Brisbane Sound

We wanted to do something that was unique and something that we were passionate about. We had many many ideas and themes we wanted to explore from the beginning and funnelled our project down to what it is today- LOCAL ANIMALITY. We used a number of resources from both formal and casual media as well as brainstorming a lot. Some of the original ideas we had were around Brisbane’s queer culture and producing a completion album of Brisbanes queer artists. This was the idea we were work-shopping for. We came to the conclusion that given the range of bands we knew personally that we could really contact all sorts of genres and different demographics in this project- we didn't have to limit ourselves to a minority - we are a minority and we are working with bands that are a minority by default. HMM.. “How can we elaborate on this?” we thought. Well luckily for us as we began digging into the cultures and things we know about our little Brisbane music community and found a heap of information and themes around it. We have been looking into the themes of this project and ways in which we can use these to our advantage. Both from a creative to a marketing perspective. We decided to challenge ourselves that a Brisbane underground music scene compilation album would be the way to go. We were able to reach out to artists that we like to be a part of the project and most of them said yes!

So, what themes are we looking into? One of the biggest one is COMMUNITY. Here in Brisbane we feel as if we are part of a small community. There are many local icons in our industry. We have iconic people, places and events that bring our community together. Mike and I are very lucky to both be involved in this small music scene and we are very proud to be. We will be using the places in which we have been completing our apprenticeships. Mike has been working in production at 4ZZZ. We will be able to use his platform to promote any gigs that we book to launch the album. I have been working at Jet Black Cat Music doing live sound. We will be able to use some of the contacts I have made through this experience to book a gig for the launch of the project. We maybe be able to get some promotion through other radio stations as well.

Another is of course the Striped Sunlight Sound of Brisbane. This is something we research in order to develop the aesthetics of the project. We pitched that the bands involved could cover ANY song from Brisbane. It could be a small local band or any of our Brisbane legends classic’s. Almost all the bands chose songs that were involved with developing the Brisbane sound. Regan justifies the existence of the Brisbane music scene having a distinct sound during late 70’s - early 80’s was not particularly unique “I do not contend that the Brisbane Sound of 1978-1983 was necessarily distinct or peculiar to Brisbane. Local music scenes and musicians are not hermetically sealed hubs of creativity; all popular music is trans-local, trans-temporal and much of it intertextual, influenced by global music practices and traditions” (Regan, p. 14). Rather he states that due to trans-local and similar communities that the overall sound will be influenced through cross pollination of these. “A translocal scene referred to multiple, disparate local scenes that shared similar values, styles, and tastes in music, and how scene members interacted through the sharing of music recordings, bands and fanzines (2004, 8-11). Translocal scenes accounted for how various music styles, like punk, can seemingly emerge simultaneously in various disparate geographic locations” (Regan. P. 27). This is the theory that we wanted to use as a basis of the project also. These bands are all a part of the same scene here in Brisbane as we have quite a small music scene here. Regan uses this quote in his PDH so define a scene “a cultural space in which a range of musical practices coexist, interacting with each other within a variety of processes of differentiation, and according to widely varying trajectories of change and cross fertilization” (Straw 1991, 373).

Moreover, We want to incorporate events that will bring the community together. We will be doing this with the help of social media and promotion through 4ZZZ as I stated earlier. The first of these events will be to launch the project. We will have some of the bands on the album play a set including the cover that will be on the album. We want to put on a second show as well when the album is released. There will be t-shirts and copies of the album available. Live music is in high demand and people want local artists. Declan Byrne of Triple J states that “70% of the line-up is Australian” for Splendour In The Grass 2018, and “Of the 70 Australian artists on the bill, 35 of them are women or feature at least one female member or feature vocalists. That’s exactly 50%!” (Byrne, 2018). In extension to this after the recent social distancing bans have been put in place bands have been posting from their bed rooms and people are posting about how much they miss live music. See some of the facebook posts I saw this week about the live music ban.

We have been through a number of designs from various artists. We really wanted someone who was passionate about this project to be involved. Someone who could work with us to create the image for this branding. We didn’t really land with anyone. We could not really get anyone to commit to doing a logo and all the other bits we will need such as facebook banners, instagram posts, ect. We decided that it would be worth really looking for what we wanted and paying someone. We found a really cool local artist on instagram called Freak Street. Mike sent him a message with a pitch of the idea and within a day he sent back some drafts. We wanted it to have a sun in it for the Brisbane Sound and it took look a little 70's as well to represent the era in which the original songs were released. We were really stoked with the professionalism and felt good about supporting a local artist during these tough (COVID-19) times. We picked out of the designs which one we wanted him to develop. He sent back a day later 3 different colour versions of the logo! This was very exciting as we now finally can work on the aesthetics of the project and think about what other designs we need. We also talked to him about getting shirts printed and he said he could help us out to get that done too! We are really stoked with the final product and here is it! We are going to keep in contact with Freak Street in the coming months to get some more designs ready potentially for t-shirts when we can.

