Industry - Career Plan

Personal Statement
Throughout my life, I have always enjoyed engaging in Physical Education and would like to pursue my career in the field of sports science. I have always had a keen interest and have felt intensely when it comes to the practical and theoretical work concerning Physical Education. I am very aware of the importance of exercise and the related issues of diet and fitness on the prevention of injury in the human body.

I am currently studying a UAL Music Production Level 3 course. This subject appealed to me due to my background within music growing up and it sparked an interest with the industrial side of music like being involved with Pr companies. Although I study Music production and studied Music technology in school, from around year 10 my curiosity with fitness and health grew, I started attending my local gym around 3-4 times a week and altered my diet to achieve the targets I was hoping for, I noticed that I enjoyed this life style.

The style of music I produce now varies from hip-hop, R&B and Jazz, whereas it used to only be hip-hop and the slightest bit of jazz. Whilst I produce music, I'm also very interested in setting up recording sessions to record artists and bands. Furthermore this is a skill I think I excel in and took a liking to when I first started studying music in year 10, as it gave me the tools I needed to record artists closer to me like friends and family making it cheaper for them to start their career.

Fan Base
My fan base is mainly young people ranging from 15-25, this is a rough estimate as this age group tends to have most of the similar interests. Also this does not limit only this age group to listening to my music as you'll find people of all ages listening to my music.

Live Performance
As I'm a producer/sound engineer, performing live is not something I aim for, however having one of my produced tracks performed live is a strong possibility. As some of my tracks have vocals on them and all of them have instruments which can be played live. It would be fairly simple to set up a gig for one of my tracks and just have the occasional synth playing in the back in track.

Performing at the Nottingham Motorpoint Arena is in sight, the fee will be quite expensive as I'm a producer starting off but due to connections I've been promised discounts.

Marketing
For Marketing social media is my main platform, being 'tech savvy' has its perks when you are a starting producer. Twitter is one of the main social medias I use to promote myself and any events I will be attending, due to the ability to 'retweet', you're followers can share the promotion with their followers and its an on going cycle, so you're almost guaranteed to catch some eyes. In addition if you don't have the followers to support you, twitter also offers an advertisement button. You pay for having your tweet promoted onto people who don't necessarily follow you. The more you pay the more people the promotion will reach.

I have photos for my ep's and album covers for when I release them.

Releases
I will be releasing albums and singles within the next coming months, I'm working on fine tuning them till I am content with the product. These albums and singles will be released alongside the photos I told you earlier to be used as album covers etc. I will be releasing them through spotify, apple music and hard copies on cds.

Live Production

Traktor

Using Traktor and dj'ing was one way I worked on my technical development. I was taught how to beat match using the decks, use the hi, low and mid passing filters and a wide range of effects including flanger which would alter the sound of the original tracks.

Drumpads

Using Drumpads was another way I worked on my technical development. Learning to use drumpads was a bit challenging to begin with because, I had to choose a sample I would be putting into the drumpads or pick and choose using the scissor tool on logic a sound out of my own music and fine tune it so the sound would fit the drumpad. 

Looping

Using a loop pedal was also another way I worked on my technical development, using the keytar as the instrument and the loop pedal to record different segments. I quickly learned how useful this tool could be.

Farz's assignment

Upgrading Crazy Tazy 

When it came to improving Crazy Tazy, I decided I would start from the very scratch and changed the chords, I made the chords using a chord trigger and an ES2 synth, my favourite types of synth are quite sweet sounding and soothing to the ears, however I also like when flanger plays a bit so I added a flanger effect and turned the rate of the flanger quite low.  I also added a space designer reverb to the synth. 

For the melody, I used a synth I created called Breathe, I called it breathe because it has an ambient sound that reminds me of breathing smoothly, I made it using sculpture. Sculpture was very confusing but after messing around for a while I found the sound I was looking for. Furthermore I also added a flute and placed it slightly behind the melody synth, this acts an echo but it's a different sound. I put space designer reverb and flanger on both of these instruments.

I created the rhythm using ultra beat, I used three channels for ultra beat; one for hi-hats, one for the kick drum and the last one for the click and tom, the rhythm was fairly simple to make, I put a flanger, overdrive and reverb on the hi-hats. The kick drum was fairly easy to find but it was difficult to make it prominent in the mix, to make it prominent I added overdrive which helped a lot.

Improving What Do You Want

Improving What Do You Want wasn't as long a process as Crazy Tazy as I didn't strip the track apart. However it still took time as I added ultra beat whilst the rest of the song was already in effect which was like creating the rhythm of a song even though the song was already based off a different rhythm. I added a flute and piano to play the melody. I used flanger on the Hi-hats to give it a more metallic, sharp sound, furthermore I used flanger and echo on the flute to give the track a more like dream/fantasy feel. The drums lead the song into the next part with the snare hits then would stop whilst the bass took over.

Industry

Personal Statement

I'm Miles Edwards-Francis, I'm a producer who mainly focuses on the Jazz genre of music, this is interesting because I research all the different aspects of Jazz to ensure that my style has some relation to a piece. 

Fanbase

My fanbase are Jazz enthusiasts, who like to hear different styles of jazz, they are also producers who like to listen to my pieces of work so they can compare as a community.

Live Performance

I plan to get artists to perform my music at the Harrison. I'm am currently working on more gigs, I have performed for my school before.

Marketing

For my marketing I will be using twitter to take of advantage of my followers who will support me. Furthermore I have friends who will also be doing the same to help promote my music. The advertisement includes a cover of my mixtape and a picture of me.

Releases
I will release a 4 track mix tape, with merchandise of my clothes for my fans.

Harrison Gig Evaluation

Harrison Gig Evaluation

To live engineer at the Harrison gig me and Taylor volunteered, upon arrival we were given a brief talk through of what instruments to expect and how many vocalists to expect. For Ria's group; Tega was the on the electric piano, for the electric piano we connected a jack-male xlr lead into the Loom setup which connected to the stage box, which then ran into the mixer. Furthermore there were three vocalists, Ria, Porcha and Khadesha. To cater for the three vocalists, we set up two mic stands closer together which would be for the back up singers and one separate mic stand for the lead singer. We connected all the microphones using an XLR lead into the Loom, which led into the stage box and then into the mixer. Ria wanted reverb on all of her songs except her last one, this made it quite easy to control the mixer for her performance because we just had to change one slider as she announced her last song. Whilst we were doing the soundcheck Taylor was on the mixer and I was ensuring the sound was sounding how it should. During the soundcheck we noticed that the right speaker wasn't working. We waited till the performers had finished playing, flattened the desk and investigated the issue. The speaker hadn't been switched on by the plug. We restarted the soundcheck and everything was fine. Here is a photo of the mixing desk for Ria's group.

For Grace's group, we needed one mic stand and an XLR lead for the lead vocalist Grace and a chair and jack to male XLR lead for Leonie as she was playing the guitar. There are no complications with Grace's performance, she wanted reverb on the vocals and reverb on the guitar, me and Taylor decided that the reverb we had set for Ria's lead vocals was fine for Grace, and we had the slightest bit of reverb on the guitar. The mixer was set the same for Grace's group so there was no need for a photo.

For Gloria and Carol
The set up was similar to Ria's group minus the three backup singers, they wanted less reverb on the vocals, and the piano to be louder in the mix than the previous groups. They were quite easy to cater for as they knew precisely what they wanted for their sound.