#md6311

Bandcamp: https://mattyapp.bandcamp.com/releases

Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/matt-yapp-1/sets/the-truth-behind-the-smile

At the beginning of the major project module, I set out to create an EP of my own solo material. I wanted to use this module, to test myself and showcase my abilities as a composer and as a producer.

Through this project, I wanted to explore the different aspects that take place when releasing either an album or an EP. Some of these aspects that I was interested in looking into included, the distribution of the music as well as the marketing and promotion.

The genre of music that I wanted to create for my solo material, falls into genres as such as indie and pop punk. This of course, is the type of music that I had planned to, and wanted to release when I first pitched my idea for the major project.

I had planned to write music that is similar to the work of bands as such as Moose Blood and My Chemical Romance, and I believe that I have been able to achieve this with my final product. I have done this by, using similar instrumentation as these bands, as well as, talking about similar topics in my music. A good example of this would be the first track on my EP, ‘Best it Gets’, in comparison to Moose Blood’s song ‘Gum’.

I have found however, that during the writing process of my EP, I have not only taken influence from emo and pop punk bands, but I have also taken influence from indie artists and bands as such as Catfish and the Bottlemen as well as Stereophonics.

I have always been fairly comfortable, when it comes to composing different pieces of music in multiple genres. However, my main concern when beginning this project was my lack of experience and ability when it comes to lyric writing. I had originally planned to attempt the lyric writing myself and then approach songwriters from the popular music course to give me tips on how to strengthen my work.

I began to try and write lyrics using different techniques, as such as brainstorming and the cut-up technique, after reading different books and online articles on how to lyric write. I was able to write lyrics that I was fairly happy with for my song ‘Not Over It Yet’ and worked alongside Tom Bentley to polish them and make them sound as good as possible.

Being a new artist, it is difficult to know who your audience will be and where in the world you will have followers.

Being a member of Indigo Haze, and seeing the ways in which we gained followers, I decided to try and run my social media accounts in a similar way.

The first way I tried to gain a following, was to simply follow and invite everybody that I am friends with on my personal accounts, and see how many of those people would start following my artist page. I did this as I knew it would be a good starting point and would help to guarantee a few followers.

After a lecture on social media tactics, I decided that I would add different hashtags onto my Instagram posts. This was something that I know we did on the Indigo Haze account also, with all of our posts with hashtags gaining better responses than the ones without.

Another tactic that I attempted was, to put artists names that played similar music to myself in my Instagram bio and then follow people who follow those band pages. This again was something that worked for Indigo Haze. I did not gain many followers from this tactic, but I do believe it could be because I tried it before releasing any music. I plan to try it again now the EP has been released and see what the response is like.

You can see below the stats from my different social media accounts.

To try and promote ‘The Truth Behind The Smile’and myself as an artist, I set up social media accounts across a few different platforms. The platforms that I chose to use were, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. I chose to use these social media sites because, after doing research on bands as such as Fatherson and Moose Blood, I was able to establish that these are sites that allow an artist or band to create a relationship between themselves and their audience. Sites as such as Instagram and Facebook, are also very good ways to showcase pieces of work and share different events.

I decided after a month of creating the accounts that I would delete my Twitter account. I debated for a while whether I should keep it active, but decided against it due to the fact I was not getting as many followers on that platform as I was on sites like Facebook and Instagram. I feel I was getting less followers and likes on Twitter because, I was not posting consistently enough.

Below you can see some of the content that I have been uploading onto my different social media pages.

The interesting thing that I have found, is that posts with pictures of me always seem to get better likes than the posts of posters and other content.

By the end of the major project module, I have been able to write an EP of original material and release my music onto major streaming platforms as such as Spotify and Apple Music. I have been able to use this module to create an identity for myself as a solo artist, not only through the music I have created, but also through different social media platforms. In this evaluation, I am going to be looking at my project and discussing the areas that I believe went well, as well as the areas that did not go as well as I would have hoped.

All in all, I am very happy with the outcome of the three songs that I composed for my EP ‘The Truth Behind The Smile’. I believe that, the three songs on my EP are all strong pieces of work that showcase my ability as a composer of rock/alternative music.

I am very happy with the final outcome of all of the songs on my EP, especially because there were points over the course of the module that I was worried that the music that I was writing did not fall into the genre of music I was intending to write.

‘More Than I Ever Did’is a great example of this, with the original demo sounding more like a pop song than an indie/emo song which was what I was intending to achieve by the release of the EP. When comparing both the demo version and the final version of ‘More Than I Ever Did’, I believe the change in guitar tones and the addition of the lyrics really helps to drag the song away from the pop genre and into the indie and rock genre.

As well as the composing and the writing of the music on my EP, I decided that I wanted to produce and prepare all of the tracks for release myself. I decided to produce the EP myself because, I have had experience mixing and producing pop and indie music in the past, and wanted to challenge myself by mixing a heavier genre than what I am used to mixing. Overall, I am happy with how the production and mixing of ‘The Truth Behind The Smile’ has gone. My main concern when beginning the mixing process was that, I knew that I am not the strongest vocalist and was worried that I would not be able to make the vocals sound as good or as strong as the instrumentation on all of the tracks. I am also not very experienced in using any forms of auto tune, so was also worried that I would over produce the vocal. Looking at my final outcome, I feel that I have managed to produce the vocals to a satisfactory standard that matches the quality of the instrumentation.

