D8.1 - Skills
Skills (technical, musical, social):
Gained (give evidence) - equalisation and panning (evidence = Demons and Dots), blogging (assignments), planning/reflecting (A1).
Working on - arranging instruments (Demons and Dots), understanding music styles (fusions), managing a rehearsal (can organise time and place but need to work on having most efficient rehearsal possible), practical music theory application (Demons and Dots - arrangements), Wix site (setting up), youtube channel (set up but unsure on things to upload), microphone type care and set up (can set up some microphones, struggles with different mics), Di boxes/pre-amps (have used but not confident), live mixing (like mixing but never done it live before).
Planning towards - online networking, interpersonal skills, making lead sheets, live streaming, instrumental skill, compression (have used but don't understand), Inserts and Outboard Rack units, Monitoring, Amps (backline and power), Speakers.
What do I want to do after college?
- Uni
- Record and release music
- Mixing/production
How I can work on my skills:
Recording and producing more music - I've written some songs and I'm planning on recording and producing all of them and then choosing some to release. Through this process, I will learn from my mistakes in using production to my advantage and being able to make tracks that are unique but the same sound to them by using the arrangements of different instruments and manipulating synths to reflect the atmosphere of the song.
My technical skill: Arranging and Mixing - evidence = Demons and Dots
My music skill: Songwriting - evidence = songs I've written
My social skill: Organising events (time and place, equipment) - I'm bad at physically talking to people, I'm better at organising digitally
Job roles:
- Mixer
- Producer
- Sound engineer
- Singer/songwriter
Skills I need to develop for them:
Mixer:
- Mix more tracks with a variety of instruments and genres
Producer:
- Arrange the instruments for different songs
- Edit songs
Sound Engineer:
- Set up microphones for different types of recording
- Set up Di boxes and amps for live performances
Singer/songwriter:
- write songs
- perform songs with good stage presence - be engaging
What I've enjoyed:
I've enjoyed writing music and mixing the tracks that I make and being able to arrange the instruments. I do enjoy recording but less so as it is often frustrating trying to get a take that's good enough for the track. I also struggle with the arrangements when I get stuck as I can often get hung up on trying to make sure it sounds thick in texture and really fitting of the song whilst being rather aware of not making all of my songs sound the same. I only enjoy performing when I feel confident in what I'm doing - I've found this through the fact that performing my own songs means I don't know how people will react to them or if they'll like them which makes me nervous and therefore I do a worse performance and I don't enjoy it but when I know it's going to go well and people are going to like the song (most likely), I become more confident which gives a better performance which also results in me having a lot more fun doing it.
A skill I want to develop:
Promotion on social media
Example: Taylor Swift
One of the first people to use social media as a digital marketing system, she's used social media for a lot of promotion through the years and also uses it to hint at future projects in order to get fans and other people interested in what she's doing and therefore making it more likely for her to get more streams
and to sell more albums as she's built up people's excitement about it over time. One example of this is the clues she left leading up to the release of her recent album "The Tortured Poets Department"(TTPD). This is an interesting one because she's been rerecording her albums and she used black and white filters on her pictures as well as wearing black and white clothing which lead many people to believe that she was going to announce the release of "Reputation (Taylor's Version)" soon due to the similar colour schemes. 
You can see this is the cover of the Reputation album compared to her Instagram posts leading towards the album. The outfit can be shown for when she went to the grammy's and wore a white dress with long, black gloves and a clock necklace with other pieces of jewellery which is also very reminiscent of one of her outfits that made it into her music video for TTPD. 
This is the music video: Fortnight (Official Music Video)
Some pictures of this dress are also shown below.
Her make-up shows the darkness of the outfit and the stark contrast of the black and white which is emphasised by the use of the black and white filter onto the video which also shows her hair to look dark as well. The dress that she wears in the music video is like a more extreme version of the one she wore to the grammy's - the corners are taller and 'sharper' and there's more wrinkles across the dress that makes it look a bit like it's fixed in place.
The style of the dress is also replicated with the split on the left-hand side as well as having it look as it's been tied up on one side as well as having it trail quite far. In a way, it partially resembles a wedding dress except one that's been made harsh (sharp corners) and wrinkled up as though it's become twisted in the falling apart of the engagement before making it to marriage.
After announcing the release of the album, she raised even more excitement about it by using the black and white filter on pictures that she posted.
This was already made exciting by the fact that she posted pictures from her eras tour happening at the same time after she left a country.
Another thing she did was leave a clue about the album being a double album that wasn't too vague but also wasn't too specific. When announcing the album, she made a peace sign in reference to her having worked on the album for two years. The number two also comes back in a short video she made for her instagram announcing the release of the music video where there are two desks. This caused more excitement for the album as people didn't know what it meant but they had a lot of fun trying to figure out what it was.
It did, however cause some divide between fans due to them not knowing whether it was intended to be a peace sign or a two.
The video on the left: Instagram TTPD video
I found an article for strategies in digital marketing (see the article here) and it had eleven key points on it. It established the difference between a strategy and a tactic noting that the marketing tactics are the actions you take and some examples of these include writing blog posts, responding to people on social media, sending emails and designing advertisements.
A type of marketing that was mentioned that seemed relevant to being a music artist on social media was content marketing. I thought this because this type of marketing is based around increasing brand awareness and improving the loyalty to your brand. Things included in content marketing are: blog posts, landing pages, videos, podcasts, infographics, white papers and case studies. Engaging with the customers more and caring about what they need leads to a stronger relationship with that customer and therefore an advantage over other companies. The way in which this relates to music is replying to comments on videos and engaging in things that other people might post about you as this will make people feel more included and you'll be able to create your own community of people who will grow to be loyal to one another and to you and this will help you build a loyal fan base which makes it easier to create a career solely based on your music.
This also relates to the part of the article that talks about social media marketing where interacting with followers is crucial to building a bigger, more loyal following. It also makes the point that 45% of the world's population uses social media; that's 3.6 billion people. A lot.
Notes:
student finance loan
maintenance loan - payed in three parts; less if living at home
student finance calculator - gov.uk - work out how much you'll potentially get
student finance only funds one degree - if you want to do another, you have to fund it yourself (unless it's a degree involved in the NHS, then that gets funded due to the demand)
Scholarships - the complete university guide, the scholarship hub, Uni website
Online application - don't need a confirmed place, apply as early as possible as can take 6 weeks, link with UCAS, parents have access to portal and own log in, other questions ask on Facebook, Twitter and The Student Room
HOW ARE YOU GOING TO MANAGE YOUR MONEY IN UNIVERSITY?
pay 9% for the money made over £25,000 a year (from gross amount - straight from wage, before tax)
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