Patrick's Blog

My digital artefact is an artist platform that has been created on SoundCloud, where I have made and uploaded ‘royalty-free’ beats onto that are free to download. The project encompasses a wide variety of musical genre’s and styles, and aims to provide music for users who are primarily amateur music producers, or other video content creators. I developed this project because I wanted to explore another avenue in music making where I could put my ideas somewhere online for someone anywhere to listen to, while at the same time being beneficial to both myself as a musician and other content creators. When developing my pitch, I also felt that there was a general need to make music that was available to a widespread audience rather than the standard hip-hop beats which are well over-saturated, which I feel I could provide an avenue for. As read in this article about how expensive music production can be, a big part of my project over the Beta was and still is figuring out “how could you rise above the competition without spending more than you should?”. To develop this project, I would write and record the music in my studio at home from scratch, mix the audio, and then upload it to my online music streaming platforms on my own, readily available for people to do with what they want, and later on in the project I would work on the design of my page. One of my main inspirations for a beat making project was this SoundCloud beat artist, as “Yetti Beats” too upload content that is stripped back and easy to use for music producers.

While I do see the projects undeniable utility for all kinds of users and audiences, I also understood that it would take more than 13 weeks to get something like this to grow any kind of audience by grinding week in and out. Each week starting from week 5 I would upload around two tracks a week to my account and make adjustments to the style of music I was making based off what tracks on my SoundCloud were gaining more attention. When I started this project, I felt that I would be able to do it on both SoundCloud and Bandcamp, and maybe eventually venture over to YouTube. However, it was visible that by the time the Beta was due, starting from scratch with Bandcamp at the same time was essentially pointless and was wasted energy, as the following screenshots suggest:

Since moving my platform solely to SoundCloud, I have seen some, though small, noticeable amount of more positive traction to ‘Unfinished Business’. I was able to make music that could see more likes, and streams, and I could set out an official design for my profile (as seen in the profile screenshot above) that would outline a vibe for what my DA entails; psychedelic synth based music that is both simple to make and use. The project had a large focus on the FIST concept outlined in BCM114, as I was able to work on a project I could fit in my day-to-day, and the content created was been quick to produce on a regulatory scale with resources I had. The results since establishing the design after week 11 and sound of the project are as follows:

Though a small improvement, moving forward, I’m still not sure if I want to continue with this proje*ct or not. It was hard to get any feedback with users on my platform so I could only rely on metric figures of what tracks gained me more traction. The DA had a few shortcomings, mainly because I wasn’t able to interact with anyone on SoundCloud, although an interesting point made by a student in OP2 feedback was that I should “play around with the lengths of your piece to see if maybe a longer track gets more views/likes”, which I have begun to do and will follow up on after the DA is due, to see if I can progress any further by doing so. Also, I will be getting more involved with sharing other artists content from around the SoundCloud community to try and boost my own profile in future (whether for this project or another), as the “the artists guide” again mentions the importance of this, in that; “It’s one thing to share your music, but it’s another thing to share someone else’s work on your profile”.

As my D.A nears final submission for this university semester, so to does this signal the beginning of further musical work I’d like to upload online, maybe on the profile I made, or maybe on an entirely new profile that picks up off the shortcomings of this project, such as being not as interactive with the SoundCloud community as I could’ve been. Either way, the journey has been an enjoyable one full of learning experiences.

As I took the time to iterate and prototype over the last 10 or so weeks, it was cool to see analytics to just see how throwing something random online made its way around to different people, and it was even cooler to see even just a couple of people decide to click ‘like’ or even follow. I feel like I have tested the waters with this project, and it has given me confidence in moving forward with future project ideas in the future.

Over the last few weeks I had taken some steps to get as much out of my project before the week 13 deadline. Though this was never something I knew wasn’t going to blow up overnight, and was going to be something I would have to grind for even years on to even get anywhere, it was important that I could get as much out of this project as possible before the end of the semester. While trying ideas such as uploading longer material and working on the cover design and aesthetic of my SoundCloud profile for Unfinished Business (as shown above), I looked to various sources for inspiration on how to do this. This included the importance of developing a set in stone image, which can be read about here, as having a good logo/design could be a factor in what makes people look at you in the first place, and standing out from the noise, in the ways that you promote yourself and share others content, in order to communicate.

Now having metaphorically dipped my feet in the water, as mentioned, I am extremely keen moving into the future to continue making content online, whether it be on this platform, or something entirely different! If there’s anything this project has shown me, the possibilities are endless!

