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For the first week of the project I prioritised planning the whole project. I worked on my gantt chart to schedule when I would work on specific aspects of the project and on top of that I began working on the context side of the project. Jotting down ideas for the FMP and sending out forms to see the opinions of others, I eventually decided to create a short EP consisting of eight total songs and an audio visualizer within Touch designer. I will also be creating my own website using HTML and CSS from scratch to document the production process of the FMP. The idea of working on an EP sounded great since music is my passion and I’ve been creating music as a hobby for 2-3 years. I planned when I would work on the music and what I would be doing in each song. This part of the planning process is taking considerably longer since in the past I've worked on individual songs with minimal planning, however with this project I’ve had to plan 8 songs. While I haven’t finished planning out each individual song yet, I have finished the context and the research. Researching this type of ambient music was pretty useful in understanding the inner workings of the genre and how to be able to create effective ambient music. On top of the research I did online, I created a form to send out to the class to see what they thought about ambient music. This was my primary research and was intended to understand people's thoughts on this particular genre of music. While this did not produce results that would directly contribute to my work, It did give me a good angle on my peers perspective on video game soundtracks and ambient music.

On top of all that, I researched ambient music in my own ways by listening to soundtracks that I would like to replicate, this includes the Mirrors Edge Catalyst soundtrack, the Dreamwild soundtrack and the Psychopomp soundtrack. These soundtracks are big inspirations on the project and listening to the soundtracks give me a good understanding on how I want my EP to sound. This week was very useful to the project since it laid the ground work and overall structure of the project. The context has allowed me to explain my work and give myself a better understanding of where I currently am and what I want to do. Next week I will begin to work on the EP itself (After the research has been completed). Overall This week was a great start to the project and has given me confidence within my abilities to ensure that this project will be completed with the highest standards.

This week I finished all the research, more people have completed the forms that I have sent out and the secondary research has also been completed. I dedicated the first two days of this week to compelling the research and due to this I managed to complete it before Wednesday. While I did not anticipate that the research would take this long, due to the extra time I dedicated to ensuring that I completed the research, I managed to gain more knowledge on the subject and allow myself to gain a deeper understanding of the music I wanted to create. I also managed to complete the planning stage of the project. All the songs have been planned and written out. This is to ensure that I have a foundation to work on, boosting my overall personal efficiency. Since I felt like I was ahead of work I began to work on the first song this week. The production of the song took only 2 days since I had already planned what I wanted the song to sound like and the instruments I was going to use. The song was called “Transient Microcosm” and is very much akin to Karbonic’s work on Dreamwild. The production for this song went well, there weren't any setbacks or anything that intervened with the production process.

On top of finishing the research and creating the first song, I decided to begin to work on the website that I would use to document the production of the FMP. I decided to take baby steps when beginning the website, since I haven’t worked in HTML or CSS in more than a year, going back was rather difficult. The pressure of creating a whole website from scratch with my dwindled knowledge of HTML and CSS really gave me second thoughts on creating my own website, however with perseverance and patience I managed to create a baseplate that I would work on over the course of the project and stylize it as I go on and get accustomed with the coding languages. Currently there are only 3 white boxes and a light cyan background, as stated previously as the project goes on more will be added to the website and it will be stylized.

This week was drastically more chaotic than the first and was very hard. Making the song and finishing the research in and of itself wasn’t bad, but pushing myself out of my comfort zone and creating a website was a major source of stress during this week. Thankfully websites such as “w2school” and “CSS-Tricks” helped me get comfortable with the languages again and lowered my worries about the project.

This week I began to work on the second song, Thanks to the previous planning. I managed to complete a large chunk of the song this week. I have technically finished the song, however I want to add more to this particular song since I feel personally the song in its current state isn’t as good as It could be. While I did follow the plan that I wrote out, I still feel like this song needs more. I attempted to finish the song as soon as possible since I am currently working on music for my friend and his game. Working on the song for his game is taking a long time since I have never made orchestral music before. This week alone I’ve spent 20 hours on his song which is cutting into the time that I have designated for college work. However I am not behind on work, I believe that working on his song this week will be beneficial for my personal efficiency and allow me to be able to work on the FMP without it bleeding into other weeks. This week was also notable for the development of the website, I have stylized it to my personal liking. THe background consists of a blurred image from Dreamwild, since Dreamwild is one of the biggest inspirations for the project. And made the boxes slightly see through with a white border. This gives the website a more dream-like feel, which is what I'm going for with the FMP itself.

