Project one- Post Mordem

During the project, I began extremely motivated, producing most of the Project within the first week of it being provided. To begin with I imported the acapella and determined the key signature and tempo I wanted my song to be in, which was F# minor and 124 BPM. After I agreed upon my key and tempo, I was able to lay down a chord progression and some basic drums, just to make a draft of the sound. Being as I was working alone on this project a lot of these decisions that would be generally difficult to make were easy. I really think that my initial motivation and focus was important, as I was excited to get my ideas out and experiment with this project, to ensure that I express this same motivation for other project's I feel that I must store my ideas at the earliest times possible as this is where I feel perhaps a lot of my better ideas happen, storing these ideas will also give me opportunities to expand upon them at a later time. I feel that applying this method to all future project will ensure that I have multiple options and ideas to work with. However, it is also important that I maintain my motivation, not just using it in the beginning of a project and slowly losing interest or motivation as this could become counter-productive and achieve the opposite of what I want with my project management and organisation.

Being as the project developed from some spur of the moment processes early on, there were definitely many different stages that this song went through. Initially I was going to keep the song with the original acapella, however, after deciding that I was going to post the song on my soundcloud, I decided to collaborate with one of my classmates to prevent any copyright infringements as well has to make the track more- 'self-made' and getting the experience of collaborating and interacting with others for this song. It wasn't easy trying to plan time where we were both available and at some point I was behind my projected schedule, but we managed to pull through with plenty of time to spare, leaving more than enough time for comping and mixing the vocals along with the rest of the track.

On the subject of mixing, this was the first project I had done at SAE where I had the chance to use Fl Studio in one of my productions, which for the most part, I enjoyed, I felt like it boosted my productivity a lot being able to use both Fl Studio for production and composing and Pro Tools for mixing, recording and comping. The only issues I experienced were with importing different files from FL to Pro Tools which were only minor issues.

This was also the first opportunity I have had to perform my own vocals over a song, which was a positive experience for me. Prior to this track i've seldom ever rapped but I saw this as an opportunity to 'broaden my horizons' and I found the whole experience to be thoroughly enjoyable and a good confidence boost, I will definitely be doing this again for future songs.

I really enjoyed executing this project as it was a good opportunity for me to be creative, using and creating different synthesizers, writing my own melodies and drum patterns and being able to write and perform my own lyrics. All of which I found to turn out quite well and somewhat achieve a good sounding song, although I definitely can improve, I think that doing a bit more research into the sounds and synths I implemented would be a great idea, not only allowing me to learn different methods but also apply these creatively to achieve new and interesting sounds, I also definitely feel like I should be trying to practise more live-instrumentation over exclusively producing 'in the box' however, for the song I have done, I don't think that this was necessary. I also feel that lyrically I can improve but being as this is my first attempt at a song, I'm certain that I can continuously improve.

For planning, I didn't really follow too much of my initial plan, I did pay attention to my timeline and was able to follow its general completion goals for each week. I was able to complete and submit project before week 7 and was satisfied with the quality and direction of the track. Other than that I didn't really regularly update the planning document as I didn't feel the requirement to, being as I was working alone I already knew what I did and didn't need to do. That's not to say that it was pointless, the plan was effective to some extent with time management and being able to begin with planning some ideas and direction.

All in all, this was an enjoyable project and I definitely learned some new soft skills, as well as many new methods and concepts that I can apply in future projects. If I were to change anything about the project I would probably be my time management and motivational inconsistencies.

If you would like to see the completely mixed and mastered version is is available on my soundcloud.