Final Wrap - Up
The final blog of this trimester, gotta say it's been fun! I've learnt so much this Trimester, its been great. In this last blog i'm going to sum up my final project, which was a jingle project. Something new yet again, pushing me to try things out of my comfort zone, which was most of this Trimester!
For my solo jingle, one of the most time consuming parts at the start of this assignment was trying to figure out what kind of trailer i could work with. I eventually found this nintendo ad, which i was keen to try out because i remembered i had this sample pack of all these different nintendo games on my computer hdd, from when i used them in a song.
I listened to the music in the original and thought it had a pretty upbeat rock kind of vibe to it, which i thought suited it so i wanted to stick with that. I listened to the original only once because i didn't want to be too influenced by it. However one thing i wished i did was actually look up the song that was in the original and the bpm, or at least tapped the bpm out and used the same tempo. i worked out quite late in the process it would of been nice to have the rhythm changing along with the video properly, however i did just set it to 115 bpm and it didn't end up too bad.
I started with the bass line, using a vst Ampeg svt3 amp and using decapitator for some fuzzy distortion. I started by just plucking along to the click which is something i do just to lock in properly. I ended up thinking that would actually work for the rhythm, and i was starting to get some ideas for drums, so i laid down the drums using Addictive Drummer playing the beat on my midi controller and using a sample for the fill. I went with a sort of pop upbeat kind of groove, i honestly didn't think about it to much, just tried to steer clear of making it sound too heavy - which is what i mostly have been involved in music wise. Towards the end of the video i was getting really sick of the riff, and the last bit has all the games in the video played through really quickly. Amassing samples had already been quite time consuming at this point even with my video game sample pack. So i thought i'd have a sort of break down at the end, going half time on the drums.
After that i laid down the guitars. Just Di, basically staggering the guitar parts to try and keep the jingle interesting. I used a few different amp simulators, playing through a Marshall stack and an orange stack, mainly clean and following the bass line with a little lead later to keep it moving.
I sourced most my samples from freesample, and i used a few recordings of my own voice for some bits. I also used a sample from a previous sample library assessment. There was tons of samples used so it would take ages to list them all. It was really the first time i've ever matched up samples with a video and i was surprised at how easily it can work.
So thats the rundown of my solo jingle, now for the group jingle we did a SpaceX trailer by Elon Musk, it's a very space themed trailer about how Elon musk plans on using rockets space travel to get around countries in the world in under an hour. It's a very cool ad and a very cool idea, so we thought it would be cool to redo.
Our group sessions were plagued with a bit of bad luck and technical issues all the way throughout, which had been a massive time consumer. We had one session where neither of our laptops were playing the videos correctly, always stuttering or lagging. We ended up putting down some tunes in that session and scrapping them all. Next session in the EMP lab at uni we gave it another crack and laid down some synth parts. Even in the EMP lab we had some technical issues unfortunately. We went with some Space themed synths and got some foley together.
After the Second session i was off to Perth to spend time with family, so having already done my share of the work i left the other two guys to just sort a few more samples and do a little touch up mix. I've tried to keep in contact but i honestly don't know how they've gone with finishing up so i might have to get stuck back into it, just a bit more difficult over here because i don't have any of my instruments/gear.
I don't have the final mix of this track as i'm doing this one just yet but hopefully i get it before anyone reads this.
As for any of the freelance work i've done this Tri, i'm not sure if it counts but i recorded a 5 track EP for some of my mates from Perth who've played in bands and written some stuff. However i did end up playing Rhythm guitar on the EP so i thought it might not count for the freelance credit in the unit. I also didn't get paid, but it has taken up a huge portion of my time, especially with mixing. I'm only just now getting to a point where i'm happy with the sound, so it's not released yet, but if it counts towards to freelance project i'll happily show you guys.
In regards to my thoughts on how well i did on this project. I'm actually quite happy with my solo jingle. I really didn't know what i was going to do, and i thought it was going to be really difficult, but it was actually lots of fun. It was very time consuming trying different samples and getting ones to work, which is why i recorded some bits myself. I think the biggest challenge i faced in regards to the solo project was just the time i took to decide which one i wanted to do. Everything sort of fell in to place step by step however like i said, it was time consuming. As for the Group project obviously i'm a bit disappointed that i had to leave to Perth early, but this was booked ages ago and i have to deal with some personal family things, along with getting to intern for a week in my mates studio, recording a few tracks for a band! However i made sure i did my fair share of the workload before leaving, and hopefully everything comes out good!
I also made our website which TBW productions, just a simple website layout with our Home page for our group jingle, and our individual pages for our solo jingles.
Well thanks Clarkey, Nick and Tom for the trimester, it's been fun, learned heaps, and i think you guys kill it! Have a safe and merry christmas \m/
