Ayame Kwiatulska Getting Plugged in Blog

  I worked mainly on my vocal track this week, trying to get that typical 'radio' sound. In all honesty, I started off in completely the wrong way to achieve this sound at the beginning as I was trying to make it more distant by adding all sorts of delays and reverbs, which gave the vocals a weird 'muddy' sound which wasn't really what I was going for. After discussing it with my lecturer I found that to achieve the 'radio' sound I would need some vocal distortion and some heavy compression which I then added to the track. I am really happy with the result of this as I think that I have managed to achieve the sound that I wanted initially.  Here is an example of the type of vocal sound that I wanted on the track. I wanted mine to be similar, yet still have my own twist on it. I have also started mixing the rest of the jingle this week by panning some of the tracks and adding some EQ to some of the synths to make them seem brighter. Here is everything that I ...

This week, I recorded some extra guitar lines into the track, to add a slight element of rock in the jingle, to give it the slight edge. I thought that the guitar should follow the lead synth line when the track cuts down in the middle for the vocals as it might keep the lead line clearer and more pronounced throughout the track. I then asked my lecturer what I could do to make the track feel a bit more interesting as I felt as though that synth line gets quite repetitive after a while and he recommended that I added a low pass filter to the synth. I then adjusted it throughout the track by using the 'latch' function on Logic which then made the track feel more alive in my opinion.  Here is an example of what I did to adjust the LP filter In addition to this, recorded the vocal tracks needed for this jingle which went quite well overall. I didn't think that a highly melodic vocal would work in this track, so I tried a more monotone, speaking vocal when recording. As I have ...

Today I started working on an idea for my own jingle as we have decided to go our separate ways for this assignment as the band idea hasn't quite worked as well as we'd have thought. I have gone for the typical radio jingle feeling for the track as I just feel that it works well and has a hook that is quite catchy and can stick in your head. I did initially plan on incorporating a variety of different genres to demonstrate the variety of different songs and genres that the station plays, however I realised that doing this would be quite difficult when the track can only be between 20 and 40 seconds long. The idea is to have a range of different synths and other midi instruments in the track, rather than having live instrument recordings as I feel that it gives the song seem more like a radio jingle, as opposed to just a 40 second track. I am however going to be adding a vocal overdub of someone saying something along the lines of 'BBC Radio Wales, every Saturday night at 10...

Today we began working on our jingle as a group. To be honest, I'm not sure if working in such a large group will work as we are now a group of 5. While it was interesting to see everyone's takes on the track, a lot of the time we struggled to agree on certain things as we all have different tastes and opinions. Additionally, having five people working on a (mainly) electronic tack using midi instruments and Logic loops is quite hard as we can't contribute as much as we would on our own tracks.  So far, the main feel for the track so far is quite a Disney/Pixar theme song, however my understanding of the track is that the final idea will have a few more rock elements as the show plays all kinds of music and the jingle will hopefuly reflect that a bit.

This week, we were given an assignment to write and record a jingle for Adam Walton's show on BBC Radio Wales. As a result, I have decided to do some research into the station and in particular his Saturday night show. I am quite looking forward to creating this track as it is quite unlike most of the work I have done in the past. I feel that the jingle needs to be a catchy tune, that can be instantly recognisable and associated with it's label (in this case BBC Radio Wales). After listening to the show, I have discovered that there is not a set genre for all of the tracks that Walton plays on the station; each song can be completely different genres for example one song could be a heavy metal track and the next could be a jazz track. I have an idea to try to involve this idea when creating my jingle. One idea I have is to write a short, simple riff/hook and record it in a few genres, however I am unsure how this would work when we are given a 45 second time limit on the track ...