Week 5 - Communication is Key.

Hello everyone! Thanks for checking back. It’s been another very busy week! It was pancake week this week too, which means pancakes (one of the best days of the year, apart from Halloween imo).

Here's me and friends making some pancakes:

The stress really is getting to me, it’s getting to me more and more every week, but it’ll be okay, there’s not long left now.

ALLORA

I had a very productive week with ALLORA. On tuesday we spent a couple of hours filming two different kinds of videos to use for the ALLORA promotion. As part of the ALLORA strategy we decided that it would be good to create content which allowed people to get to know them as well as entertaining content for people that already know them. In addition to this, we wanted to create content that people would want to watch, even if they don’t know who ALLORA are. So one series of videos is going to be group videos, which are slightly sillier, where they’re playing games such as “most likely to” “BFF challenge” “a night in with ALLORA”. I’ve taken a lot of inspiration when devising these videos from Sex Education cast interviews which I’ve watched a lot of recently after loving both series. The other types of videos are individual interviews so that you can get to personally know each band member. We managed to record the group “most likely to” - which was 38 minutes long(!), and each individual band member interview.

I recorded everything on a proper camera and on my phone so that we could do a full-screen IGTV, however, the quality of the footage is better on the camera so I might just use the camera footage for IGTV too.

Although they were meant to be out this friday, editing took longer than expected, especially with everything else that was going on, I also didn’t have time to go through anything with the girls before the post day so we are going to reschedule it for as soon as possible.

Meanwhile here are some BTS pics:

Personal Artistry - Songwriting and Production

This week I tried to do as much as I could to do with my own artistry. I had a studio session where I decided to start to record ‘In My Feels’ (a song that I wrote with Merryn in first semester). I told my band that I’m performing with that we had a studio session (which we were going to instead of rehearsal time this week) as I wanted them to record the song with me as they know it really well and I’m really happy with how it’s sounding in rehearsals.

There were a few issues with the studio session. Holly couldn’t get there right at the start because her class finished half an hour into the session, but she came as soon as she could. We then set up the grand piano to record, but I didn’t have any vocals recorded, I didn’t want to keep Holly longer than I needed to as she also had class after the studio session, and I didn’t want to run out of time. We recorded quite a few takes which was good, and Holly did really well without vocals - we gave her the lyrics instead so that she could follow herself.

However, my guitarist got confused and went to our rehearsal space instead and went home when we didn’t turn up, he went home. One of my backing vocalists and my bassist were late too as they forgot the time, but they came in in the end and we got some bass down. However, we ran out of time to get any vocals, but I’ve got another studio session too so hopefully I can record the guitar and backing vocals soon and release ‘In My Feels’.

I also did lots of songwriting this week. I finished ‘house party 44’, it just needs a re-record and a little bit of production. I also had a play around with Arcade and started writing a song called ‘Anybody Else But You’ which I’m super excited about! I also found a really cool loop on ‘Pool’ on Arcade, but the timing is slightly wrong so I might work the chords out and re-record it myself. Nothing’s ready just yet to go on the demo or music page but I’m trying to very soon. I also started writing a song called ‘Boundaries’ which I love and I’m tempted to release it but I’m not too sure yet….

I’ve been trying to take inspiration from SG Lewis, Marina (particularly ‘Love + Fear’ at this moment), Lily Allen (particularly ‘No Shame’) Clairo, which is sometimes super easy and sometimes quite difficult, but we’re getting there, slowly but surely.

It was overall quite a quiet week for writing and production however as I have a few more studio sessions booked in so I’m planning on writing a bit more in the near future to record in those sessions, and I want to record what I’ve got so far and release it as there’s a lot in the woodwork, but I am constantly writing lyrics. I have found though that I’m focusing on the songwriting quite a lot which is good because it’s the skill that I want to develop, but I also want to work on the production and start to have things release-ready.

I'm also thinking about possibly starting a weekly series of posts, possibly on a monday, of my song recommendations for that week, but I haven't decided yet. Would that be something you guys are up for?

Also, I took some sick pictures for my artist instagram, which you can see by going on @sabsmusic_ and hitting follow. Here's a little preview though:

Performance

We didn’t actually get a chance to rehearse this week as I used the slot for the studio session, but things are coming along nicely, and one of the songs still needs to be finished, so hopefully soon, and I still need to completely finalise the second cover.

That’s it for an update for now, but check back soon to see what else is new!