I have had so much fun working on my final project from the very start to the very end. Producing this music has been very educational for me as I have learnt more than I could have ever imagined in this past couple of months. From this project I have learnt that I really like composing music, and I would like to do this in future. I think for my first time composing music I have done a good job by learning from my mistakes and developing new skills.

Time management

I have learnt not to focus on one idea for too long as this often can be a waste of time if the idea does not work, this lesson was learnt in week 3 of my project when I wasted a lot of time trying to get the synth unison idea to work. This roadblock in my composition development stunted the development of my music for 3 college days on my music, from this experience I learnt that spending too much time on one idea can be the wrong decision as the idea may not even work out, which was the case for my idea. After week 3 I got a lot better at managing time when composing music, this is because I became more elf aware when I was spending too much time on one objective. One point where I showed development in my time managing skill was in the middle stages of mixing my track. At this point I did not have long on my composition and I was spending most of time time assigning EQ to different tracks, my main goal was to make everything sound perfectly balanced. But then I realised I could spend weeks more doing that so I decided to finish the EQ I was doing and move onto compression and automation. This was the right decision because the work I did on automation had more of a positive impact on the quality of my music than it would have spending the rest of my time balancing out the EQ’s of different tracks. This is how I know my time management skills have developed, because at the start I did not know when to stop focusing on a certain task after a specific amount of time.

Arrangement

I have learnt through this project that instrumental arrangement is very important to think about in terms of mixing before the mixing stage has even began. I learnt this is my mixing stage as I was struggling to manage the EQ on different tracks. This issue was caused by the insane amount of low end frequencies inside of my mix, this was caused by my musical arrangement as many of my instruments let out a lot of low end frequencies. These instruments where usually of the percussion instrumental family. This taught me that when picking out instruments for your composition you need to decide if you have too much low end or high end instruments and if your mix can sound clean with anymore. In the end I ended up fixing my my mix by making low cuts on some instruments to clear up the mix, but if I had thought out my musical arrangement more carefully I wouldn’t have the struggle of cutting out so much low end. In the future when composing music I will carefully pick out my instrumentation and think to myself if my music needs anymore bass or high end frequencies in the mix.

Professionalism

During the project I believe I have worked in a very professional manor and shown a focused attitude during the journey of this music project. One example of when I have shown a professional attitude across the span of the project is by showing up on time to every lesson, in the music industry you are expected to be on time for every meeting/ session are event, this is one reason why I have shows a professional attitude in this project. I have always been focused during this project and always tried to quickly adapt to fix problems with my work. One example in which I did this was when my project turned from an 8 minuet composition to a DOOM Eternal trailer. This was a situation where I had to quickly adapt to the changes in order to continue with my project with good time, one day after learning about the changes I had to make in my project I had already fully developed my trailer to but music over. One day after that I had re-arranged my composition to sync with the trailer. This quick adaptation is a point in my project where I believe I had shows professional behaviour. One way my professionalism could be improved would be by managing my promotion better, this is because I did my promotion last minuet and quickly learnt that this was a mistake. This is because it is impossible to attract a big audience in a matter of a week, this is because not many people will see your promotion get out in this small space of time. This made me realise that promotion has to be done constantly and efficiently to ensure you gather a big enough audience. Next time when composing or when working in any area of music I will promote my music constantly so that more people hear of the music yet to come.

Communication

This project I took part in a total of 5 collaborations over the span of these last 9 weeks. Each of these where very important and influential in the development of my composition. My weakest collaboration was probably my first with Dan, this collaboration was the task for Dan to record a guitar riff into Logic for my music. Unfortunately this was out of time and was missing some of the aggressive tones I wanted in it. I believe part of the reason this collaboration failed was my lack of communication to Dan. This is because I did not tell him the key signature of my composition which is very essential when recording for a composition, because the what they will play will most likely be out of key. I also did not describe in detail what I wanted the guitar recording to sound like, this meant I was not going to get the riff I had pictured in my head. If I was to do this collaboration again I would tell him all the detail about my composition set up which includes the tempo and key signature. Therefore I believe lack of communication was my number one weakness when it came to collaborations such as this one. Luckily a new riff we re-recorded in by Ben, this riff was in time, in key and sounded a lot more aggressive than the other riff did which was what I needed in my music. Later on in my project I also used a mini nova synth which created a mystical arpeggio in my music which was brought in a demonstrated to me by Ben. This was very helpful and influenced my music greatly, this is because I wanted this synth to be in the spotlight of my music therefore many other instruments played off of the rhythm and note of the arp. There are a few other collaborations that have been very successful and I have talked about them on my composition development page. Overall I think my collaborations went well but the number one thing that let me down was my communication when directing people on telling them what to play. In the future I will be more specific when telling people what I want them to play, this will result in more productive collaborations.

