Evolving Suns Audio Blog @evolvingsunsaudioblog - Tumblr Blog

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My DJ Vlog 001 Reviewing DJ Studio Youtube Video here starting doing Vlog post with Blog post on here so get involved and check them out !!

#DJStudio #evolving suns audio #Review #Vlog #DJ #Youtube

Evo Sonic Events Presets Evolving Suns Audio Club 1.0 Showcase

Blog Post 7 Final Product plus feedback and a brief evaluation of of the project The project has been a fun project over the course of carrying out the project. I have found that adjustments were made, and though I started the visuals earlier,I paused the creation of the visuals, until I had created the audio as I thought it was more beneficial to the creation of the visuals. I feel confident in producing visuals for myself again, but I would not do so many at one particular time. The concept album was a real challenge and the fact they intertwined, made it hard to do one thing without the other.I hope you enjoy watching it. From this Blog post I aim to keep writing blog posts on my personal Tumblr page. Thank you.

#trance #visuals #Club 1.0 #conept album

Club 1.0 Blog post 7 Planning the showcase event

The organisation of the showcase is to showcase the visuals online, I have a group chat of various Plymouth and Southwest DJs and producers. I use this group to organise events, for an events company collective that I have set up recently called Evo Sonic Events.

https://www.facebook.com/EvoSonicEvents

The idea with the events company is to source talent from Plymouth, and the whole of the Southwest via Clubbing events. Having successfully planned and carried out an event in April, the idea was made for me to showcase on one of our livestream events, and showcase my work as well as having support from people that help me with the events.

Making the decision on how I am going to stream my showcase from previous streaming, I decided to upload my showcase to Youtube, and set a time for it to premier knowing it would hold its quality and no issues with streaming then.

Event planning, then I had DJs do vinyl sets via Youtube livestream which would end dead at 9pm, I advertised at 9 to switch to my premier link to watch my showcase. Then afterwards back to the livestream for pre recorded DJ sets

Club 1.0 Blog Post 6 Promotion

Most of the promotion with the visual content, tied in with the promotion of the audio concept album which was part of my BA Honours Project.

Having effective planning and goal settings and making sure certain aspects of the promotional process are completed, to promote the music as well as the visuals was really important and vital.

My first task was to approach some record labels, to ask what they would have expected of me, to deliver them music and what their timeline for release. The labels I got in contact with were Cohesion, a Southwest Trance label (Cohesion Records, 2021)

https://www.facebook.com/cohesionrecordsandevents

Where I spoke about what they wanted, so I took on board they would wan,t the finished product, the album in full firstly and then they still might not sign it; it depended on the quality. The other label I spoke to was Joyride.

https://www.facebook.com/JoyrideRecordingsOfficial

They said they would sign the whole album, however they had a promotional period of 12 weeks prior and that meant I would have had less production time and less creative control.

The next step then was to research alternative ways of distribution from which I found out the following about the various distributors that I looked at such as:

Distrokid

Music to stores straight away

All the stores

Apple music Spotify youtube all streaming services.

Keep 100% royalties

Option for royalty split

$19.99 a year

Unlimited releases

https://distrokid.com/

Ditto music

Music on all Stores Beatport for extra £50

Unlimited releases

£19.00 a year

https://dittomusic.com/en/pricing/

Tunecore

£7.49 per single

£23.99 Per album

All the stores

Apple music Spotify youtube all streaming services.

Keep 100% royalties

Option for royalty split

https://www.tunecore.co.uk/

Landr

£20 a year

£5 for a single

£19 for an album

All the stores including beatport

But they take 9% commission

https://www.landr.com/en/pricing/release

The option I then decided to take was to self release my music via Ditto music for a fee of £19 a year. I can release unlimited amounts of music and basically release a whole album at once, which was perfect for what I wanted. Once I knew that I could set a release date and figure out any promotional aspects around the release date. I am a host of a Radio show Liquid Pulse Radio

https://www.facebook.com/liquidpulsegroup

So I have the ability to Premiere the album in hour two of the show which was my plan, talk about it a bit as I host the show and then have the album mixed on the show as a promo, two weeks before the release. The show goes to one of the globes biggest Dance Music Online Radio hosting websites D.I Radio and gets aired every Tuesday evening near midnight. When American listeners listen in, I had a look at the previous releases numbers, and I had gained 10,000 streams last year all from America, that is my target audience. Americans love EDM electronic music in a big way, so me putting my album on the show was vital and all part of the promotional process. https://www.di.fm/

