IAMFIREWEED

I make noise here and connect jumper wires

[iamfireweed]

Internship Week 8 (17th Sep - 21st Sep)

This was my final week, and we had to do a few meetings. This was all related to the fundraiser that is coming up. We had to meet with Litewerkz, as well as Ebenex. 

Regarding Litewerkz, they are a group of installation artist that did this year’s Night Festival, and we are looking to have them put up some installation work at the festival, and incorporate it into one of the sets. This would mean a cross-disciplinary set between artists and musicians.

For Ebenex, we managed to secure a good deal for backline and settle the required equipment for the festival. Also we locked down dates for bumping in as well as tech runs and soundcheck and show timings.

Overall there are so many things that I learnt during my stint. One of the key takeaways was having a very good business mindset. It is very interesting how all the musical businessman move and shake the music industry. In a sense, it is them who shape the music scene and decide who and what gets played and becomes famous. I think this internship really helped me realise what I want to do in the future.

[iamfireweed]

Internship Week 7 (10th Sep - 14th Sep)

This week, which actually included the week before was Music Matters. It was an eye opening experience as this was a full scale event with no room for errors. I was dealing with international professionals who have done this for their whole lives and are responsible for the biggest musical acts the world knows. 

I was tasked to usher in the speakers to the places they had to be in at the correct time. And also made sure that they had their refreshments and also make sure that their talk set ended on time by holding up cue cards. This also meant that I got to sit into their talks. This was very enriching and I learnt so much. Their approach on how to tackle the music business was really very mind-blowing.

Also I had to settle some administrative issues, like some of the members actually signed up but were denied of entry upon signing up. I had to solve the issue by asking them to re-sign up again with the given link and only then the issue was solved. Overall the weekend was very fruitful and I definitely learnt truckloads of knowledge. 

After the Music Matters episode, life resumed and we had to focus back on the fundraiser festival. This meant a meeting with Zouk who wants to help SGMUSO with matters of the local music scene. 

[iamfireweed]

Internship Week 6 (3rd Sep - 7th Sep)

In this week, I had to do quite a few things. I had to officially send out emails to various mediums to engage their help for the fundraiser festival. This includes a video crew, production company, PR company, backline company. Some of these company we already have connections to, but we had to set up meetings with all of them. 

After that, we had to choose volunteers to help out with for Music Matters from the existing list of volunteers at SGMUSO. At the same time I had to also source for more companies to partner up with so that we can bring more benefits to the people. Also I had to design and print a pull up banner for the Made In Singapore showcase for Music Matters.

This was something I had never done before in my life. Designing is something new and I definitely struggled a lot with it. Thankfully I had designer friends who were able to guide me along on the dimensions, as well as some formatting help. Even down to printing shops to get the job done ASAP. 

[iamfireweed]

Internship Week 5 (27th Aug - 31st Aug)

This week I had to start laying down some groundwork regarding the Fundraiser Festival. This meant beginning to start an excel sheet on the things to do, as well as the list of contacts that I had to reach out to. This ranges from musicians/artists to F&B outlets. This is really rather daunting because I have never organised any event, not to mention that this event is rather large scale. I then gathered the necessary information and laid it out. I also sent two emails to 2 bands. 

Also, work on Music Matters continues. Now that we have gotten the promo code, we can input it into the email draft I created for the paid members, and finally send it out. Also I was tasked upload the promo for Music Matters speakers highlight on all social media platforms. 

This week we attended an event by Singapore Tourism Board. This was one of their initiatives to showcase different sides of Singapore, and music was one of them. We headed down for the showcase, as well as managed catch the team involved in pushing the local music scene to be used in Singapore Tourism Board related promotional material. We also wanted SGMUSO to be the main organisation in-charge of music export of local music overseas. It was a very crucial meeting.

[iamfireweed]

Internship Week 4 (20th Aug - 24th Aug)

For this week I had to churn out promotional material for the upcoming Music Matters 2018 event. For this year, SGMUSO is in-charge of helping out with the Music Matters Academy. In this one day academy, there will be a bevy of international professionals, from distribution powerhouses to local artists like Shigga Shay, giving insights on how they became who they are. This is incredibly insightful for anyone as I think the local music scene can stand to gain something just by listening to how these professionals worked.

So first I had gather bio photos of some of the more notable speakers and do up a press release to be sent to our paid members. This was rather tough as some of the speakers did not really have good photos so I spent some time finding out good photos that best represented them. In doing so I also did some research on them and I was able to pick out which speakers I wanted to catch. 

In this promotional mail thats to be sent to paid members, I had to include a promo link that entitles our paid members to free passes to the academy. So this meant that I had to wait for the Music Matters team to generate the code before I could proceed.

