AUS 220 - Week 2 Blog

So far, in this trimester, we’ve been introduced to some of the assessments related to a particular intensive (Music production, post, live sound) for AUS 220 and the three assessments for CIU 211. We have been briefed about some of our assessments and we’ve started working on them.

Right now, I’m working with my assigned group on our Demo project and the Podcast project for AUS 220. Until now, it has been a smooth journey for me and I’m really hoping to do better than my last trimester. I don’t really know my group-mates that well but they seem like nice guys and so far, we’re all contributing equally and working hard on our assessments.

Our recording sessions for the Demo project have been great and I’m very confident that we’ll be able to achieve some great results and finish everything on time. The Podcast project has taken off well and we’ve already planned everything that we’re going to do. We’ve created a progress timeline for this project and we really hope to stay on track and do quality work.

Currently, I’m not stressing about any other assessments as we are yet to be briefed about them. Moreover, I like to focus on one thing at a time. I try not to worry about things that are going to happen next week; instead, I set small goals for the day and try to achieve them to the best of my potential. I believe that these small steps towards progress are critical in balancing my time and health between my studies, freelance work, job and family.

The Demo

For our group Demo project, we chose the song “Distant friend”. It was a group decision and we did not have any troubles choosing it over the other as everyone in the group was inclined to do it as soon as they heard it. I wanted to choose this song myself as I thought it was quite dynamic and the chorus sounded more interesting. Also, I was having these wild ideas about how I could change and recreate this song in so many different ways.

For our references, we were all brainstorming across different styles and genres of music and started picking our favorites from each. Choosing our references was easy as we all came down to some similar styles of music.

We were thinking about some early 2000s Linkin Park and Limpbizkit’s Nu-Metal vibe with some Kanye West’s 808 and heartbreak and trap/hip-hop music.

Till now, we’ve had two recording sessions for this project in the Neve studio. We recorded the acoustic piano, drums and vocals in session 1 and 2 respectively. I’m very happy with the piano recordings as they sound great. The performance was good and I think it has set a good platform for us to build on.