Thank you for following me on this journey!

So, since around week 5 after my last blog post, I began work immediately on my DA idea, ‘Unfinished Business’. The basis of this idea was to create an alias artist platform that I would upload beats onto at least a couple of times a week, just for people to listen to, but also available to download for anyone to use royalty free. While I feel like I’ve kept on track with what I’d liked to have been doing at the beginning of the project, there have of course been a lot of iterations undertaken throughout the course of the project.

Starting with what I mentioned in my previous post on my beta of the project, one of the main developments has been going from trying to build my profile across multiple, to just focusing on one major platform on SoundCloud. The main thought behind this was that rather than wasting time trying gain traction and listens on platforms like Bandcamp and YouTube at the same time, the reality (at least for me) was that no matter how many platforms I used, it wouldn’t allow me to garner any extra followers, likes or listens any faster, as shown in the early stats while prototyping my project below. Instead, by focusing just on SoundCloud, which I found was the easiest to attract random listeners on (compared to the previous platforms listed), even without having an official design for the page yet I have been able to gradually build on the amount of follows and plays my beats have had, as I’ve uploaded more content each week. In essence, by breaking my DA down to just being this, I feel as though I have been able to achieve a result that allows me to follow the ideas of “continuous deployment”, read about in an interesting Facebook research article, whereby I have maintained these updates to be “kept as small and isolated as reasonably feasible”.

Moreover, another important part of my DA’s development has been the actual making process of music, and finding ways to put out content quickly while maintaining a production quality that is feasible. Since I have been doing this all myself, not only has the ability to write and record my ideas quickly been important, but the final sound quality in itself is another vital component, because if the final mix is cluttered, has undistinguishable sounds or a complete mess, any listener could instantly deem the work unlistenable or unprofessional, and my project will ultimately have even less of a chance of going anywhere. Now since I have a long background with music mixing, this was nothing new or difficult for me, but rather, I looked to find ways to speed up the mixing process. This was done by utilising and learning new plugins in my DAW, such as Izotope’s “Neutrino” plugin for example, a plugin that in a nutshell, seeks to analyse each individual track in a session and sets parameters automatically for you to start with, essentially allowing me to get out of the blocks faster when undertaking every new session. This process in itself follows an idea in Clarke’s “complete guide to content curation”, as I would like to move towards being “recognized as an expert” in my field, curating my content and how it sounds towards the potential listeners needs.

All in all, I am fairly happy with how my project has developed up until this point, and there’s only a few things left to do design and track wise before I release it as an official platform. Following the core concept of F.I.S.T, I have been able to work on a project I could fit in my day-to-day work/uni schedule, and the content I’ve created has been quick and easy to produce on a regulatory scale, all from equipment I had already acquired over the years, making it relatively inexpensive. Considering at the beginning of this project I would’ve been happy for anyone anywhere to play my content at least once, now that I have gotten a few streams, follows, and likes, I’m more than excited to find new ways to expand and improve on this in the coming weeks.

Remember to leave a comment if you have any feedback, thanks!

How my DA has come along so far:

When I began my DA project, my intent was to make musical beats and upload them to free music streaming platforms Soundcloud and Bandcamp, with the hope they’d be listened to and possibly downloaded by other music makers interested in using the types of sounds I’m making. Being that the type of music I was making was directed towards a niche community looking for electronic music beats, so far, I am happy in that at least a few users have streamed my sounds.

Changes undertaken since the pitch:

As mentioned in the video below, the first few changes really revolved around the name, but moving on from that, when I uploaded my first beats, I could see what my listeners were listening to as well as other statistics, inclusive of when the best day/time to upload these beats were. Because of this, I decided to move my platform to be solely focused on Soundcloud, since I found through user statistics when I uploaded my first few tracks to both SoundCloud and Bandcamp, this is where I could actually start to build an established community of followers. From there, I could begin to branch out to platforms like Bandcamp again, and even YouTube or Spotify. I also said in my pitch that I’d be aiming for around 3+ uploads a week, but doing this project myself and fitting it around work has really only enabled me to average 1-2 uploads a week since the project started, but I feel that by doing this, I’m at least still encouraging a consistent flow of content for enough listeners to find.

Moving forward:

As I move into the final phase of this DA, my main goal is to have a proper design and layout on my Soundcloud page established, which will allow the project to look official and attract more people to spend time on my page and share its content. I will still continue to make beats at the same time, but now that I have prototyped my product, I am confident that this is the right way to carry on, as with few listens, the only way is upward!

