October 2016

Meeting the Bands

Callum Price

We headed over to the college to meet the bands and chat about their styles.

This was particularly useful as it allowed Joe and me to formulate a plan for how we were going to record them.

The first band was called The Docs. They described their style as Indie rock, saying they were inspired by bands like kings of Leon.

The second band was called Sunderstraight. They described themselves as indie pop. With inspirations in the Red Hot Chilli Peppers.

The third band was called Undercover tide. Their style was more progressive. They also have a different instrument layout to the other bands.

Meeting the bands was very useful as it helps with formulating recording days.

Audio Project – Meeting 4

Callum Price

This week we presented our presentation.

We went through our business goals for the project and our individual learning outcomes.  My learning outcomes were focused towards the production and product side.

Presentation – Circle Studios

  • To be consistent in mixing and mastering multiple genres to a high level to produce a professional product worthy of payment.
  • To know how to present products of a similar nature to a media based client.
  • To understand professional working relationships in a media scenario.
  • To practice and understand the internal dynamics of running a production company.
We spoke with Lee about our progress and the presentation. We agreed to reword some of our LO’s to make them more measurable.

Luke Pickering – Studio Assistant

Callum Price

Luke is a Studio assistant at the church studios in London.

He started the lecture by giving us a virtual tour of the studios using pictures and explained a little bit about each space. This was really interesting as it gave insight into how a studio is set up.

Luke spoke about his boss Paul Epworth. Paul co-wrote and produced rolling in the deep and Skyfall with Adele. He mentioned that paul bought the studio after it was potentially going to close.

Luke then moved on to talk about traditional studio roles. He listed them with a list of tasks associated with each role. He spoke about how each role is designed to support the one above. His position which is a studio assistant mainly consists of him keeping everything stocked up. Has to manage plugins and data storage. Luke also mentioned the roles of an assistant engineer and the engineer.

The last part of the lecture consisted of how to get a job at a studio. He spoke of what to put on a CV and the skills to list. What was very important from this was the fact he spoke about the do not’s. This was very useful as nowhere else would tell you these things.

Luke also spoke about how he got the job in the first place. He said how he was signed up to this work experience company called Miloco. Miloco had placed him there at the right time and place.

Overall this was a really useful lecture and gave some good insight into working in a studio

 

Splitting Responsibilities

Callum Price

We thought the best way to tackle a project with this many aspects was to split our tasks.

I took over a lot of the production aspects while Joe took over a lot of the business communication. As Joe had been a student at the college it made more sense for him to be the front for our business with them.

Dividing these tasks allowed us to focus our efforts more directly, meaning we are more effective as a company.

 

 

Running a Businesses

Callum Price

As we are planning to operate as a proto-company, I conducted some very basic research into running a company.

Top 20 tips for running your own business

Having an A – Level in business studies I knew roughly how to run businesses. This website gives a great list of tips for starting businesses.

Some of the main points which are particularly useful are the sections on “planning” and “get into a niche”.  As we aim to deal with schools planning is something we need to be very good at. Schools work to strict schedules, and this is something we would need to adhere to. The other section on getting into a niche is good for us as that is our aim. We currently can’t find a service that does what ours is proposing. This should hopefully give us an edge into the industry.