For our collaborative project, we have decided to write and record an EP consisting of three original tracks, and then put on a performance to showcase it. In addition to this, we discussed having an overlaying theme to the project to give us a focal point and decided to use this opportunity to spread awareness and raise money for the homeless across the UK. We have agreed that any proceeds made from the performance will be donated to a charity called ‘Shelter’ who do extensive work into tackling this issue.
We are aiming to turn the final performance into a sort of ‘mini festival’ and have a variety of local acts come to perform as well as ourselves for the whole evening. Hopefully we will have a good mix of bands and solo artists come and perform to help make the event a success. We are thinking big for this performance, so we will be learning how to operate stage lighting, the use of projected visuals, and maybe even try and get hold of some props for on stage to really make this a visually brilliant performance as well as musically entertaining.
As this is a collaborative project, we have decided to split up various roles for us each to take on in order to even out the work load between us all. Here is a list of who is doing what:
- Project Manager – Kelsey
- Musical Directors – Lex, Shaun, Shy’yan, and Dan (me)
- Promotion and Marketing – Everyone
- Communications/networking – Jada and Shy’yan
- Events planner – Luke
- Research – Everyone
My main role in the project will be the Musical Director role, in which myself and some others will be focusing on writing and arranging the three original songs for the EP. The reason I took on this role is because I play the guitar in the band, which I find easy to write riffs and chord sequences with. It also made sense to do this role as we then have a Drummer, Bass/keys player, Guitarist, and Vocalist all taking on the songwriting and each having input on the songs.
As a Musical Director, I will be primarily collaborating with the band itself, and the recording studio where we will be recording the EP.
Before I move onto the songwriting process, here is our group schedule for the project:
Group Sessions:
- 30th January – Write/arrange first song
- 6th February – Write/arrange second song
- 13th February – Write/arrange third song
- 14th February – Rehearsal
- 20th February – Rehearsal
- 27th February – Recording Studio
- 28th February – Recording Studio
- 5th March – Break Week
- 12th March – Mixing/Mastering first song
- 19th March – Mixing/Mastering second song
- 26th March – Mixing/Mastering third song
- 2nd April – Rehearsal
- 9th April – Rehearsal
- 16th April – Rehearsal
- 23rd April – Performance day
We agreed that this is an appropriate plan as we should have a good amount, of time to focus on each task, for example writing, recording, and rehearsal sessions. Alongside this, we will collectively be doing promotional work via social media networks and such. The reason we haven’t explicitly included promotion in the plan above is because we want it to be an ongoing thing throughout the project in order to keep people’s interest. Promotion for this project will begin around the time we enter the recording studio as this will be a good way of showing our progress towards the EP as well as starting to build peoples interest in the upcoming event.
Another thing we will all be doing is research. This will likely all be our own kind of research, for example I plan on looking into songwriting concepts as this is relevant to my role of musical director. I will be using sources online and offline from books and articles and such to conduct my research. I will be beginning my research at the start of the project, and hopefully keeping up to it throughout the project as I am sure there will be points where I need to look into things I hadn’t already anticipated.
Problem solving will undoubtedly be something we all need to think about when taking on any kind of project, especially when our project is a festival rather than just ourselves playing. Some problems we may potentially have to work around are:
- Communicating with others – Sometimes people are terrible in regard to replying to messages and such, therefore we need to make sure we are collaborating with reliable people.
- Reliability – The more acts we book to play at our launch night, the higher the chance of someone pulling out will be, so we need to be able to work around this and hopefully find some acts who are reliable.
- Equipment and Setup – With so many acts performing, there will be more gear to set up, therefore we need to learn and maybe even practice the stage setup in advance if possible so that we know how everything works, and how to safely operate it all.
- Inspiration for material – one problem may be that we just can’t think of ideas to write songs with. I think we have lowered this risk though by having four of us writing together so we should have plenty of ideas.
- Funding – As this is a charity gig, we will not be profiting off of the money made on the night. This means it will impact things like the venue and acts, as not everybody is willing to work for free.
Finally something worth mentioning in this proposal is health and safety. We absolutely must perform a thorough risk assessment for the event due to the amount of people and gear that will be present. We will have to bare in mind things like neat cable management, volume levels, placement of fire exits and placement of equipment on stage. This is something we can think about more towards the time of the event, but is worth mentioning now.
If all goes to plan this should be a really good event, and if promoted properly it should help to raise a good amount of funds for charity.