Okay I'm going run through a bit more about our communication process with the bands in which we intend will be on the project. We initially we very nervous about getting bands involved with the project. We were thinking of ways to befriend bands such as going to their gigs and chatting to them. We got some of our friends bands involved at the beginning to entice other bands before the project was even fully developed. We brain stormed some bands that we liked and wanted to get involved and sent out an email to see what would happen. We thought that it would be best to have our own email account to work from for the project. Some where we can both access to share information and somewhere to keep track of all the project progress. We thought it would also be good to get an email account up and running in preparation for future communicating as well. It's a very easy was to keep track of all bands information when they send it through.

Mike has been mostly communicating with the bands and we have been constructing emails together. This is the initial email we sent out to the bands.

The response we got more traction that we were anticipating. All the bands replied to us with in a day confirming they were either keen or too busy at this time to be apart of it. We had planned to send out more emails that week but had a full line up and extra bands locked in with in a few days.

We began gathering what songs bands were going to be covering over a few weeks and started planning when we could being recording. We created this chart in order to keep track of bands recording dates and what songs they were potentially going to cover.

After communicating with the SAE tech team to book dates for recordings this is where we were at in week 6 of this trimester for recording bands this trimester. These sessions would have been to demo tracks and practice the recording techniques we have been researching over the past few months. Since this initial email we have been constantly

been talking to bands about their covers especially the bands that were due to be recorded by the end of this trimester. We had a few meetings before Corona dictated a change in the time line for the project. We are now adapting and getting information about bands tracks via email and zoom!

We sent out an email asking the artists to help us out during this time seeing us through their gear and reference tracks if they have any. We really wanted to keep everyone motivated during this weird time.

So this is how we have been communicating with artists. We are having our first zoom meeting over the weekend with Perv Endings. We have thought of a few questions we are going to ask them during the meeting to help us get the information that we need.

Here is the email we sent in preparation for the meeting!

I have thought of some questions to ask them about the song. We also need to ask them questions about their position as a band at the moment and weather they are able to practice. We need to be considerate of everyone's mindset at the moment because our industry is on such a hold (sad face).

Perv Endings Q's:

- What reference tracks to do have for the cover? - if you don't we can help you find some because we know their is many bands who influence us and our writing its just sometimes not as obvious. (we can come back to this at a later date if they need time to think fo some they can send through to us)

- How is the cover going to differ from the original. The song you have picks has a horns section we are wording how you are planning to adapt this part.

- have you practiced the song yet?

- do you have any demos?

- if not, what is your plan at the moment for practicing as a band or are you un able to practice at this time?

- Are you more comfortable live tracking or multi-tracking and what do you think would work best for your arrangement.

- Are you planning to write many extra parts or is this a song you are able to play live as a band?

- How have you recorded in the past? What worked well here?

- Why did you choose this song?

- Do you know much about The Saints and their contribution to the Stripped Sunlight Sound ?

- How would you best describe your genre?

- What artists influence your writing in general is there any artists you strive to sound like?

We are really excited to begin this phase of communication with the bands over the next few months. We are especially going to be taking advantage of this time off to keep in contact with the bands and continue our preparation. It's really nice to reflect on the people we now have involved in this project who now it can’t happen without. We are super lucky that all the bands we have involved are still keeping in touch with us through this weird time when communicating is a bit harder. We are going to be having a lot more meetings like this over the next few months leading up to the recording phase of the production. This is not something we can stop doing now. We need solid communication methods “Strategic communication focuses on how the organisation itself presents and promotes itself through the intentional activities of its leaders, employees, and communication practitioners” (Hallahan et al., 2007, p. 7) We are keeping in contact updating our clients with everything that has been going on. We have assured them that this project is going ahead and that they should keep preparing their songs if they can. This is a little bit of strategic communication we are using to keep everyone interested in the project. We are planning to elaborate on this when we launch our instagram page by using it as a platform to promote the bands. This will also hopefully entice the bands through this community that we are creating- Corona or not.

As we gather more information about the bands we have organised it all in our google drive. This has been a great way for us to share notes as rousers with each other and keep track of the information that we have for each band. We also keep track of out research in here.

We have a section for all our grade documentations and a folder with all our pre production documents in it.

With in the Pre Production folder there is an Artist Info folder where we have all our notes on the demos, mic lists, demos is we have them and a PPP for for 4 bands that we had planned to record with diagrams, detailed information about the mic lists and information on the demos.

This is a resource that we will continue to use as we get more information for each band over the next few months to thoroughly plan for their recordings.

Keep checking this space for more updates on the project and more information. I hope this has given you some insight to the project and a bit about our inspiration!

REFERENCES:

Hallam, S. (2010). The power of music: Its impact on the intellectual, social and personal development of children and young people. International Journal of Music Education, 28(3), 269-289.

Throsby, D., & Zednik, A. (2010). An economic study of professional artists in Australia.

Regan, S. (2019). The Brisbane Sound [Ebook] (1st ed., pp. 20-60). Creative Works. Retrieved 4 March 2020, from https://eprints.qut.edu.au/130584/9/Scott%20Regan%20Thesis.pdf.

Irina Lock, Anke Wonneberger, Piet Verhoeven, Iina Hellsten. (2020) Back to the Roots? The Applications of Communication Science Theories in Strategic Communication Research. International Journal of Strategic Communication 14:1, pages 1-24.