Sonication

My target audience is mainly people my age and maybe a few years older. When it comes down to it, it’s really quite a challenge to target a huge age group. I find that you could separate each age group into a “stereo-type” of what music they like. (of course this has nothing to do with any scientific research and is merely from personal experience and observation) We’ll start with the 0-5 year olds. This music is mainly “kindertunes”. This music can range from more sophisticated lyrics and melodies mainly oriented towards 5 year olds, or even simpler tunes and lyrics (which would mainly just be catchy or almost preferably teaching tunes) for 0-3 year olds. Moving onto 6-10. These ages mainly consist of what the media now calls “Disney Pop”. This mainly means the child stars that the Disney brand has created. These include people such as Selena Gomez, Hannah Montana, Jonas Brothers and Demi Lovato. There are new stars almost every year. Upbeat, happy, and overall very relatable lyrically. From 11-13 the music is similar to the Disney stars, however it becomes the Disney stars broken off. What I mean from this, is that it suddenly becomes Miley Cyrus instead of Hannah Montana, or Ashley Tisdale or Aly & AJ. So basically music which many might call “teeny bopper”. From 14-25 is when people start to explore the different genres of music. Many of my friends enjoy singer/song-writer/folky music. However I also have many friends that are into hard core rock to even extremely main stream. I find that even though 14 year old may not like the same music as 25 year olds or vice versa, they still enter the stage of exploring new bands. Finally 26 and up, I find lean more towards classics. This includes Leonard Cohen, David Bowie, Neil Young, Pink Floyd, The Beatles and many many more.

My target is a group of people my age and maybe slightly older. I feel as though a lot of my lyrics are things that mostly teenagers can relate to. Although I am not limiting my audience of course, I still feel as though this is mainly where it will hit. This has a lot to do with the distribution as well. Most likely I will tell my friends first about it. This will cover people my age. Eventually (hopefully) it will spread. Or another way of distributing this, is something called a scan code. Often you will see them in advertisements for clothing or newspapers or magazines. The idea of this is basically that you can scan the code with your cell phone and it will take you to the link that the code holds. Since cell phones are a new invention (within the last 40 years) my generation and maybe a bit older, contributes to the steady rise and popularity of the cell phone. This means it is more likely that my era will have more access or have more curiosity to scan these codes.

Right before I left for camp I handed in the draft of my project. When I say draft I mean the product. Im really happy with the way it turned out. Of course you can tell the difference between editing and who did what, but I think it makes the CD more personal. As if since I did my make-shift editing, it feels like I did a lot of the project as well. Of course I know it couldnt of turned out the way it did without Pat, however like I said, I like that its “raw” so to speak. After all, this is a school project and I think that I did really well. The journey to get to this point was a long one, however it was worth it.

Today during lunch I walked into my mentors class to ask him to listen to my song. Unforutnately two other students were in there. After a… long explanation of why I might not sound good (a.k.a. procrastination… yet again..) we finally got it playing and they seemed to like it. I was extrememly flattered and very happy that it was not as brutal as I thought it was going to be. It trully is almost a treacherous climb on a mountain trying to reach the stage in which you can listen to your own voice and not be afraid to show it to anybody or cringe when you hear the first note. If my mountain is Grouse, I’m still at the corner store down the street, but I’ll get there :)

I’ve finished recording both songs and now I’m just browsing the internet. Erm… i mean editing… I’m not avoiding editing… psh… -__-

Well to be fair I have edited one song and i’m just tweaking it and the second song I have at least some editing done and just making sure for the moment that I will not become mentally insane by the time school starts. 

The songs I recorded are called:

1) Dance in the sea

2) I’ll be okay

Originally I was going to record a song called Once in a While however my voice kept cracking and I lost my temper so therefore I decided to just start fresh and pick a different song. 

To be totally honest I’m actually really nervous about presenting this to my mentor. Of course it’s mostly because it could really affect my self -esteem, but also just the content of the songs. A lot of the content is about life/love. Not that I dont believe in any of what I say, however I think ppesenting it could result to an awkward moment. 

All well, none the less I’m nervous/excited for this to be over and done with and created to the best of my capabilities. 

After consideration of the time restraint, I ended up renting a microphone and recording some songs myself just to help speed up the process. It never really occurred to me that it take a ton of brain power to figure everything out. It starts with the room. 

-Acoustics (echo, no echo)

- trying to fix the room if there is echoing

- trying to get rid of all noise (i.e. computer, internet airport, lights)

Then theres the equipment you have to set up.

