week 3 What a wonderful blog

Get ready for some bleeding ears drums

https://sites.google.com/view/stevenjohnraymusic/stevens-podcasts
 Here is week three podcast, sorry about it not being up for some reason. I went back to fix it and it showed up so it was probably a ghost after ruling out all other factors.

This is week three of me and my silly self trying to blog, podcast, and make some tunes. I am ahead of schedule compared to what it says on my planner sheet. I was planning on just practing writing lyrics but I got to song writing and decided might as well make some beats to go along with it and I ended up with a song. Not a great song, not great vocals, but its a start. Go listen to my podcast and it is included inside of it. I was able to get this far along because mainly once I started working on writing lyrics I really didnt want to stop just there. Once I start doing something I enjoy I don't pay attention to the time. I feel like I want to try couple other genres than just rap, although I do need to come out with a rapper name if I want to go big time. Im thinking some country type, or slower signing music where you all will get the chance to listen to my angel voice. 

 I mention Alex many times in my podcast as whenever I think is this good enough I can think what would Alex have to say. If any of you guys need inspiration just go look at any of his blogs. I say since I am ahead of schedule I should make the most of it and just give myself as much time as possible to become good at what i'm doing. I didn't include any pictures and this wasnt a super long blog but since my podcast was almost eight minutes long ill take it. In the next couple of blogs, podcasts I will try to walk you through what I am actually doing just so you guys can get a taste of what I am up to. It will be more in depth. Hopefully everyone elses projects are doing swell. Just remember to not procrastinate as its no fun when you have a deadline trying to turn you into a certain type of goose (not school appropriate).

 On an unrelated topic, what do you think Alex?    

week 2 The Ray Adventures.

Making a website, setting up my microphone, making a podcast, and other fun adventures. 

Here is the link to my website that has my podcast on it.
https://sites.google.com/view/stevenjohnraymusic/general-overview 

       

              In order for me to have a podcast at least to my knowledge you need to have an outside website that is actually able to hold audio files. That meant I had to figure out how to make a website, then go through the process of making said website. I then needed to make my audio file into a listenable mp3 file then transfer it over to my google account. From there I went onto my website and actually transferred that file from my email over to it. That is how my Wednesday went. Honestly though it wasn't all too bad and it'll be fun to make it cooler down the road. I talk about a little bit on the podcast how I wasn't able to spend the full amount of time I would have liked on just using the software itself, although I did spend hours both researching and you tubing how to do different things. Setting up the microphone to actually record took me over an hour to figure out, having to go through the settings and try some different things till I figured out how to make it work. I plan on doing podcasts most blogs, as will help me to learn how to record audio, better and more efficiently. I also will get to mess around with any kind of effects you can use on your voice. I believe that it will give me more confidence so when I actually sing for my songs that my voice won't portray any nervousness as you listen to it. I'd say I have much better understanding now of how to record vocals now from this past week. I've also got some necessary things done that weren't originally things I thought I would have to do, to be able to show off what I do. For next week I plan to start writing lyrics, researching how do songwriters structure it, and look into how do I start to incorporate that into the beats themselves. Ill also be making some more short beats that will be more creative. Although this blog was shorter than I would have liked I'm pretty happy overall. I would be happy to answer any questions or if you guys have any ideas you think I should explore. Thanks for reading, hope you got to listen to my podcast and didn't die a terrible tortuous death.   


Here is what the short beat I made looks like on Fl Studio 20.

Here is a link to the podcast and short music clip I made.
https://sites.google.com/view/stevenjohnraymusic/stevens-podcasts

This is the music making setup that I have going on a table downstairs near my room. I have some headphones, microphone with a pop filter, a midi keyboard, and a laptop.

week one Shark Tank Blog

Vbi Sunt Loca 
          means in Latin "where are the sharks"                                 Vbi sunt loca              

          Last week we all had to do a shark tank pitch, where we showed our class what we were going to do for our genius project. You had to tell why you wanted to do it, how you planned on doing it, what would success be to you, and what you might learn. I decided to learn how to produce a full song with lyrics. Music has had a positive impact on my life and the same can go for lives of many other people its had an impact on.  I've always been interested in the process that goes into making music, I've always listened to the radio, you tube, spotify, and have heard songs that were popular that I personally thought were not creative and trashy. My thinking was that I could make a better song than that and this gives me the chance to see if I can do that. I spent a night making the slide show for the pitch tank and that was alright. I had to plan out what I was going to do on the Genius plan thingy. I think I gave myself plenty of time to do everything as long as I actually put in the time and do it. I might have issues with not liking anything i'm making so that might be kinda discouraging.

         I plan to start researching how to use my DAW software. There are lots of youtube videos and many different aspects you can look at it. I've researched into voice recording and it seems like you can make it as complicated as you want. Everything from the distance you stand from the mike, to the type of microphone you use, the room you record it in, whether or not it has soft or hard surfaces, how many times you should go through a song. There are also more general topics it involves. Things like typical structure of a song, should I make music or lyrics first, how many instruments should I use, how do I make them sound good together, how do I transition from part to part in the music. I then plan to move on to making short music clips, eventually transitioning to starting to make a real full length song with lyrics, vocals. I was hoping I could be able to spend at least an hour a day working on this project so the end result might be ok.

        For future blogs I will post some clips of whatever short clips of music I'm making, I also should do a podcast so I can figure out the microphone that I will be getting shortly. Pictures and videos would also spice up the blog a little and make it somewhat interesting. I've never done a blog before and I'm feeling a Mrs.Martin  "meh" about it. Hopefully it will grow on me and from my inspiration I will compose beautiful words together in ways that no one has ever seen so then maybe it will be music to your ears, or at least in your mind. Alex I feel like has a really good blog helped me to be inspired to make a blog that is hopefully of the quality that he made, His Shark Tank Pitch was my favorite as he showed no signs of being nervous, he had a really good understanding of what he was going to do and was pretty funny as well. I tried to post some pictures to this blog but they caused all sorts of problems, making it so I couldn't scroll down any farther, and making the paragraphs jump all around.