This project has been equally exciting and challenging throughout. I have thoroughly enjoyed all of the processes involved in completing my tasks and have definitely learned a lot that I will take with me on my future endeavours.
The first thing That I want to evaluate from this project is my aims and objectives from my proposal. These are the aims and objectives that I had at the start of the project
Project aim:
The aim of my project is to Professionally produce an EP, along with a music video, with my band CHAPODIO, for which I am the drummer. I am aiming to have a two track EP professionally recorded and mixed, as well as have a professional music video to accompany one of the songs on the EP.
Objectives:
- Contact different studios/engineers and get quotes on recording and mixing.
- Look at different artists to use for our artwork
- Get a good EP cover
- Record a professional EP
- Go into a professional studio to get the EP recorded by a professional.
- Make some merchandise to promote the EP.
My initial idea was to Professionally produce a two-track EP with my band. I managed to achieve this through the project as this was my main role. I was very happy with how the EP turned out and I can confidently say that It is a successful EP. I focused the bulk of my time and energy on this section of the project and made sure that we had a quality product at the end of it. The second part of my initial idea was to produce a music video to accompany one of the tracks on the EP. This was unsuccessful. A brief explanation as to why we failed to produce this was due to poor time management and organisational skills. I will go into further detail as to why later on in my evaluation.
My first objective was to contact different studios and engineers to get quotes on how much recording would be. Although on paper this was unsuccessful as the only engineer I contacted was Kurt who was definitely going to record us, I still did some research into the different studios that we had available to us. After researching these and looking at aspects such as equipment, facilities and cost, I came to the conclusion that Corner house would be the best studio for us to go to. Because of this, I think that this aim was successfully met.
My second aim was to look at different artists to do our artwork. This is a similar situation to the last objective as although I didn’t research any artists. We knew of two reputable artists and got them to do our artwork. For this reason, I can class myself as successfully completing this objective.
My third aim was to get a good EP cover. Although this is a subjective-objective to evaluate, after getting two different artists to create some artwork for us, I can confidently say that I am happy with the artwork for the EP. It is a distinctive piece of art and easily sets us apart from similar bands whilst also having enough normalities so that somebody can easily guess what type of music that we play just by looking at our artwork. An example of this is that the blood on the art symbolises violence and agression, relating to our agressive style of music. Because of these reasons, I would say that this aim was successfully completed.
The fourth objective of my project was to record a professional EP. I can definitely say that I have successfully achieved this. After spending two days recording in a private professional studio and one day mixing, we have a decent sounding EP to show for it. It far surpasses the quality if anything that we couldve recorded ourselves in college and therefore I class this as a successfully completed aim. See my EP evaluation page for more information on this.
My fifth objective was to go to a professional studio to get our EP recorded. Again, This was definitely a success as I literally achieved this word for word.
My final objective was to get merchandise made to help promote the EP. This objective was not met as we had put effort into getting t-shirts printed for us. This was the only merchandise we had planned on getting. However, when it came to printing the t-shirts, it was going to cost far too much and ended up being so that the band wouldn’t make any money from the merchandise.
My production plan is the next thing that I want to discuss on this page. When making my production plan, I had made it very specific about what I wanted to complete each week. This was so that I always had something to do and always knew what needed to be done. Overall, my action plan worked relatively well. As I stated before, it helped me to remember what needed to be done and when it needed to be done by. It helped me to keep on track with things such as; when we were supposed to record our music video, when I needed to have decided on a studio by and when we needed to go into the studio. For the most part, it succeeded in keeping me on track. The only thing that I would do differently in the future would be to set more deadlines within the plan. A lot of the time I found that I had completed parts of the work that I needed to do, but not finished it. Having set deadlines for each target in the plan would have helped me, in the long run, to keep on top of the entire project and make sure I have all of my written work completed as soon as possible.
