Home (WR 20)

This past Friday I went on my 5th mentor visit of the year. Every time I go on a visit I am learning and experiencing many new things and ideas. This is especially true for my most previous visit. We talked and discussed many topics, but two main ideas stuck out to me. The first idea we talked about was the concept of a countermelody. The second takeaway I had was the idea of ‘home’ within a song.
The first big thin Jonathan explained to me is the importance of having a countermelody. To put it in context, we were working on one of my songs and there was a long guitar solo. He said that while the solo was good, there should be some things added to support it so the listener does not get board. Jonathan had a really good analogy to illustrate this. He said the guitar or main melody should be like the road of a road trip. Most of the time you are focusing on the road, but every now and then you look off for a moment to see a mountain or lake. The counter melody is the mountain/lake. Its something that distracts the listener for a moment but doesn't take away from the road.
The second takeaway I had was the idea of having a ‘home’ in a song. Jonathan said that every song should have a solid home, but the song should have a good amount of time away from home so that when you return to home, it truly feels like home. He said its just like a real home, your home doesn't feel special until you have spent time away from it. Like when you go on vacation, and then return to home it really feels special to be home. In a song, Jonathan explained that you can achieve this by having parts of the song that feel unusual so that when you return to that home, it feels special and has a greater emotional impact.

Final Product Calendar (WR 19)

One assignment that was due this week was the final product proposal and calendar. The proposal is simply an overview of what my final product will be and the calendar is the schedule of dates of when each segment of the final product needs to be completed. When I was completing the calendar, I had a couple of eye openers. The first and most important is that I do not have as much time as I thought I had. I initially thought, "I have plenty of time, its not due until the end of the year" which is partly true. The project is due at the end of the year, but that is only about 2 months away. I now know that if I want to complete this album (my final product), I need to start ramping up the amount of time I spend working on it. This means putting my other projects on hold for a few months and focusing on this album. Another thing I realized from completing the calendar is that planning ahead is very crucial. For example, I want to have physical copies of my album at FPN (final presentation night). For this to happen though, I have to have the album complete and sent off a couple of weeks prior to make the copies and get it published.

Original Work (WR 18)

This past Friday, the Original work project was due. For this project, I had to do primary research and write a report summarizing my findings. I decided to conduct an online survey asking people about their musical preferences and how/why they like to listen to music. I then gathered the 130 results and looked for correlations and links between different factors. I ended up finding some important links, some of winch even surprised me. Once I had looked over all of the data, I then wrote an assessment about my findings. Along with the assessment, I created numerous graphs to aid the assessment and give the reader a deeper understanding about the data and the correlations between the data. Besides a few printing issues, the project went really good and I learned a lot about how/why people listen to music. Now the reason I decided to conduct this survey was to better prepare me for my final product (album). I now know a lot about what people prefer in a song, what kind of music videos they like, how most people listen to music, etc.

Mentor Visit 2 (WR 17)

On Monday January 19th, I went on my second mentor visit. I met up with Jonathan at his studio in Dallas. When I arrived, Jonathan told me that today we would be working on a project for one of his clients. It was a latin/pop song and our task for the day was to record acoustic guitar. We started by setting up the mics and line checking the patches. Jonathan showed me so much that I did not know before like how to position the mics, what mics to use, how to get good levels, etc. He then grabbed his guitar and went to the live room and I got to run the studio. I was in charge of recording him play. One really valuable thing I learned was how to operate ‘punch-in recording’. Punch-in recording is basically starting recording the channel after the session is playing. I did not know how to do this prior, but I now do and will be using it a lot because of how handy it is.

While we were working, Jonathan mentioned that he would be out of town for the next two weeks because he is going to NAMM (National Association of Music Merchants). This is really cool to me because I've always wanted to go to NAMM and now I personally know someone that has gone, Jonathan even played at NAMM last year.

Research Survey (WR 16)

For part of my original work, I decided to do some research on what peoples music preferences are. I set up an online survey of 12 questions. The goal of the survey is to find out exactly how people listen to music, and why they listen to music. I asked questions such as, "What platform do you most frequently listen to music on?" or "What device do you most frequently listen to music on?" to find out specifically how most people listen to music. I also asked questions as to why people listen to music. An example would be "In a song, what is the most important to you?". I also asked some questions about how/why people follow bands/artists on social media.

Now all this information is great, but how does it help me? This information is going to help me gather real life information, and apply the results to my planned album release at the end of the year. For example, I am planning on making a music video for one of the songs on the album. I had no idea what kind of video to make, so I asked "In a music video, what is the most important to you?" and most people have been saying that they would rather see a storyline related to the song. This is just one example of how I am going to use the data and there will surly be many more uses for it.

Mentor (WR 15)

Over the break a lot of exciting things happened to me in regards to ISM. The biggest being that Jonathen Camacho from C-Factory Productions said yes to being my mentor! Jonathen is one of the best music producers in Dallas and I am very excited to get to work with him all year. He produces all kinds of music ranging from latin, pop, rock, and so much more. You can read more about Jonathen and C-Factory here (http://christianchavarria.wix.com/c-factoryproductions).

Another exciting thing that happened was that on this past Saturday, I got to visit my mentor for the first time. The first thing I experienced was Jonathen working with a client. They were in pre-production and had just created a scratch track. Once his client left, Jonathen then took the time to help me with some of my songs. We worked on mixing them and basically rebuilt them from the ground up. He showed me all the things I was doing great, and all the things I need to fix and improve on. All in all, this has been a great break and I got a lot of productive stuff done.

Research Showcase (WR 14)

This Tuesday is the 2014-2015 ISM research showcase. At this event, I will be displaying all of the research I have been doing this entire semester. This will include having my presentation board, portfolio/binder, my atmosphere, and of course myself. I have prepared all of these things in advance and they should be all ready to go, despite some expected last minute changes. Theoretically all I have to do is show up!

There is a great amount of planning and preparing that will go into the showcase on Tuesday. First, I  have my display-board (Seen below). I put a lot of time into it making sure everything was perfect. I also have updated my portfolio to include every assessment I have done so far in ISM. This includes; All my research assessments, interview assessments, weekly blogs, and all of the other various assessments. Finally, I have been preparing my 'atmosphere' for the table. While most people put snacks or refreshments, I am going to have a 'create your own song' element to my display. I will have my portable studio setup, and allow people to record their own short song. This will be great because it will give people a realistic idea of what music production is. Now, with every detail in place, all I have to do is show up.