I find it fitting that the website would be stylized with the same aesthetic in mind. However, working on the website was also cut rather short due to producing the song for my friend. Not much could’ve been done this week due to his song. Though I am close to finishing it so it won’t be an issue next week.

I’ve completed the song that was made for my friend's game. Thankfully this did not take much time since I had finished a majority of the song last week. This will no longer be a constraint on my FMP. This week I also finished the second song of the FMP, the song is called “NAME HERE”, this song is quite different from the others I’ve planned. I took inspiration from the minecraft OST for this song and decided to make something unique. This song does differentiate from the other songs since it didn’t take inspiration from karbonic, however I felt this was necessary since it allowed me to be more creative and show my capabilities as a music producer. While my friend's song won’t be a constraint to me anymore, my BAC dissertation has been. While it's almost done, I still have the evaluation to write which took half a day to finish. While it's not a significant amount of time, it's still notable to mention since it did take up time that I could’ve been working on the FMP.

Next Week I plan to work on the music and will be finishing more than one song a week. I previously wanted to finish multiple songs a week so I could work on the audio visualizer faster since that would take the most amount of time, however these constraints have limited me. I worked on the website and stylized it further. The small bar on the top of the website now has text that scrolls by with the specific page that you are on. I did this purely for aesthetics and to test my CSS and HTML skills. I have also made the first box an index that allows you to navigate between different pages with ease. This was pretty easy to do since all you had to do was reference the page with HREF. The second box will be where the continents of each page will be held. All the writing and the images will be held in this box. To make this possible I implemented “overflow-y: auto;”. This makes it so that text can be held in a box and be able to scroll up and down within that box without scrolling on the body itself. This is incredibly useful since it allows me to format my work in a more professional/organised way. Overall this week has been good since it has allowed me to complete one of the projects that has been a constraint to me. I am pleased with the progress made on the website and being able to finish the second song.

I’m deciding to couple these two weeks together since it was Easter break, I did miss a week due to being in the hospital. This majorly limited my ability to work on the project and led me to end up not working on music or the website. Due to this setback, I dedicated the two weeks of Easter to make up for the loss. I planned to make two songs over the break, since If I were to make three or four I would burn myself out and limit my personal effectiveness long term. Since I did not initially plan working over the break it's important to pace myself appropriately so I do not burn myself out. The first week I worked on “Starting from zero”. With this song I focused more on creating atmospheric music. I used a wide variety of pads and synths. I used long and drowning chords on the pads and synths since layering is very important in making atmospheric music. Layering gives the music flavour so to speak. This song in particular uses a lot of reverb, when using a lot of reverb it's important to properly EQ your instruments so that the track doesn’t sound muddy or too full.

An EQ (equalizer) allows you to manipulate specific frequencies of sound, this is crucial when mixing a track since it allows you to cut out unneeded frequencies that clash with other sounds. While using an EQ is important in general when mixing music, in this specific case where there are multiple instruments being played at the same time, it's important that we ensure that there isn’t any unneeded frequency clashing. Mixing this song has been quite difficult but by the end of the first week I did manage to fix the mixing. This song was fun to work on and allowed me to show off my creativity, because of that the song is considerably longer than the others. I didn’t plan out what length each song was going to be since I felt like I would be limiting myself.

At the start of the second week I began to work on the fourth song “Lychee”. I decided to take a strong atmospheric approach with this song since working on the last song was really enjoyable to make and allowed me to be more creative. With this song I used pads and soundfonts from games such as Pizza Tower to ensure an old and nostalgic sound. With all that said, even though I did lose out on a week, I personally feel like I made the time up over the Easter holidays.

