I've Moved!

Well not in real life, but digitally. You can find all my new content and blog posts at my new website davidwoodwardmusic.com .

Resonate Album is Live!

After a great deal of hard work, the Resonate album is live on all major music platforms! Check out the following links to hear it for yourself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTGTNWFA4sg&list=PL7Qz7WSgiydh-PIPbI-HgrsHx1tqB8MT5

davidwoodwardmusic.com

Realizations (WR 26)

Originally, it had been my goal to write and produce five songs for my final product. After careful thought and discussions with my mentor, we have decided that it will be best to stick to four songs. Heres why; The main reason is that it is much better to have four amazing songs, then five 'okay' songs. My mentor Jonathan said that in todays music world, people would much rather a fewer song album with all of the songs being outstanding. This can be seen in many successful artists nowadays. A lot of artists are releasing shorter 5-6 song albums with each song being very high quality. This tied into a factor of time lead me to make the designs to only produce 4 songs and spend my remaining time perfecting the songs I have and also working on the two videos and marketing the album.

FPN (WR 25)

The countdown for the days left until final presentation night (FPN) has been posted in the ISM classroom this week. As of Friday, there was 37 days. That means it is crunch time to get everything ready and prepared for FPN, the most important night of ISM. Final product has to be finished, I have to prepare my 45-60 min presentation, invitations need to be created and sent out, and so much more needs to get done for that night to be a success. This past week, I worked on creating the design for my invitation and started writing the introduction to my presentation. For the invitation, I decided to get a little creative and create a little record with a sleeve (seen below). I think this will work out very well and be a great way to invite people to my presentation. This weekend I plan on creating the invitations and distributing them.

Party (WR 24)

Every mentor visit is a chance to learn and explore new ideas. Each visit I am continually learning and getting better at my craft thanks to the guidance and wisdom of my mentor. This past mentor visit, the first thing Jonathan had me do was listen to Beethoven's 5th symphony. At first I didn’t see how listening to Beethoven’s 5th symphony was relevant or would help me with music production. Then the more we listened and talked about it I saw how important it and vital it is for a producer to understand classical music.
This past visit, we talked about how music should be like a party. A party with many people all in their own groups about the house. Each group is talking and having their own conversations, talking about various different things. Then you, the listener, walks into the party. At first everyone stops to greet you, then they go about their normal conversations. You then walk around hearing bits of every conversation. This is exactly how music should be, except with instruments instead of people. The piece starts with a main theme, then breaks out into many different musical ‘conversations’ between the different instruments as you the listener walk around and hear different bits of each conversation. All the while each conversation is going on you just hear the closest one the clearest. When Jonathan said this, it all made sense to me. Just like a mix, there is multiple things going on and when you want to introduce a new idea, the other ideas shouldn’t stop but should keep going lower in the mix. Similar to a party, when you exit one conversation it doesn’t just end, but just gets softer and replaced by the new conversation.

Looking Forward (WR 23)

There is a month and a half left until FPN (final presentation night). To some, this is a reality check but to me this is a checkmark. I feel good about the position Im in. In regards to my final product, I have almost 4/5 songs complete. This means I just have one and a half songs to complete. Technically, I am a little behind on the calendar I created but this is fine because I built in extra time to compensate. I am learning that with creative projects, they often take longer then expected because of how the creative process works. This is also something my mentor warned me about earlier in the year so I feel prepared. All in all, things a going great I just need to spend some time on the project and it will be complete very soon. "Rome wasn't built in a day"

"Break" (WR 22)

This past week I was fortunate enough to have the entire week off of school for spring break. This was a great opportunity for me because it allowed me time to get a lot of stuff done and be very productive. Even though it was spring break, it was hardly a "break" for me. Every day I was productive and I spent a great deal of much needed time working on ISM related things. The first couple days I spent working in my home studio on my album. I got a lot of great songwriting, production, and mixing done. I even started working on the 4th song (out of 5). Then on Wednesday, I got the chance to spend the entire day working at C - Factory with Christian Chavarria, an associate of my mentor, recording and producing one of his up and coming artists. This was a great experience and I got to meet/hangout with some really cool people. Then on Friday, I once again went up to C - Factory to meet with my mentor. We worked on some of my projects, talked, and I also got to sit in on a session with one of his clients. Overall, it was a great week and I got a lot of much needed stuff done.