For my proposal, I set out to create an authentic metal EP, with at least four finished songs, with vocals and a real live drummer for the drum parts. Blending different style of music, such as orchestral, baroque, folk, call and response, prog, cinematic, ambient and OST together, with Thrash Metal, in an old school, Symphonic Metal-esque sounding album, that I would put out on BandCamp and potentially record on Tape Cassette.

The outcome resulted in a pretty similar result, however some things went not as well, or differently, than expected and planned. For example I needed to change the amount of non instrumental tracks I do, form four to three, due to the limited amount of time, and the drawbacks I faced with the demo tracks, resulting in me having less time for vocals in the studio. I also did not end up recording the finished album on tape, however I did indeed put up the EP on BandCamp.
I unfortunately did not manage to get a live drummer recorded, as I faced the challenge of having to program the drum set parts on the demo, with samples, which ended up with me making humanly impossible parts, that sounded messy and cacophonous in the mix, because I literally never was taught how to program metal drums in a realistic manner. I thus had to re-do the drums using Logic Pro's drummer, as stated in my phase three, and from that point on I had almost no time left for drum set recording, so I kept the virtual drummer parts in the EP. 
I also had to completely leave out a song, due to it being hard to record in the little time we had, and thus I also left out the "Folk" elements that were going to be included, after being told that the djembe drum does not work within the mix. 
I also decided to not use my mel9 pedal, due to it sounding not as good as I expected ot to sound, meaning that I left it solely as an ambient pad, under the guitars.
I also changed the digitally recorded orchestral samples to tape recorded orchestral samples done with a mellotron, as I ended up liking the lo-fi and disturbing sound that they had, as opposed to the pseudo realistic, pristine sounding digital samples, which also cost alot to make sound good. Many things needed tweaking simply due to financial issues, for example I did not buy a walkman for the proposed tape cassette copy of the EP and I also did not use real tapes and vinyl; for the tape/vinyl effects, instead using free plugins that simulated them, such as Izotope's Vinyl and Caelum Audio's Tape Cassette. 
I also intended to re amp guitar parts with real amplifiers, however this was quickly abolished when I found out that I need a re amp box in my research, and thus I could not put re amping into practice, since I had no re amp box.

Many things however did go very well and did go to plan. For example I got my own live vocals done and the three tracks that I planned to record and did demos for are fully recorded and sound professional (according to peers and my family). I also managed to get a hefty amount of work done on each track and even managed to include instrumental outros, intros and an interval to the EP., which was not really mentioned in my proposal, however the ambient elements that I did state that I would include were present in both outro and intro. 
I successfully managed to blend orchestral elements with thrash metal, and make the tracks sound dark and cinematic, and my research on orchestration really helped me, as well as my research regarding guitar tone for thrash, as it allowed me to make these tracks sound as heavy, punchy and massive sounding as I initially wanted them to.
I managed to "complete" everything regarding practical work, which in itself is a massive achievement, due to my poor organisation and time management skills (I will talk about that further on). The fact I completed three full pieces (that actually had vocals) in two months, considering that I normally overthink and take great time doing my tracks. This was great progress and really gave me hope that I can function properly. 
I also successfully managed to include all the musical styles I wanted to include, as stated in my proposal. In my proposal I mentioned that I would make the EP in the styles of thrash metal, hardcore, symphonic and ambient metal, which I managed to do very successfully, despite having a literal onslaught of inspirations and ideas, from many different sources, ranging from video games to current events, to bands and musical styles I liked. It was pretty difficult for me to find suitable reference tracks because of this, as I literally would borrow different ideas from many sources and had my own unique style. However In my proposal I did mention my wide range of influences in metal alone, so I successfully managed to achieve what I stated in the proposal, and blend each of these elements together to make an authentic EP. My research in Phase two helped me figure out both how well I am doing regarding the usage and inclusion of these elements, as well as helped me refresh my memory regarding what is typically seen in metal and in the styles I have researched, and helped me create a mental image of what I want the final product to sound like, and which elements from my research I can include. 

