Smart target

My target is to finish off my coursework by December the 6th, 12th and the 20th of December . Also I have to finish my Instrumental Mixtape called 'The Keys',  the deadline is December the 5th. What I'm doing at the moment  is mixing and mastering the beats on my mix tape.

EP plan

EP plan
My name is Steven Williams AKA StevieBbeatz, I am a musician. I play the piano, compose and I produce as well. My goal is to become a professional Producer, to work with artists with no worries however my main goal is to work with known artists and make some beautiful music. In the music industry I see myself as a professional producer working in a studio with a few singers / rappers and engineers to support me, I also see myself teaching kids about the technical side of music. 

The genre I mostly do is urban & ambience, I do a lot of Hip hop, rap and R&B on the other hand I can do more genres but these are my main ones. My genres fit well with me because they are what make who I am, I grew up listening to these genres. The ambience is one of the mains that fit with me because it describes my personality - I'm a calm person and ambience is about calmness. My influence 4040 got me into ambience as I love his work so much and I would like to work with him one day also to produce for drake as he is drakes main producer - friend.

 The content of my EP is going to be R&B and Rap, the reason why I chose this style of music is because I know the elements in urban music, I know how to make it, the chord progressions and so on. To add on I always listen to these type of genres on my phone and on the laptop so R&B/Rap is my speciality, it will be blendid with a bit of ambience to it... One of the examples that I am talking about when I say 'blendid with amhienfe' is Drake Pound cake. The production in that track is mixed really well, it's nice and calm also it's easy for rappers to rap over it. 

The people I plan to collaborate with: 3 singers (Baran, Danillo, 1 session player (Andre) 1 pianist (Lamar) 3 Rappers (Kieran, Naga, Chucks) These people will bring a great aspect to my project because I know that they have the skills and abilities to achieve the goal that I want, they will give me ideas to make wonderful music. I will hire a session player because I would be the writer of the music & i'd tell the session player what to play. I would probably need a bass session player so I can get that live bass. I don't think I would need a composer since I would be the one writing the chords but at some circumstance i probably would need one as the composer would have more knowledge upon composition than me. Composers and session players are very different, composers are the like writers too , they write the chords, melodies and more however for a session players they are the people you tell what to play. **AS COMPOSERS, OR SESSION PLAYERS?**  **WHY WILL YOU HIRE PROFESSIONAL MUSICIANS**

Firstly I plan to get the pianist, in a production room with me, we will discuss about what sound we want to make(rap or R&B), once we have made the sound, me and the pianist will decide who we want for our song if it was a singer and a rapper we would need to see who has the right voice for our sound. I will tell them what the track Is about, if I feel that I want some live bass into my track then I would bring the bass player into the studio to give us that live bass sound.

 In the studio there's different roles such as studio engineer, technician, engineer, instrumentalists, Layer and more. In the Music industry you need to pay people to mix your tracks & to master them. All of the roles that I just listed exist in the industry but they're not that known. I think that I would need a studio engineer to set up the instruments for the artists + instrumentalists and a engineer to mix and master my tracks (but in these terms I might not need one since I would be doing this job myself).


** MORE DETAIL FOPR EACH ITEM OF EQUIPMENT **

The equipment that I would need the most is the midi keyboard and Logic, this is because these are the main things that I would be using since I'd need to make the beats.

Midi Keyboard - A midi keyboard is a keyboard that transmit data to logic pro, it's the same as a normal keyboard except you can't play it live. This is the keyboard that helps me create my beats and sounds.

Another Equipment I would need is the Microphone (C414) one reason is it's a condenser microphone and it gives brilliant quality when recording with a rapper or a singer however it is quite sensitive... but I'd still need it. I wouldn't use a dynamic at this Case because the quality of a dynamic mic isn't that great in terms of studio recording, condenser mics are more better as they have that nice crispy - clean sound. Whereas a dynamic it's abit more flat.

The pop shield will also come in handy so that the plosives from rapper's doesn't damage the microphone..
Also I will be needing the Mic booth so that there wouldn't be so many reverberation when a singer/rapper is recording, it will absorb the sound towards the singer/rapper back at him/her.

To add on the stage box would be needed so I could plug the XLR cables into it so it can transmit data to the mixer and Logic.