Nick Murphy, FKA Chet Faker, is an Australian musician, artist and performer from Melbourne that makes leaps and bounds across multiple styles of music. His music release catalogue incorporates elements of hip and trip-hop, synth-pop, soul, jazz and techno, so it is quite evident that as an Australian, his music incorporates appropriation from cultures all over the globe, bringing large audiences of people together. Sandrine supports this idea in “Moving From Cultural Appropriation to Cultural Appreciation, as this notion of appreciation allows all listeners to have a “recognition and enjoyment of the good qualities of someone”. (2019).

Early on his career, Murphy was heavily influenced by hip-hop, as his cover and breakout release of “No Diggity” suggests, a song originally performed by American R&B group “Blackstreet” featuring Dr. Dre. In Murphy’s rendition, he turns the R&B hit into a soulful and melodic performance, and in turn he is able to bring out a whole new life to the song through this appropriation of genre. As Jim Poe writes in his interview with Murphy for the guardian; “Its combination of arch indie irony and earnest crooning made it an apt crossover hit, grabbing worldwide play when it was licensed for a Super Bowl beer commercial.” (2014), effectively allowing the music to become a global taste.

Murphy’s former moniker, Chet Faker, also expands on his global appropriation style, a stage name that he owes to 1950’s jazz musician, Chet Baker. In an interview with the ABC in 2015 after winning his first set of ARIA awards, Murphy explains why he adopted the name, and why it was important for what he was trying to achieve;

“I liked the idea that Chet Baker represented for me the idea that you didn’t have to be technically amazing to make good music and that you could actually take your flaws and make the music more powerful. … He wasn’t a singer, traditionally, he was a trumpet player. But when he started singing, you could say he sucked, but he didn’t. The music was really good. It is an art form, it’s not a science at the end of the day. So it’s about expressing human qualities and imperfection is human as anything.” (2015).

Moreover, with his recent transgression of style and stage name change to his own name, Nick Murphy, it depicts an evolution towards how he approaches the next phase of his musical career to the world. Murphy achieves this new change in his album “Run Fast Sleep Naked”, an album full of sonically rich instrumentation, with songs that even feature instrumentation recorded by the Budapest Symphony Orchestra. Murphy explains in an interview with Triple J; “You can hire an orchestra and do it via online…I skyped in from Tokyo 4am, with my engineer in New York, to an orchestra with a translator.” (2019), putting a real perspective towards the global influences that make up his current musical style.

Nick Murphy as an artist is constantly growing and changing, and his adaption of multiple genres that allowed him to break out initially, and to later expand on, shows how important hybridisation and cultural adaption in growing as a phenomenon within the global music industry is. Despite the negative connotation that cultural appropriation seems to provide, no one can argue that the need for adaptation across music styles is not necessary, as Murphy shows it brings new life and appreciation of culture through remix to once ‘forgotten’ compositions, and allows people all over the globe to share a common taste.

References:

J, Poe (2014). Interview: Chet Faker: My Album Milked My Brain. The Guardian. Accessed August 29 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/music/australia-culture-blog/2014/apr/03/chet-faker-australia

N, Murphy (2015). Transcript: Chet Faker talks success and being inspired by a 1950s jazz great. Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Accessed August 29 2019. https://eds-a-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.uow.edu.au/eds/detail/detail?vid=7&sid=6e971d47-17dc-4a10-a090-ac8bfe783d87%40sessionmgr4006&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmU%3d#AN=P6S012861860615&db=n5h

A, Newstead (2019). Nick Murphy has made an album that Chet Faker never could. Triple J, ABC. Accessed August 29 2019. https://www.abc.net.au/triplej/news/musicnews/nick-murphy-run-fast-sleep-naked-feature-album-interview-review/11049428

H, Sandrine (2019). Moving From Cultural Appropriation to Cultural Appreciation. Vol. 72, Iss. 2. pp 8-13.

As film has become an increasingly important part of a countries culture and identity, it is becoming more and more evident that certain brands of ‘woods’ are travelling across the globe and infiltrating regions, resulting in an outcome of cultural imperialism within media. This is particularly obvious with how Hollywood has taken over most, if not all of the global north, and is currently making progress throughout the global south in countries such as China. Hollywood in itself is the biggest film industry in the world in both viewership and the quality of production, combined with the biggest stars and names, and with this comes the homogenization of film as it makes its way across the globe.

