, Electric Guitar, Amplifier, SN58 Microphone.

Track 3: 

808 Generation - Grand Piano, Titan Microphone. 

I started my year of 2013 with an idea of making my own home studio.

To make and produce my own EP I had to gain about £2000 based on my research and my calculations, here is what i managed to buy.

• Macbook Pro 13 Inch (With student discount) - £850 
• Memory RAM 16G - £108
• M-Audio Studio Phile AV 40 - £999
• RCA Phono Plugs - £1.25
• Stagg 3m High Quality XLR to XLR Plug Microphone Cable - £3.25
• Behringer Ps 400 Phantom Power Supply 
• Behringer C-1 Studio Condenser Microphone - (x2) - £49.77
• HDE XLR Female to USB 2.0 CABLE - £15.65
• M-Audio Key Station MIDI - £33.39
• Samsung Wide Screen HD 3D T.V - £350
• Display Port DP to HDMI Cable - £20
• TOTAL: 2,430.28

Even though i went £430.28 over the limit I feel that my target to make my own home studio was a success. If I didn't research what I needed to buy first, I'm sure that I would of spent a lot more money then I have. My next goal from which I started in summer involved me producing my own E.P, I set myself a target to complete six tracks by December 28th. At the time based on my optimism it was achievable but having starting the new year in college and having learnt new skills I realised to get six tracks sounding good by December 28th became unrealistic based on the work that I had to do for each track. But I'll still manage to complete three well mixed tracks for my E.P.

My next target is to improve my mixing skills and learn about new techniques in logic that can make my songs improve. I will set a target to buy the book 'Mixing Secrets For Small Studio' by the first of January 2014 and I will dedicate the month February 2014 to read the book.

Recording Schedule:

For 12 weeks i'm going to make sure that every week I book the studio to record vocals, acoustic guitar, electric guitar and to mix down.

Future Plan:

My future plan for my E.P is to make tracks that are going to attract new listeners to my soundcloud and my band camp. My main goal is to use this E.P  to my promote myself as a artist/producer. My electro/soul E.P will be available next summer as a free download.
It is going to be available for free download because due to my lack of exposure to the media uploading my track to soundcloud, band camp is a great way to start gaining recognition. This will also be a good portfolio for applying to university and getting jobs in the industry, the reason for this is if you get recognised in social sites it indicates that your work is good.

‘Beginners Guide to Synthesis’

Danilo Ferreira da Silva

3 December 2013

‘Beginners Guide to Synthesis’

the relationship between acoustic theory and the fundamentals of synthesis.

The Word Synthesis means combining different element and thats exactly what a synthesiser does combine different elements like pitch, texture, shapes of sound and you modify it create the sound you want. It sound simple but there are a few things you need to understand about sound for you to get the exact sound you need. and here are a few things were going to cover:

Pitch

One of the most used aspect of human expression Is pitch but what is pitch, and how does it work? well pitch is the rate of frequency that travels through the air while vibrating meaning, that if you want the sound to travel low you need the vibration thats coming from the source to travel slow making a low frequency sound which makes a low pitch sound and to get the sound to travel in high pitch you increase the rate of vibration and the will make a high pitch sound, pitch is vital in music and it was developed to work in synthesisers the same way as a piano.

Frequency

When thinking about frequency think of the tube and how the trans engine sounds,when you are at the station and the engine is on the train vibrates the everything around you and when the train moves you hear the pitch of the engine going higher and higher until the engine reach its beak and thats how frequency work you have your waveform + Amplitude + frequency which is how fast the waveform moves = sound.

Waveforms

To understand how synthesis works you need to understand how sound works. Sound though not seen works with physical energy, it is created by moving particles in the air which is described as sound pressure which is interpreted by the human ears and translated by the brain. If sound was to be seen by the naked eye, we would be able to see lots and lots of waveforms. Waveforms are basically how sounds behave.Sound is affected by many factors and lots of different textured surface this always and synthesisers capture a lot of that.

