What I’m Doing This Trimester

So I’m a little late to blogging this trimester! I’ve been so busy focusing on what went wrong with my projects last trimester and I’ve been spending the early weeks of the trimester dedicated to finding suitable artists so that I actually can end up with a project rather than scrambling in case an artist cancels (ie. my experience last trimester). This trimester there are two primary assessment pieces, one of which is a minor project that is a resounding of a trailer. This is basically the same type of thing as we did last trimester but instead we are individually doing our mixes, and some of the assets have already been included. The other assessment piece is a Major Project, which like last trimester is a little more freelance and up to us to individually decide on what we're going to do (I'll go into the details a little bit later!)

As with the rest of the class, I’ll be doing a resounding of a trailer for the 2018 film ARCTIC. I’m looking at doing the mix in not only surround (as per the assessment deliverable), but am hoping to return to the project after this to complete a 5.1 surround sound mix using the S6 studio. This due in week 6 so this project will be happening pretty fast, so expect to see a few posts about the process of this in the coming weeks - Other than that there’s not too much else to really say about this project for the time being.

Here’s a clip of the trailer that we’re doing the resounding of:

Now let’s talk about my major project which is going to require a lot more time in planning and workload to accomplish. There were two options for the major project, you could either go down the Studio Production route of the Post Production route. Seeing as we were already doing a post production assessment piece for the minor project, I decided I would change things up by doing the Studio Production work. I want to have somewhat of a focus on post production work mainly as i’ve found there is a LOT more jobs in Australia related to it, but seeing as I could only pick one or the other I decided going down the studio production route would be a more efficient use of my time at SAE (I want to get my money's worth by using the studios to my advantage in the little time we have left). I like doing post production, however just not enough to do a whole trimester on ONLY post production work - it’s also something that I can easily do at home with a setup of a zoom recorder, some extra microphones and a DAW.

The requirements for the studio production major was as follows:

The required project work consists of:

Minimum length of the audio being produced is 30 minutes per student (CLO5).

At least one song’s instrument must be acoustic and performed by someone else than yourself (LO4).

Advanced audio mixing tools must be used: Melodyne (LO5), iZotope RX (LO8).

At least one song must be mixed in 5.1, 7.1, 7.1.2, or VR (LO3, LO10, LO11, LO18).

Final product’s loudness must be appropriate for the genre with consideration of distribution platform (LO12, LO14).

Only the final audio is required as deliverables (CLO9).

For this project, I’ll be doing 2 EP’s, one which is 2 tracks and one which should be about 4-5 tracks.

One of my more complicated projects would be a 'Metalcore' EP that I'm producing for a local band called Rare Words. I contacted the band through Facebook messenger and arranged to complete two tracks with them this trimester. I had hoped to complete more but the band had only just finished recording and only had about 2 tracks of material ready to record.

Rare Words has a strong resemblance to the Metalcore band Bring Me The Horizon (BMTH), which is not only their reference but the reference I was looking at for the sound of the project, so it's an almost perfect match.

I mentioned in my blogging last trimester that I'd love to create something similar to the track 'Throne' by BMTH and weirdly enough after hearing one of the demos that they had sent over, I found throne to be the reference material and also shares a strong overall resemblance to the track.

This is a particularly good project for me to be involved in as it is different enough to anything else I've ever done but is also a style of music that I actually listen to. The band also has many synth and electronic elements which will allow me to have some creative input in a style that I'm already familiar with.

I think that I will write a full blog about how I'm going to go about the process of recording the band as doing these types of productions require immense planning.

The next project that I’m working on is an alternative R&B EP. This is similar to some of my previous work that I’ve done before in SAE just at a much bigger scale. The project will be electronic based instrumentals that I have composed and produced and then I will collaborate with a third party Artist to do vocals and any other acoustic elements over the top of this. This piece is a little different to the style of music I’ve worked with before as it will be having a much darker sound than the usual pop sound that I go for. I am referencing artists such as The Weeknd, Ozzie, Teflon Sega and XXYYXX, and the EP is looking to have a dark, lofi type sound with heaps of textures. I will also write a separate blog on this where I can go into detail about the specifics on this project

Example of Lofi sounds:

These are the main things that I’m going to be blogging about this trimester so keep an eye out to see how these projects roll out!