- microphone. (good height? length? size? placement)

- organizing work space to see everything clearly

- sorting out cables 

Then you have to figure out where you will sit in relativity to the mic. (closer, farther) I found that the rest (which is GarageBand) just includes playing around and seeing what you think sounds good. But the things that kill me are the tiny details that people may not notice upfront but subconsciously they do. Time and time again Pat always said how he could spend hours playing with little things like this, and I always remember just nodding, not really understanding what he meant when he said that. NOW I UNDERSTAND! You could easily drive yourself insane with this. 

Oh, and getting everyone out of the house and trying to avoid all noise all together. This is the hardest task. Having the patience to wait out someone mowing their lawn, or a dog barking. When you depend on silence, its brutal.

After counting, I have written about 36 songs. I plan to put three more on the CD. two of the three are songs about love. Merely because I feel like this is a big part in a teenagers life. Adults always say our “hormones” are acting up. It doesn’t matter whats causing it quite frankly but every teenager, maybe even younger, always goes through a stage of meeting someone or finding a hobby they love and feeling passion. My songs aren’t necessarily written because I want them to be gushy love songs. Theres are more out there than I can count. My songs are written because I want to try and sum up passion. Whether its for a person, an object, an activity, anything. 

One song that I wrote though, is about generally being happy. I think its good to have songs that you can put on and after hearing it, you feel great, and suddenly everything is alright. This song is one of my favourites because I always imagine myself in a meadow somewhere just dancing around. Mostly because (as weird as it may sound) that where my happy place is, and that was the aim behind writing this song, I wanted it to take you to your happy place.

I heard Mr.stranger for the first time. From this song I got a completely different feeling. This song makes me smile. I remember writing this song in tears and everytime I sing it, i still remember that emotion. And although it may sound sappy, Pat always says that thats the difference between a good song, and a great song. My song may not necessarily be great, but I know that I can feel the emotion I had and to me that makes Mr. Stranger great. Pat added some guitar rifts into the song and they fit beautifully with the piece. He described it as Mr.stranger is talking back and that is exactly the feeling I get when I hear it. Mr. Stranger doesn’t have a voice, or a face or any specific quality about him. Its someone that everyone can relate to (if they’ve been in a relationship) There is a lot of symbolism behind this song. Its not obvious symbolism, its more something that only my Mr.Stranger would understand, however I feel good that its in there because it makes the song more personal to me. 

Theres something extremely alluring about procrastination. One thing this project has taught me is that I procrastinate. I could always justify with the fact that yeah, Im just a kid, and its summer. But I can’t help and agree and feel slightly ashamed when i realize that I have so much help and support, and yet can’t seem to find it in me to write down a blog! If this project were just about writing songs, id be rocketing to the moon and i’d be ready to go. But this project isnt just about whether or not you can build a boat out of drift wood, or make a cooking book. Its about the process and learning how to learn. I think that a lot of the kids are struggling with this concept because I definitely know that I am. However I also think that this is a really good opportunity to learn this now and figure it out now, instead of later. (i.e. university) 

One of the major things that I’ve definitely learned from this entire process (although its not done yet!) is that people aren’t going to respond the way you want them to, if you dont man up and put in the effort. As my dad often likes to say, life is a two-way street. You gotta give some to get a lil. 

Mr. Stranger was finally recorded! I am extremely proud of it. We tried a new form of recording with this song. Instead of plugging in an acoustic guitar, (which we did try) we ended up just playing the guitar into the same microphone that I use to sing. Therefore, the song sound becomes much less harsh compared to when an acoustic guitar was plugged in. I really liked how I got to play instead of Pat having to go through the process of learning the way I play my song etc etc. I felt like it made it a lot easier. Singing wise I have noticed that my peak is on the 3rd-5th take. After that my voice starts to falter. A tip that pat has taught me is to drink water with some lemon squeezed in and i dont necessarily know if it does anything for my voice but it does tend to relax my throat and sooth it. Especially sing towards the end of the capacity of my voice, I tend to strain and compensate with my throat which what you do not want to do. I have been told time and time again by numerous people that you always want to sing from you diaphragm. 

On a positive note, I have noticed that I am gradually becoming less and less choppy and now it is just a matter of diligence in remembering how to sing. I never really noticed how hard singing actually is. There are actually rules and techniques to becoming a good singer that are often overlooked.