#md6320

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.

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:

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.