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It crackles and it rustles. In this 6-week audiovisual KISD project – initiated by designer and music producer Stefanie Grawe aka GRAY – 22 design students dedicated themselves to the love of lo-fi music and composed their own song. For this they dealt intensively both theoretically and practically with the associated production techniques, analyzed popular pieces of music and experimented with different sounds. Of course, they also designed a visual identity in the form of a cover artwork and music video. All results are now presented on this website.


HOUSEWIFES – ADINOKI

Martina Moran, Ionna Gkanidou & Inga Grönitz



We all feel this loneliness after covid and lockdowns and the struggle to fit in. Everyone wants our attention: our parents, peers, school, work and social media. Our brain is on constant fire with no place to escape. We want loneliness, and at the same time we don’t. Our song is capturing exactly this feeling – being torn between two worlds and not belonging to either one.

RESPONSIBILITIES

Concept of Song/Group: Everyone
Song creation & mixing: Ionna Gkanidou
Concept of music video: Everyone
Storyboard & Shooting Plan: Inga Grönitz
Filming & Directing: Everyone
Documentation, Upload Youtube & Bandcamp,
Press Release: Inga Grönitz
Editing & Cutting of Music Video: Martina Moran
Cover Graphics: Martina Moran


MOOD

Groovy
Energetic
Vinyl scratch rush sound
Nostalgic
Vibes from the past

TOPIC / IDEA

Coming back from a club
Rush of energy
Sun is coming up
Mellow summer night feeling


CONCEPT 

Our concept was built after doing a listening session of LoFi Songs and compiling our favorites. As our main influences we selected the following songs:

For Beat & Rhythm: Pals Trax - Equation
For Vocals: Park Hye Jin - Like This
For Vocals, Sound Effects & Music Video: Parallel Dance Ensemble - Juices For Vocals & Build-up Structure: Kllo - Walls To Build (Mall Grab Remix) The instruments we wanted to use are these: Keyboard, Low drums, Bass, High hat, INIT, Kick, Dynamics, Vocals. The vocals should be a voice message used in the beginning of the song and repeated in parts throughout. The band name came to use very quickly. House stands for the Genre and together with the word Wifes it creates a solid play on words. Further Wifes is written incorrect (grammatically correct is Wives). This puts an emphasi on our different international backgrounds.





SONG

The Song was created using the Software Ableton Live. As we are all new to song making, we all wanted to learn how to do it and tried out a bit. After presenting to each other what we came up with, we decided to go with Ionnas Idea. She then got to know the program further and made the Song. It was important to us, that we had vocals in the song. We liked the idea of having a voice message play. For this, Ionnas Mom sent an audio being angry in russian. Ionna then distorted the message and included it in the song. Once in full in the beginning and then snippets throughout. The song name was chosen Adinoki because it is Russian for lonely. The Song should be sad, lonely, but danceable and fit the Genre of LoFi House. This was a challenge, especially us all being new to the field, and we did some listening sessions where we together talked about how the song could be improved. The song itself is a house track with lo-fi effects that I added with the Auto Filter and the EQ Eight filter. Of course there are also vinyl and cassette noises running in the background to give the song a ‘’not finished’’ sound. The first thing I did was to look at all the options the program offers me. I started with kick, open and closed hihat. After that came a few chords played until they sounded good in my opinion. One of the last things I added was the bass, which I built myself with certain filters. Stefanie showed me how to structure my song and that I should think about the song structure. Which I did later and put structure into the song. I must say that helped me a lot and I wish I had done it much earlier and understood it. The last component was the vocals. I had my mother send me voice messages in Russian and then imported them and put them in. Later, small effects were added little by little. When mixing, I adjusted the sound and worked even further with the Auto Filter.

MUSIC VIDEO

For the music video we asked Robert Hartmann, a fellow student, if he could be our main character. He agreed and we met up with him. The shooting took place in two days. Before doing the shooting, we did a test shoot to get used to the camera and light situation. The initial concept was tweaked a little bit. Instead of telling a story from scene to scene, we created a video that tells a story through dance and location changes. We decided to do this to give the video more energy and to really make dance an instrument playing along to the music.






COVER ARTWORK

The cover visual was created using a scanned image and a film still from the music video and layering them. The scanned image was made by putting boots on the scanner and moving them during the scanning process. This created a pattern that was further edited in Photoshop. The round cutout we chose because it portrays the vintage style of LoF music. For the LP version, we made a second cover out of a video still to be the sleeve.




PRESS RELEASE

For the song we wrote following press release and uploaded it to Bandcamp and YouTube. We then used snippets of the press release throughout the social media presence (see text on the left of the Bandcamp page).

As our colors we chose orange, white, light grey and black. These colors are also prominent in the music video. The music video was uploaded to YouTube.

REFLECTION

The project was fun and at the same time a lot of work and exhausting at times. There was little time to create the song and the video and everything in between until the deadlines. As beginners in music making, this was a big challenge for us, but we made it! During this project we learned the process of music making and how to deal with high stress. In the group we got along very well, which was a wonderful experience. We also supported each other and gave feedback and worked on a lot of tasks together. Since we also have different design backgrounds, we could compliment each other well. What also really helped was that we had a similar vision for the end result in mind. We were on the same page, even when it came to making changes to the first ideas that we had.

The next time, more in-depth planning could be useful especially for shooting the video. For example next time during the shoot one person could take notes which scenes were good and which ones not so much. Like this not all scenes need to be viewed again to sort out which ones to work with. Also a more in-depth story board including the angles would be good, since it took a lot of time for us to find this out during the shooting. Our approach was very laid-back and at the same time better planning could potentially lower the stress levels. We are very pleased with our outcome. Getting an insight into music is very valuable and we look forward to the next music projects we might attend!
© KISD / Image & Motion
SS 2022