Promos went out via Email. I had looked at promobox for promotions. I had realised I needed to build my contacts for it to be worth it, with a fee that I would have to pay. This is something I will use however in the future on future releases. https://www.label-worx.com/labelmanager/index.php?login=true

Blog Post 5 Creation of Visual content part 2

Carrying on from creation of visual content Post 1. The visual content artistically has come together. I had started to work on the visuals but they got paused due to needing to work on the tracks first, it was much better once the tracks were 100% completed. This was in order to be able to hear aesthetically what they sound like and to have a better understanding.

Going into more depth here I thought it would be good to cover Adobes blend modes, which can be found in most of Adobe's software After Effects Premiere Pro and Photoshop.

How blending modes work

The opacity slider in the layers panel allows you to make use of layers translucent, which in turn allows you to see other layers underneath. So the names of the blending modes can be misleading,though the grouping system is better at explaining the blending modes. (https://www.facebook.com/PhotoBlogStop, 2011)

See the picture below to explain:

Picture From https://photoblogstop.com/photoshop/photoshop-blend-modes-explained

3D Video Editing Effect in more Detail:

In the effects panel and perspective you will find basic 3D. What basic 3D does and allows you to do in terms of what it allows you to do it allows you to move a layer of video in 3D space.

Once applied to you selected clip the options are as follows:

Swivel Y axis Rotation

Tilt X axis Rotation

Distance scales the image on the z axis

Secular highlight adds light that creates a reflection on the layer.

Using Transitions to transition and make clips smooth between layers, this is a very important part of what I have been trying to achieve when creating the visuals. I don't want any jumps or clips to look non smooth. Loops have to look looped and loop back in again, making it look like one continuous loop. Transitions are normally effects that fade out or dissolve, and it can be applied from the transitions presets in the effect panel. There are other ways to do transitions, the manual way of using the blending modes and opacity and key frames, to control when a clip fades and how quickly.

Example of transitions applied between each clip

Club 1.0 Blog post 4 Collaboration

Woking on the Project to deliver the visuals, I thought about using a graphic designer to do the artwork for the album by using the site Fiverr. Fiverr is a site where you can post a job and creative graphic designers can contact me about the job and discuss with me if they want to carry out that work. (Fiverr, 2021)

https://www.fiverr.com/

I straight away had someone add me and we started to message over instagram I gave them my details and instruction of what I wanted my artwork to look like at the time I said some kind of virtual space with some sort of lasers lights something that represented a club. The next day I got some pictures the person had sent me but I found I wasn't happy with them. I then was asked to show some examples of backdrop pictures I sent across and the person asked if I still wanted to use what he had used as the background. It was at that point I was finding it really frustrating to get my point across of what exactly I wanted, so I downloaded some stock image backgrounds, which I paid for from adobe stock and thought I would have a go at making them myself as an example I made a pretty cool piece of artwork I liked and messaged the person to show them what I wanted I said I was now going to do the job myself. The moral here is I think when it comes to my personal choices, I prefer to do my own design work as I can control the quality and get it done so much quicker.

Sometimes collaboration doesn't always work in this situation. It was much quicker working on my own work myself as I could get it done and move on to the next task done and completed.

The conversation with a graphic designer about the art work, my vision for it and why It didn't work out.

So to complete the artwork which I did myself I made a folder of my top graphic designs and asked my peers to judge them and to pick their best design, then determined the design I was going to choose.

