Over the past 9 weeks of friday classes, I have learnt plenty. By being placed in a new uncomfortable environment I have been able to study completely new music genres and production techniques. On top of this, I have had to pay special attention to tracks and artists I am already familiar with, analysing them on a deeper level that I would likely not have done on my own without being pushed to do so.
Within our first week, we were tasked with answering the question that was: What is music production? This was a heavily intriguing start to the course and gave me a brief glimpse into the classes for the future while also preparing me for the blogs I was going to write in the coming weeks.
During week two we delved into analysing songs for the first time. With my choice to analyse ‘Blue Hawaiian’ by Pavement, i gained a newfound love for the track. When discussing other tracks I had analysed such as ‘Orange Peeler’ and ‘Bloom’ I realised there were multiple released versions of each, including demos and re-recordings that I would’ve unlikely known about if I wasn’t tasked with actively listening and analysing each.
Later on we looked into the African record label ‘Hakuna Kulala’, exploring culture and how it can relate to the music in different areas of the world. I was able to relate to my classmate Orlando when we both chose to research the artist ‘Adomaa’ for our weekly blog. Admiring her wilful combination of her gospel background fusion with her jazz and r&b influences to create some songs that I genuinely enjoyed.
As the course has progressed i have looked into more obscure niche genres that I hadn’t really even heard of before such as breakcore, industrial and noise. This exposed me to a wider spectrum of music, expanding my appreciation for music and my knowledge on the subject. By researching them I discovered unique sounds, innovative techniques, and unconventional approaches to music production that could possibly inspire my own work.
For example when Brian Eno utilised tape loops extensively in his early ambient works like “Music For Airports.” He would record segments of music on tape loops, allowing them to play and overlap, creating layered and evolving sounds and textures. Although not physically possible for me to do, I can recreate such effects on ableton for my electronic music production project.
Throughout these past weeks, writing the blog posts has made me a lot more confident in myself and my ability to write creatively and reference my work, perhaps even some ideas and certainly some techniques for music production for my other assignments.