Music Production

5/22/23 (Written 5/23/23 @7:28 PM) 3 hours spent, 87 hours total This day, now that I had a recorded song, I mostly practiced other music. I started working on my fingerpicking technique  on guitar for most of the duration, learning Bob Dylan’s acoustic  rendition of Baby Let Me Follow You Down. As I’m new to fingerpicking, it proved to be a challenge but I persisted and ended up getting the intro down to it. The finger pattern stays roughly the same throughout the whole song but Bob varies it a bit. I followed a YouTube channel to help me with the pattern. I felt a little bored because I was done with my song and a little sad that senior project is  all over. I would’ve recorded more songs (covers most likely) but Scott seemed  burned out with it all when I went over to him. Song I was learning: https://youtu.be/QgJ9oUX1pbA

  With my first  (and only complete) song ready, my second week was a race to start recording. I did not expect the process to be so slow. I wanted to record my guitar, vocals, and harmonica only in one track but looking back on it, if I started recording them separately from the get go, I would probably have a more complete recording in terms of instrumentation. It was thrilling to record my song as I was doing, it was almost like performing it live because if you mess up you have to restart. That is why Scott told me to perform it as if I am in a pub or restaurant, where I would have to improvise if I forget lyrics. I ended up doing this on a few of the takes. I also learned how each recording is different, you can never replicate the same recording exactly. This is similar to acting for me, as I can’t replicate a performance, what comes out comes out. During this week I started experimenting with writing another song. I ended up finding a nice chord progression and started writing l

  5/20/23 (Written 5/21, 11:15 AM) .5 hours spent, approx. 84 hours total I couldn’t believe it was the final day when Scott told me at the end of the day! I actually didn’t even know it was the final day until he reminded me when I came to record. Since I was over the minimum hours, I slept in and didn’t do anything project-related until 1:00. When I got to the studio, Scott said that it was too late to add other instruments to the mix because multi-tracking takes a lot of hours. I was initially disappointed, but I came to realize that I learned important lessons in this project, namely that  things take  time. We spent about a half an hour reviewing two takes of my songs. I was then tasked to listen to them on my own and decide which of the two takes I prefer. 

5/19/23 (written 5/23/23, 11:14 AM) 83 hours total, 4 hours spent Getting to the music studio at around 9, I only spent around two hours total on my project before the afternoon. I felt confident in my song playing-wise. I ran through it a bunch of times, practicing playing my song all the way through with a metronome. When the afternoon came around I finally got around to recording it. We did another three or so takes of the song, none of them were perfect. I came to realize that it takes skilled musicianship to be able to play a song all the way through on beat without messing up, especially when guitar, vocals, and harmonica are being recorded all in one. We spent about an hour and a half recording. It was the second to last day and after that Scott said for me to play the instruments on separate recordings for the next day. 

5/18 (Written 11:19 PM) 8 Hours (79 total) I got to the recording studio at about 8:30. I started working on a song using a chord progression and riff that I had worked out on my guitar last night. I got a melody and started writing lyrics to it. I did this for a couple of hours, alternating between practicing my established song and working out my new one. I returned to the studio later today after lunch, 2:30 PM this time. However, I practiced for an hour again until band recording came along. Recording was very challenging as I didn’t have the lyrics memorized! Looking back, that was the crux of my problems. If I had my lyrics memorized this would’ve been a lot smoother. I came up with a semi decent recording, but I will try again tomorrow with the lyrics memorized.

  5/17 (Written 5/18, 10:51 PM) Hours: 8 Total Hours 71 This day I actually started my session by brainstorming other song ideas. I thought of writing a song about both of my deceased grandfathers, one of whom died four years before I was born and the other this year. I spent a solid couple of hours from 9 AM doing this, and then I went to lunch. After I got back from lunch I continued working on playing my song for about four hours. This was pretty much the same as the day prior: blowin’ the harp, playing the guitar and singing  all in unison. I tried my best to stay on time  with a metronome to prepare for the recording session which would happen the next day. This was a challenging endeavor as I was juggling multiple instruments at once while remembering lyrics.