My Viva Voce

Final Product Evaluation

Presentation

The presentation of my final product which is available on YouTube has much to be desired, one reason this could have been improved would be by designing a thumb nail for my video. The reason I would do this is because it looks more visually pleasing to the audience which may potentially increase the view count of my video as people are attracted to the videos image. Their is currently some art work in development for me which I will use as a thumbnail for this YouTube video as well as my SoundCloud image, however this artwork will most likely not be developed until the end of my project which is unfortunate. To do avoid this issue in my next project I will ask the artist to work on my artwork weeks before the deadline, this will give the artist a lot of time to work on my art work and will most definitely come before the deadline allowing me to upload it as a thumbnail for my music. On SoundCloud I did use royalty free artwork for my thumbnail which did make it more visually pleasing, the image I used is the main cover of DOOM Eternal. In this case the thumbnail also lets the listener know what the music is inspired by or what it will sound like due to the thumbnails artwork.

Because the video clips I used in my trailer were from 2 other YouTube videos which I have talked about on the ‘making my trailer’ page. The video named ‘Icon Of Sin Moments compilation’ has a channel logo mark on all of the footage, unfortunately I did not spot this logo until I posted my project online. There is issue’s with copyright on these grounds as the footage originated from the game, therefore the channel has no ownership over the footage. However now all the clips in my project trailer that have the Icon Of Sin in them have the channel marking that says ‘Ikiga’ in the lower right corner of the screen. This looks very unprofessional and next time I will not make another mistake like this again. I will avoid doing this by providing my own footage by recording it myself instead of taking it from YouTube sources, recording the footage myself would give me full control of what is in the video meaning there would be no channel markings. Another way I could avoid this is by being more observant of the videos I use in my projects, as being unobservant is what caused this channel sticker to get into my project. My YouTube channel has no profile picture, this looks very unprofessional and will prevent some people from being attracted to my YouTube channel. To change this I will make the profile of my Instagram account also the profile picture of my YouTube account, this is professional as then my profile picture acts as an artist Logo for myself.

Promotion

I have left my project promotion until last minuet which was a huge mistake, this is because all my followers were uninformed that I was working on developing a composition. This meant that when I promoted it in the last week of my project that they were all shocked I was even working on a piece of music, this overall means that your project will get less exposure meaning less views and a smaller audience. However the promotion strategies I have used in this short space of time seem to be working effectively, this is because I uploaded my video on YouTube on Tuesday and it already has 70 views. 30 of these views are my family and friends while the other 40 are complete strangers. I believe my promotion was successful mainly because of the hashtags I used in the video, this meant people who have a mutual interest in DOOM and metal music would see my video and be promoted to click on it. Aside from the hashtags I believe the short and specific title and description may have attracted viewers as it explains what the video is about and how I made it in few words, the short title of the video and the use of popular key words such as ‘DOOM’ and ‘trailer will make the video onto more peoples recommended page depending on their interests.

My Instagram account promotion was generally less successful than the YouTube promotion, the results of views and likes where 40 to 8. This is not by all means bad because of the short time the video has been up, but it does show a contrast in comparison to the YouTube video. My video on Instagram got more likes, however these where all from relatives and friends meaning it the Instagram video of my trailer did not reach the general public. This is the same case for the views as most of them where friends, relatives and friends of friends. This once again means that the video did not reach the general public. I believe the main cause of this failure was because I simply did not promote my second Instagram account enough leading to less followers and exposure to this account. To avoid this issue next time I will frequently post on the music account including hashtags, if I do this enough I will gradually build up a following of my account from the general public as it will get more exposure. The second way I would promote my second account would be by often mentioning my second account on my main account through stories and posts, this will direct my followers to follow my second account to support me in my music.

Developing my skills

During the development of this project I have many different things about my self and about the process of making music. I have also learnt a lot about my strengths and weaknesses and how I have improved from previous projects in this year of college. Each week in my project I have shown constant development in my music as well as the development of new and creative ideas. One example where I have shown creative development in my project was when doing the audio design for the reverse chains and I decided I wanted the two samples to do the exact opposite actions to each other when playing. To get further information on this visit week 6 of my weekly development page, I did this with the creative intention of making the samples creative a chaotic and spacious atmosphere in the music and this was very successfully. As well as creative development I believe I have shown development in knowledge around complex tasks such as mixing and composing music in general. At the start of this project I did not know what a channel EQ did or how to use a compressor, at the end of this project I have a foundation of knowledge which allows me to use both on a simple level of understanding. My knowledge of these subjects came from Bens lectures of mixing tracks and compositions which was very helpful to me.

