Mission 1 Creativity:Adaptations, Remixes and Mashups

BLOG 1
PROCESS
For my first time doing a group project I was not sure what topic I would like to do and what I would be good at.So for my first lab session with Helen where I was told I had to pick a topic, I found it difficult to begin with. As I was not sure how it was going to play out and where my strengths and weaknesses would come into the presentation.The name of this mission was called creativity and it was the first of the three we had to do as part of the module.

The first thing I done before picking a topic was go through each one and look for the one that I found that I had an interest in the most.Where  I thought would be the best at and would excel to my highest potential in the project.The topics I had to pick from where: art of the animated gif, augmented reality,digital audio,interactive fiction, adaptations remixes and mashups, creative coding, gaming,critical making.

For my first group project I done adaptations, remixes and mashups. Our main goal for this project was to hopefully in the end have a remixed song we liked  and were proud of, we also wanted to get a grasp and learn about the history and concept of adaptations, remixes and mashups and make them to be interesting in our presentation. Another goal was to understand the development of the issues of copyright and authorship and the last goal was to understand the motivation behind these concepts and creative outputs.

We want by the end of this mission to have produced a song we like and that it would actually be a product we are proud of. We want the song to be good so people actually enjoy it and we want our presentation to have useful information so it is interesting for the people watching it.

For this mission we used a few of the websites linked to the adaptations remixes and mashups website as a part of inspiration for our presentation and to get us started in the right direction. The main ones we used was "the rhetoric of remix" this website gave us an interesting take on remixes and made us think of it from a different perspective. Another website we read into was "Videographic Deformations" this website had to do with videoed music and was more about music in videos and how they were used. A lot of the websites for this mission where blogs so they were opinion based which was a positive and negative thing because it was interesting to get other peoples opinions but they were not factual so that was a bit of a downfall for our presentation.




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PRODUCT
The first thing I done was try to figure out how to remix a song and what songs I think would work.For this I went through my Spotify playlist and tried to pick a few songs that I thought would work together. This process was done through a lot of trial through the software GarageBand on the MacBook which I found to be the easiest to work with when mixing songs. I tried to use VidBolt but the process was too long and the songs I wanted to use did not work with this. I tried to use Drake's song "Controlla" with some simple beats but did not like the turn out. I also tried speeding up some slow songs by Jorja Smith but did not like how that worked out either. This was definitely the trickiest part of the mission but was the most worth it by the end.So after a lot of trial and error I picked the two songs "Pretty Little Fears" by 6lack ft J Cole and remixed it with the song "With you" by Stwo. I found these songs to be the best two when combined, I liked the beats of both songs when I mixed them together. 

After getting through the song the next thing I done was me and Aoibhe went through the goals we had for the presentation and came up with a plan to get the best slides out of this mission. We done this by regularly meeting up in the Mac Lab and communicating on what we had to get done for the presentation. The presentation we set out to be 16 slides, 2 pages being for the beginning and end and a slide for the song we created through Garage Band.

The slides in the presentation began with the history and evolution of remixes, we explained this to a basic knowledge and linked in a youtube video of the first song ever remixed by Kevin Saunderson.
Then the presentation goes on to explain the history and evolution of mashups, we gave a bit of background and then went onto talk about Frank Zappa and how he changed the perception of music. 
We also gave information on the history and evolution of adaptations, we found information on how music adaptation had a lot to do with video games and gave information on that and how that changed music later on.

We also went onto to explain about what is copyright as that has a lot to do with remixed music and we also explained what authorship was. In our final slides we discussed our creative outputs we gave reasons why we thought adaptations, remixes and mashups and why we thought they were important. In this slide we also went onto discuss what goes into remixing and how to remix music you need to have an interest in it and have good rhythm. That was our process for our presentation on the creativity mission:adaptations, remixes and mashups.

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REFLECTION
What I learned from this mission is that the presentation is equally as important as the product which is produced during it. I learned to put in as much effort in the presentation when looking up information for the slides as when trying to pick music for the remixed song. They both have equal value so I learned this to bring forward into my other missions.

During the course of doing my mission what I discovered was that I really enjoy remixing music and I found it easy at times as I enjoyed what I was doing. I discovered that I have an interest in music and the history behind the remixes etc I found to be enjoyable. I also discovered that I work harder 
on things I enjoy as I have motivation to get through the mission which makes it more interesting to do. I also discovered I am good when it comes to the writing part about the backgrounds and having to summarize it and put it into my own words.

I think what worked in our project was our song turned out well. I like the mashup of songs and was definitely a stand out as most of my group done GIFS. I also think our presentation turned out well our slides met the goals we set out at the start for our project.What I think I can work on for the next project is keeping my slides with less information rather than having filled with information.Less is more so keeping the slides shorter comes off more effective rather than having packed with information that is not as important.Also keeping the slides with short bullet points and getting straight to the point rather than waffling on. Another thing I can work on for next time is my presentation skills, remembering to introduce myself and what my project is on at the start is key. Also having key notes rather than reading of the slides and just rambling on.

I think overall this was a good first project to start with, I feel like we reached all the goals we wanted in the presentation. We also succeeded at mashing up to songs which was our main goal to have as an end product at the end. Even though it was a lot of trial and error at the beginning we still got it at the end. Another key thing I learned was communication is key and if you work together as a team it makes the project smoother and you work more sufficiently and quicker.Overall I was proud of the turn out of the song and how the presentation went well. This was a first good project to start on and it gave me a lot of insight for how to work on the next project and what to do and not to do.