Hello again, it’s that time of the week where I tell you about my life (at college). This week’s post will be written in advance of posting as, unfortunately I temporarily have no Internet connection. However despite that oh so tragic news, it is just a Trojan horse of good news waiting to attack you with glory. The news is that I and two of my fellow college mates have finally found an abode in which to dwell for the college terms. We live in a flat now and not the ‘street’. We are overjoyed. In other news this week, my eye still looks horrendous as it is all zombie-like and red. Also this week, I shall be putting my student representative status into force with a ‘student power’ letter, but we’ll hear more about that later.
Now to talk about this week’s college based antics. As per usual, first up on Monday morning was the research and management skills class, or what it really should be called, the dissertation appreciation society – with mandatory membership. During this week’s class we discussed how to do a bibliography properly, it was very essential. We looked at previous dissertations of form former students to spark inspiration. It inspired me to write a poem. Not really. Although we did have to write our own bibliography for the next research and management class, problem was I didn’t have a topic for my dissertation at that point. So skipping forward in time a few days and hours, I sat down with my laptop and racked my brain for things I was interested in which I could write about. I thought about the Average White Band for a while, but then I couldn’t really come up with a topic that involved them directly, maybe a cameo mention but that’s just not the same. In the end I came up with three topics:
Music and Alcohol – Let the Good Times Roll?
When Did R&B become R’n’B?: A study of change in context.
Music and Movies: Does a Soundtrack Determine a Film’s Success?
Although all of these topics are my ‘children’ I must choose the strongest to develop. I think the Music and Alcohol topic will be the strongest for a dissertation topic as I reckon there will be some room for ‘experimental’ research to come to a conclusion.
Next up was the mystery bag of a class, Digital Audio Production Multimedia. This week the mystery started to unravel a bit more as the lecturer explained more about the final product. Although still not as ideally clued up on the class as I’d like to be, I have a rough idea about what I’m going to do. Essentially he would rate our idea on paper first before we are a loud to do anything about it, so I spent most of my time in the class this week writing a proposal and then waiting in a queue for him to read it, which never happened. However I did finish the proposal and then later e-mailed it to him, still awaiting a reply. My idea for the class is to film a spoof trailer for an imaginary film and the write, record and overdub the music for the trailer. I hope it goes well.
After that was band practice for the ensemble project, which I have recently found out that we have to write a proposal for and an essay about the chosen topic. That doesn’t really tickle my fancy. However despite this band practice went off to a promising start. Once we tuned up and plugged in, we went straight into a whole load of the Blues Brothers. Soul Man was our first tune, which might I say, we nailed pretty quickly, even with some dance steps. It was great fun. Second we played Sweet Home Chicago, which was also very fun to play and a guitarist’s blank canvas. We jammed that out for a while and it was sounding great. I had some mild concerns about the Sax player as she didn’t seem to play along with that song, but that may have been my fault as I didn’t tell her the right key, but I have full confidence that she will be able to do it next time. The third song we played was the Blues Brothers big hit; Everybody Needs Somebody (To Love). Once again it was a really simple song to play as it’s pretty much straight comping all the way through; however it is also really fun to play. By the time we had done that an hour and a half had went by and we had to let the bassist and the saxophonist go to their other band. I think what would have made this practice more productive would have been a medium for all the band to listen to the songs, for example a CD, as we ended up listening to someone’s iPod headphones going through a microphone, which wasn’t really adequate. After people went home I stayed around and jammed with the other band. They were doing soul music and songs from the Commitments. They didn’t have anything prepared, so we jammed for a while and then went home.
The next day, I had a lie in which was sweet. This was because I did not have a student advisor meeting. Joy all round. So, I ambled into college for noon where my first class was that arty class, Presenting a Personal Portfolio. This week we met our designers. It was strange meeting all these new, cool, trendy faces we had seen around carrying big black portfolio cases in person. I was teamed up with a guy called Marc. We introduced ourselves and then we walked around for a bit trying to find somewhere to do business. We settled for under the stairs where another musician/designer team were. I started by telling him about myself, what influenced me musically and what I envisioned my final project to be about (slide guitar). He furiously scribbled down notes about my musings and then he showed me some of his work. I liked what he had previously come up with and he said that he has a ‘simple but effective’ artistic style, which I feel is appropriate for my project. After that we exchanged details and walked back to class. He told me the ideas he had off the top of his head and I agreed with what he imagined. After we returned to class, we made a short amusing video about our conversation. We discussed everything we went over previously on the video. After that we said our goodbyes and left. I was then asked to do some sort of ‘mood-map’, which I think is like a mind-map but with pictures. I may have trouble doing that, as I don’t have the Internet or a printer to find inspiring pictures, I could always just use a magazine though.
The final class of the week was our first dose of production. Despite my initial scepticism for my choice, I think I will really enjoy this class and it will benefit me. I would also like to give a big hand to Dave Patterson (the lecturer) as he has been the only lecturer who has explained a class in plain English which everyone understood the first time round. The aim of the class is to produce a 20 minute EP of music. There. Simple as that. Even wrote the proposal already. My idea for this class is to produce some pop music. I think this will expand my compositional versatility further. I plan to record and produce a pop song I wrote called Be In My Arms, as this has been on my agenda for a while and I would love to get it done. I will also write 3 more pop songs to fill the remaining time, but I intend to keep the same quality. I will produce those and put them on a CD. We also get paired up with a sound engineer, so I won’t have to learn about all the recording equipment and software straight away. I may even get my graphic designer to maybe do a cover for the CD. I am actually really excited; I think this project will be excellent fun and a learning experience.
So that’s it for this week, I thank you for reading.
Catch you next time.
Daryl.
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