Week 1
To start our project, we discussed what our target audience will be. I came up with the idea of aiming for teens and young adults as we are included in this audience and know most about the sort of music they like. This would include short cover songs to make sure we didn't spend too much time in the studio doing the whole song as this would mean trying to find available space and because they're complex songs and may take longer to record each instrument needed than we have time for; eliminating concerns of logistics. Rebecca then had the idea of doing a remix of songs however after discussing the pros and cons we thought it would be too difficult and take much more time to plan each song we are going to use and then put them all together. Also, because we would need to make them up from scratch, learning each part would be hard for the short time we have. I then came up with a new idea that we could do nursery rhymes. This is because there's a variety of songs which are easy to cover and won't be too time consuming and wouldn't necessarily need a studio to record it. Our target audience therefore would be children around 6 and under. This means we could use Garageband and record it in the classroom which means we wouldn't need to take much time outside of lessons necessarily to record them. After I promoted the idea to the group we decided to use this idea.
We then did some market research and asked a variety of questions to a parent of three young children. This included questions such as "what types of music do your toddlers listen too?" and "where do you play the music to your children the most?". We came to the conclusion that instead of doing just music tracks, we wanted to include storylines as well to engage the children more (an audio book). This audio book would be based on the story 'The Gruffalo'. One of the answers to the questions was that they mostly pay attention to the tracks in the car with a hard copy of the stories and songs so they can also actively learn from it. We took this idea and I came up with the idea of doing the story in the inlay of the CD case to make it easier for it to be stored in cars rather than a big book. Also it's much easier to make. Will decided the inlay should include pictures for the children who cannot read such as children aged 3 and under. Also, for 4 and above, simple sentences to explain what's going on. Nursery rhymes and audiobooks would both suit this age range as it would entertain and educate them.
We all contributed our favourite nursery rhyme as a young child and picked our 3 favourites over all. These songs were 'Incy Wincy Spider', 'Baa Baa Black Sheep' and 'Wheels on the Bus'. We picked these 3 because, thinking about our market research, they can do actions along with these and it will get them to interact more.
Week 2
In this lesson we focussed on the technical and logistical requirements and constraints. Thinking about how we could record the tracks, equipment needed and facilities, I came up with the idea of using Garageband on an iPad. This would make it easier to know how to use it. This would also mean that we would be able to record it through headphones in any quiet space that can find. This would be much easier than trying to find a time slot for the studio and trying to find time of east recorder to be recorded, eliminating the constraints. We all decided that the ability of the performer had to be that they had a calm voice as the narrator of the audio book. As it would be easier for one of us in the group to do the recording to eliminate time constraints, we decided to have Rebecca as the narrator. As for the other characters, I will be the mouse, Will as the Gruffalo, Brandon as the Fox and James as the snake. We chose these roles for each other as we thought our vocals would fit these characters the best, to make the track as realistic as possible.
We then assigned takes for each person to complete by the next lesson to help us. Will's task was to print off the lyrics. Rebecca's task was to get the short script of the Gruffalo.
Week 3
This week we rehearsed our audio script 'The Gruffalo'. We went through it many times to ensure each person knew what they were doing and made sure the flow went nicely. I came up with the idea of creating a short musical tune that repeats in between the pauses in the script when it's the next scene. Also Will came up with the idea that sound effects would make the piece more intriguing and more appealing to our target audience of young children. For example, loud stomping for when the Gruffalo is coming along.
Week 4
This week we focused on getting the recordings finished. We recorded each scene around 3 times until we were happy with the recording. All we need to do now is find different sound effects we can use and put the whole piece together.
Week 5
This week, as a group we discussed which different promotional material we could do to advertise our music product. Some ideas we came up with were: poster, website, flyers, press release and social media. these are all effective ways in which our music product would be noticed as they are all easily accessed by the public. We assigned who was going to produce which. Brandon is creating posters; Will is creating flyers and leaflets; Rebecca is creating a press release; James is creating a website and I am creating a twitter page for social media. we also discussed what our company and album name is going to be and James designed a logo which we can add to all of the promotional material so it is easily recognisable.
Week 6
I have created the twitter page for our project and I've included the logo created by James.
Promotional Material
This is my Promotional Material - I focused on social media with Twitter. I have also put my Industry Practice research further at the bottom of the page.
Twittertgh
Evaluation
As part of my team, for unit 2, I took a lead role. This role was to ensure everyone knew what they were doing and sort out the tracks and make sure they were completed. Immediately, I took control by helping the group come up with different ideas which helped the group move forward. I came up with the ideas such as using garage band on the iPads and that it would be easier to do simple nursery rhymes considering all of the constraints.
In the process of developing our ideas, we came up the deadline for certain tasks to be completed by. However we had to push these deadlines back due to complications. These complications included myself being ill so therefor I couldn't do the track when we planned to and also other people missing lessons. This resulted in everything being pushed back. To make sure everything was done in as least time as possible, jobs we allocated to different people. This sped up things which made it easier for our group.
A negative aspect of the recordings, was that there is the sound of distant drums in The Gruffalo recording. This came from people near by playing them. This was hard to prevent as the only place we could do it in was school and people were always around. If I had time to redo the recording, I would have made sure that we recorded it in a quiet place with no extra noise. Another negative aspect is in the Incy Wincy Spider recording. In the recording, the vocals sounds slightly muffled as is over ridden by the backing track. This is because they were both recorded at the same time on the same track. if we had more time, we would have recorded the separately to make sure the balance was right. also, the twinkle twinkle little star recording had the markers in the wrong place when exporting so the track wasn't comopelte.
The Three Tracks
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