Major Music Project

Tyler Wilson-Poole UOG

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This is an example of an AMV (Anime Music Video) that I created for my song Stasis. I would like to replicate this using different anime for my other two singles: Firestations and Ultra Violence.

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Here is an example of a song I am working on, before and after getting feedback from my A&R team.

The first version definitely had some good ideas and gave me a solid foundation to work with for the rest of the song, but my A&R team felt that the build up was good but that the drop didn't feel impactful enough. To fix this, I added some extra effects to the bass tracks, and tweaked the hi-hat's EQ to remove some of the top end and make it sound a bit softer. I also altered the top line to fit the chord progression of the bassline which definitely fits the song better and adds more of a melody line which makes the drop more impactful.

They also suggested that the second time around I should add a variation of the drop, keeping the same underlying chord progression but adding a different melody line or maybe even some vocals. I changed the top line's melody whilst keeping the bass line the same as the first drop, and also added a vocaloid-type effect over the top of everything to give the impression of a human sung melody line while also keeping the electronic feel of the music.

Overall, I am very happy with the way that the song progressed and definitely gives a clear example of how my songs progress over time, especially when given helpful feedback from other people, this time my A&R team.

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These three songs, Stasis, Ultra Violence, and Firestations, are three songs that I am happy with and are a completed product. These songs portray the moods and themes I will be exploring in this album, and are the three songs that I will be releasing as singles in the leadup to the full album release on the 2nd of May 2023.

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In this video, I talk through my creative decision-making using my song Ultra Violence as an example. I talk about my songwriting, recording, mixing, and mastering process and the thought process behind all of this.

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These are all of the bits of work from my Ideas folder. This folder contains riffs, chord progressions, drum beats, and various different sounds that I like and could potentially use in songs later down the line. I find it incredibly helpful to quickly record ideas that I have in my head and save them as individual ideas which I can then look back over for inspiration or help if I get stuck when trying to write new music.

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Market and Audience Research

For my Synthwave album, I will be uploading it to Spotify, SoundCloud, and YouTube. Synthwave is a genre that is very community orientated, with a lot of original music being posted for free on these platforms. Because of this, I will be uploading to these platforms as SoundCloud and especially YouTube are very public community driven sites, and Spotify is the standard for music releases in the modern digital age so I will be releasing my music there are well. I will be promoting my music using my social media pages on Facebook and Instagram, as well as making a TikTok account to promote it there as well; this way I will be able to get a broad range of listeners from a variety of different platforms and try to reach as many people as I possibly can.

I plan on releasing three singles in the runup to the full album release on the 2nd of May. These three singles will be released weekly, with each single getting an accompanying animated music video that I will be putting together from various different Anime series that fit the mood and aesthetic of the songs that I will release on YouTube. This is common practice within the electronic music community and can really help to emphasise the tone of the songs, as well as making it more interesting for people to watch and give people something to look forward to in regard to the releases. These singles will serve as a teaser for the full album and get people interested in the album release and hopefully excited to listen to the full album on the day one release. These singles will be teased on social media before being released on Spotify, SoundCloud, and YouTube, with the full album being released on the 2nd of May.

Spotify also has a large amount of curated playlists for different genres of music, including Synthwave music. These playlists are a great opportunity for people to hear new music from different artists as they contain thousands of songs and have thousands of followers, with the songs in the playlists being rotated on a regular basis. If I were to release my music on Spotify, there is a chance that some of my songs will be added to these playlists and reach an even larger audience, with people then becoming fans and listening to my other work.

My music will be mainly aimed at Synthwave fans, as well as Retrowave, Chillwave, Cyberpunk, and Ambient music fans, and electronic music fans in general. Although I would class my music as predominantly Synthwave, it definitely has elements and influences from all of these different genres as well, which is why I believe that fans of these genres will like and want to listen to my music.

I’ll also be aiming to target retro video game and 80s Sci-Fi and Horror fans as the sort of Synthwave I create is also heavily inspired by retro video games and movies from the 80s such as The Thing, Halloween, and Blade Runner.

Below are some examples of work from Synthwave artists and also the curated playlists:

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My brilliant padlet

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This is a link to my Padlet, talking a bit about my work and influences

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Final Project Plan

My full length Synthwave album needs to be live in the public domain by the 2nd of May 2023. In order to achieve this goal, I will be outlining my projected project timeline for Semester 2 going forward. 