#collaboration #Project #Blog

Club 1.0 Blog Post 3 Visual Creation Post 1

Working on the Visual Content

In this blog post I will cover my initial work on the visual content that accompanies the audio, created in my other project as the conceptalbum.

When starting off with making the visuals, it was vital I looked at some ways of creation, in order to form an idea of how I wanted to carry out this process. I decided Premier pro and After Effects is the best option for myself (See Figure 1)

Figure 1: Screenshot of project in Premiere pro and After effects

Various things I have learnt from using Adobe Premiere Pro and in the initial learning process, the first time I used the software, I did a lot of processing of clips blending and overlaying and putting clips in 3D space without using the nesting option. Nesting is like putting your track into groups in a daw.

Nesting is a very useful tool when it comes to editing in Adobe Premiere Pro after reading this article on nesting by (Motion Array, 2020)

https://motionarray.com/learn/premiere-pro/premiere-pro-nesting-tutorial/

I have started using nesting. I work in sections at a time then nest each section.

Other techniques I have used so far using the razor slice tool, to split clips up again. This is so I can work in sections and work on part then once all the parts are done construct all of it together.

So when it comes to layering in Adobe Premiere Pro it is much like layering in Adobe Photoshop, I have experience in photoshop so this is pretty straightforward. To layer an object on top of another you have video layers, which is the number of clips in the sequence, you can stack them on top of each other. I will use the screen layer which allows the layer underneath the top layer, to be seen as well as the top layer. Then it is a case of playing with the opacity setting of the layers, for the desired effect. I will cover these effects in a different blog post as the production continues.

Photo of two VJ loops Layered together

#Club 1.0 #Visuals #premierepro #book blog #Evolving Suns Audio

Club 1.0 promo visuals

Club 1.0 Blog Post 2 Planning and Organisation

Planning and organisation to deliver the project

The planning and organization is key to me delivering the project, in this case the visuals. In this aspect of time, I need to consider how long it will take me to produce the visuals and to make sure that they aesthetically represent the concept albums audio. The delivery is key in how I look to showcase the visuals, making sure I have promoted the concept album as a whole enough, so that it gets enough interest that people will want to view it and it being a success.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic 81% of nightclubs will not survive beyond the end of February 2021 (Houghton, 2021). This is due to 43% not being given any grants or support from the government (Houghton, 2021). Unfortunately this could mean that many chances of DJing will only be able to be showcased online, if help is not given. I wanted to make visuals that can be used in a club and also online, so that people can enjoy and feel like they are in a nightclub setting. Many cultural and creative sectors have benefited from online content platforms, as there has been an increased demand for content online during lockdown (OECD, 2020). This is good in one way, so people can still enjoy and experience music platforms online, however this will have a huge impact on the clubbing and music venues/industry now and in the future.

Planning is important to make sure that I have a good time scale of when I want my project to be completed by. I have redefined my Ganntt chart so I have a clear and precise time scale of when I want to have tasks completed by. This will allow me to see tasks visually and keep track of each task each week. This will drive me forward so I know I can complete everything that needs to be done in order to have a successful product at the end of it.

Friday 16th April will be Liquid Pulse showcase of the audio from the album. Then Saturday 24th April I will do my Visual Showcase online streamed showcase. I have not decided on having people pay yet or not the idea of having people pay and they get the album with the payment or just purely promotional stream. Then on the 30th April I will release the self release of the concept album.

I will need to make decisions on artwork for the album, as well very soon, on its appearance which is something I will use the feedback from my peers with a whole choice of options to get an idea what visually will look good and be the best option.

Having a clear promotional plan is really important, as you can see I already have two ways in which I can promote my album; one being through the radio show that I co host. This gets streamed live on a Friday via mixcloud, and then gets repeated on a Tuesday where it gets played on an internationally known radio station for dance music D.I FM https://www.di.fm/ (DI.FM, 2019). This is a Trance radio station which hosts big trance producers radio shows internationally, this will mean it will get good scope.

I have noticed my own spotify is receiving plays from America, which I put on to the show, being played late which in turn would be around evening time in America. It is an excellent way of me being able to promote myself and the whole album so people will hear it, and then they can promote the showcase coming up where they can see the visuals with it.