[iamfireweed]

Internship Week 3 (13th Aug - 17th Aug)

The week started with the Music SocieTea event. It was my first time being part of the organising committee and it was something new for me. I had learnt so much on the job. Like being a good host, and knowing everything there is to know about my event. This was something out of my comfort zone as usually I’m an introvert, so mingling and engaging with others was not my forte. 

As the night went by, I picked up some PR skills by watching David (my boss) work. Being the organiser I was also allowed to chat with Syaheed (Bedsty/Believe) and get some insights on the topic beforehand. And also because of this I had more time to ask him my own question before the session even started. It was really insightful to pick the mind of a seasoned music businessman. I feel that the business acumen that he has is something that can’t be learnt overnight. To be able to pick his brain and learn from his experience is really valuable to me. 

After the event ended, we had to mingle with the participants, and spread the word about our membership, as well as answer any queries that they might have. 

Also in this week, we had a call with the Music Matters team from Singapore and Hong Kong. This was because the next upcoming event that I would be a part of would be Music Matters 2018. During this Skype call, we had to iron out details regarding international speakers, the timings, and role delegations. 

On top of that we also had two other meetings with potential partners that could work with SGMUSO for our upcoming Fundraiser Festival in 2019. 

[iamfireweed]

Internship Week 2 (6th Aug - 10th Aug)

This week was my first week handling most of the company activities by my own. This meant continuing on the previous task of creating posters for the upcoming Music SocieTea event that is jointly organised between SGMUSO and COMPASS. This event would be happening next Monday.

Some administrative issues cropped up, where some of our paid members tried to use a shared email like a band email to entitle all the users of the email to the benefits that we are giving to our paid members. So I had to contact each individual member and notify them to sign up with their personal email. 

From there I had make sure they are successfully signed up, and cross check the attendees with a list that COMPASS had sent over to ensure that everything checks out. 

After that, I had to compile a list of possible contacts that we could send out the news of our membership relaunch. This consists of media outlets like bandwagon/juice, and other online editorials. 

Overall this was a very short week because of the National Day holiday.

[iamfireweed]

Internship Week 1 (30th Jul - 3rd Aug)

This is my first week of internship, which is also the handover week for my upper study. I have chosen to intern at SGMUSO as I feel that what really resonated with me was being someone in the backend. I wanted to create opportunities for musicians and artists to have their works showcased. 

It was a rather stressful week for me because there was only a week to pick up everything from where my upper study left off. That includes taking over ongoing projects, as well as being briefed about upcoming projects that my upper study has begun to make preparation for. 

One major thing that I had to immediately take over was the launch of the new membership program that SGMUSO is having. This introduces a new paid scheme for members to get entitled to more benefits, and is going to be launched come 1st August. This scheme aims to convert the 2000 + free members that SGMUSO has (affectionately called the “Friends of SGMUSO”) to paid members. This would help generate more money for the organisation to work with, and in turn generate more benefits for everyone. I had to pick up on all the various sites that the company was using to track members, their payments as well as their personal data. There was really many things happening at one time. I also designed a gif for our social media advertisement.

One such event that I had to undertake immediately would be the MusicSocieTea that was being held by SGMUSO in conjunction with COMPASS on 13th August. This was an event where one of our council members, Syaheed, would educate members of SGMUSO about digital distribution. This event would be held in the following week, and I had to send out different emails to the paid members, as well as the free members. This meant learning to use the mailing site Mailchimp, as well as filtering out the paid from the free on our Memberspace backend site. 

[iamfireweed]

A demo of how my final sketch should sort of look like.

[iamfireweed]

Playing with get audio example 1

[iamfireweed]

Interactivity Example

[iamfireweed]

Colour Example

[iamfireweed]

Animation Example

[iamfireweed]

This would hopefully my final sketch. By improving on the previously present shapes, I added WEBGL as well as object rotate. So this would borrow elements from all the 5 previous sketches. This gives it a more wholesome look and overall more satisfying. 

[iamfireweed]

In this sketch I am implementing many things. Firstly I used a microphone input to get audio from. Next I segregated the frequencies to its relevant groups, lows, low mids, high mids, and highs. Then I mapped actions to each frequency group, and by inputting the audio from me playing drums, the relevant frequencies would trigger the actions. These actions include creating new shapes, moving the shapes and changing the colour of the backgrounds.

[iamfireweed]

This is a FFT sketch as well, but to more clearly show which segment of frequencies are present, I made circles to grow bigger as the present frequencies in the spectrum became louder.

[iamfireweed]

In this piece I am playing with interactivity. By simply mapping the circle size to the position of the mouse I can control its size.