This week, we we did group work.
However firstly, happy international women's day! James showed us some statistics on women in the music industry. All I have to say is that is is very male dominated. The statistics for producers was a ratio of 98/2. That is insane. They way around that is to stop stigmatising electronic music as a male dominated music making platform.
The producer Alison Wonderland, is probably produces the hardest stuff I've heard. She is honestly such an underrated artist. But, is it the fact that she is female she isn't getting much attention that she deserves? Or is it because people don't take her seriously?
In class, we were put into groups and was immediately told to connect an audio interface to a laptop as well as a microphone. Luckily, I already know how to connect these very easily. If this activity was put into a classroom, this would be a very successful task. They get hands on work and would also develop teamwork skills. You could also elaborate on this in other lessons and tell them to connect a microphone to a speaker and so on.
We were then instructed to record some sounds using a dynamic microphone and see what works well, and to pick a DAW to record it in. Of course, I instantly had a great idea to use Ableton instead of soundtrap. Again, I regret not using soundtrap as everyone was familiar with it. And, it would be useful for knowing how to pair the interface with soundtrap for school purposes. It is really good for problem solving skills, communication and thinking outside the box.
Anyhow, we made a drum rack FROM SCRATCH using the sounds into the microphone and body percussion. My group wanted to learn how to use Ableton, so I showed them how to make a new drum rack. We were shown an omnidirectional condenser microphone. Our group were the first ones to use it for our next recordings.
I find in group work that sometimes you don't know what to sing/create. As a composer, I am always writing individually. Writing in a group is really difficult I find. We were all relying on each other for ideas on what to sing/do. I didn't want to be the only one generating ideas. I think, having the teacher/lecturer give us a subject or something to work towards would have made the project easier for us to think of ideas, thus more communication and teamwork. But then again, this comes back to the circling question of "should I have used soundtrap for this task?", "would that have changed anything?".
In saying this, we had a spontaneous harmonised singing line that we all joined in on. The harmonies are kind of questionable, but I think it sounds very neo-soul to me. We used the omnidirectional mic for this.
We were instructed to use audio effects and I let other people in my group have a go and to explore the possibilities. After having recorded our voices, we used an equaliser, delay, compressor, reverb and auto pan. My friends each had a go in trying to mix the vocals and finding out what sounded good or not.
I think this was good because they get to explore while doing music. The only problem with this, is that was Ableton too overwhelming for them to learn from, would have soundtrap been better. Nevertheless, they did enjoy exploring the audio effects on Ableton. Here are some pictures below of what they came up with.
Click HERE to listen to the loop!
The question that kept spiralling through the classroom was "What did you just learn?". At the time, I don't think I learnt very much in that class. However, what I figured out afterwards is I did learn something. I learnt that you should implement things in group work/the classroom that benefit the people around you, not just yourself. Such as using soundtrap for group work, or letting my group find out how to make a drum rack with my guidance.
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