In this part of my blog I will be reflecting on my project week by week and writing how everything has gone. I will be including my individual learning throughout and also the highs and lows of what I have been working on.

Project Reflection

Week 1

After deciding to base my project on such an important part of history, I feel this will enable me to push myself to create a powerful and poignant soundscape that will aid the listener to gain a better understanding of the African-American Civil Rights Movement and the support and opposition that was involved along with it. During this first week working on the project I also felt a lot of pressure to do the subject justice through the use of a 8 – 12 minute soundscape. The samples I will be using will have to be put together to put the story across well in a brief time, as this week was gathering research and ideas together I felt that using books from the library and internet sources were a good use of my time and I feel confident about starting the project.

Week 2

After making a good start to the project this week I am happy with the rough result I now have for the introduction. The decision to use ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ as a musical bed for the samples to run over was one that I thought about a lot and I’m still not entirely sure about whether or not to use it but I will hopefully make a final decision later on in the project. The big problem I now have is how to introduce the first movement after the intro and what type of beat to use for drums and what kind of tempo would suit it best. The first movement I have settled on is to be based around John F. Kennedy and his role during the Civil Rights Movement and I will be doing all of the movements in chronological order as they happened. The idea to do it this way is that it can tell the story through time, on reflection I feel this is the best method of working on this soundscape as it could be a bit confusing to the listener if events kept keep going back and forth. The introduction I have worked on this week is likely to change as I am not so confident with using the US national anthem as a starting point as it could be seen as a cliche.

Week 3

As a huge part of this project depends on research and week 3 was spent researching about the content of the piece. This area is a big interest to me and so this didn’t feel like much of a chore to do and was really interesting to find out about how JFK spoke about the civil rights subject in his election campaign. Listening research was also a fun part of this week and making notes on various production techniques that have been used in similar works. I am realising more and more that for this project to be a success, I will have to have good solid research to back up the content involved in my soundscape. Although I have enjoyed this week I am also a bit skeptical about how the music will sound behind the first movement as I haven’t composed music for quite a long time. This will hopefully come together as I move further on in the project as ideas will come to me, my time management so far has been good and I have kept on top of my schedule of what I want to do each week.

Week 4

The fourth week involved composing music and writing ideas as I was getting worried about what the  music would sound like behind the samples. After working out different musical ideas, I wasn’t happy with how the project was sounding and I thought it was best to keep my ideas but not use them in the soundscape at the moment. I would be in a better position to start writing music when I had the narration and samples together, this would mean that I could write music based around the what the narration sounded like. Leaving the music out at this point was a risk as I had originally planned to have music involved with the session at this point so the narrator could record the dialogue over the music. Choosing to record the narration without any music would give the overall piece a whole different feel but as the music I had written didn’t fit at this point in time, I decided to take the risk and keep the music ideas for a later date.

Week 5

During this week of my project it was very mundane and repetitive as it was spent surfing the internet looking for audio samples, downloading them and then cutting out the parts I needed in pro tools. This process of importing long audio clips and cutting out parts is a very time-consuming job and it wasn’t my favorite part of the project so far. I do feel however that the project is starting to take shape in regards of the material I need to complete it. I learnt during this week that it may have been better to have found these audio samples at an earlier time in the project which would have meant I could have been recording narration this week. The audio samples I found were from online recordings of speeches, news bulletins and commercials. Many of these audio clips were very low quality as they were originally recorded decades ago but this turned out to be a good factor as they sound more realistic and give the sound of the project a very authentic feel.

Week 6

The time spent recording the narration this week was a big weight off my mind with the project. I learnt a lot about the civil rights movement during my research process and the script writing and recording Oliver was another good learning process. The role of producer/engineer is a good position to have in the studio and you can learn a lot, as I was on my own in the control room I was able to run the session how I wanted. Getting Oliver to read the same sentence three times was done to make sure I had at least three takes of the same line in case I needed to take any parts from the different takes. It was a very productive week and I got some really useful dialogue from the recording session and I am now feeling more confident with the direction in which the project is heading. Now that the session has narration and audio sample, the project is now starting to sound like the original vision I had at the beginning. Once the music is introduced along with my other components the project will start to spring to life and enable me to see where things need to be.

