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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.


MOODSWINGS – mMM x3

Alina Bertacca, Martha Herfort & Denise Martin



,mMM x3‘ is about the turbulent journey of mixed feelings after a radical change in life. A feministic take on reclaiming negatively connoted emotions, or rather the whole process of going through mood changes, while embracing femininity and empowerment. The storyline of the song is written as a monologue and serves as an emotional vehicle to get closer to a person whom the viewer can identify with or develop an antipathy.

TOPIC 

No specific topic-experimenting & having fun (taking something out of theusual context and give it a different meaning)

GENRE

Experimental, influenced by grunge and post-punk, avant-garde, genre provocateur

MOOD

Nihilistic happiness dystopian fragmentation





CONCEPT After gathering our results we finally talked about parallels in the songs and visuals we chose as an inspiration. Pretty quickly we decided that we didn’t want the very obvious kind of a lo-fi track and video. We wanted the Song to have carrying lo-fi elements in a very subtle way. Moreover we wanted to create more than just one emotion with the song. Finally we decided to call ourselfs Moodswings as a wink to the topic of our concept. On the following sheet we listed the notes we made at this point.

Moodswings / Moodchanges - ,Women on their periods‘,
reclaiming a term

SONG TOPIC

Weltschmerz
Overthinking
Numb
Nihilistic happiness

Lyrics are banal, simple topic and underlining the musicaland visual identity and topic.

Rebellion, provoking, reclaiming a space as a woman, notime - impatience, low energy - high pressure, contrasts, just keep going.

SONG PRODUCTION

First of all we tried to produce a song in first place and then add the samples in the end. After we already had a full song and tried to add the lo-fi elements we realized it wouldn’t work out as we imagined. So we started all over again by searching for drum samples and type beats. We finally came out with two different type beats and sampled them. After a longer trip through the city we also had our field recordings. We took a guitar part of one of the type beats as a general theme and pitched and chopped it differently, added a bassline and drums and had our base. It took some time to get us from the first verse into the next part. In the first place we thought about having a typical verse, bridge, refrain, verse hierarchy but it didn’t suit our concept so after a meeting with Stefanie Grawe where she told us to sketch our dramaturgy curve we decided to do it a bit differently. It then got from the verse to a very long bridge to actually more of another verse and ended in a happy mood. We added emulators just as sketchcassette and vinyl by iZotope to make it sound a bit more chunky and old, plus used some distortion and a lot of reverb to provide the lo-fi aspects that make a track lo-fi. The vocals were added in the end. The text is tackling the negative connotation of moodswings. It’s trying to reclaim the term and female emotions. The story itself describes mixed emotions after a radical change in life as a journey of discovery, uncertainty, trusting oneself without any validation from the outside. We called our song ‘mMM x3’ which is part of the lyrics. We also chose this name because everyone is going to pronounce it in a different way.

Used Emulators: SketchCassete, iZotope- Instrumente: Synths, Gitarre, Drums, Stimme- 120 bpm- 4:06 min- 4 Bar division- 3 Samples from 2 different Songs- Carrying Field Recordings
Inspirations: Steve Lacy, Dean Blunt, LA Timpa

SONG ARRANGEMENT

- 120 bpm, 4:04 min.
- sample chopped JPEGMAFIA type beat (1 Bar)
- suprising transition in verse, sexy but also sad (sample is introducing main theme) (4 bars)
- transition pitch gitarrensample, tact/beat and moodchange (1 bar)
- Climax, new bass (4 Bars)
- transition guitarsample (1 bar)
- Verse with several percussive effects
- transition via theme (1 bar), tension building, new synths, moodchanging (alert), change of tact/beat
- ends with sounds of falling droplets
- break of style -> happy (4 bars)

VIDEO CONCEPT

The video story line is pretty much attached to the text. It shows a person getting help by a butler. The butler sets up a table and a chair, reaches her a glass filled with colored physalis (showing off toxicity of patriarchy in a metaphoric way). The butler also serves a plate of different fruits. At some point the butler decides to leave and the person in the video is putting on their gloves. From this point on the main character finds herself at a breaking point and begins to cut the fruit in a very rough way and goes crazy with her drink. She begins to shiver and dissociate. The cuts are getting faster and faster as the mood changes. The footage off storyline is symbolizing daydreams of self reflection, watching oneself, demorphing oneself in one’s own point of view. We mostly used analogue distortion effects for the video and added some in postproduction. We wanted – just as in the song – create a video that is lo-fi but in a new progressive way and wanted to max out the stylistic means of what lo-fi can be.

Props: Magnifying Glasses & Lenses - building own distortion tools for analogue glitches, textiles

Camera: Lumix GH5

Camera look: Clean, use of different color tones in light – metaphor for mood swings and contrasts - playing with contrast (e.g., gloomy,- cold/warm contrasts, contrasts in shadow/light (a-/chromatic))

Studio Setting, arranged and planned set + props in set design - contrasting analogue glitches

Outfits: either full black/white or over-the-top textiles with wigs and crazy editorial make-up > Alter Ego / ‘Stage’ Persona









ARTWORK

The graphics should be also very analogue and distorded. Therefore we used acrylic paint and scanned the results. We coloured them differently to have a small selection we could use for our artwork. Since we really liked the footage we had from our music video we decided to use it for our artwork as well. This cover is morphed out of about 20 photos we took through broken glass.





We came out with these designs which are also stills from our video. We film free hand through an oldmagnifying glass.
Finally we decided to have an even simpler design.
© KISD / Image & Motion
SS 2022