Looking back, I learned so much in our three modules for Term 1 this year. All three of my teachers were always happy to satisfy my curious questions and provide me with advice when I was stuck with a task, or just overwhelmed by it. After the first few classes for our Intro to Music…

In starting the chapter, Toop enumerated a myriad of specific sounds, such as “a thump like the underwater pressure from the air guns of an oil rig” and “the whisper voice of professional sex.”  It feels almost overwhelming trying to imagine all of it, one phrase after the next. Perhaps, Toop’s intention was exactly this.…

Intro SOPHIE, the late musician, born and raised in Glasgow, initially made her mark as a producer. Over time, she earned critical acclaim and came to be recognised as a visionary in the music industry. SOPHIE collaborated with renowned pop stars like Charli XCX and Madonna and became a “critical darling” with her unique breakcore…

DAW technology has come a very long way since its beginnings in the 1970s. During that era, the capabilities of DAWs were relatively limited because of issues like expensive storage and slow disk speed.  In 1978, there was Soundstream, the first audiophile digital audio recording company in the United States. They developed digital audio tape…

Industrial music is a genre that, at first, might be tricky to understand. It is characterized by electronic sounds and often the use of distorted vocals. Artists within this genre tend to be more experimental and avant garde. The genre started to gain popularity in the late 1970s, pioneered by bands like Throbbing Gristle, but…

Born in Kenya and raised in Uganda, MC Yallah is an accomplished rapper who is a part of the Kampala-based label Nyege Nyege—which is a Swahili word for “an uncontrollable urge to dance”. The label pushes foreign electronic music made by African artists and MC Yallah’s work is a telltale example of this ‘fusion’ of…

In this week’s class, we did research on the workflow of artists Nazar, Burial, KMRU and Elianne Radigue. My group was in charge of finding out about Burial, a London-based electronic musician. His given name is William Emmanuel Bevan but for his artist career, he goes by the stage name Burial. Growing up, he was…

In this week’s class, we studied the demo and studio version of three different songs. The one that stuck out to me most was Olivia Rodrigo’s song titled ‘drivers license’. The demo she posted on her Instagram is simply a video of her singing the lyrics while playing the piano. There was no microphone or…

Every song has a structure. In pop music, the structure is often the same. You can expect it to look something like this–intro, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus, outro. If we look at pop song dynamics using a graph, the curve will most likely peak in the chorus. The chorus would be the catchiest…

Before coming to UAL this September, I only had knowledge of using Logic as a DAW. With the help of content creators on YouTube, I taught myself all about plug-ins, buses, how to download free instruments online etc.—essentially, all the basics of music production. I was refining my skills by composing original songs. I had…