This week I finished the fifth song of the EP. I have decided to name this song “Blight”. On these last couple of songs I aim to have them being heavily atmospheric. I have slightly deviated from that plan since I aimed to make this song sound more like a song made by karbonic. I personally felt that it would be better if I made something completely original without any direct inspiration since it gives me more artistic freedom and doesn’t keep me within a mindset of having to sound exactly like another artist. This song didn’t take that long to create, the major issue with the production was finding sounds that I felt fit the genre. Most of the production on this song was spent on creating the individual sounds (With plugins such as serum). I did utilise soundfonts on this song, specifically the Mario 64 soundfont. I’ve found that soundfonts are really useful and practical, especially in this project since I'm making a video game OST. Utilising sounds from old games gives the songs a nostalgic feeling and really makes them seem like old songs made for games around that era. There haven't been any constraints lately so production has been going rather swimmingly. I have caught up with all the work that I haven't finished due to my stay in the hospital and working on music for my friend.

During the start of the week, I was working on further developing the website. Not much has been changed on the website, only copy and pasting work written down on google docs. I initially intended that I would work on the website only on monday and tuesday, but since there is so much work that needs to be copy and pasted over from the google doc and evidence from producing, I have allowed myself to use the first three days of the week for the website production. The foundation of the website was finished a while ago, so there isn’t much to change or to talk about. After next week I will begin development on the Audio Visualizer, since I am pretty confident that I will be done with the OST after next week.

This week I worked on the second to last song of the EP. I have decided to name this song “Laeax”. I wanted to add a piano melody for this song, however I also wanted to make it heavily atmospheric. Therefore I decided to create an atmospheric song and implement a distorted piano melody. I personally feel like the melody works since it cuts through the atmospheric sounds, however in a non harsh and clashing way. I mixed up my synthesiser used in this song and used morphine which is a stock FL Studio synthesiser. I also used Purity and Zenology since they are great for atmospheric sounds. There were no issues with the mixing, and I personally feel like this song has one of the best mixes out of any song in the EP. I used a sample from a video game at the beginning and the end of the song (the reverse speech). This audio comes from Dark souls 1, specifically from a character called Solaire Of Astora. The dark souls games has been an inspiration for the throughout the production of this EP. The reverse audio at the end of the song is intended to blend with the final song. I feel that making the final two songs blend into each other will be a test of my production abilities and give the EP a nice resolution.

Next week I will begin working on the audi visualizer and the final song

Solaire Of Astora voicelines <--

This week was pretty productive since I finished the EP and completed the audio visualizer. As mentioned last week, the final song of the EP would blend into the second to last song. I achieved this by using the same sample that I used at the end of the second to last song. At the beginning of the last song. At the end of the second song the sample is reversed and at the start of the final song the sample isn’t reversed. This gives the unity effect that I aimed to achieve. I also took a different approach to producing the final song, between creating the EP I’ve been creating random songs of varying genres and have been consolidating the tracks. Consolidation* means to export a pattern to the timeline* of the song. I consolidated the tracks because it's easier to pitch them down. I decided to experiment with different pitches within this song. I feel like it was effective and gives the songs a nostalgic feeling. The timeline looks drastically different from all the other songs since everything is consolidated. At the end of the song I used voice lines from Dark souls 2, the reason why I added them at the end is that it cuts through the long ambience. The voice lines are from a character called cale the cartographer. You find him rummaging through rubble very early in Dark Souls 2. He talks about wanting to prove if a map he found in the basement of an abandoned mansion really is the map of a city called Drangleic. He talks with uncertainty when you first meet him, since he is confused why he came to the land where the game takes place. I feel that his dialogue is truly touching and emphasises the uncertainty of life. His goal is also inspiring, even in a cursed world his ambition to see his goals to their end is unwavering. That's why I added his dialogue at the end of the EP, to show that you can achieve your goals if you are determined.