Below you can find a simple Gantt chart of my projected timeline

I plan to do my research and songwriting side by side up until February, meaning that I will be gathering inspiration and listening to similar artists, such as Xennon and Gunship, whilst writing my own original music. This will allow me to keep my reference points close whilst I create me own music to get the exact sort of sounds and music that I want to, therefore creating the best music I can.

I will then start to get these ideas down by recording them into Reaper in a rough mix at first. This means I will be doing my songwriting alongside the recording process as everything I will be writing will be electronic based. This will also give me a good idea as to what ideas will work well as full songs and what ideas won’t, so I can quickly narrow down my ideas into the best selection for the album.

Once the majority of the recording has been done, I will start to mix and master the songs I am happy with whilst also finishing off any songs that I might not be as happy with. This will allow me time to make sure I have the best selection of songs possible for the final release in May.

I will then continue the mixing and mastering stage right up until release on the 2nd of May, making sure that the work I will be putting out into the public domain in the best possible work I can do and making sure I am happy with it all.

There will be a lot of overlap between the different stages as one stage comes to and end and another stage begins, but I believe that this is how I work best and this timeline will allow me to create the best work I can on time and also allow me to create a full length Synthwave album that I am happy and proud of.

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Major Music Project Description

For my final major music project, I will be creating a full length album in the genre of Synthwave. Synthwave is a genre that I have a lot of love for and also a lot of experience in when it comes to listening, writing, and producing music. I will aim for around ten songs on the album, with the album length being around half an hour to forty five minutes. All of the instruments I will be using will be electronic synths and drum machines, with the exception of human vocals and potentially some guitar work in the form of guitar solos. Everything will be recorded, mixed, and mastered by myself without the help of anyone else.

Below is my work in progress folder. Here I store all of the ideas I have for songs, whether it is full demos of just random hooks and riffs. It isn’t the most organised folder but it helps a lot when I feel like I’m stuck in the writing progress of a song as I have a backlog of random ideas I had that I can look through and get inspiration from. Some of these ideas have also been the starting points of full songs I have produced.

Below is what a typical project session will look like when working on it using the DAW Reaper. I have a template setup that I like to use when creating synthwave music as it already has all of my instruments setup with the correct effects and plugins, such as EQ, reverb, compression, flangers, etc. This allows me to quickly get into the writing and recording process without having to worry about setting everything up first, and allows for consistency of sound between different songs. Of course, I’m always adding new instruments and settings to my songs as my ideas and sound change and evolve, but this template is always a good starting point and a massive help in the songwriting process.

The TyrellN6 synthesiser is the main synthesiser I use when creating synthwave. It has a lot of really useful presets with lots of different sounds and instruments programmed into it, but it still allows me to fine tune everything on the synthesiser itself to really get the sound that I want for my music. 

I also use a variety of different plugins to get the exact sound I’m looking for. This includes using EQ, compression, reverb, flangers, and delays, some of which you can see below.

In terms of my inspiration, I take a lot of inspiration from retro futurism themes as well as the past in general, mainly the 1980s. Classic films such as Blade Runner and its soundtrack composed by Vangelis, as well as a lot of John Carpenter movies and soundtracks such as The Thing and Halloween, all played a pivotal part in fuelling me with inspiration when it comes to the atmosphere I want my music to give off.

The Synthwave artists Xennon and Gunship also give me a lot of inspiration for the way I want my music to sound, especially the sounds of the instruments. These two artists are at the forefront of Synthwave music and create incredible music that transports you to a different time and space entirely and I take a lot of inspiration from that.

When creating my music, it is very important for me to have a clear target audience in mind as I want my music to be able to reach a certain niche of listeners that I know will appreciate the sort of music I am producing.

The obvious target audience for my music is of course Synthwave and electronic music fans, as my music can be classed as Synthwave and is very electronic based. However, I also want to target fans of classic 80s Sci-Fi and Horror movies such as Aliens, The Thing, Halloween, Friday the 13th, etc. as well as retro video game enthusiast. I would class myself as both a retro video game and classic 80s movies fan and want to create a type of music that I myself would enjoy listening to; the type of music that has the ability to transport you back in time and space to a different place altogether and make you feel nostalgic for a time that you might not have even been alive to experience yourself. Music is an incredible tool that allows the listener to transport themselves away from their current surroundings and that’s what I aim to do with my music.