Overall, I am happy with how my project has turned out. I have mostly achieved what I had planned to. I was very dedicated to the practical side of the project, demonstrating professional skills such as communication, live performance, studio performance, and general musicianship. Using the reflective model of my choice, the Gibbs reflective model, I can evaluate in great detail.
Description:
My project consisted of me and my band CHAPODIO, of which I am the drummer, Producing a professional EP and music video in order to aid our band in growth. We have completed the EP to a satisfying level that we are all happy with. We recorded and mixed our EP in a professional studio which was a much better option than recording in our college as we did last year. We did not manage to complete the music video due to poor time management and organisational skills. On top of these two, we also completed a number of other tasks. Such as playing at local gigs opening for larger bands, making a banner to better present our band, having a photoshoot for promotional photos, and getting designs ready to be used for merchandise.
Feelings:
I believe that since I am an artist, it is important to talk about my feelings during a project since art is a very emotional subject. I have had mixed feelings about this project. I am happy with my own accomplishments such as organising getting the band into the studio and managing that whole process. I am also happy with the entire band’s effort and where we are as a band now. We have played some fairly large shows and have been promoting our EP and networking at each of these. Doing this has allowed us as a band to get more connections and a step up into the industry. One thing that I am unhappy with in this project was that we weren’t able to finish the music video. After all of the hard work put into recording the video, it is a shame to not have it ready yet. This made me quite frustrated as all of the hard work I put into this process now has nothing to show for it.
Evaluation:
One strength of the project was my practical skills and commitment to the practical side of the project. I feel as though throughout the project, I was performing as well as I possibly could at all times and it shows. Whether this be my performance in the EP, my performance on stage, or my general performance when it came to all the other small things. I am confident with my performance enough to rate it as a strength of this process.
Another strength was how the EP turned out. Because of all of the planning and preparation I had done for the studio process, and because of the amount of practice we had put in as a band to get the EP sounding as good as possible. In my opinion, all of this hard work has paid off as we now have a finished EP that is ready to be released in aims of boosting my band’s popularity and status.
One weakness of the project would definitely have to be organisational skills. Due to poor organisation, I often left the written side of my project until the last minute which resulted in me not gaining as much experience as I could throughout the project. This lead to me not fully learning from some processes until it was too late. This also lead to the music video not being completed and therefore a rather large part of my project being left behind.
Analysis:
I think that the reason this project was a successful one was that we had our allocated rolls to complete. However, even though this was the case, everyone involved in the project still got a say in what was going to be happening. We thought that using this process would save us from scrambling from each other’s information to figure out what we had done at the last minute.
Conclusion:
I have learned from this experience that when dividing work between different people and collaborating, it is important to also be up to date with what they are doing. Keeping a close eye on what the other collaborators are doing can help to avoid problems such as one of the participants not completing their work on time. Also, I would like to continue doing similar projects like this in my career as I very much enjoyed it and think that when utilised properly, projects such as this can help to boost one’s career substantially.
Action plan:
If I were to undertake this project again, one thing that I would do differently is not produce a music video. Because of the experiences I have had throughout this project, I feel as though our time spent producing the music video would have been better spent playing live and making a name for ourselves that way. This doesn’t mean that I would completely rule out making a music video in the future, I would just prioritise more practical tasks such as gigging. I would also make sure that I put more time and effort into documenting all of the processes that I undertook. This would help a lot as I would be constantly up to date on everything that needed completing and I would also know more about what I can do to improve for the next task.
For the future, I would like to continue growing my band and trying to make a career out of it. It has been a very enjoyable process and I have learned a lot throughout. Such as; collaborating with professionals in the industry, whether this is artists or recording engineers, acquiring the skills necessary has been detrimental to having a successful project and will serve me well in my future endeavours. I have also learned how to effectively utilize being in a recording studio. As I plan to do similar projects like this in the future, it is imperative that I am well versed in how to properly behave in the studio and make sure that I can create a good final product. This can also help me with other projects such as if somebody asked me to be a session musician on a track, I would know exactly how to be a professional and get other profitable gigs such as that.