Guest blog by Sudhan Gurung
My name is Sudhan Gurung and I’m a 2nd year EMP degree student here at The Academy of Contemporary Music (ACM). It’s extremely unfortunate that the country in which I loved growing up was struck with the biggest disaster of the century – two massive earthquakes.
Fortunately, my fiancé, grandparents and relatives are all safe but that doesn’t mean we should stop caring. There are people who desperately need help.
I, with the help of fellow ACM artists, decided to record and release a track to raise funds to help the people of this disaster. This is our attempt to utilise our talent that God gave us towards a good cause. The entire money will contribute towards buying food, medication, shelter and funding the rescue teams.
The name of the track we recorded is Mother Nepal and the artists involved were:
- Rapper: Liam Otis Mensah
- Singer: Megan Birch
- Pianist/Co-producer: Cameron Spencer
- Guitarist: Lewis Warne
- Bamboo Flute player: Mr. Kul Bahadur Thapa (Pata Magar)
- Bass: Cameron Websdale
- News Reporter (actor): Edward Forbes
- Producer/ Recording & Mixing Engineer/Interviewee: Sudhan Gurung
The process began when I produced a draft version on Ableton. It had always been my goal since the start of my studies at ACM to work with real musicians, and that goal turned into reality in the process of making this song. I gathered musicians within ACM, some of whom I had worked with before and some with the help of Laura Moors (ACM Industry Link). I recorded all the instruments and mixed the record as well. The next stage was to design the artwork myself. I’m currently making a lyric video of the song and working with ACM Business students to discuss social media promotion strategies for the song.
The track will be available from the 15th June on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify and Amazon Music, and we’ve also purchased the functionality that allows people to purchase the song via SMS. However, we are still waiting for the SMS code to be verified.
We will try to get radio plays on Kane FM, Eagle 3, Nepalese radio shows (UK): BFBS Gurkha radio, Yuva Vibes and Gurkha Connection and the ACM radio playlist and other local and online radios.
Streaming: Spotify, Tidal, iheart, 24/7 entertainment, Rhapsody.
We were very lucky to be able to get the track mastered for free within a Metropolis masterclass with top mastering engineer Tim Young.
I did some background study on Tim Young before the session and also got the opportunity to speak with Alex Ferguson who is an audio production student at ACM, who had completed at internship at Metropolis. They all said positive things, which reflected during our visit because as soon as I walked into the studio, Tim greeted me with a friendly handshake and a big smile. Tim is a mastering engineer with lots of experience and amazing accomplishments, yet very down-to-earth.
The atmosphere was very positive throughout. Tim never hesitated to answer all our questions and helped explain things with diagrams.
The session taught me that that whilst mastering, ‘less is more’, an approach that was completely opposite to the way I had approached mastering in the past. He mentioned that even an idiot can set a higher threshold value of the limiter to get a louder sound, but that it takes a skilful engineer to deliver similar impact with lesser loudness.
About Sudhan
I moved to UK 9 and half years ago from Nepal. I thought I wanted to become a computer engineer, however after studying a Computer Science course at Kingston University for four years I wasn’t happy with my life. My grades weren’t good enough for me to get a job because I spent more time making music than learning about computers and programming. That’s when I came to the realisation that I really wanted to become a musician.
I can honestly say that joining ACM was a decision I would never regret! ACM taught me the fundamental knowledge and experience that will forever be useful in my professional career.
Now, I’m on a mission to be the first Nepali to have No.1 hit record and album worldwide and inspire the youth of Nepal to watch and be inspired.
