Sunday, 6^th November 2016

Following the group allocations, we started by choosing our genre and I’d venture to say that Gospel ‘spoke’ to us. Most of us weren’t familiar with this genre so we started by listening to premier gospel (in my case) and other gospel radio stations or songs we were recommended. We did, however, decide what our roles would be and myself and Adam became Heads of Music. There wasn’t much we could do in regards to planning the programme so we just went on to listen to some gospel music.

As a group, we’ve decided to meet every Monday. On the first meeting, with a better idea of what a gospel radio station’s output is, we began to brainstorm and come up with ideas. James set up Trello, which is a website where we can upload whatever we’ve been working on and share it with the rest of the group.

Sunday, 13^th November 2016

The target for Adam and I was to select 30 to 50 songs to pitch it to the group. We were given suggestions by Afia and Curtis and did our own independent research. We agreed that by Thursday we would have our lists complete in order to select the 30 to 50 songs we were going to pitch the group and so it happened and because we disagreed on a few tracks we continued working on it, however, this time Adam created a Google Drive Doc where we could keep all the information for the songs we decided on showing to the group (James also had access to the doc).

The following Monday we met with the group, however we were unable to listen to a clip of all the songs as we didn’t have enough time. However, the group suggested a few other tracks for us to listen to, agreeing that we would all sit down and listen to a clip of the songs by the following Thursday.

On Thursday, the team finally listened to a clip of every song and selected the ones we wanted to be on our playlist. I was a long process; we disagreed with each other on some songs and at the same time managed to defend some choices, even though Tom thought were being ‘too quiet’ for a playlist meeting.

Sunday, 20^th November 2016

This week we started working on getting the songs and uploading them to myriad. Adam and I knew it was going to take a long time, which it did. We recorded all 38 songs into Adobe Audition and saved them as WAVE files which we should have not, however we hadn’t realised it at the time. This was when things started going wrong; something happened while I was saving the files and we lost most of the songs we had. I don’t know whether it was something I did or if the software couldn’t handle that much data but when doing it again I saved them individually as I was finishing recording. This all happened this Thursday, 17^th November and I went back to the studio on Friday to rerecord the songs we had lost. My plan for the day was to import every song into myriad, mark the intros and outros and write the copyright information. I came to University at around 12 am but couldn’t start working as I was unable to use studio 5 as there were students from a different university using Studio 6 and the little booth to film for their project. This pushed me back on my plan as I lost a little over an hour of work.

When I finally got to studio 5, I started by redoing the recordings Adam and I lost and then transferred them from Studio PC to the Myriad PC, however 38 WAVE files seemed off to me as they’re gigantic so I wanted to be sure that I was supposed to import them into myriad. I double checked and I was told that I wouldn’t be able to import WAVE files and that I would have to convert them to MP3. Despite not being happy with the situation, I continued working and converted all the files to MP3 and imported them into Myriad. Meanwhile I was keeping Adam updated on the situation as he was working on the music features outside university.

Once everything was on myriad, I started by setting the intros and outros of every song, however I wasn’t able to finish as I had to leave the studios at 9pm. Had I had access to the studios past that time I could have finished everything that day.

Sunday, 27^th November 2016

As we had a group meeting on Monday, Adam and I met earlier in order to finish working on myriad. I quickly set the intros and outros for the songs left and Adam went through all of them to double check. We added two more as they fit the show. Following that we added the copyright information to every song and moved on to working on our music feature. Adam and I agreed on writing a piece about up and coming gospel artist Zoe Grace, a duo which cover song was part of our playlist. As a back-up, we thought of creating a feature on Chance, The Rapper as he was in the UK, on tour. Adam contacted Zoe Grace and I emailed Chance, The Rapper’s management. Despite many efforts trying to contact these artists, we didn’t hear back from them. At this point I started asking almost everyone I know if they’re gospel fans and if they know any artists.

Meanwhile, during the week we did our first pilot as we wanted to see how everything would come together and whether we should change or replace something. This way we would be better prepared for next week’s pilot, in which we would get feedback.

Sunday, 4^th December 2016

On the 1^st December, we did our official pilot. I thought it went well, however we did have a fair bit to improve on. I wasn’t too happy with the music, especially after the feedback we got, so we decided to meet to select a better playlist for the assessed show. Adam, James, Curtis and I met on Friday and agreed on a new playlist.

Meanwhile, one of my co-workers told me about a gospel act by the name of Volney Morgan and New-ye, so I contacted them via Facebook. The artist replied to my message by asking me to arrange an interview by sending an email to their ‘bookings’ account. Following that I got in contact with Nicole, part of the management team, and we set an interview for Monday, however she didn’t email me back confirming the time and phone number. As I was running out of time, I thought of creating a feature regarding new artists, but without an interview. However, this idea wasn’t approved.

Sunday, 11^th December

This week was very nerve-racking for me.

I was supposed to conduct an interview with Volney Morgan, the creative director of Volney Morgan and New-Ye, but it didn’t happen as Nicole didn’t get back to me. She, later, sent me an email apologising and we managed to set a different interview date, however Mr. Morgan was at work the entire day and would only be home by 9pm. At this point, I tried every solution I could think of from recording the interview at that time, asking him to record himself as we didn’t have access to a studio, to doing a live interview on Thursday. As the artist preferred not to be interviewed on Wednesday evening, we set the interview for Thursday at 9am. This meant that I had limited time to produce the feature I planned, having to make a few adjustments. This, also, prevented me from filling out the PSR report and overall help the team as I did on the pilot. Nevertheless, everything went on fine, even though I didn’t listen to the show.

I’m proud of everyone for their hard work however I couldn’t point out everything everyone has done as I feel I wasn’t too involved in the whole process. Dealing with the music, with all the restrictions Adam and I faced, was extremely time consuming and challenging. We spent hours in studio 5 obtaining the songs and uploading them into myriad, setting intros and outros. Once we were done, looking at it, I felt as though we hadn’t done much. However, I know that was not the case.