My weakest points where I need the most development is managing my time, this is because there were moments where I over worked my self or spent too long on one task. In college I often did not take breaks from my work, this lead to mental exhaustion and prevented me from making good quality work. This obstructed me from getting work done at many points during my project, but as I progressed towards the end of the project I noticed that it was very important to take breaks from work. This is because spending too long at a computer can strain your eyes and cause headaches leading to bad work, these consequences were the main reason I realised the importance of taking breaks. Once I began taking breaks I realised it was a lot easier to produce work after a short break of fresh air. Another way I failed to manage my time well was in week 3, which I have talked about before. In this week I was suffering from writers block when trying to develop one idea for my music, I wanted this idea to work so bad that I spent excessive amounts of time trying to develop this idea. However after a while I realised that it was eating up my time and I had to develop a new idea, once I began moving on my music began to develop rapidly. In this space when I was trying to develop this Idea I could have been further developing my work putting me ahead in terms of my practical development. I believe this was obstruction in my music was one of the reasons I was struggling for time at the end of my project, this made me realise that it important not to spend too long on one idea.

How would you improve this project in the future?

For future projects I have learnt many lessons on what to do and what not to do thanks to the experience I have gained from this project. To improve my work I would work on promoting my music all the way through the project, this would increase the total numbers of my audience leading to more exposure as an artists, I learnt doing this was important because of my late start on promotion in the project which lead to few audience members and wasted potential. I would also manage my time better when expanding and developing upon new ideas, I learnt that time management was important after my failure to manage time in week 3 as I have mentioned. To manage my time better in the future I will limit myself to a time of one hour to develop an idea, and if there is no sign of development in that hour I will move onto developing a new one. Next time when I am requesting art work from someone I will ask for it weeks in advance before the deadline, this is because in this project I have no professional thumbnail for my music uploads, this has lead to my project to have a mad presentation online which may effect public exposure to my trailer on YouTube.

When collaborating with people I have learnt to communicate more clearly in order to get the correct sound or instrumental I am asking from them. I point in my project where I have shown weak communication was in week 4 when I was asking Dan (HE) for a riff, I was not specific in what I was asking for. This lack of commination lead to a out of time riff that didn’t have the correct pace and levels of aggression I desired. As I progressed through my project and encountered more collaborations I began to learn how to describe what sound I wanted from people better, an example of this was with Lewis when I we were experimenting with glitch effects. I told him what effects I wanted such as stutters and variations in the sample. I then told him which samples I liked and didn’t, this lead to a successful collaboration due to this increase in effective communicative skills.

Next project I will do my self reflections and evaluations differently by uploading a screencast of my template to my digital space, I would do this because it would give readers of my work would have the opportunity to hear each individual sound and see how they work with other instruments, I found this would be easier after spending hours writing up evaluations and trying to explain how some of my instruments sound and how I made them that way. A screen cast would make it a lot easier to understand as I could quickly run each sound and fluently explain how it works, I also found that I find speaking easier than writing after recording my Viva Votce. This is because upon re-wacthing it I realised that I had the ability to speak in more detail in quicker time during that interview, that is when I wished I would have done this all the way through my project reflections and evaluations.

Did I enjoy the Project?

I loved participating in this project so much and it has made me see what areas in composing I have loved the most and also what parts I did not enjoy as much compared to other areas. My favourite part of this project was experimenting on the MiniNova synth that Ben brought in for me, this was the first time I had every used a synth and I enjoyed it so much. The synth had the ability to develop so many interesting rhythms with it’s built in arpeggiator and well as create interesting sounds with it’s many different modulator parameters. I used this synth in the C section of my music to create a mystical sound in my music, I unfortunately did not have full access to this synth, but in the short time I had my hands on it I enjoyed it so much in contrast to the other parts of the project. My least favourite part of my project was the late stages of mixing my composition, this was my least favourite part in comparison to the rest of the project because your music ends up getting boring as you have listened to it so many times over and over. You have to listen to it many times to fix up small mistakes in your music that need altering, this is important but by far the most tedious process of mixing.