Waveforms: 

Sine - The type of sound you get from hearing a Sine wave is a really specific single frequency type sound which sounds very useful when creating a baseline or a lead it is also the purest of sound you can hear when heard at a low frequency the sound is very pleasant but when you hear the sound at a high frequency its unbearable you might argue that the sound you hear when you have tinnitus is a sine wave because of the luck of texture.

here is also a link which represents the sound of a sine wave  

Square -   the square has more layers of frequencies which makes the sound sound more  dirtier you might even confuse the sound of a square and a triangle waveform.

here is a link which represents a square wave

Triangle -  A triangle sound is great to use to make brass sounds it is also a easy way to get distortion due to the large amount of frequency level trying to fight each other.

Sawtooth - sawtooth just by the name makes explain a lot the sound the sawtooth produces is very arising and hard to hear a long period of time but you can get lots of different texture when mixing the sawtooth with different waveforms 

Sawtooth - 

The only realistic sounds we hear as humans from natural sound pressure is the Sine wave, the square,triangle and sawtooth waveforms are only due able within synthesisers, it might sound a bit complicated and a bit irrelevant but when it comes to creating sound it is vital.

Now that I explained the basics, i will explain in detail how you could manipulate, edit and create your own sound using different synthesis and what type of synthesis you could use to make your sound. 

ADRS Envelope 

An ADRS Envelope is a Tool vital when creating your own sound and most sythersisers will have a built in ADRS Envelope built in. The way they work is simple you have Attack which is how fast the sound reach its people when the sound is played a short attack means you can have a smooth sound with out any bang to the sound.Decay mean how long or short you want the peak to meat fading of your sound.A sustain means how long the sound stays at the frequency when holding the keys down.release is how fast the sustain level reaches zero. 

another aspect I want to speak upon is is Filters and how you can use it to manipulate sound.the are 3 main type of filter Low pass, low pass filter all frequencies above and every extra noise above gets cut off straight a way. High pass, high pass works the same way as the Lowpass but it cuts of the low end instead. Band pass allow only the sound around the chose cut off point to get throw. 

LFO 

Low - Frequency Oscillator is a Digital signal that moves on really low frequencies it is used to create rhythmic grove as-well. Although they effect sound they do not change how it sounds they only manipulate an already made sound by pulsing. you can sync the sound to different groves 1/4, 2bars or choose a wave shape to trigger the sound at.

Unit 16 Roles Evaluation

Unit: 11

chrome hoofs

Role: Sell merchandise 

My task was to sell merchandise I used the time before the event to increase my network, I spoke with sound engineer musicians managers and fans that is involved in the industry, they gave me different prospectives on the roles that they were involved in and there opinion made me think 

about what aspect of the industry I can start working in.

I learned a lot from my self selling merchandise during the event, especially how you should react  in certain moments how to sell your product and what interest people , we sold a lot of merchandise  because we sold our product well and showed interest in what the people was talking about.

nothing major went wrong during the event and after but in my opinion if we had more merchandise we would of made more money.

My task was simple I had to sell merchandise, so the first thing I did was to plan the best way to show off the merchandise and also how we would position our selfs to attract people. I never worked with kieran(team mate) before so we learned a lot from each before the task was done right we got on well and that came across to the buyers. overall it was a success there always a place for improvement but it was a success we sold out vynyl  all the medium t-shirts we sold jumpers CDs.

History Of Electronic Music

2012 was a great year for live performance there was lots of old heroes coming back to do it, there was more money involved in it, the technology became more complex and image became a major influence. 2012 was a year that made me think of how image actually influences live performance in this article I will be going back in time and will be exploring the history and comparing how image effects live performance now and how it used to effects then.

