Having gone through two years of my Music Production BA course, I knew that I wanted to do my final major project on something to do with live sound since this is the sector in which I wish to advance in for the future. I decided at the end of my second year that I wanted to help produce an EP for one of my friends, Laiara, since she has been wanting to create and put out music of her own and needed a music producer for and thought that I could use this as a way to link to my FMP, where I could create an EP launch as a gig for her.
I started my FMP process by conversating with Laiara, where we discussed her preferences for the EP, including references, genres of music, preferred instruments, and motivation for the production of the EP. Her artist name is Laiara Amelie, and she mentioned that the genres that she was interested in creating would be a fusion of neo-soul, rnb and jazz, and with jazz being a huge deal in the live scene, there would be lots of venues that I could do my research on. In addition, depending on the genre of music, different setups and equipment that is used. This was to help me get a better understanding of what I could do in terms of research as well as practicality of my project, however with this information on what Laiara wanted to achieve, I wasn’t too sure on how to go about it, start or what to research within my written work.
In addition to this, I had a tutorial with Alfie where with his expertise within the live sound setting, he was able to give me lots of ideas of what I could research. The starting point I found was searching for venues that are specifically for live jazz music. This is because Laiara stated that she was interested in creating a mix of mainly jazz and R&B genre of music. There is a whole history behind jazz music and its live scene, where in the 1920s and 1930s, the genre of jazz became mainstream, and basement clubs that showcased jazz music in Soho, London would gain popularity. Even recently, as advertised on social media such as TikTok, these kinds of venues have been trending. Alfie was able to help me familiarise myself with the most well-known jazz venues such as Ronnie Scott’s, located in Soho, London.
In my tutorial with Alfie, we also discussed if I was able to meet all the criteria given in the assessment guide, with him going through each learning objective. Through doing this, we found that meeting the first objective “Apply systematic knowledge of creative music production techniques to the development of original artefacts relevant to a significant creative music production project”, meaning that I would have to hand in one or more artefacts, which would be the hardest for me to achieve through my kind of project. When discussing my idea to Diego in class, he suggested that I ultimately may have to record the gig itself and hand this in after editing and mixing the audio recorded of each instrument in the live show.
With all of this information in mind, I would have to decide on where to hold the event, with what I can afford and what is accessible to me. I will have to continue my research in what equipment I would need such as mics to use, since recording a live performance is different to recording within the studio, as well as what kind of set up would be suitable for my project. In addition, since I am actively producing the EP for Laiara at the same time as planning this event, I will have to plan my schedule effectively so that I have time to have everything mixed and finished in time for my hand in.