I have 12 weeks to record my stuff, since I have free facilities at college and my old school that I can use... I would need to book the production room/studio at certain times, I would also need to book them often in college. So my schedule would be:
Monday - 11Am - 4/5Pm (At school Studio, working on the beats/Mixing/Mastering)
Tuesday - 11Am - 5/6pm (At school studio, working on the beats/Mixing/Mastering)
Wednesday - 1 Pm - 4-6 pm (At College Studio, working with an artist thinking of ideas, maybe with a pianist too for some extra ideas + recording)
Thursday - 11:15am - 12:30pm (At college studio recording with an artist)
Friday -  10:30 - 12pm - (At college studio recording *If finished recording, I would be mixing the vocals*)

Equipment costs:
sE Metal pop shield : £52.00
Mic Vocal booth Roughly: £60
C414 Microphone: £1,410.00
Microphone Stand: £15
Midi Keyboard: £80
Studio hire full day 10am - 7pm : £325
I would probably need about 30 Cd's to release which would cost about £30,
this is because I would mainly be releasing my EP online...
TOTAL COST: £1,415,62

but if my EP wasn't free it would be about £5 on Itunes/Bandcamp.
The promotion I would be doing myself, my group of collectives would be also helping me as well as my very known friends will help me promote.
In future I plan to release my finished product on my soundcloud, also on Itunes. I will be sending my EP online, to loads of artists to listen, also to my friends, maybe a couple of DJ's as well. My EP will be a free download as it being free will get a lot of exposure especially from the people that will definitely help me with the promotion. My product will be promoted on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and so on. This will attract other artists to see more of my work - to get them to contact and work with me.

Deadline of this EP, before June.

Sound Design

                                                            Sound Deisgn

What is a Synthesizer?

A synthesizer is a instrument that creates a wide range of sounds, it's operated by a keyboard using different signals and frequencies of sounds. They can emulate a variety of sounds such as, a helicopter, a voice and much more. Synthesizer's isn't exactly natural sounds, they're more a frequency and a electronic sound. In Synthesizers there's different waves such as Sine, Triangle, Square and the saw wave.  Back in the 70's there was only one wave which was the Sine wave, it was the mot basic sine wave ever it had no control over pitch.

ADSR envelope

The ADSR stands for:

A- Attack

D- Decay

S - Sustain 

R - Release

It's a tool used to shape sounds. What the envelope does is it controls the impact and length of the sound, It opens and closes the sound. The ADSR has different roles to them which is:
A: The attack tells us how quickly the sounds want to be hit at a high amplitude, a short attack has a instant reaction, the slow attack has a slow reaction.

D: The Decay is the time taken subsequent attack level from designated sustain level.
S: The sustain is the duration of how long it will go on when a key is released
R: The release is how long it will take for it to decay from the sustain level 0

The wave forms and plug ins
Synthesized sounds are made from these basic sign waves: sine, square, triangle and saw. Back then they wasn't able to combined 2 wave only one. This is what the waves look like:

.

Between these 3 waves, the cleanest is the Sine, as there is no distortion, fuzzyness or anything. This wave sounds more polythonic than others. The triangle wave is almost the same as the sine except it there's a deeper bass in this waveform, as you can see on the diagram above^ the triangle picture almost matches the sine, it's just more sharper.
Comparing the Triangle and the saw tooth they both do not look the same but when it comes to sound they are about 60% the same. The Square sounds like it's combined with another sound, it's clean with harmonics and it has a higher pitch. The Sawtooth is the distorted sine wave, it has that fuzz-buzzy type of sound and it's low pitched compared to the other sine waves.

Nowadays we are able to combine more than 1 waveform to create a variety of different sounds by using software's such as Logic for example. We do this by using the ES2 Synthesizer we can also tweak the sound to create another sound. This is what it looks like:

This is the ES2 Synthesizer as you can see we can now manipulate synths using this. We can combine Waveforms to create new sounds, add distortion, change the key and many more. This is the main Synthesizer plug in where we can create our Synths, Synths like Pads, Leads, Basses or anything by just using this plug in. It may look complicated because of the different options there are but it's not as complicated as you think, as you can see there's different options/diagrams/areas each of these areas work as one. The most important area of them all is the one on the left and the middle. 

This is where the Sine, Triangle, Square and saw waveforms are located. This is how we can now combined more than one, where it says '1,2,3' that meas if we want to combine either 2 waves, 3 waves or just leave it at one wave. In the middle option where it says filter, we use this to tweak the waves around, we can add Resonance for high frequency fx, we can also add drive which makes the sound fuller. 

Another plug in we can also use for Synthesizer's is the EXS24 sampler. It has some features of the ES2, it's more of the easier version when using Synthesizers or tweaking Synthesized sounds. The features it has that relates to synth's is the cut off, drive, LFO, resonance, bandwidth and some other's. The features that it doesn't have is the 'Sine/Triangle/Saw/Square' option. In the middle section you can see it has 'cut off' ' the cut off is like an Envelope if you move that green line right and left contently then it would create an open and close type of sound. If you bring it all the way down to the left it would give you that warmth type of sound.

ES2 or EXS24?
Similarities: They both have the same features such as Resonance, Drive, Bandwidth, LFO option and so on. They can both tweak Synthesized presets, they can create a variety of sounds and manipulate them to create more interesting synths,
Differences: The EXS24 is more of a sampler than a Synthesizer, it doesn't have the Sine/Triangle/Square/Saw option, it doesn't have that much options to create the sounds you actually want and there's not enough presets.
The ES2 is not a sampler it's more a synthesizer, you can create any type of Synths, you can choose more than one waveform, change the key of it, add distortion and many more.
In my opinion I would choose the ES2 for making Synth sounds, this is because it's a Synth type of plug in. There's many options to choose from if you want to create different sounds such as the Envelope, cut off, LFO, pitch and many more. Although it looks complicated It's actually quite sophisticated and more intelligent than the EXS24 when it comes to Synthesizers.