Regarding the theoretical timeline that I have set myself in the proposal. I knew instantly that despite doing my best to be realistic in the making of said timeline, I knew deep down that I struggle to follow a set scheme, due to my pretty much none existent time management and organisation skills, as well as my equally inadequate social interaction/communication skills, and my overall self consciousness and overall self doubt. So to not create the sociological conundrum known as the self fulfilling prophecy, which is where one essentially theorises that they may not succeed in something, starts to believe in this, leading them to not even try and ultimately fail as a result, fulfilling said prophecy, I instead decided to try my best to stick to the timeline. 
However this failed namely due to my demos providing me with all sorts of unforeseen issues, namely regarding the poorly/unrealistically programmed drums, thanks to my lack of knowledge regarding metal drumming and programming drum set parts, and my lack of research regarding that, due to my assumption that I already know, based of what I see and hear played on thrash metal records/live shows, meaning that I ended up trying (and failing) to recreate thrash drum parts "by ear", and overthinking them and overcomplicating them to the point that they became a cacophonous mess that was unplayable by the human drummer. 
This quickly led to more issues, as my poorly programmed drums were so chaotic and unrealistic, that there was barely a groove to follow, meaning that I struggled to play guitar to these beats. This led to me playing riffs as fast as I possibly can, in an desperate attempt to keep in time with the drum diarrhoea that was being blasted around the place. This unsurprisingly led to the guitars being out of time, as well as the bass and all the other instruments that I recorded, resulting in the demos sounding like a cacophonous mess, and being unfixable. This led to me feeling very troubled, as I was not aware why the demos were sounding so poor and why I struggled to work with these drum patterns. I then took about a whole week to reach out to a teacher who stated that the demos need re recording, as they are so out of time that they cannot be fixed. I got told that I should instead record these guitar parts to a metronome, which would give me a steady groove to work with. I re-did the guitars, bass and orchestra, but the tracks still sounded annoying and noisy. At this point I was halfway into FMP practical time, and most of my class were already on Phase three, and recording things in the studio. At this point I realised that I have fallen behind my pre planned schedule and I need to catch up. I still persevered and tried to catch up, and decided to overcome my fear of judgement and reach out to the human drummer, and email him the tracks to learn, despite them still sounding messy. Within about five minutes I got an email back saying that the drums that I have programmed are physically impossible to play by a human being. Desperate, I overcame my fear and self consciousness and I reached out to the teacher and was told that the drums are indeed impossible to play, because of how I programmed them. The parts that I thought would be easy to play were in fact impossible, and at this point I was nearly out of practical time, needed to record a drummer still AND had poorly programmed drums that I had no idea how to fix. This was partly due to the fact that I have barely any experience behind a drum set, and partly because I failed to consider that drum programming was a thing I needed to work on more, thinking I already know how to make decent drum parts.
My teachers helped me by showing me the Logic Pro Drummer. This was something I normally avoided as after a few times of using it, as I deemed it as a massive gimmick that was less helpful and more of a hassle and wasn't even compatible with my Steven Slate drum set, on which it missed out things like cymbal chokes and china hits, due to being built around the Logic Pro drum sets, which were very simplistic and thus lacked china and splash cymbals, extra toms, high hat foot splashes and the option to choke cymbals. However I was shown how to work with the Logic Pro drummer, and shown how to edit the parts, and made the beats the way I wanted them to sound, using the Logic Pro drummers, together with Steven Slate 5.5, which ended up sounding very realistic and much more like a drummer, and resulted in the demos finally sounding like musical pieces, and not like drummer workout exercises.  
I was then advised to keep the virtual drum parts, as they sounded good, and I had very little time to record a set and for the drummer to learn the new parts. At first it didn't sit right with me, as I was not only behind on schedule, but also not going with the plan, however I realised that in the end it is what sounds best for the songs, in the little time I had left, and instead thought of the moral of the story, and thought of what went wrong and what I could have done instead, should I ever have the chance to make an EP again, which I will tak about later... 

My research helped greatly in my practical work, as stated before. My research of singing technique helped me in the process of recording the vocals, which went surprisingly well, allowing me to do the songs in one take and not destroy my voice due to incorrect technique, despite at first struggling to get the technique done correctly when recording Memento Mori, as despite sounding right and feeling decent in the process, I came home with a sore throat and a hoarse voice. My performance greatly improved once I started actively thinking of my research when recording the next two songs during the following week, and focusing on my vocal technique and how I could apply my theoretical knowledge to my practical work in my vocal performance. This resulted in me not only nailing the performance, but also trying out and improvising with some different vocal techniques, alongside my regular overdriven shouting, such as falsetto screams, spoken/whispered parts and hardcore/groove metal grunts.
My research based on genres, really helped refresh my knowledge of what goes into these genres, as well as give me a mental sketch of how I want my EP to sound, and what I will include, resulting in my EP being very diverse musically, while remaining creepy, angry, heavy and dark. 
My research into orchestration, as stated before, helped immensely as It allowed me to make the orchestral sounds work well with the heavy riffs and guitar works, and make them sound the way I needed them to sound. 
My research into orchestral sounds also helped me make a decision on what I want to use for my main orchestral sound. I knew first off that I definitely wanted samples at least, since I couldn't have real orchestral instruments, as I researched that hiring an orchestral ensemble of any sort will literally cost over £1000 per song, and synths were not an option, since they sounded fake, learning from the mistakes of mainstream symphonic metal acts like Epica and Nightwish, who use keyboards for orchestration, resulting in fake, sparkly and annoying sounding timbres. However I had MANY samples, some better than others, and thus I looked into how I could get the best sound and the most authentic sound out of them. I tried bitcrushing the digital orchestral sounds, to make them sound more vintage, however that failed as it didn't sound as great as I expected. I then looked at old samplers, such as the Fairlight CMI, which was the first ever digital sampler, however the samples off that sounded somewhat fake, and not as decent as I imagined them to sound, so I instead used the tried and trusted mellotron, which I heard on tracks like As Fire Swept Clean The Earth, The Grand Conjuration, Changes, Devils, Black Sabbath, Cryptorchid and many other bangers that were in my research, that worked well within my mix due to it's disturbing and lo-fi/dystopian sound, which turned out to be what I wanted.
The only real thing I feel that I have missed in my research, which I did not foresee, is drum programming as mentioned earlier. I know for a fact that there are drum programming courses out there from the youtubers I watch, and despite this, I never really looked into any tips or help into drum sequencing, mainly due to me thinking that It's a simple no brainer, and that I know what a drummer can do when drumming, based on how I watched drummers perform in bands like Slayer, as well as on youtube videos. This ended up with me thinking I know what I am doing and programming parts based on how I envisioned the drummers playing them. If I could redo this FMP I would pay more attention to getting the demo phase done as professionally and as quickly as possible, and research drum programming for metal and maybe even give Scott Elliott's online drum programming course (meant to help out metal composers who aren't drummers) a go.

