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Fmp- Weekly Diary 

March 5th 2020

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Today I had my 2nd session with El Train who is the producer Im working with for my original material. I have also been bringing my keys player/co-songwriter to these sessions as my 2nd pair of ears, just because he is amazing and really understands/knows my vision for the songs. In our last session we worked on one of El Trains songs in which I wrote lyrics and melody and My keys player laid some EP riffs throughout to bring up the track a bit more. I was really impressed with the session, because the 3 of us really clicked and the session flowed really well. Today we worked on my song ‘Under Your Spell’ which we recorded from scratch with just keys and vocals and then started to build off that in which El Train had some fantastic ideas and me and Finn were able to bounce off really well and suddenly we have a whole new vision for the song, which is incredible and i'm so excited to see how it develops. Our next session will be in 2 weeks time, in the meantime I am going to find some reference tracks for ‘Under Your Spell’ for the inspiration of sounds and production.         

March 7th 2020

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Rehearsal with keys player

This afternoon my keys player and I met to develop a set list for our restaurant function on the  27th in which we will be doing a 30 minute trial set to see if they would hire us on a regular basis, we then have a gig at a care home on April the 17th which will include the same set but with some added old classics. 

So for the moment we are learning-

 

  • For Once In My Life (Stevie Wonder) 

  • Moon River (Audrey Hepburn)

  • Killing Me Softly (Robeta Frank)

  • I’ll Be There (Jackson 5)

  • Dream A Little Dream (Louis Armstrong)

  • Misty (Sarah Vaughan)

  • Hold on (The Internet)

  • Let's Stay Together (Al Green)

  • On & On (Erykah Badu)

  • What A Wonderful World ( Louis Armstrong)

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We are going to start off with mastering these 10 songs putting our own unique swing on each song. 

We will then start to add more songs as we go.

March 18th

Unfortunately due to COVID-19 my studio session tomorrow has been cancelled and so have my up and coming gigs, these are hard and weird times but all we can do is keep positive, healthy and make the most of what we can do to complete our FMPs at home.

 My Artist development project will carry on but with less documentation of my practical work, I will focus on my music industry research, lyrical progression, and vocal health exercises and documentation. Luckily my keys player only lives around the corner from me so we can hopefully meet to do some songwriting and when everything blows over we will have a load of material to take to my producer.

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March 22nd 

Even though everything is crazy at the moment, I was able to have a session with Finn yesterday in which we worked on the production of a new project. We really like the vibe of the song and I am yet to write lyrics and melody for it. The great thing about this song is that it doesn't have a clear structure so you can really experiment vocally with different melodies and phrasing and take it to a completely different level. We really want to play with different vocal effects and mix them together to create something almost quite abstract which will be really different from the rest of the songs we have written and are producing with El train at the moment.  

attached above is a little voice memo of me just humming some melody ideas ( Ignore my keys player he was just messing around in the background *inserts laughing face emoji*)  

March 25th 

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Today I started to write lyrics and melody to ‘Exhibition’ which is a project that Finn and I are working on virtually as we cannot see each other due to the government's new rules. It took me a while to find and secure a melody I was happy with, I guess you could say that for some reason I'm finding it a little tricker to write to then our other songs but I took the time to really clear my mind and just go with the flow, in which I came up with this:

I then got back some constructive feedback from Finn basically saying that in terms of melody he thinks I should write something simpler, something that your ear can easily grab onto and something that will build up to the chorus e.i maybe starting in a lower register or just saving the high notes. He suggested I grab a melody phrase and repeat it with different lyrics, and think about spacing which makes sense personally I saw this song as an interlude into one of our other future songs but Finns heart is set on it being a complete 3 minute song with structure, so I need to change my mind set, and create a build up of tension for a climax in the chorus.   

He then suggested having a listen to ‘Help Me Believe’ by Kirk Franklin and feel the clarity of the song, and to also be inspired by how the melody repeats itself but with different lyrics and how the last line of each section is a little different. The song also is a ballad and has sweeping build ups followed by climaxes which is very similar to the feel we are trying to create with ‘Exhibition’. The difference between these two songs is obviously the style, although ‘Exhibition’ is not gospel it does have elements of gospel voicings.

29th march 

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We are in lockdown and I am trying my best to be productive and keep on top of things, so far I have been successful and have been recording covers, putting up content on my instagram to keep active, I have also been musically having debates on messenger with Finn over our project ‘Exhibition’ in which I changed the melody quite a few times with tears and frustration (im joking)  before I got it to a standard we were both happy with. I managed to cover all the points that we both agreed would improve the 1st verse e.i spacing, build up, and then climax to the chorus. Our next task is to write the rest of the song and I'm just waiting on Finn to update the structure (musically) as I had changed it a little bit to bring up the chorus.   

6th April 

 

Because I changed the structure of ‘Exhibition’ it is now in Finn’s hands to change the original projects he has all the original stems. I have also sent him the vocals to slot in to then then send an audio back to me so I can continue recording vocals.

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I have written the 2nd verse and starting to write a bridge section so excited to get recording the 2nd verse and bridge but in the meantime I Have been uploading some free styles to my instagram using producer type beats from youtube just so i'm continuing to upload content, and it's been a good exercise just writing or improvising over music.

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There have also been a few instagram challenges going around so I'm hoping to participate in a few of those but I think it's great that people and musicians are coming together on instagram and other social platforms to really bring positivity in a time that is quite scary.

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