The audio visualiser was rather difficult to create, since I haven’t really used Touch Designer before. Thanks to my classmate faith (who has experience in Touch Designer) I was able to create an audio reactive program. I decided to leave creating the audio visualiser until all of the songs were finished since I felt that after the EP was done it would allow me to gauge how I wanted the audio visualiser to look. Since the songs on the EP vary from Karbonic-esque to ambient it was hard to find something that fit the multiple styles of the EP. I decided to use a lot of whites, blues and purples in the audio visualiser, since it gives it an ethereal vibe. I feel that a cosmic and ethereal vibe would match all of the different sounds in the EP. I created a spinning box in the middle of the program and made the background reactive to the music. I created the white box since it catches the attention of the viewer instantly. It also distorts with time and slowly rotates. The background is completely abstract, it has a sort of cosmic vibe. It pulsates and moves with the music. This was difficult to implement and took some time to properly work.

Cale The Cartographer Voicelines <--

Creativity: when I was first planning how to tackle the project I intended to create an EP similar to the Dreamwild OST. However when I started to work on the EP itself and began completing more and more songs I decided to change the overall vibe of the EP. There were a multitude of reasons why I felt the change was needed, one of the most pressing reasons is that I felt that I wasn’t creating something unique to me. Because of this, I decided to stick to purely creating atmospheric music with unique layers. I found that creating my own sounds using programs such as serum really allowed me to show my creativity. Being able to sample voice lines from games I liked made the project very enjoyable and allowed me to add my own flare to the music. I added voice lines from video games that inspired me, specifically the dark souls trilogy. While Dark souls has a different aesthetic from the EP, I feel that the voice lines work quite well in the songs.

Organisation: The organisation of the website was actually inspired by a website that I made before working on this project. I felt that it would be good to use since it's spacious and easy on the eyes. The Splitters that I used between points were taken from a video game called Hollow Knight, since I felt that it fit the aesthetic of the website. The three box design of the website makes it easy to read and easy for the eyes to follow.

Music: At the beginning of the project, I intended for the EP to be similar to a Karbonic soundtrack, specifically the Dreamwild OST. However as the project continued the EP gradually lost its “Karbonic” essence. I quickly realised the challenge that lies with making a soundtrack in a style like Karbonic’s. I decided to pivot to a strictly atmospheric style. His style of music is very unique and very hard to replicate so, I pivoted the project’s focus. Overall I feel like this project went very well, I learned numerous musical techniques and improved my capabilities in FL Studio. A skill that I feel that has noticeably gotten better throughout the course of the project is my mixing. Learning how to EQ correctly and how to layer sounds not only improved how the songs sounded in the project but will continue to make my music sound clean and professional.

Audio Visualiser: Out of everything in the project, making the audio visualizer definitely proved to be the hardest challenge I had to overcome. Since I had no prior experience in Touch Designer I found it very difficult to navigate. Going into the project I didn’t have an idea on how I wanted the audio visualiser to look. I thought that as I progressed through the project I would get an idea on the looks and aesthetics of the EP. Which in turn would help me gain an idea on how to design the audio visualiser. I decided that I wanted an ethereal audio visualiser with bright colors (mainly white, blue and purple). I feel the design fits the aesthetic of the EP since most songs sound dreamy.

Website: Coding the website turned out to be way easier than I thought it would be. Before working on this project I did create a website as practice, however I had many difficulties and that website had its fair share of shortcomings. However, coding the FMP website was far easier because of the prior testing. If I had to work on this project again I would definitely try harder to stay on the original premise (which was creating music similar to Karbonic’s). All in all I am happy with how the project turned out. The website is very user friendly and intuitive to use. It's very easy to use and easy to read.

What I would change: If I could work on this project again I would definitely stick to the original premise (which was creating an EP that was similar to Karbonic’s music). After the second song I decided to pivot to more atmospheric sounds. The reason for this is because karbonic’s music is really hard to replicate, since it's his own unique style. Therefore I decided to make music in my own style. This allows me to show off my creativity and get better at blending chords and sound selection. I would also ensure that the audio visualizer would respond better to music. I wanted to make the box reactive to music however It would not work no matter how much I tried, so I decided only to make the background reactive.

Overall Thoughts: I am very happy with how the whole project turned out. This project was a serious test of my musical capabilities and allowed me to grow my skill across various different programs. I am very glad I chose this as my Final major project. This will project will be added to my resume/portfolio and hopefully help me get work in the future.