What is my project?
My project plan hasn’t changed much since conception. I am making an album, with a video/visualizer for every song. I want this to be a concept album that follows a vague narrative, which will be a continuation of my film RITUAL.
This concerns you, I understand
This sounds wildly ambitions, and yeah, it might be. That is unfortunately my style. But to ease some of your concerns, I’m going to explain some things.
Visualizers are similar to cinemographs, where it’s basically a still image with one moving component. I got this idea from the visualizers Vancouver Sleep Clinic made for their songs, so feel free to look that up for reference if you’re curious. These will not take a lot of time to make, and right now I’m thinking around 1/2 of the visual components will consist of these visualizers, so that won’t be too demanding.
What is a song? If you’ve taken Quinn’s class, you might know that the definition of “song” can be a bit loose. I want to make this a concept album and add in a bunch of interludes, and some of those might just be what most people would consider “sounds”. I haven’t fully fleshed out everything so I’m not sure yet but I do like the idea of incorporating found sounds into their own little tracks. This would also be less demanding, and I have some sounds recorded already that might be cool.
So what progress have I made?
By my standards, I have not done a lot. By other people’s standards, maybe I have. Arguably I have nothing to show at this very moment since no one song or video is completed, but I do have a lot of assets to work with. On the visual side, I have one visualizer completely filmed, one video half filmed, and some miscellaneous footage that might be made into it’s own visualizer, maybe added to a video, or maybe completely scrapped, I’m not quite sure yet. On the music side things are looking considerably worse, but I have 2 songs mostly written, I just have to mess with the arrangement, add in some digital sounds, and make the actual recording since they’re just in demo form right now. Since I am a musician I do have little bits and pieces I can springboard off of to make songs, but there’s nothing else that I know for sure is making the album. One song I was working on over the summer might hit the album too, but I’d probably edit it a bit since I currently haven’t been vibing with it.
As you might be able to tell, we had some complications this semester
You don’t know how much I want 2020 to be over. Earlier I was trying to think up what good things have come out of this year, and I can confirm it really isn’t a lot. I don’t want to get too deep into things on here but essentially I keep thinking that I hit rock bottom, only to find the next month that things have gotten worse. Honestly, in my current mental state I’m kind of surprised I got as much done as I have right now. This is a relatively ambitious project that takes a lot of prior planning and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t worried.
What does the future hold?
With that above message being said, I really need to focus on making sure I’m in an OK enough mental state before delving deep into schoolwork. I have constructed a plan, namely to get 2 songs and 2 videos/visualizers done every month from January-April. If I can end up getting my mental health back to what it once was a year or so ago, I should probably get ahead of schedule pretty quickly. If I can’t, I may end up being behind. Future planning is something that is pretty hard for me to do right now, but considering I usually make 2 videos a month for my YouTube channel, Feeding Artists, I think this sounds like a decent enough plan.
One last clarification
When I’ve said in the past that I’m making an album with videos/visualizers, a lot of people take that as “I’m mostly making an album, but also throwing in some visuals”. This really isn’t the case. I did originally start with the idea of an album just since it’s something I’ve wanted to do forever, but for those of you that know me, you know my main gig is making videos. The visual component to this album is arguably just as important as the music to me. And it’s also a lot easier for me to plan, share, and conceptualize this project in reference to video, since that’s something I’ve been producing for longer and am a lot more comfortable with. I know I’m a good video maker. I don’t know if I’m a good musical artist. I want this thesis to not just be an album, but an entire artistic project.
I might not be sharing much about my actual project, here’s why
Since I’m doing audio and visual components, I really have to plan those two things together, which has been challenging. I often find when I’m planning videos, I end up having a solid plan for my beginning and end, but not for the middle. I’m in a similar situation right now, although I do have a middle now, it’s just that I have ideas for parts 1, 3, and 5, but not 2 or 4. Essentially, the little middles in between are missing. I make music for my films often enough, but the type of music I make for film isn’t exactly what I’m looking to make for this album (or at least, not every song). It also never has lyrics, which is what I’m most nervous about writing. Thing is, I kind of want the songs to be songs, and the visuals to match, yet it’s a hell of a lot easier to make the visuals and then make the songs. I just don’t necessarily want to write for the videos, but stuff still needs to match. I hope that makes sense.
To further complicate things, I’ve also never written a linear set of songs that all follow a vague storyline, heck I’ve never written a set of songs ever. I don’t think the genres are really going to match. If you couldn’t tell already I’m very nervous about releasing music or showing it to anyone which is why you probably aren’t going to hear a lot of music until everything is done.
Right now I have a lot of bits and pieces, but I need the glue to hold it together
I know a lot of this probably sounds pretty bleak, and I don’t anticipate this outro will sound better. I really wanted to have everything fully planned by the end of the semester. Things overall did not go the way I ever could have guessed, and it sucks. I really, really hope that I can have everything fully planned by the end of winter break. That’s all for now, I might update with a teaser once I finish that.
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Hey Amanda, this project idea still seems as cool as it was when you first shared it. Album visuals/visualizers are grossly underrated imo, so I’m glad that’s still a key part of it. Not to mention that concept albums are always pretty rad, so the foundation for this is all there. Something that could be really cool to explore down the line is to make a physical 12×12 art piece of the album cover, basically acting as a dummy record sleeve. It could be an opportunity to make the album art really stand out too. Since it’s a physical object rather than just an image, there’s some really cool albums that take advantage of that. The physical album for Beach House’s Depression Cherry for example, rather than just being an image of velvet like it is on streaming services, the album cover is made with actual velvet. In any case, really looking forward to see how this progresses!