Difference between revisions of "Songs against the undertow"

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''Week 7:''
 
''Week 7:''
  
~ Got "No Pain" up to the point of being a draft I want to share with the class and get general and/or detailed feedback on. It isn't polished, but I have worked on it long enough that I now need to either step back for a while or get a second opinion because I am getting lost in it.
+
~ Got "No Pain" up to the point of being a draft I want to share with the class and get general and/or detailed feedback on. It isn't polished, but I have worked on it long enough that I now need to either step back for a while or get a second opinion because I am getting lost in it.
 +
 
 +
 
 +
''Week 8:''
 +
 
 +
~ Put into practice a lot of general advice from classmates and professors about artistic process and making sure a song flows well as a whole
 +
 
 +
~ Listened to "Orange" in a lot of different contexts, journaled about the significance of the different sections lyrically to see if that could help inform the musical arc of the piece, tried to restrain myself from tweaking it and getting sucked into the micro details too soon
 +
 
 +
~ Listened to songs I like and drew diagrams of what voices came in when do get a better feel for song structure that works well
 +
 
 +
~ Made changes based on my written diagram of what I felt "Orange" needed, and on how the changes actually sounded in practice - cut out a full minute of the song and made the instrumentation less constant, added guitar ghost notes at the beginning based on my own interpretation of some advice from Lloyd
 +
 
 +
~ Presented "Orange" for class and got feedback
 +
 
 +
 
 +
''Week 9:''
 +
 
 +
~ Implemented feedback on "No Pain"
 +
 
 +
~ To be continued...

Revision as of 16:29, 3 June 2021

Intro


Hi! My name is Elena Stalnaker and this is the wiki page for my 220C project. It's an album I was originally going to make as a Chappell Lougee project, but then the pandemic hit, so I'm very glad I get to work on it now!

I'm hoping to learn more about music composition/recording in general as I work on this project throughout the class, but especially mixing, song structure, and percussion, since those are the areas I feel least comfortable with.

Here is the link to the first song I have drafted for the project ("Orange"):

https://soundcloud.com/elenamss/orange/s-tgszAd02klJ


Progress Updates


Week 2:

~ Touched up "Orange" for presentation in class, accumulated feedback

~ Inventories all ~50-60 voice memos (~23 songs and fragments) and lyrics relevant to the project, selecting which songs to finish writing and producing during the class

~ Finished writing and learning on 2 most incomplete songs (brought together 2 old fragments I’d almost forgotten about for 1, and brought together 2 separate lyrics on a similar theme only one of which had a melody for the other)


Week 3:

~ Recorded and began mixing "Spring! (Finally)"

~ Finished writing "No Pain"

~ Requested classical guitar from Julius for "O Sleep"

~ Got tips on how to work faster in Logic - using templates and making time to watch more workflow videos than I already do, potentially read the manual


Week 4:

~ Collected field recordings for "Spring" and other projects

~ Watched a bunch of logic tutorials on templates

~ Started mapping out ideas for "O Sleep," played around with tempo and key

~ Listened to Julius’s version of O sleep

~ Created first Logic template


Week 5:

~ Recorded vocals for O sleep in both octaves, played with cutting and pasting low take to align differently with the high take at different times

~ Made another kind of template

~ Recorded lead vocals for "No Pain"

~ Started on harmonies and doubling for "No Pain"

~ Recorded lower doubling for O Sleep, spent a lot of time getting it in sync with higher vocals only to decide I liked what I made on Tuesday better


Week 6:

~ Created a production plan for "No Pain," with all the voices and notes for each section drawn out on paper similar to how Eoin Callery taught us in Music 101. Brainstormed how I wanted to make sections contrast each other, and what I wanted the overall arc of the song to be.

~ Kept working on "No Pain" til it was about half done - added a primary beat to the verses and chorus and some more fleshed out percussion to the bridge, added some field recordings and background vocals.


Week 7:

~ Got "No Pain" up to the point of being a draft I want to share with the class and get general and/or detailed feedback on. It isn't polished, but I have worked on it long enough that I now need to either step back for a while or get a second opinion because I am getting lost in it.


Week 8:

~ Put into practice a lot of general advice from classmates and professors about artistic process and making sure a song flows well as a whole

~ Listened to "Orange" in a lot of different contexts, journaled about the significance of the different sections lyrically to see if that could help inform the musical arc of the piece, tried to restrain myself from tweaking it and getting sucked into the micro details too soon

~ Listened to songs I like and drew diagrams of what voices came in when do get a better feel for song structure that works well

~ Made changes based on my written diagram of what I felt "Orange" needed, and on how the changes actually sounded in practice - cut out a full minute of the song and made the instrumentation less constant, added guitar ghost notes at the beginning based on my own interpretation of some advice from Lloyd

~ Presented "Orange" for class and got feedback


Week 9:

~ Implemented feedback on "No Pain"

~ To be continued...