CD COVER ESSAY
In this essay i will be dicussing the cover of my album by Jermain Budd and the title "No turning back",The aim of this unit was to create a music artist and design a CD cover based on codes and conventions of producing original designs that I’ve made up. I learnt about the four main concepts of media, representation, foam of language and institution,
The preparations I did for this coursework, I learnt about the history of music from different genres and i reaserched in some shops that sell CD`s, I went to my local music shop called HMV and started to look at different covers such as 50 cent, DMX, and Snoop Dogg these are the artist representing the CD, I chose these artist because they represent my artist Jermaine Budd and the kind of music I chose, I looked at the price plans to make sure my cd has the right qualities, i will also discuss the most important genres of pop music, the research into marketing of album covers, and finally i will discuss they way in which i created a new album.
From the history of music I learnt that pop music began with blues and gospel at the end of the 20th centery in amercia where blacks sang about thier hardships connexted with the slavery. In the twenties and thirties jass became diminant type in music for nearly three decades until the arrival of rock and roll in the late fifties. Jass featured black musicians playing thier music in clubs but it originally evolved from big bands to orchestras. rock and roll wass connected with the culture of rebellion. young people opposed traditional values of middle-class society and music was one of the most powerful ways to express their opposition. At first , it was dominated by white bands but in the early sixties black musicians became a part of music industry as well. the late sixties reflected on the attitude of young people - intrested in drugs and peaseful lifestyle. the seventies were dominated by the development of punk and reggae. Punk has its most powerful representatives among British working classes and helped them express their anger and frustration at the state of young adults, cloths and attitude all changed at that time. Rap and hip hop music was New York’s street culture which represents break dancing and body popping and it also represents negative reponce to the older generation such as drugs, violence and erotic displays, this made me learn why on most rap songs/cds have those "parental advisory" which show parents that this music id not suitable for children, but there are other black singers that don’t represent drugs and violence for example “soul” represents powerful emotions and painful experience but it can be erotic sometimes, and “reggae” another black singers that represents sprit and power most Jamaican sing these kind of music because its in their culture it has a fast tempo so its very hard to understand.
I went and I done some research on people’s taste of music and how they hear and see the music, 1st of all I went on the internet and used a popular search engine “Google” and began my research I went to this website and found out more people like rock and pop music I guessed because they began 1st so more people liked them but hip hop and rap are like that modern type of music that people are beginning to listen to.
The main conventions of a cd cover must include the name of the artist and the name of the album. The whole configuration of an album must also connote genre of the music and represent the artist normally, the cd cover must also include institutions information and production note so the audience around can see what kind of music this is and by that the consumer can easily find what they are looking for.
My artist , jermain , is a young new artist from north west London and he does a mixture of rap and base, in creating my cd cover I tried to include all of the codes and conventions of a cd cover, my front cover denotes a man sitting with dark and grey smoke rising up, under the title id my artists name, my background on my cd cover is meant to be thrilling and dazzling at the same time, on the back cover I have written all my tracks on the left of the cover, in the bottom I have included barcodes and record company’s.
The first level focus of my cd cover I placed him in the middle because I wanted my audience to see him strait away as a gangster type of appearance, this signify that he must be a good rapper that was raised from the streets and it should signify his culture and country.
My artist - Jermain Budd- is a young boy that i chose to represent him because jermaine represents rap, hip hop, he is from Cricklewood and he is an artist that expresives himself, his music is tageted at 14-25 modern teens or young adults, The genre of my artists music is a combination of rap and base of the style that envolved in clubs during the nineties: hip hop, acoustic and base, this genre is rap and base and hip hop a good combination, I think my cd cover suggest the hip hop genre with the expensive car, and jewellery, I also think its successful in showing the hip hop genre with help from the background and its location, using “50 cent” for an example from his album there’s a lot of details and the cover its mostly black so I did the same thing with my front cd cover i used dark effects that surround the picture.
I think my cd cover is successful in connoting the genre of my artist because of the image I used and the tracks, institution and the title I used, I think my cd cover includes all conventions of a cd cover and the front and back of my cd cover represents my artist this is important because I want my artist to look like the main person which he is, if I could go back I would change the tracks because it didn’t stand out as much, how ever the configuration of cd cover suggest that Jermain is the name of my artist and NO turning back id my title and the name of the album, I also included institutional information and production note at the bottom of the back cover, I also included the artist name, album title and institution name of the spine successfully, a logo of production company is to be found at the bottom of the cd cover front, Additionanally, the typical CD front features an image of the artist or images chosen to refer to the type of music that the CD contains. sometimes at the bottom left or right corner there is a lable which says " perantal advisory lyrics", and that is a hint for parents/cares that the language on the CD might not be suitable for the under-aged.