Regarding my practical work, I believe it went well for the most part. It changed slightly with what I was originally going for in the proposal, as I could not re-amp the guitars as we had no re-amp box, which I kind of was looking forward to, and even researched into, however this in turn helped me gain new skills, so I could definitely use these skills in the future, to amp up and record my own guitar amp when I finally get a decent valve amp. 
I also gained new skills by going into the new studio on my own, as I struggled at first, to work with the equipment that was there, however I quickly learned to record vocals with headphones, and also was shown how to connect the headset to the outputs. This will come in handy when recording vocals at a studio, should I ever wish to record my vocals in a professional studio setting, as it will save time, which in turn will save money and make the producer's job easier. 
I also learned to accept my vocals a bit more, and improved my vocal technique, and my timing when both playing guitar and when doing vocals. I learned new techniques from my research on vocals, and developed the skills to use them practically when improvising. Moreover, I also managed to figure out how to shout with power and rasp, without destroying my voice, when recording vocals. These are very important skills to have as a vocalist and guitarist, who predominantly plays heavy music, and making this EP and putting what I have learned into practice, has helped me improve my skills, by having me figure out what has gone wrong, and seek ways to solve these issues, such as the aforementioned sore throat issue, that occurred after recording Memento Mori, which I figured out was because I was using my throat and not my diaphragm, and thus I fixed the issue by recording the next two tracks, focusing solely on my vocal performance, rather than just getting it done and over with, resulting in me actually enjoying myself, and improving my technique. One way I could further hone my skills is by practicing both guitar and vocals, by improvising to beats, and writing lyrics that I can sing to a backing track (perhaps made by me). However, another thing I should hone is my tolerance of my voice and myself, and that is a difficult thing to do, and the best way I can think of doing this, is just listening to myself sing to the point where I grow accustomed to my voice.
Another skill I greatly improved is mastering, which will come in handy when making my finished tracks sound professional. I learned how to master better by doing it, and getting support from teachers and the web when required, then using that advice accordingly. The only way I can develop my mastering skills is by mastering more and more tracks, and practicing it, getting help when needed, until i master the art of mastering.
There are some skills that I probably haven't yet learnt, such as drum recording, which I never really got round to doing due to the time constraint, and the reasons mentioned above. I am not too comfortable with recording drums using multi mic setups, and still would probably take some time to get my head around everything, if I had to mic up a set. One of the reasons I wanted to mic up a kit was mainly due to the fact that I wanted to get comfortable with setting up mics for a drum set recording. Unfortunately I did not get to put much of my research into practice, however based off this research, and the knowledge I learned from it in phase two, I have some knowledge and maybe a fighting chance, should I ever come to need to mic up a set in the future.

Overall, I truly believe that my project as a whole was a great success, for many reasons such as simply the fact taht this is the most successful material that I have done in such a small time scale. I also picked up a plethora of useful skills, both in performance and production, learning how drums should be programmed, practicing my timing and learning new vocal techniques and applying them, as well as finding out different ways one can orchestrate and working with vintage samples, as well as honed my mastering skills, enabling me to make professional sounding tracks.
The things that went well in the project were how my research paid off, and how well I used it to influence my practical skills. Also how well my skills improved both on vocals and guitar, and bass and orchestration. I also think my creativity helped me out so much throughout the project, and my perseverance and problem solving skills. I also enjoyed improvising on guitar, especially doing the solos, and orchestrating using the guitar as a controller. I enjoyed putting my researched vocal techniques into practice in the studio too.
A few things could have gone better, such as my time management and my social communication/interaction skills, which always were difficult for me. I also think I could have looked into drum programming before assuming I can program, and perhaps I could have also looked into other scales on the guitar than the A minor pentatonic scale, to make my music more interesting. 
If I could do anything differently, to improve I would have researched drum programming for metal, or used the logic drummer and researched how I can use them to make my beats sound real, and done my scratch tracks as quickly and efficiently as possible, without overthinking it, and adding unnecessary details, or making stupidly complicated parts. In the future I know that I have to manage my time better, and also prepare for any sudden barriers that may come in my way, and not overlook and overthink things too much. I also need to be more accepting towards myself, and be more willing to show my work to others, as that is the only way I can get help, and I should try and be less worried about peoples' judgement and what they may think of me. 
The End.

You can view my reflective log here: