Article

For this task I chose to interview Blame The Object and conducted an iterview of the questions I asked them and the answers they gave me. I then took pictures of them so that I could choose one for my article and one for my contents page.

Interview questions and answers:

What made you want to form the band?
We all had a passion for music and enjoyed it so we decided to show everyone we enjoyed it  and develop Blame The Object in to a successful band that doesn’t take things too seriously so we can have fun as friends and as a band.

What sort of music do you play?
We like to play rock and indie music but I think that we should be more creative when making our own music because that will broaden our range of music and get a better audience of people.

Do you enjoy making your own music?
Yeah we love making our own music, although it is difficult the outcome is great because we get good feedback and that gives us the confidence to keep making more and more of our own stuff and will hopefully become bigger in the music business.

Do you hope that you will be more successful in the future?
We hope so. It is hard getting there but if we do get there then it will be great knowing that all of the previous support didn’t go to waste. To make it big I think we will have to experiment with music more and that is what we plan to do.

Do you ever have and argument at band practices?
Yeah, what band doesn’t it is hard for all of us to agree on the same things so we do have to compromise. We like to have a laugh most of the time so sometimes we don’t get anything done and that does annoy some people like Ben (laughs). But aside all of the disagreements we manage to pull it together and put on a great show.

When you started the band what did you aim to achieve?
When we first started we thought okay were not going to take this too seriously in case it doesn’t go well but when we realised it sounded good we hoped to get more fans and more gigs and hopefully a headline.

Do you find it hard to come up with a set list for each gig?
No. It isn’t too difficult, we just pick the songs we know and play well and practice until it sounds great we sometimes add it little things into songs to make them our own.

What is your inspiration?
Biffy Clyro, Nirvana, Pink Floyd, Kings of Leon, The Strokes, and Metallica. Bands like that.

Where do you think your band will be in 10 years?
Hopefully we will be successful if we all chose this as a career path and we will be going to different places in the country not just in our area. We want to be known in different parts of the country maybe even all over the world.

Do you get nervous before a gig?
Yeah. Only a little bit though then that turns into excitement because we have a great audience and we always get the crowd going and it turns out to be a great night.

Have you all been friends for a long time before you formed the band?
Yeah we all go to the same school and have been friends for a couple of years. I think it makes it easier to be a band when your all friends because there are not as many disagreements.

Would you consider yourself as a successful band and how?
I would say we are, not as much as we hope to be but that all comes in time. No one starts at the top, were going to have to work our way up to that.

Article Research

Blame The Object

After I have planned out my front cover and contents page I did some background research on the person that I will interview for my magazine.I have decided to do my article research on Blame The Object as they are relevant to what type of music I am including in my mumsic magazine.

Blame the object have played at The Picket in Loverpool, this is the only actual gig they have done but they are well known in the area they are from and have played in schools for events such as battle of the bands.

This is them in a band practice before their gig.

This is a print screen of their facebook page.

Under the tab basic information it says

These are screen shots of 'Q' and 'Mojo's' double page spreads. I want my double page spread to look like these because it goes with what I want to do for my magazine. The colours are simple so the reader concentrates on the important parts of the article. They both have a simple color scheme and include 1 image on the left hand side of the article.

Article:

We spoke to Josh and Pete from Blame The object at one of their small practices. A Wirral born four piece band who like to play rock music. We found out what sort of things they get up to and how they find being a part of a band and what expectations that brings. With only being together for a year, they have made great progress in that short time. They have been on great highs and drastic lows but they have pulled through. Hopefully we will be seeing more of them this year as they are experimenting with different sounds and are hopeful of a headline gig in the New Year.

What made you want to form the band?
Josh: We all had a passion for music and enjoyed it so we decided to show everyone we enjoyed it and develop Blame The Object in to a successful band that doesn’t take things too seriously so we can have fun as friends and as a band.
Pete: It was all for a laugh to start with and then we thought why not try do something with this and it just went from there really.

What sort of music do you play?
Pete: We like to play Rock music, the heavier the better!
Josh: But I think that we should be more creative when making our own music because that will broaden our range of music and get a better audience of people.

Do you enjoy making your own music?
Josh: Yeah we love making our own music, although it is difficult the outcome is great. It can be hard to get a song right and you never have something perfect and ready to perform first time.
Pete: we get good feedback and that gives us the confidence to keep making more and more of our own stuff and will hopefully become bigger in the music business.

Do you hope that you will be more successful in the future?
Pete: We hope so. It is hard getting there but if we do get there then it will be great knowing that all of the previous support didn’t go to waste.
Josh: To make it big I think we will have to experiment with music more and that is what we plan to do. We don’t want to be too big because I think that will cause problems.

Do you ever have and argument at band practices?
Pete: Yeah, what band doesn’t it is hard for all of us to agree on the same things so we do have to compromise.
Josh: We like to have a laugh most of the time so sometimes we don’t get anything done and that does annoy some people like Ben (laughs). But aside all of the disagreements we manage to pull it together and put on a great show.

When you started the band what did you aim to achieve?
Pete: When we first started we thought okay were not going to take this too seriously in case it doesn’t go well but when we realised it sounded good we hoped to get more fans and more gigs and hopefully a headline.
Josh: We would love to eventually be known around the country and be able to play at festivals suck as Download, Leeds and Glastonbury.

Do you find it hard to come up with a set list for each gig?
Josh: No. It isn’t too difficult, we just pick the songs we know and play well and practice a lot to make sure it is put together well and sounds good.
Pete: I think it is more of what we can fit on the set list because we all want to put certain songs on the list and we can only have so many so we also have to compromise there.