The process of Hollywood’s brand of global film homogenization can be well reviewed when discussing Hollywood’s superhero genre. Visible from countless examples of American heroes developed by namely Marvel and DC, we can see their characters making their way across the globe with no form of cultural adaptation from outside of North America and still be dominant across multiple box offices. One major example of this is 2019’s “Avengers: Endgame” , developed my Marvel Studios, which trumped numerous box office records around the globe, including being the fastest film to gross over a whopping $2billion, amassing $1.56billion of that overseas, and $575 of that coming from China (1). One major reason for this success can be drawn to the point that there are many multicultural aspects to this film that enable the film to be accessible and travel across all political and even religious borders. As Klangwisan discusses in his journal; “Vision: Avengers: Endgame”, “What is intriguing about Avengers Endgame and the other Marvel films is its curious implicit play with religion and politics. The experience is a melange of religious symbolism that merges with a global, western mythos”. (2019, p.84).

Moreover, the issue of Hollywood’s global homogenization is further delved on in Fu’s journal; “Explaining Global Box-Office Tastes in Hollywood Films” (2010). In this article, Fu notes that “…media tastes around the world have gravitated toward uniformity. Since national media markets are liberalized and commercialized, individual societies have been exposed to audiovisual products that not only originate from the same sources but also carry commonness in content” (2010, p.216).

This in turn distinctively provides that as Hollywood progressively continues its march towards cultural imperialism within the global film industry, through both the combination of combining multicultural themes in American media with homogenization in product across the globe, it raises the question, are we progressively moving towards a global media market that will be controlled by the one source, Hollywood?

References:

Y, Klangwisan (2019). Stimulus: The New Zealand Journal of Christian Thought and Practice, Vol. 26, No. 1. Vision: Avengers: Endgame: 83.

W, Fu (2010). Explaining Global Box-Office Tastes in Hollywood Films: Homogenization of National Audiences’ Movie Selections: 216.

R, Rubin (2019). ‘Avengers: Endgame’ Crushes $2 Billion Milestone in Record Time. “Variety”. Accessed August 25 2019. https://variety.com/2019/film/news/avengers-endgame-2-billion-record-time-1203205293/

So already, I have made a change to my Digital Artifact. I have decided to change the artist title I’m working off for this project to “Chuunne”, the idea coming from wanting to make the name I’m working under more Australia centric, as more of a joke on the way Triple J presenters pronounce the word “tune” when referring to a good song (the name is still bound to chop and change anyway). So far, I haven’t come up with any artwork or pictures to show off the vibe off my work on my artist pages, but the plan is to have this ready before the Beta is due in Week 9, and beats are already being written.

As previously mentioned in my pitch, I said I would be uploading my work to SoundCloud and Bandcamp, and the following pages have been created for me to do this:

So with this all ready to go, I’ve also started working on music in DAW software Ableton, and factoring in other commitments, I would really like to be able to upload at least three beats a week, starting very, very soon, so I am also able to start on my goal of creating a consistent flow of content to really get the page going.

Also, as a final note, it was mentioned in the feedback for my pitch that my DA creates an interesting opportunity to get involved with any other students DA’s that need royalty free music, so if anybody in bcm114 wants to use my music, don’t hesitate to let me know! I would be more appreciative of the fact that anyone took the time to listen to what I have to make anyway!

Also, as a way to engage with my audience more, I’m open to making curated music for anyone’s content if anyone would like to collaborate – so just send me a message on one of my pages if you would like to work together!.

Anyway, this is how the development of my DA has progressed so far, so let me know what you think!

What I am thinking of doing:

The main idea I have for my BCM 114 Digital Artifact is creating an artist platform utilising both Soundcloud and Bandcamp, using an alias artist name to upload weekly ‘beats’ on which will be downloadable for subscribers to use royalty free in their own musical work.

The plan:

So to do this, I’ll be recording music beats for a variety of genres, recorded at home through Digital Audio Workstation ‘Ableton’. They will then be uploaded weekly to my artist pages on those platforms for other musicians to download and adapt to their own music and use for free.

Why?

I am doing this because music is my main hobby, and undertaking a project like this will enable myself to find another possible avenue in music making that could help amateur, or any songwriters in creating musical works of art, with the possibility of personal success later down the track. As well as this, I feel there is a general need to make beats that are available to a more widespread audience rather than the standard hip-hop/indie pop beats which are well over-saturated in content as a simple search would show you, though all avenues exist, some are definitely more developed than others:

Leave a comment if you have any interest in this or any ideas!