History of electronic music - development of electronic instruments

 Moog Synthesizer/Robert Moog
Robert Moog

Is the founder of Moog Music, he is an American Electronic pioneer, he is also the creator of the Moog synthesizer. The Moog Synthesizer was the first used Electronic musical instrument, widely ever used. He's created more things such as bass pedals, The Moog minitaur, The Minimoog and many more.

This is him telling us about the history of the moog Syntheiszer, how to use it and so on.

Before there was any type of phase distortion synthesiser or any synthesizer at all, the first ever Syntheiszer was the 'MOOG Synthesizer'. The Mood Syntehsizer is a analog synthesizer that you have to create sounds manually, it was made around the 1960's. This synthesizer has been used frequently in the 60's/70's to create synthsised sounds. Back then there was only one waveform which was the sine wave, they could not manipulate sounds by using different kind of waveforms. The Moog synthesizer has a keyboard attached with a couple of wires, these wires are the Eq's/LFO's/Filters and so on. This Synthesizer has 4 type of waveforms which is Sine/SawTooth/Triangle/Square.

This is another demonstration of the Moog Synthesizer. When he presses a key it sounds like a triangle waveform, he then twists the knob which is the filtering knob to increase the low frequency's, he tries another oscillator to manipulate sounds. He uses 3 triangle waves with the filter all the way open to create new and wild sounds.  He then uses another waveform the saw tooth to get a fuzzy sound, he adds the same waveform on top to create that buzzy/fuzzy type of sound, it sounds like a Synth lead.




Cz Series 
The CZ series are electronic instruments, they are phase distortion Synthesizers they are produced by the Casio family. They were once made in the mid 1980's. They were about 8 made synthesizer's. These keyboards have a Midi input so people can use this for live performances. It also has a pitch bender, so you can manipulate the sounds.

The first make was the CZ-101, it was released in 1984. It was one of the first polythonic synthesizers, this keyboard had only 49 keys instead of 61 keys. The CZ-101 used miniature keys. It has a good stage of a 8 envelope design, it uses phase distortion synthsis which creates brilliant sounds.  The Casio
CZ-101 has it's own digital synthesis straight from the mid eighties, these sounds are often found in the CZ family. On the other hand if you want to get these sounds then you would need to modify the sine waves to create those sounds. This synthesis can create wild new sounds and some notable sounds.
Although this is the first make it's the mini version of the Cz-1000.

Casio Cz-1000

This Electronic instrument is called the Casio CZ-1000 Digital synthezier. " Casio Developed some of the first high-quality, low cost digital syntheziers . Modelssuch as the CZ-1000 helped bridge the deep gap between cheaper 'home' Keyboards and expensive instruments, and they were used by some amateurs and professionals alike. " - Source Martin Susan.
It was introduced in 1985, it is the 3rd ever made synthesiser and the second programmable phase distortion synthesiser. It's got 32 batches which includes 16 presets  and 16 user. It's succeeded by the CZ-3000 and CZ-5000.
The Casio CZ is most known for the 8 stage envelope. It used a phase distortion so with this you can manipulate with digital waveforms, for example sine waves and create your own varrious of sounds.
There are 3 sets of 8 envelopes sections, they are used to modulate your sounds. The first is used to modify the 'DCO' (Digitally controlled oscillator) Pitches. A DCO is like a digital electronic oscillator or analogue.
The second 8 stage in the DCW (Device Control Word) is used for modifiying phase angle time, which is the filter - they use this to either cut off bits/take away highs or lows.

The way he was using this synthesiser, is he was playing it like a keyboard and he was using the pitch bender on the left to manipulate his sound.



Casio CZ-1

The Casio CZ-1 is the most advanced and recent synthesiser in the CZ Series. It has doubled the memory compared to the eldest synthesiser's, it's got 3 modes - one is called normal, tone mix and key split. Each of these modes have different controls in terms of channels. It's also got a backlight just incase your power is out for example, the rest of the series do not have this feature. This Synthesiser is a Phase distortion synthesis, however compared to the other ones in the CZ series this one has new & improved features. The Casio CZ has effects that allows you to manipulate with the sounds  so you can create new sounds of your own. It also works like a normal keyboard because it has different presets you can use such as strings, orchestra, guitar and many more. This keyboard has external controls, you can use it for midi (logic) or for live performance.
Example of someone using the Casio CZ-1:

The way this person was using the Casio is he was demonstrating the way how the Casio works he was also showing us what type of 'presets' it has. It's got many many sounds that you can play around with.

Kraftwerk

Kraftwerk are the most known electronic musicians ever. These are one of the musicians that use a electronic keyboard.  This is them live performing as you can see one of the member's is using they keyboard/synthesizer