What is your inspiration?
Josh: Biffy Clyro!
Pete: Pink Floyd, Nirvana
Josh: Kings of Leon, The Strokes, and Metallica. Bands like that.
Pete: We are inspired by bands like these because they all write their own music and love what they do which is exactly what we want to do.

Where do you think your band will be in 10 years?
Josh: Hopefully we will be successful if we all chose this as a career path and we will be going to different places in the country not just in our area.
Pete: We want to be known in different parts of the country maybe even all over the world.

Do you get nervous before a gig?
Josh: Yeah. Only a little bit though then that turns into excitement because we have a great audience and we always get the crowd going and it turns out to be a great night.

Have you all been friends for a long time before you formed the band?
Josh: Yeah we all go to the same school and have been friends for a couple of years.
Pete: I think it makes it easier to be a band when your all friends because there are not as many disagreements.

Would you consider yourself as a successful band and how?
Pete: I would say we are, not as much as we hope to be but that all comes in time. No one starts at the top.
Josh: Were going to have to work our way up to that.

Front Cover, Contentes Page & Double Page Spread Sketches

These are the sketches that I drew in order to actually produce my front cover, contentes page & double page spread.

Production Plans

Planning Production

I will now go further into the deeper detail of what I will include in my magazine.

Images I will use for my front cover:

·         Helen Mahoney

Coverlines:

·         Interview with Blame The Object

·         Win meet and great with Kasabian

·         Scarlet “My life is so different now”

·         Download festival 2012

·         Morrissey and Marr from The Smiths reveal all

·         10 albums you have to listen to this year

·         Muse back to the old days

Images I will include for my contests page:

·         Blame The Object

·         Scarlet

·         Refrain

·         An amplifier

Text I will use for my contents page:

·         Album reviews

·         Band of the fortnight

·         Money off gigs vouchers

·         Win VIP and meet and great with Kasabian

·         Gig Guide

·         Posters

·         Tabs - Biffy Clyro - That Golden Rule

·         Gigs across the country

·         Gig experiences

·         Guitars

·         In the making of Velociraptor

·         Metallica and Megadeth

·         Best drummers, voted by you

·         Arctic Monkeys

·         Line up for Sonesphere 2011

·         Getting into the music business

·         Mon the Biff

·         Muse in the old days

·         What is the best album cover of all time?

·         Morrisey & Marr from The Smiths reveal all

·         Mumford & Sons amp it up

·         Interview with blame the object

·         Muse and Radiohead

·         Noel Gallager going solo

·         Scarlet

·         Line up for download festival 2012

·         10 albums you have to listen to in this year

·         Top 10 rock songs of this year

·         Ed Sheeran’s album plus +

·         Kirk Hammett’s amazing guitar solo’s

·         Amy McDonald has a new album!

 

Publication Plan

Publication Plan

Title:  ROCKK!

Frequency of Publication: Weekly

Price: £2.80 per week

Rationale: This magazine aims to give it’s target audience gig information, interviews & posters, I will focus on what the fans really want to see and read.

Style: Informal but not using strong slang so that everyone can read this magazine. I will use the colours purple and black to keep in with the rock theme.

Regular Content:

·         Album reviews

·         Band of the fortnight

·         Money off gigs vouchers

·         Win VIP and meet and great with Kasabian

·         Gig Guide

·         Posters

·         Tabs - Biffy Clyro - That Golden Rule

·         Gigs across the country

·         Gig experiences

·         Guitars

Featured Content:

·         In the making of Velociraptor

·         Metallica and Megadeth

·         Best drummers, voted by you

·         Arctic Monkeys

·         Line up for Sonesphere 2011

·         Getting into the music business

·         Mon the Biff

·         Muse in the old days

·         What is the best album cover of all time?

·         Morrisey & Marr from The Smiths reveal all

·         Mumford & Sons amp it up

·         Interview with blame the object

·         Muse and Radiohead

·         Noel Gallager going solo

·         Scarlet

·         Line up for download festival 2012

·         10 albums you have to listen to in this year

·         Top 10 rock songs of this year

·         Ed Sheeran’s album plus +

·         Kirk Hammett’s amazing guitar solo’s

·         Amy McDonald has a new album!

House Style: Arial

Coverlines: Impact

Headlines: Arial Underlined

Standfirst: Arial Bold 14pt

Captions: Arial Italic 8pt

Features First Paragraph: Drop capital Impact 4 lines deep the rest of the text lower case.

Body Text: Arial

Colour Scheme: Black, green and purple

Audience Research Results and Conclusions

For this task I did 2 voice recordings and 1 video recording of people answering my questionnaire to gain results and I could then base my magazine on what people said.

Questionnaire Results

These are the results that I concluded from the questionnaires that I gave out for people to fill in. It shows what the popular choices are and what I should include in my magazine.

The first question I asked was: Do you like to see interviews with bands? The majority of people said yes. This helped me when choosing what content I will include in my magazine. The second question I asked was: Do you like to receive information on where you can go to see bands? The majority again said yes so this will again help me choose what I want to include in my magazine.

For the next question I asked I asked: Who is their favourite band or singer? The answeres where misxed and I think I could have asked the question better by asking people that listen to rock music so that I would have a clearer idea. The next question I asked was: How often to you buy music magazines? Half of the people I asked said weekly. This helped me choose how frequent I would publish my magazine.

The next question I asked was: What colours would you associate with a rock magazine? A large proportion said black, I think this is an essential colour to use on any rock music magazine. The next question I asked was: How much would you be willing to pay for a music magazine? Most people ticked the box that said £2 - £3. This is the price range I will choose.