Project Reflection

If you’ve been following my blog you’ll know I launched my project officially last Saturday. It’s been a really great success and I’m really happy with how it turned out. If you haven’t heard it yet you can listen here. Feel free to share it around if you like it.  After taking on a project it’s good to reflect back on some of the important things that happened. I’ve pinpointed two issues that I found to be the most important over the project duration. The first being sticking/deviating to and from the project plan and the second being working with musical talent.

The project plan that I made was the most in depth ones I had ever made. I feel that this worked in both my favour and also against me. Having every single detail planned out was really helpful to keep me on track and motivate me to get tasks done. It was also really great to be able to look at the whole project overview and see where I was, where I was heading and what needed to be done to get me there. The problem with such a rigid plan is that when something goes wrong everything falls apart. I had problems with getting the music video put together and with finding a space for the live launch party. When this happened it hit me with a huge shock. My plan wasn’t working how it was supposed to, what now? I had to quickly learn on the fly how to loosen, extend or remove deadlines completely. Parts of the original plan were removed like the music video and backup plans were put into action for the live launch. I came out of it with a valuable lesson. While a meticulously planned project works on paper, there’s no telling what can happen during the course of a project. From now on I’ll be making plans with the knowledge that it’s okay to change the plan as the project is happening. It’s not the end of the world, it’s normal.

The other point I wanted to talk about was working with talent. I have worked with bands and performers in two other projects but never called in a musician to play on something I have created. It was an odd feeling as normally if I’m behind the desk or working in the live room I’m giving direction on the artists positioning and playing style but not really giving them direction on what to play. It was an awkward situation for me as I have never really been in that kind of commanding role before and found it really difficult to convey what I was wanting the artist to do and also get the message across without seeming aggressive or bossy. While it’s not a bad thing to be assertive there is definitely a very fine line that could easily be crossed. Obviously no one wants this to happen as relationships, contacts and the performance/project could be ruined. After sitting in a guest lecture about recording vocals successfully I learnt some important tips on working with talent. There is a huge emphasis on keeping them happy and how to go about. The main tips I took away was to butter them up… a lot!

Get butterin’

Even if something is wrong with the take or the performance don’t point it out to them, you can redo the take without them ever knowing something was wrong. Another good tip was to keep an eye on the performer and if you notice their performance starts lacking in something just take a break. Once again you don’t need to explain to them that it might be there fault you’re taking a break just make an excuse, nine times out of ten after the break everyone will be back in the studio with a clear head and fresh ears. Communication is something I’ll always be working on because it’s one of the most important things to running a project successfully.

Now I’m not saying I’m a master after learning these lessons, that’ll take many years and many projects, but I am slowly learning to get better. This whole reflection process throughout the project duration has really helped me pinpoint areas I’m weak in and what I need to change to get better. I’m sure there’s many more mistakes out there for me to make and many more lessons to learn. I’ll probably stop blogging as regularly over the Christmas period but be ready for a strong start next year.

Why Bandcamp?

I just wanted to make a quick blog to justify and explain why I picked Bandcamp as my platform to release over some other popular choices. I currently use soundcloud for my general production and it works pretty well to get songs out to the public. It’s especially useful as a tool to easily send private links to peers for review and advice. While this is really useful for day to day stuff as this was my first ever “official” release I wanted to choose somewhere that better reflected it.

Enter Bandcamp.

I have used it in the past from a previous band I was in Tabletop Lamps. I found that it was a more accessible platform media and had a larger collection of similar genres . Because this album is a dark-ambient style that borders on experimental it’s hard to find a suitable marketplace in the mainstream. After looking at the prevalence of the genre on Soundcloud and Bandcamp it was easy to see where I would have the most reach. This has been basically proven by the playcount over the two days it’s been released. I’ve gotten around 60 plays and 3 downloads on Bandcamp compared to some songs on my Soundcloud that have been up for months and barely cracked 20-30.

The other upside to using Bandcamp is that if I do gather a small following, fanbase or create partnerships with other Bandcamp producers there’s a chance to turn that into profit. For my first release I decided to make the download name your price meaning anyone can pay whatever they want to download including nothing. If this becomes a popular release I can think about next time charging a price for my next release. Bandcamp does take a portion of the money you earn but fir an independent artist it’s a small price to pay when I imagine the costs of hosting, monitoring payments and sending out the product with only me to handle it.

So there are some good and bad points when it comes to Bandcamp but I think for where I am at in my career and on a personal level it suits me well.

Copyright Distribution

When looking at my foley sounds that I created for an animation project I got to wondering about how I could sell these products. In Soundcloud (where I released them) there are two options for licensing options, all rights reserved and creative commons.

All rights reserved is a license that means the content creator holds all the rights to their product. While this statement is still seen widely today it is basically an obsolete marking and doesn’t need to be explicitly said for it to be in effect. In Australia copyright is automatically applied to any product a person creates whether that’s music, writing, film and television. With this kind of copyright and licensing if I were to sell my sound effects I would need to write up a contract and have the other party sign and agree to my requests. I feel like this would be the best method for releasing sound effects to people as I would still retain the rights to my product I would be licensing them out to parties.

Creative commons is another licensing option that acts as an easy way to draw up a sort of psuedo-contract that I have easy access to. The four different licensing types taken from the creative commons website are :

• Attribution: You must always provide credit to the original author.
• Share-Alike: If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original.
• Non-Commercial: You may not use the material for commercial purposes.
• No-Derivatives: You may not distribute modified versions of the work.

The main concerns I have with the creative common system are that it’s hard to keep track of who has used your work. While they have to provide credit to the original author the ways they do that could vary considerably. Obviously the best case scenario is that someone would message me before using a creative commons licensed product but there could be a chance of someone using my product and crediting me without my knowledge. This could prove to be an issue if the product was used in a way that breaks the creative commons licence without my knowledge. Someone could potentially be making money from something I haven’t agreed upon.

Both these options have the pros and cons but I still feel the best course of action would to hold the rights for myself and look deeper into the process of writing my own contracts. In the meantime there are organizations within Australia that can give help to artists about copyright whether that’s simply answering questions or helping to contract and distribute their work.