Gone Project - Post Mortem

Whoa... It's been a while guys! Almost like I vanished off the face of the earth for a while there! But it's ok, I'm back and man do I have some news for you! Let's jump right in!

I'm very proud to say that since the previous blog, my first major audio project ever is finally complete and you can listen to it here! That's all... seeya next time!

The remix artwork I created by stealing someone else's artwork and drawing on it in word, NICE!!

.... Gotcha didn't I? If only it was that easy to tell this roller coaster of a story ;)

Last Minute Changes - Major

During the final week of production, my group and I experienced some major last minute changes due to unfortunate circumstances. One of these circumstances being that the vocalist for the track never ended up being recorded as she was away over the two days we had planned to record. This was rather surprising and admittedly, did shake us up a bit. However, we were not about to roll over belly up and call it a day after coming this far.

Our first plan of action was to release the track as an instrumental. However, considering that the track was originally structured to have vocals and lyrics, it seemed very empty and boring as an instrumental. We decided that if it was to be released, we would have to have some kind of vocal to fill that hole in the track and bring the groove back. This is where Richard and myself came up with the genius idea of turning the track into a remix! (I know, super original, no pun intended).

Finding The Vocals

At first this was a very difficult task as our track was based in the key of D minor and we soon came to find that almost no popular songs are based in that key. Luckily, we stumbled across a youtube channel known as King Acapella which, thus the name, releases isolated vocal files for tracks. This channel was particularly good compared to the other channels we searched through as their acapella files were official, studio recorded vocals with absolutely minimum defects. However, we still struggled to find an acapella within our dedicated key. We eventually gave up and decided to get creative with it instead. We found an acapella from Australian producer GRMM's track 'Electrify' featuring Father Dude. Considering the key of this acapella was in A minor, we figured it wouldn't make drastic vocal changes if we tuned it up to D minor ourselves. Luckily, it turned out just as we planned and sounded really smooth and chilled!

For any beginning producers out there like myself who are super keen on creating something but have no idea what to make, start with a remix! Grab some vocals from King Acapella and jump in head first! I came to find that I learn't most of what I did throughout this project through hands on work and screwing things up multiple times! Its all a part of the process! Below I have attached the acapella we used to create our remix from King Acapella: GRMM feat. Father Dude - Electrify

Group Contribution issues...

Now this is going to sound very cheesy and stereotypical however, the uni students out there reading this blog will know exactly what I'm talking about. In almost any group assignment or project ever, there will always be a certain individual in the group who contributes very little if not nothing at all to the finished product. In very rare circumstances, this can sometimes be overlooked if everybody works equally as hard. However, this was not the case for me this time around unfortunately as only two of the three of us who worked on this project actually worked. I know it may seem that I'm going on a bit of a rant in this paragraph but bear with me for just a little bit longer.

This is not to say that I am ungrateful for working this these kinds of people in fact, its the complete opposite. I see everything I do in terms of work as experiences, in this instance, I gained experience on how to deal with un-productive individuals. As the group leader, this was a skill I had developed over the course of the project as the task didn't necessarily get any easier as time went on. You'll notice in our remix linked above that only two names are labelled on it: Levels (my artist alias) and Richard Woodhouse (arranger of the group). The third person within my group I did not label as they did not contribute anything towards the project in general. This was particularly hard for me to do as I'm generally the nice guy who tends to try and avoid troubles however, as group leader, it was my responsibility and it had to be done.

'Gone' is gone... for now

It almost feels rather strange writing this blog as I've been hyping up our song 'Gone' for a while now to think that it is actually is gone is rather funny and ironic. However, this is not to say that the song will never come to exist as the lyrics for it are still written. As for now though, 'Gone' is gone and its expected return date is yet unknown. But, just know this, I'm not the kind of person to keep things hidden in the shadows for too long. Watch this space ladies and gents! As always, thank you so much for reading my blog, especially this one (I applaud you if you made it this far). Until next time, have a good one and I'll catch ya later!

Levels :)