Tupac Hologram

The tupac hologram marked a new step for technology, even though technology grew rapidly in the last 20 years. For those who never saw the performance of 2012 with Snoop Dogg, tupac and dr dre and for those who have seen it, it's still hard to believe how amazing the event was, this is because tupac came to join the party. Although Tupac never resurrected the producers of the event managed to make a $100,000 hologram version of Tupac. So people don't freak out the tupac hologram version is a recording from his 1996 performance at the house of blues. Tupac's performance live at the house of blues had standard LED lights and a projector that had house of blues written in white. At that time visuals was a major part of performance, so now I want to go deeper than that, earlier than that to explain how we see live performance developed with time.

Major Equipment In Live Performance

LED Lighting:

Electroluminescence which is what LED technology was built upon was discovered in 1907 by a british radio researcher and his assistant. Henry Joseph made an experiment with silicon carbide and a cats whisker. During the 1920's a radio researcher Oleg Vladimirovich was studying what electroluminescence is, and in 1927 he published a paper called Luminous Carborundum even though this didn't create the original LED light it became a major influence to the future of LED lighting. In 1962 Nick Holonyack a engineer for an electronic company invented the first visible light, it was red LED. A few years later LED light went on to be developed and now it is a major equipment for live performance. Now in the 21st century LED light has many shapes, many sizes and can be controlled through many devices and in some cases it reacts to sound.

Video Panel: 

A video panel is a LED display. Within a video panel there is groups of red, green and blue diodes and it operates together to form a full coloured pixel mostly in a square shape. Though this is used for a lot of different things it is now the most useful piece of equipment in live performance. Whether you use them for display of a video or have your bands name written in a large display.

Smoking Machine:

A smoking machine in live performance is very useful, the reason why the smoking machine is so useful is because the smoke that the machine provides helps to section the lights making the LED lights more visible for the audience to see. The smoke machine works by heating up propylene glycol and triethylene glycol mixed with 20% of water. This makes the smoke spread out quite similar to a cigarette or smoke on fire without causing any side effects or injuries.

Live Performance During The 60s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcYrmYeyFsM

During the 60's, performances was based more on how the band sounded, the focus also was more on the audience. The people going to see live performance during the 60's were more worried about having fun, dancing, more then actually seeing people perform live. As the years went on equipment and technology became more advanced, stage performances went from being at the centre to the front of the venue. Everything that was being created gave focus to the performer. 30 years later technology became a must in live performances.

Live Performance During The 90s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fb4qyuR7_cc

Live performances during the 90's were quite different due to a lot of people experimenting with new sounds, new image and new style of music. The 90's was also a great year for visuals, bands like guns and roses and performers like michael jackson were all very extreme in terms of finding new ways to showcase their image. Although these are not the people I will be talking about, if you do watch any performances during the 90's you would see how advanced technology became. A band that I really want to focus on is 9 inch nails and the reason I want to talk about them is because they always had a step ahead when it came to visuals. In 1994's wood stock event they amazed me with the amount of things they had going on stage, but what was unique about them was that there was songs that made audience focus on the singer and other songs that made you focus on the lyrics. But that is not unique, what was unique was that they made the visuals and the lights influence the audience on wether they wanted the audience to focus on the singer or the song.


How The Media Uses It
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYwNOO9N5lM

Years went by and what once was knew became old, but one thing that didn't age was 9 inch nails style of visuals in their 90's. Their style of using visuals in their performances can still be seen today in almost every music reality show. For example: in this video Bruno Mars sings a song about love and if we were to stand there watching him perform that song without any of the visual effects we would not pay attention to the lyrics. But what is very interesting about this performance was that the video reacts to the drums, making it seem much more dramatic then what it is.

Next Step For Live Performance
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbuQuvoc0YE

Were in the year 2013 and what is really exciting is, as time goes on technology gets more and more advanced, and as for the visual side of performance it gets more and more complicated but yet simple for our minds to react to music and visuals as one piece. This video with Flying Lotus shows how people in this era are writing songs to match visuals, and how performers are now trying to get the audience to see what's in their minds with video technology.