Evaluation of FMP Project

Evaluation

Critical Analysis

Looking over my work I am very satisfied with my work and consider it to be at a professional level. Compared to artists who do work at a professional level I would say all the music I've produced and recorded is up to par, this is because I feel I have gone about my project, analysing every detail to the last key before making or beginning the creation of each track. Furthermore looking into each artist I planned on researching before I worked on the song I wanted to be influenced by them, really helped as I was able to pinpoint what aspect of their music I wanted to include or be the main focus of my work. The main issue I faced with my project is time management, I had really poor time management throughout the project as I would tend to spend too much time working on one song, which led to the next song or another aspect of my work not being how I visioned it, furthermore this is what led to the un-complete track which was supposed to be influenced by Herbie Hancock's Cantaloupe Island. Moreover the amount of time I gave the group I was working with to record Keep Us Safe was not sufficient enough, I would give more time for this by letting my group be aware of my plans much earlier in the project. In addition working on the score was also quite challenging as although i had knowledge with music theory, I had never written a whole song for a range of different instruments which was why my teachers and logic was such a big help, but even so I had never used the logic score function so I learnt a new skill within logic. If I was to start this project from scratch, I would start off by researching the artists songs that I would be taking influence from so I could get started on the creation of each track much earlier and much more efficiently, rather than just doing notes for my research as I go along I would write all my research I had gathered at the end of the week rather than when I thought I had gathered enough notes. In the future I plan to improve by being much more aware of my time, I could do this by writing a detailed plan of what I wish to achieve by that week, and if one of the items on the checklist are in-complete they would then take priority over the next week. Moreover I would also like to be able to have enough time to mix my tracks more throughly as I feel this would have improved my songs and help them fit them image I had in my head.

Research

My research was based around, three artists, Nina Simone, Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock also my research includes the different types of modal jazz and modes within jazz. I looked into the keys they used in an individual song of theirs, and took an aspect of their work and changed it into a way that suited me and included it in my tracks. The research methods I used were, reading articles both online and paper copies, watching videos that explain how a track is made or explain more about the artist and reading other online websites that give a lot of information about scores, keys, modes and the artists themselves. I feel I completed an adequate amount of research apart from my research based on Herbie Hancock. I feel I should have researched more into Herbie Hancocks Cantaloupe Island and the creation of that song. Furthermore I should have researched throughly the style he plays and what makes him so unique and why he was chosen to play with Miles Davis. Through my research I have learnt a much better way to create songs using keys and changing the feel of music its self simply with the chords and how I play the chords.

Technical and Practical skills.

My research has helped my practical work by letting me understand modes and which modes I would be including in my tracks. This helped because I was able to get the aspect of music I wished. In addition from looking at the different scores the artists used I was able to have a better understanding on doing my own scores, which made the process a lot shorter than I originally thought it would be. There are a range of skills I used which helped me finish the project. Firstly, setting up a recording studio was a key skill, this was a skill I learnt in secondary school and I was able to set up the recording studio with the short time we had swiftly as, this was a regular occurrence. Furthermore, writing scores is a skill that I had developed over the course of this project as to be able to record the instruments I would need a score, although most of the score writing was done by logic I had to converse with the artists to see what kind of score would be best for the individual artist.

Project Management and Working Methods

During the FMP a few problems arose, my lack of knowledge on modal jazz and chords, proved to be a main factor as working on my tracks couldn't proceed without enough information on both of these subjects. To counter this i made it priority in my research to start researching this. This helped because once I had learnt these two subjects I was able to create and finish both of the tracks swiftly.
I have not completed all the work intended for my project, I missed out on my track which was to be influenced by Herbie Hancock and parts of research that was to be done to help with the Herbie Hancock track. To attemept to make up for missing out on Herbie Hancock I put more detail into both of my tracks Keep Us Safe and Conversement, and doubled the research I planned originally to do on them, this helped the success of both of these songs and taught me more about Jazz in general.
During the access time slots that were given to us i made use of these by attending all slots and working on my music as much as possible since I could do the majority of research and written work elsewhere.

Collaborations during the FMP

One of artists that I collaborated with during the project would be Eleanor. Eleanor was very useful to me as she helped write the lyrics to Keep Us Safe and allowed me to record her singing so that I could use her voice in the Keep Us Safe track. This was helpful because at the time I was unsure whether I would be getting any vocals on the tracks at that time. Furthermore I worked with Jack, Joshua, Alex and Monique, all of these artists helped me record the instruments of Keep Us Safe and they were very helpful as we had limited time in the studio to do this recording session.