Blog Post Club 1.0

Club 1.0 Concept Album

Club 1.0 is my idea to create the immersive environment of being in a nightclub, at a club night in the crowd, experiencing your favorite DJ's banging out the tunes. This is in order to try to encapsulate that aesthetic and feeling and recreate it using audio and visuals.

In a time where we can’t go clubbing or to festivals due to COVID-19, I thought this would be a fantastic way to allow people to experience the feeling of being in a club. It is the feeling of being in a club as a clubber or even as a DJ performer that we all miss.

Carrying out some initial research into this area, I have been inspired by Tomorrowland and it’s virtual version of its hugely popular festival. This is normally hosted in Boom in Belgium in July each summer, however due to the change in the industry due to COVID-19, this past year of 2020 festivals and clubs being open has not been a possibility. Tomorrowland however in my opinion were the true innovators in this situation, they produced a whole virtual festival Tomorrowland Around the World (T. Tomorrowland, 2020), allowing you to go between virtual stages. This in turn allowed producers and DJs to still perform virtually. This video will explain more of how they pulled it off (Tomorrowland Youtube, 2020)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOeub7d44E4

So looking at that model viturtally, and realising I can create a concept album that can tell the story and the aesthetic audibly, I thought the visual side is a fantastic way that all of it can tie together. Having seen various live streams online constantly streaming DJ sets, people getting bored isn't the same as being there in person. With that in mind that is the reason for the visuals. Not being able to perform a live set or a DJ set in a club at the moment as well this gives me my platform to perform on with the visuals as a showcase.

Working on live set for live performance Berlin in April

#liveset #ableton #production #electronic music

https://youtu.be/65nhIMalsN0

My latest release is now out on Cohesion white

New keyboard with lights perfect for cracking on with more production and typing

Blog Post 12 Hardware production project evaluation

The hardware production project has been a really fun project that has expanded my knowledge of hardware production approaches and techniques.

So to start with this project I normally am a producer that produces in the box so for me personally, I thought the restrictions would stop me from being able to create what I was intending to create but then over the weeks and learning the various techniques and approaches. I soon found out I could create the same sounds as I have created in the box but outside of the box in the hardware and in fact, I found it actually sounds better.

Looking at the level of what I have learnt and the way It has changed my approach to how I am producing electronic music I have really enjoyed the modular synthesis and it is something I really want to get stuck into unfortunately at the moment not having the funds means I can’t buy any Eurorack setup but purchasing voltage modular VST a virtual version of a Euroack is allowing me to experiment with modules and patching so when I do get a setup my knowledge will be at a level that will be able to create some really complex stuff. Voltage modular also has a module design tool I really want to get stuck into and making my own virtual modules and then being able to turn them into real-life manufactured modules that can earn me money so I’m not just using it to create crazy sounds but for having financial gain supporting my living.

I have really enjoyed working on collaborations with Ryan fellow classmate to create a unique piece of techno. I will continue to keep experimenting with hardware production methodologies and working with others in a collaborative way keeping up the work and academic research.

I have also found it enjoyable posting the blogs and now feel it is something I am now looking to do on other platforms as a way to reach out communicate and give advice to others that might want to learn about production techniques.

I feel I also might take more time too to look at other peoples blogs they have written as someone’s blog might have some insightful knowledge that might be able to help me do research for another project sharing knowledge is a really valuable tool that can help others and yourself and your learning as someone can communicate and feedback on your work and you then learn from it to improve it the next time. Learning should never stop it is also a way of being able to reflect upon your knowledge as a whole.

Blog post 11 Collaboration and roles

So looking at the collaboration and roles of the collaboration to achieving the end goal product we have been so organised and discussed out what sounds we are looking for that fit in well with the collaboration techno track a lot of hard work went into making sure we did bits in and recording to give us certain parts that we then could add and work within the collaborative process. I feel like the collaborative process went really well myself.

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