ckfinalyear

[ckfinalyear]

LMBO — Final Year Project

This is an IDM/Microsound audiovisual final year project. In it I combined my 9 years of music production and songwriting experience with the knowledge I acquired as an Electronic Music student at LASALLE.

The title is an homage to my friend Andy Barnard, who used to make IDM under the name 'Stereo Cube', one of my favourite songs he never released was called 'Lmbo'. I also think the idea of limbo is applicable to this type of music and visuals, they may only appeal to a niche audience but they are timeless. These projects do not follow trends, they're simply an expression of love for music and technology.

[ckfinalyear]

04.26 - Visual 3 Finished

There we go! The last visual for this project is done, and with it the project as a whole.

This visual consists of 3 variations on the same motion graphic. I used a 'clouds' generator in Motion, and processed it with various effects and overlays to get 3 versions of it. I then brought these visuals into Final Cut and edited them in time with the video, as well as layering a spectrogram of the song in various ways to give the video a little more dynamism. The spectrogram was recorded thanks to my friend's program MiniMeters.

After some extra processing overlaying effects and making transitions, I had a final video. This one came together fairly quickly but I like the way it looks a lot!

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04.22 - Track 3 Finished

I wrote track 3 in a single session, once again on a livestream.

I knew I wanted this track to be smoother and less heavy. I also wanted to subvert the listener's expectation by setting the song up as a halftime track, but having the drops be 4 on the floor.

I believe this track to be the most successful combination of songwriting/production and experimental electronic. While the other two have both, they typically rely on separate sections to distinguish between the two whereas this track combines them simultaneously in an effective manner. The layering of granulated experimental sounds over the 4/4 drop as off time percussion was a success.

As with the other tracks, the stream replay can be found here: STREAM REPLAY and the track can be found below.

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04.21 - Visuals 2 Finished

Two in a day! After finishing visual 1 I got straight to work on the visual for 'please stand by' — this is my favourite track so i put in a lot of work.

First I decided I would use the bubbly animation I'd already made, I extended it from a 10s loop to a full 4 minute and 19 second continuous shapeshifting video. I then brought the video into FCPX and got to work cutting, chopping, and adding glitches and overlays to go along with the sounds in the song.

After a few hours of work, I have a video I'm very excited about!

[ckfinalyear]

04.21 - Visual 1 Finished

Over the last few weeks I had to let this project take a backseat as I was finishing up my dissertation. Since that is now finished, I've gotten back into the swing of things and finished the visual for track 1, 'in case of an emergency'.

I used a combination of Motion and Final Cut Pro to make and edit this visual. I started by making the looping visual in Motion, this was done quite a while back. I brought a render of it into Motion again and assigned different parameters to react to different parts of the audio, as well as randomising some parameters to keep the visual dynamic. I assigned the overall opacity and the intensity of the Glint effect to the overall volume of the song, so the louder it is the brighter and shinier it is. I also assigned a Prism blur to engage any time a Kick or Snare was played, this was achieved by rendering a kick/snare stem and feeding it into the programme. I also randomised the angle of the prism blur so it wouldn't look exactly the same each time.

Once this step was done, I rendered the visual out and brought it into FCPX, which is where I added all the glitch effects at the end using various overlays and adjustment layers, as shown in the images below.

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04.08 - Track 2 Finished

This was unexpected but very exciting, I finished my second track in a single session!

At the end of 2019 I had made a short IDM demo which I used as my starting point for this track which I then finished in one session, once again on a livestream.

I believe this song has a better implementation the more abstract aspect of electronic music that we're taught here in LASALLE. The abstract parts in this track are interspersed throughout and used in parallel with the other parts as well. I also made use of distortion and resampling, as well as granular audio editing. All techniques I was able to improve during my time here.

My immediate next step is going to be making the final visuals for the first two tracks, most likely using some of the visuals I presented earlier in this blog as a starting point.

The livestream replay can be found here: WATCH REPLAY

The track can be found below.

[ckfinalyear]

03.25 - Track 1 Finished

Track 1 is finished! I made the microsound section, had some fun with it. I recorded down the drum beat and made use of Ableton 11's "PitchLoop89" device to mangle it, layered it with a pad I warped into grains, and some textures I created by recording faulty cable sounds.

Very happy with this track, I think it's a solid embodiment of what this project should be. Music with an experimental twist.

I've also decided I'm going to pair it with one of the visuals from a few posts ago.

Onto the next one!

[ckfinalyear]

02.16 - Title + Update

I've decided on 'lmbo' as the title for this project. This is an homage to one of my friends who made IDM for years, one of my favourite songs of his was titled 'Lmbo' and as he has been a great inspiration for the audio aesthetic of this project so far, it felt right.

Over the last 10 days I’ve also kept working on my first song.

I'm combining elements of IDM with microsound/microedits to make a syncopated energetic track. The intro is quite cinematic and grand, which is an influence I took from my friend after whom I named the project. I intend to add a section at the end that is mostly microsound and typical LASALLE EM-style audio.

I have a video recording of my workflow beginning the song as I started it on a livestream, which you can find below.

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02.06 - Progress

Over the last week, following a burnout with music, I worked on a few looping visuals that really solidified the aesthetic of this project in my mind and helped me open up to thinking on a more concrete level about what this project is going to be. These are the visuals I posted to this blog.

As an EM student we are often encouraged to go as weird as we want and make insane evolving soundscapes and crazy sound design sessions. As a producer/writer I am most comfortable when writing music that has some sort of melodic and rhythmic structure. What better style to mash those two workflows together but IDM?

I’ve already began work on some music, I’ll share more of my process as I continue to make it.

[ckfinalyear]

[ckfinalyear]

Final Year Project - Initial Thoughts

For my FYP I’ve decided against doing a performance based assessment and instead hand in a portfolio work.

My intention is to make a fully produced and mastered EP of at least 3 tracks that make use of my own skills as a songwriter and producer, paired with the sound design and experimental electronic music skills I learned at LASALLE. By meshing these two drastically different influences I believe I can come up with some truly unique tracks.

I’ll be using this blog to document my progress and post visuals/audio I create throughout this process.