Week 7

To avoid worrying about the second part of the narration being recorded in time, I thought it was best to complete it during this week to ensure that Oliver was still in Lincoln. After finishing all of the narration this week I felt that the project could finally move on to the editing stage as I had all the audio I needed. During this week I also changed the idea for my output of my soundscape as I felt the project had took on a different direction. My choice for output now is that the piece would suit the style of ‘Radio 1 Stories’ in an episode that discussed the African-American Civil Rights Movement. This is because the music and narration are integrated in such a way that the sound is very contemporary and I feel it would fit well with Radio 1. With the recording elements of the project completed I now feel a bit happier about moving onto the music composition and focusing on this in the upcoming weeks. After listening back to all the narration I recorded I was very happy with the results and the overall sound I captured from the microphone. The sound was very good on the dialogue and only need a slight boost on the EQ at around 2kHz, this just added a slight presence to Oliver’s voice as he had quite a deep voice. Looking back the narration was the element that I was most pleased with whilst working on the project so far.

Week 8

The eighth week was based at home editing. I feel that a weight has been slightly lifted this week as my project is starting to take shape and sound like the idea I have had in my head all along. The music is still the weakest part of the soundscape but this will hopefully become stronger in the upcoming weeks. In regards to the mixing process, I am only keeping a rough mix at the moment and in the next few weeks I will be starting to mix the whole project properly. Most of the editing has been quick as I consider myself to be quite fast at editing and I know a lot of the shortcuts in pro tools which always helps speed up the process. I have had no major problems with editing the audio clips although I have had to cut certain gaps in the narration and audio samples to shorten the length to fit against the music ideas that I have. With regards to the timescale, I am on target for the deadlines I have been setting myself and next week I will be replacing the introduction idea that I had (The Star Spangled Banner) with my own version which I will be playing on guitar. This is done because I am still not happy with the intro and I want to put my own personal touch on the project.

Week 9

As I am coming to the end of the project I am feeling good about my progress so far but if I was to do this again I would have drafted in musicians for the music that will be in my soundscape. The music I have so far is certainly sounding like it will be the weakest part of my project but I will try and strengthen this in week 10 before I begin to mix. The guitar part that I recorded this week was done quickly as I was only at home for a day but as the part is small I was happy with the sound I achieved on the recording. As soon as I had recorded the part I used the ‘elastic audio’ function in pro tools to lengthen the part, I have been doing this with different parts a lot on my soundscape as I am trying to make the piece very contemporary and I feel that some parts are very good but others can sound a bit week against what other things are going on. Using ‘elastic audio’ on the guitar intro has made the part sound out-of-tune which I felt fitted in well against the opening audio samples. I am still behind with the music composition but I aim to rectify this in the next week and then I will be back on track with the project.

Week 10

The final element of the piece was sound effects and introducing these has added a nice touch to the piece, I now feel slightly more confident with the project as I go in to the mixing stage next week. On reflection, one major technique I have been using whilst editing this week has been using ‘audiosuite’ to render parts there and then which means I cannot undo my decision, this was done to save on CPU but I have been happy with my decision making as it means I don’t have to keep changing things time and time again. This process of working is much like the days of bouncing tracks down to save space for other tracks and was very common in the past decades of recording. Doing this has meant I have more time to do other things in the project such as editing, blog writing and leveling. As this week is the final week before the project deadline, I am a bit worried about if my soundscape sounds good at all but I have been showing different people my rough mix and the overall feedback has been OK but I still need to do a lot of work. A major regret is that I wish I had began to edit a week earlier than I did and this has been a big learning point for me this week.

Week 11

The last week of the project was spent adding last minute parts, mixing and mastering. The mixing and mastering went very well and overall I was happy with the finished project. I do still feel that the weakest part of the whole soundscape  is the introduction, this could have been a lot better to grab the listeners attention. If I was to restart this same project I would come up with a completely new idea for the intro as opposed to the US national anthem. I wasn’t happy with the guitar part either due to me recording it with distortion instead of clean, a clean sound may have sounded clearer and  easier to listen to. I do feel that if this was to be aired on a format such as Radio 1 documentaries then it would fit in well as my overall sound is quite contemporary with regards to the drums and keyboard parts. The structure of the piece is one area that I feel is quite strong as it is kept clear with an intro, four movements and an outro, the ending is probably the most powerful part as it brings the story to a poignant climax. Overall, after reflecting on the finished product I am very happy, but there are some areas that could be a lot stronger. Areas such as the intro, more instrumentation in parts and poor quality audio clips are the main areas that needed strengthening but as with any project there are always bits that could have been improved. I enjoyed the learning process during this project and I feel that I have learnt valuable production techniques, a good knowledge of the civil rights movement and how to write and compose the elements needed for a soundscape.