When it came to the production, I compared all of my tracks to the music of bands as such as Moose Blood because, they are bands who play music within a similar genre to myself so I thought it would be a good to use some of their songs as reference tracks.

As well as having reference tracks, I asked a number of different people to listen to my mixes and give me any tips on parts of the mix that they would change. I found this to be a useful exercise because, it allowed fresh ears to listen to the EP and helped me to gain more ideas on what I could change or add to each individual mix.

In terms of mastering the EP, I asked Tom Bentley and Will Davis to master all of the tracks. I did this because I am not the strongest at mastering, and it also allowed people who haven’t heard too much of my music before to offer their opinions and views on my music.

Part of this project included distribution. I used Emubands, as they allow you to only pay once to keep your music online for ever. I chose to upload my music onto all the major streaming platforms, as well as sights as such as Soundcloud and Bandcamp.

When I first pitched the idea of my solo project, I had created a spreadsheet of session musicians that I wanted to play on my EP as well as a timeline of when I wanted to achieve everything. I explained in assessment 001, how it may prove difficult to get certain session musicians into the studio due to them either being busy with their own projects or with them not living particularly close.

This was the case with a lot of the session players that I had originally named on my spreadsheet. Due to having to find replacement session musicians, my timeline of events did not really go to plan when it came to the recording and mixing processes. You can see below the new list of session musicians.

In addition to the music, I had to create an identity for myself as a solo performer. I expressed in assessment 001 how I wanted to try and come up with an artist name similar to Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds. I was unable to come up with any ideas that I liked so decided to simply name my artist name ‘Matt Yapp’.

A part of creating an identity for myself, included having a specific image. I decided a good way to create this image would be, through photos and the EP artwork. Over the course of this project, I have been working alongside different photographers to get the right shots for my social media accounts. As I have mentioned previously, I have been inspired by Moose Blood so decided to try and create a similar image.

The photos below are an example of how I have tried to create a similar image for myself.

I have experienced some difficulties when it comes to working alongside different photographers during this project. I have been on multiple shoots, but have struggled to get responses from photographers once the shoot has finished. This means that I have not received most of the photos taken on these shoots, and have had to use photos of myself taken from past gigs.

The artwork for ‘The Truth Behind The Smile’was designed by Conor Chipp. I approached Conor after seeing that he was looking for work, designing artwork and posters for people. I have also seen work that Conor has produced for his own projects, and knew that his style would match the music that I was going to release.

I discussed with Conor, the types of bands that I was inspired by and expressed how I quite liked the idea of having something not to complex and out there. After looking at the artwork used by the bands I had named, Conor went away and created the artwork, which you can see below.

One aspect of this project that I would like to explore, would to start playing live shows. I feel that, live music is a great way to reach out a larger audience who may not have heard off or come across you as an artist before.

I have never performed by myself in the past, so I have decided a good way to start is by signing up to play at Wychwood Festival 2019, on one of the university run stages. I am hoping that, the live performance at Wychwood will get a good response from people attending the festival and, will also help to grow my confidence as a solo performer.

One has started from looking at the rhythm and groove that are the foundation for the House music and other EDM genres. One wanted to experiment with this little bit and make it different from others. One is not a trained drummer, so only way for building rhythm is the programming. This approach gives results of the beat being very robotic like lacking the groove (fig. 1), of course, the best method to apply would be utilizing swing function in the DAW my project, however, concentrated on experiments which involve manual adjustments and shifting of the notes (fig. 2 and 3). This method is easy to do while utilizing Ableton's Push controller and doesn't take much time, but the effect is better from the swing function and allows for creating the push and pull effect to the rhythm.

Fig. 1

Fig. 2

Fig. 3

Next advancement One has made during this phase of the project was cross use of DAW's. One has been working with Ableton DAW for a very long time, knowing this DAW well is helping with the quick workflow. No DAW is perfect and felt like project lacked instruments in the arsenal, so One has decided to use a Logic X DAW along with the Ableton. This advancement resulted in learning new DAW.

One has developed effect rack in the Ableton software allowing for full of feedback wash-out effect that combines ‘Replica’ delay and equalizer. The result combines delay feedback with EQ (Fig. 5) in the way in which when set to maximum feedback is set to 84% (Fig. 6) and EQ works as high pass filter cutting all frequencies going into delay below the set point. Extra controls of delay time and feedback High cut were added to.

Fig. 4

Fig. 6

Example

Utilizing function of the freeze in Ableton’s reverb to create atmospheres.

Example

Samples and found sounds were extra ingredients in the songs, figure 7 represents this approach and the utilization as chords.

Fig. 7

Example

Found sounds recording were made with the use of the Zoom H4n recorder. One captured sounds of the old photo cameras and interesting objects found while exploring the Polish city of Torun (Fig. 8 and 9)

Fig. 8

Fig. 9