Honors Project Reflection
Unfortunately I didn't complete my client project, so I can't critique that in this reflection or have it be critiqued. Instead, we just have to talk about the honors project only. For my Honors project, I chose to make a song. I've always loved music, but I haven't learned to play any instruments. My brother uses the software on our home computer all the time to produce small tracks and experiment with the program called Ableton Live 10. However, I wanted to go all out and make a full 4 minute track. I had gotten a lot of inspiration for this project from the band Daft Punk as they're one of my favorite music artists/producers.
For the song, I planned for it to be something Daft Punk themselves might produce, but I quickly realized that this was my first song, and that it probably wasn't going to be that great. So instead of taking the Daft Punk route (although I was still heavily inspired by them), I went for an 80's dance club sounding song. I hadn't planned on putting vocals in either because of time constraints imposed by myself for not starting the project earlier in the semester, and I also didn't have a microphone good enough for singing available.
Overall, I think this project shows how much I've advanced in digital media because although it isn't adobe software, the layout is relatively similar. I also had gotten some experience with making short tracks with our video clip song project and some other projects in DM1, so I had a good idea of how to go about making the song. I think this project is a decent representation of my skills in digital media when it comes to music production and audio editing.
As for my personal assessment on the project, I would say that the song works pretty well together, although some tracks don't seem to go well with the rest of the song or are too abrupt when they start to play. (I'm looking at you, Schnauss synthesizer/track four.) The song doesn't sound professional by any means, but for my first time, I'd say I did just fine. If I could do this over again, what I would do differently is just start working a lot earlier. It would definitely make it easier finding better instruments and actually give me time to complete my honors client project.
From this project I think the main thing I've learned in regards to the actual music production itself is that it's actually a lot more difficult and time consuming than I originally thought, but I probably should've expected a hard time while working with a program I don't have tons of experience in.
To summarize, I should've given myself a larger window of time to improve the quality of the honors project song and give me a chance to work on my client project. I had a lot of fun working on the project regardless of the problems I had, so that's definitely another reason I should give myself more time.
For the song, I planned for it to be something Daft Punk themselves might produce, but I quickly realized that this was my first song, and that it probably wasn't going to be that great. So instead of taking the Daft Punk route (although I was still heavily inspired by them), I went for an 80's dance club sounding song. I hadn't planned on putting vocals in either because of time constraints imposed by myself for not starting the project earlier in the semester, and I also didn't have a microphone good enough for singing available.
Overall, I think this project shows how much I've advanced in digital media because although it isn't adobe software, the layout is relatively similar. I also had gotten some experience with making short tracks with our video clip song project and some other projects in DM1, so I had a good idea of how to go about making the song. I think this project is a decent representation of my skills in digital media when it comes to music production and audio editing.
As for my personal assessment on the project, I would say that the song works pretty well together, although some tracks don't seem to go well with the rest of the song or are too abrupt when they start to play. (I'm looking at you, Schnauss synthesizer/track four.) The song doesn't sound professional by any means, but for my first time, I'd say I did just fine. If I could do this over again, what I would do differently is just start working a lot earlier. It would definitely make it easier finding better instruments and actually give me time to complete my honors client project.
From this project I think the main thing I've learned in regards to the actual music production itself is that it's actually a lot more difficult and time consuming than I originally thought, but I probably should've expected a hard time while working with a program I don't have tons of experience in.
To summarize, I should've given myself a larger window of time to improve the quality of the honors project song and give me a chance to work on my client project. I had a lot of fun working on the project regardless of the problems I had, so that's definitely another reason I should give myself more time.